Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin, Xmarks & Major Torrent Sites Blocked in India - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiancustomers.in/vimeo-dailymotion-pastebin-331.html <comment><USER2> Its getting ridiculous by the day, the way laws are being set here in India.

Recently the Supreme Court of India, has ordered that all cars must get rid of their sun films. Even tinted glasses of any tint percentage aren't allowed. This is because they think the kidnapping, terrorism and crimes against women will stop if the cars get rid of sun films and tint on windows. People are predicting heavy bribe business in early days after ban is enforced.

In another instance, the court has also ordered that heavy vehicles like lorries, trucks and other goods/passenger vehicles get speed regulators fixed preventing them from going above some level(I guess that is 60 Km) this is because some boy died in a over speeding accident. From what I hear, there is a strike planned to counter this.

Coming to Piracy, its ridiculous to think that they are going to stop piracy by banning torrent and video sites. In a country where pirated CD's are available on the footpath for the price of peanuts, Piracy isn't going to be that easy to solve. In fact of bulk of the piracy business happens, through those means. Very few people apart from the computer savvy ones know how to use torrents, or even know what torrents are.

<comment><USER3> I am somewhat amazed that you are clubbing somewhat unrelated issues with a problem that directly threatens freedom of internet access in India.While, I do not take any sides -tinting of car glasses was prohibited by few state governments before. Also I am not sure if installing speed regulators is a step in the right direction but people getting killed in road accidents is a real problem in India. Remember that Lambourghuini mowing down several people in New Delhi?

But lets not call it "getting ridiculous by the day" yet. These orders were passed by court and not laws that parliament tried to make to achieve a totalitarian state and as such these orders are open for challenge by anyone. For example, it is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through and there weren't anyone[probably] challenging it and hence it is now being enforced by ISPs.

<comment><USER4> > "It is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through" I would > get worried if this were the case. Serious cases take years to pass through > Indian courts. If Copyright Labs (which I increasingly feel is a facade > company) got this rushed through the court AND got the ISPs to block access > at such a blanket level I would start getting worried about the integrity of > that court.

<comment><USER3> My point was the cases that drag for years generally has two sides, but what if the case had only one side? Copyright Labs wanted certain sites banned and obviously Vimeo, Pastebin etc have zero ground presence in India so there wasn't really anyone protesting the case of Copyright Labs. I am betting, if there was someone opposing what Copyright Labs was claiming, the outcome would have been different.

<comment><USER5> If a court is banning a publication, surely at least someone might be expected to go and double check that the claim isn't bullshit. You know, just on the basis of it being their job, or something nice like that. Otherwise it isn't really a court, is it? Is more like just a carefully staged sketch show with unusually high consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The really disturbing aspect of these blocking is the blatant manner in which websites which are known for their self-regulation (mainly for quality control) like Vimeo have been blacked out presumably by twisting the Chennai High court order against 'video sharing websites' by Copyright Labs, which seems to be a dummy company <http://goo.gl/a1rjS> . There is an alarming lack of internet literacy among the law makers and keepers who need to be educated on these issues so that such ridiculous incidents don't happen again.

<comment><USER7> "We Protect your move from spreading through Torrent" - They haven't even ran a spell checker on their site, can't stop laughing at these people.

<comment><USER8> None of those words have been misspelled...

<comment><USER4> 'protect your move ...' Move? What move?

<comment><USER9> His point is a spell checker wouldn't have helped here!

<comment><USER10> Not a software one, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to access the blocked sites, the surest way is to get a free mini instance with amazon(or use an existing one), and use ssh dynamic port forwarding for you browsing.

        ssh -D 8080 -i your_amazon_key.pem username@ec2-instance
        # Followed by changing your browser/system settings to use localhost:8080 as socks v5 proxy

If you are concerned about some ass-hats censoring the web because of some upcoming movie I don't give two fucks about, or Airtel/Reliance bending over backwards to enforce the ban, I don't know what to do.

"Some movie is coming out, we are afraid we will lose revenue if people pirate it. I know what to do. Let's get a court order asking ISPs to ban sites which are infringing upon the movie(the good old ISP, takes the safer route and blocks whole sites since it doesn't know or doesn't want to stop just the movie). Hey look, people are still able to get through to the movie. Let's get another court order asking the ISPs to stop service altogether for 6 months."

"Rape cases on a rise and most rapes happen at night. Let's stop people from going out at night. Still not working. Let's stop people from going out altogether."

I can understand the concerns about loss of revenue over piracy, but these dystopian measures aren't worth whatever hypothetical losses you might be suffering.

<comment><USER12> In that case may as well install a proxy on the mini-instance, along with an OpenVPN server.

There are OpenVPN clients available for most platforms, configuration is easy and using it is trivial ("install and forget").

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just to clear up some air here ... The government, as in the Central or State governing bodies have not blocked any sites, nor have they passed any orders for the same. The issue involves a company, Copyright Labs (<http://www.copyrightlabs.in/index.php>) which through the Madras High Court got a John Doe order to get ISPs to block access to certain sites to 'ensure' that an upcoming movie is not pirated. What is worrying w.r.t. the government is summed up quite aptly here: [https://twitter.com/#!/pranesh_prakash/status/20306526313290...](https://twitter.com/#!/pranesh_prakash/status/203065263132905472)

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Drumming this news as somehow - Executive arm of our constitution took power in its hands and decided to block websites unilaterally is false. I still lament the lack of knowledge judiciary has, when it comes to passing judgement on such things but I don't see Central or State Govt. at fault here.

<comment><USER13> Is that really a meaningful distinction? The judiciary is part of the government, and the other parts are bound by its decisions. Honestly I don't know how judges in India are selected, but presumably it's subject to the same democratic checks as elsewhere (either because they are directly elected or because they are appointed by elected politicians). "The government" doesn't get off the hook just because it was a court that did the dirty work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No, these sites are being blocked. I am on Airtel as well and things weren't blocked until yesterday. I think Reliance was the first to enforce the block - I believe they're also the ones who filed for the court order. It's really good to see this on the HN front-page, and hope there's more awareness / discussion. Blocking pastebin is a bit ridiculous :/ - the message one gets when one goes to any of the sites is just "This site has been blocked as per Court Orders", without any other explanation. Changing DNS servers does not work, so they are doing it at a different level.

tl;dr: sites are being blocked. wtf?

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked it on Airtel broadband, Airtel 3G and MTNL in New Delhi. It is blocked here, I get this error:

Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders

<comment><USER15> All sites work fine for me using Google's DNS servers on Airtel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> shreyas-satish Here's the court order for the inclined - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/93879417/John-Doe-order-to- block-s...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/93879417/John-Doe-order-to-block-sites)

IANAL, but as far as the court order goes there are no specific sites mentioned to be blocked. This implies, service providers like Airtel have _perceived_ the aforementioned sites to be liable for copyright infringement. It is curious as to how they decided Pastebin and not Youtube could be used for "copyright infringement".

<comment><USER16> I'm confused. It says "...or anyone claiming through them be and are hereby restrained (...) from in any manner infringing the applicant's copyright in the cinematographic film...". How is it that a court can order someone not to break the law? And how can that be understood as "cease all operations"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't it great India also wants to rally all the world's governments to take control over the internet, overseen of course by the UN

<http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3423018.ece>

</comment><comment><USER18> The indian govt is trying to get the UN to regulate the internet with help from countries like Russia and some Arab countries . Its trying to form a 50 member UN Committee called the Committee for Internet Policy . They re saying its to end the US dominance over Internet Policy .. Im suspicious..

<comment><USER19> How ironic they do not listen to their own countryman, U.N. Commissioner Pravin Lal.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am on airtel, got the "This site has been blocked as per Court Orders" message when trying to access vimeo this morning, and was taken by surprise. Why would one want to block vimeo? These guys have to at least say why they blocked it. The most stupid thing is blocking pastebin, if they are going to block a site due to someone writing something that is objectionable, then I think almost all sites which accepts and displays user inputs qualifies to be taken down. If you see the comments in youtube.com/indiatimes.com during an IPL match you can find all sorts of nasty comments and one can easily argue that these sites should be taken down. I am even considering switching from Airtel to some other ISP if they are not blocking traffic.

<comment><USER4> It is a John Doe order being enforced because some big movie is being released and they don't want it to be pirated. Those of us who use Vimeo for leisure or work are evidently lesser citizens ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A few days back, customers of Reliance faced blocking of Torrent and Vimeo, which was later unblocked. Meanwhile, BSNL did not block any of these sites.

<comment><USER21> I think that the reason behind this block-unblock cycle that reliance goes through every time a movie of theirs is released is quite simple. They do not want to block these sites permanently because then they lose an edge in the competition with airtel.

On the other hand whenever a movie from Reliance entertainment comes out they want to avoid the cams to spread for the first few weeks so they block these sites. Once the first couple of weeks have passed they undo the blocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A more detailed article: [http://www.medianama.com/2012/05/223-airtel-blocks- vimeo-dai...](http://www.medianama.com/2012/05/223-airtel-blocks-vimeo- dailymotion-all-major-torrent-sites-in-india/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Having a Tata Photon+ wireless (EVDO) connection, as well as an MTNL (Mumbai) broadband and a local internet provider (Hathway) in my home and/or at work, I haven't seen this in action. I am not sure whether Airtel and Reliance have any vested interest (far be me from it!), but Reliance is also the owner of BIG Entertainment and BIG Pictures (both owned by the younger Ambani), and the Mittals of Airtel have tied up with BigFlix. In other words, this may be a net non-neutrality move, not the first of its kind.

<comment><USER24> why pastebin then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now Anonymous - operation India have protested by taking down the websites of supreme court of India and AICC (ruling party of India) websites.

</comment><comment><USER26> They only blocked http access, it looks like. Sites that support https still work.

I guess the ISPs are only sniffing port 80?

<comment><USER21> At least vimeo is still blocked on port 443.

<comment><USER26> I think that's because they redirect to http?

The Pirate Bay works on https (I love that they have legit certs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is happening so often in India that it isn't even newsworthy anymore :(

For those outside India who are wondering, only Airtel (private) seems to have blocked sites. I have a BSNL (state owned) broadband connection and everything still loads fine for me.

<comment><USER28> That's probably because the BSNL employees are still having the samosas/chai they ordered?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here is the copy of "John Doe" order [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdU...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdUb3c2S3EwSk1Udw/edit?pli=1)

</comment><comment><USER30> While I agree that Vimeo and DailyMotion should not have been blocked since they don't allow pirated video, it is possible that KolaveriDi did appear there and that evidence must have been presented to the court to get a block on those sites. If that is not true then I am sure someone will appeal.

However, I strongly support shutting Pirate sites and illegal file downloads. There is a good reason why Bollywood is so much smaller than Hollywood - rampant Piracy in India. Remember you are doing India a great disservice by pirating - India loses jobs and creative people suffer.

<comment><USER31> > However, I strongly support shutting Pirate sites and illegal file > downloads.

Except this isn't shutting down pirate sites, this is making sure that 90% of people can't access them by ordering major ISPs to interfere with communications between their customers and the websites in question (some might call this "censorship" or "protectionism"). I agree that TPB-style piracy is usually a bad thing, but do the ends really justify the means here? The blocking of Vimeo and Dailymotion suggest that this is a very, very slippery slope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are they blocking by IP or just DNS? Are you guys typing just domain names, or are you trying the IP addresses too? Add a line to your HOSTS file and see what happens: 22.214.171.124 vimeo.com www.vimeo.com

<comment><USER33> Several are claiming that HTTPS still works, which means it's not DNS-level _or_ IP-level. It may be IP+port level, or the only thing that I can really think which is left is deep-packet inspection: a Linux user in India could easily test this with something like:

        curl -v -H "Host: thepiratebay.se" http://www.google.com/

<comment><USER22> I got "Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders" message when I tried this.

It's not surprising, because a year or so ago Airtel was using deep packet inspection to throttle torrents and file sharing sites. They already have the necessary equipment in place, they can use it when and as they please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am using airtel in New Delhi and the sites seem to be working. specifically checked vimeo, xmarks, pastebin.

This is from our leased line via Airtel, so it seems that corporates are exempt from the ban.

<comment><USER35> it is banned in chennai, can't access on my office leased line

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> May be relavent.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q5ZQsxSWk_A)

<comment><USER37> YouTube has live streams now? That's the second I've seen, the only other was IPL...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I suppose we just have to have faith in the average techie's ability to bypass these restrictions, which seem to be becoming a global phenomenon, not just a western one. OK I know china has blocked a huge amount of sites for years, but it's only recently in the west that serious impingements on our right to information have begun to happen. As for the masses who don't have a clue how to use a VPN or a proxy, I feel sorry for them. They're becoming victims of control.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just in: the motion to get the draconian IT Rules 2011 act annulled has been negatived. [https://twitter.com/#!/PRSLegislative/status/203069104331030...](https://twitter.com/#!/PRSLegislative/status/203069104331030528) This and acts like it are central to such ridiculousness even being possible ...

</comment><comment><USER39> Court _has not_ ordered to block any website. The order asks ISPs to make sure that illegal copies of movies does not get distributed. [https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdU...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxi2TzVXul5ZUl9EclRQZXlRdVdUb3c2S3EwSk1Udw/edit?pli=1)

</comment><comment><USER40> I personally think that it is actually a good thing that they are targeting these sites and hope they are going to ban YouTube as well. People need to feel the pain of censorship in order to act, and the more popular the censored websites are, the more I see a chance for action.

</comment><comment><USER41> Let's hit them where it hurts. Sign and share this petition..

[http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-will-vote-against- the-c...](http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-will-vote-against-the-congress- party-for/)

..and we can announce that we're a vote bank that can hurt them.

<comment><USER4> How does this help? At all?

<comment><USER41> If there are enough votes at stake, the politicians will back our interests.

<comment><USER42> Ha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> No it isn't. Everything is working fine for me. I checked in Airtel, and over NIC (National Informatics Center). If it isn't blocked by the NIC (gov. body, btw, I am a gov employee) I doubt whether anyone else would block it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is blocked on major ISPs like Airtel, MTNL & Reliance. Some ISPs may have not implemented the block yet, but may follow soon.

<comment><USER44> My reliance connection allows TPB, Vimeo and Pastebin. I can confirm that at least vimeo and TPB were blocked till a few days ago when I checked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This should shift the s/w outsourcing edge away from India.

I think the rest of the world should consider this good news and encourage them to find more creative ways to 'protect' against imaginary criminal activity.

</comment><comment><USER46> I use Airtel at home and these sites are blocked. But we use a different ISP at work and vimeo and pastebin are not blocked. Can anybody who uses another ISP confirm that it is not just Airtel?

</comment><comment><USER47> It may be working via few isps and dns servers. But the whole point of excercising a ban on websites is absurd. Wonder how the court is controlled by the big shots in India.

</comment><comment><USER48> The CEO of Copyrightlabs was just on TV. He says he wanted the ISPs to only block specific URLs serving pirated content but the ISPs went ahead and blocked the whole sites

<comment><USER21> What channel was this on? I want to follow this on TV but have not seen this reported yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> i think freedom is our fundamental right. but it seems some political parties want that people in India, behave like a Chinese people, where you do not have any right to say anything against govt.its very ridiculous person like some leader is free to move anywhere and they can promote any lady to just full fill one demand of sex.our Leader says that its fundamental right of that person.but,we are not allowed to watch video according to our choice.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is pretty lame, blocking sites is not the way to go. If you find something that is pirated, flag/report it to get the video removed.

</comment><comment><USER51> No it isn't. I checked vimeo after I saw a tweet about it being blocked. Was working fine for me. My ISP is semi-govt org.

</comment><comment><USER52> No website can be blocked. If they think they blocked any, they are only fooling themselves.

</comment><comment><USER53> Main thing is ISP guys don't know why they are blocking sites. Specially MTNL.

</comment><comment><USER54> Damn. It is blocked in certain ISP only. Everything is working on my network

</comment><comment><USER55> Pretty lame. This is just going to push more and more people to use VPNs.

</comment><comment><USER56> I am using Airtel in Mumbai and the sites are blocked. Crazy stuff!

</comment><comment><USER57> My faith in universal human rationality is decreasing day by day.

<comment><USER58> Very few humans are rational...

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> No problem accessing vimeo or pastebin. Checked on Tata photon+.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is what I get:

Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders

<comment><USER51> Which ISP ? Location ?

<comment><USER57> Delhi. Airtel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Blocked on Airtel :( MTS seems fine for now.

</comment><comment><USER62> Solutions? Using Firefox & Windows.

</comment><comment><USER63> India is a retarded nation

</comment><comment><USER64> fine with Tata Indicom

</comment><comment><USER65> I wonder what Vimeo and Pastebin did to end up on this list. These two are definitely odd (and harmless) apples in that bunch.

<comment><USER66> same about xmarks, it's bookmarking service for god's sake...

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> WTFFF !!!!! What does Pastebin & Vimeo even have to do with the "Piracy Stuff" !!!

How foolish is the Indian Government !! Seriously !!!

</comment><comment><USER68> why is that? esp on pastebin that is.</comment>


The Swedish Number – Talk with a Random Swede - <AUTHOR> http://theswedishnumber.com <comment><USER2> Carl from Sweden who actually received calls, recollects his experience here - [https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories-from-the-swedish- numbe...](https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories-from-the-swedish- number-50ca1a2d11a2#.plh1f75f6)

<comment><USER3> Like nearly all other Swedes, you can google 'carl heath' and find a page with his phone number, home address, birthday, and a button 'send him flowers': [http://personer.eniro.se/resultat/Carl+Heath](http://personer.eniro.se/resultat/Carl+Heath)

<comment><USER4> haha yes! I used interflora

<comment><USER3> Oops, just found out he's a colleague :)

<comment><USER5> And we can also use google to find stories on ourselves too, in Sweden. Havent seen any flowers yet, though. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone try this yet? I've always wondered what Swedes think about IKEA in America...

<comment><USER7> As a Swede currently living in California who also has visited IKEA in several different countries I can report that the general experience of visiting IKEA is pretty much as stressful and disorienting here as in Sweden. There are some local variations in the product portfolio both due to different standards like in bed sizes and kitchen and cultural differences. You cannot find a cheese slicer in my nearest IKEA and they have icing on their cinnamon buns (almost blasphemy).

To be honest, IKEA is a Swedish company by brand only. The products are sourced from wherever it is cheapest to manufacture right now and the ownership structure is so complex, multinational and tax-avoidance schemy that probably only the head honcho Ingvar Kamprad (IK in IKEA) who until recently resided in Switzerland, knows where the profit ends up.

(edit: got Ingvar Kamprads name wrong first time around)

<comment><USER8> The Swedes are using cheese slicers too? I always thought the Dutch were the only people in the world to use cheese slicers.

<comment><USER9> Finn here. How else are you supposed to slice cheese?

<comment><USER7> Knife i guess or buy factory sliced. Most cheeses in america is a bit to soft to slice with a cheese slicer anyway.

<comment><USER8> American cheese? Does that relate to real cheese as Pizza Hawaii compares to an actual Italian pizza?

<comment><USER10> Don't look for American cheese, look for Wisconsin or Vermont cheese. Maybe California in a pinch. Those will be good.

<comment><USER11> That makes no sense. The geographic source of the cheese is trivila compared to the way it is made. You can get cheap American process ccheese food or you can get expensive classic varieties of cheese from anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hej Hej! I spent 4 months (in the dead of winter) consulting in Stockholm Sweden and it has a special place in my heart. I meet some great people... Some from just posting in reddit /stockholm.

Highly recommend visiting, if you can, go during June (end) for midsummer. I was there Dec - March, it was damn cold.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ahh the new SaaS(Swede as a Service).

<comment><USER14> SaaB (Swedish as a Business)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am from Norway, and decided to call. Ended up talking 30 mins with an extremely nice lady in the south of sweden. 10/10 would recommend - Swedes are awesome

</comment><comment><USER16> Can't wait to see what /b/ will do with that.

<comment><USER17> I'm not Swedish but I'm living in Sweden. This past weekend, my girlfriend, who is Swedish, wanted to participate in this phone number thing. I told her it was a terrible idea and I had to show her /b/ to convince her.

<comment><USER18> Shame. other people seem to have had lovely connections with the service, like Karl mentioned in another comment: [https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories- from-the-swedish-numbe...](https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories-from-the- swedish-number-50ca1a2d11a2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting but not surprising website. I visited Stockholm for the first time recently and I was impressed with the usage of tech to increase everyday efficiencies. Things like: app for the rail station tickets/yellow cabs/buses, electric/hybrid vehicles commonplace, free wifi in abundance...

</comment><comment><USER20> This was featured on BBC R1 last week - the presenters calling random Swedes via the number looking for a 'Freida'.. it's as bizarre as it sounds.

</comment><comment><USER21> Did people sign up for this or was it involuntarily and anyone, including those who don't want to be bothered, will get calls?

<comment><USER22> People sign up. There is also a [http://twitter.com/sweden](http://twitter.com/sweden) that is also run by citizens who sign up (it rotates every week).

<comment><USER21> How does that twitter profile switching work technically. Is there actual shadow account support available to Pro Twitter accounts?

<comment><USER23> "Here you go, the password is bfGeAgwRHU5bwMNd."

Some technical problems don't need technical solutions.

<comment><USER24> So there is some kind of 2fa that prevents whover has the account that week from changing the password and email?

<comment><USER23> They don't just give the account to random people. It's always people with already some kind of social media presence, and stealing an account as well known as @Sweden is not something someone like that would just do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We had a similar initiative but with other purpose here in Brussels after the November terrorist attacks on Paris

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/09...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/09/in- order-to-win-back-tourists-this-european-capital-wants-visitors-to-dial-up- random-locals/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Similarly, the @Sweden Twitter account is given to a different random Swede every week.

<comment><USER27> The abuse of the @Sweden Twitter account is obvious -- just look at the lebanese immigrant Elias Kreidy who wrote "I'm the immigrant f __king your daughter while you're trying to sleep ignoring her moans calling me 'daddy '".

Now imagine this guy answering a phone line as an ambassador for the country!

NSFW article about the tweet: [http://www.infowars.com/im-the-immigrant-fking- your-daughter...](http://www.infowars.com/im-the-immigrant-fking-your- daughter/)

<comment><USER18> This site seems to be run by a conspiracy theorist [1]. Next time a more reasonable source would probably be in order.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_%28radio_host%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_%28radio_host%29)

<comment><USER28> [http://www.friatider.se/jag-ar-invandraren-som-knullar- din-d...](http://www.friatider.se/jag-ar-invandraren-som-knullar-din-dotter)

[http://curatorsofsweden.com/curator/elias- kreidy/](http://curatorsofsweden.com/curator/elias-kreidy/)

Use Google Translate. Obviously English sources for _Swedish_ news is hard to find. It is, afaik, not the first the time @sweden account has been used for trolling by douches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is an American living in Sweden that is answering calls. He's got some interesting perspectives on life in Sweden. Not sure if he is still taking calls or not.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nobody has mentioned the language issue yet?

Unfortunately what I've seen implies they talk in English. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But my son has been taking French language class in school and this provides the obvious extension to their idea of "talk to a random French-speaking person" or whatever other language someone wants to learn. Something like that probably already exists anyway. I suppose there would be the predictable issues with most foreign language learners being minors.

<comment><USER31> I've visited Sweden quite a few times and have travelled around quite a bit. I didn't meet a single person who couldn't speak English to some extent. I didn't meet a single person under about 50 who wasn't completely fluent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't image the US ever doing this.

<comment><USER33> Imagine it quickly being turned off due to abuse.

<comment><USER34> I've troubled imagining how you can abuse this though.

<comment><USER35> "Is your refrigerator running?"

<comment><USER36> Well yeah, why?

<comment><USER33> "Is your refrigerator running?"

"Yes."

"Well, you'd better go catch it!"

(Click.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do swedes get to opt out of this?

<comment><USER38> It's opt in. In a radio segment the other day they said 6k people have volunteered. Which makes it very much non-random, but still, cute concept.

<comment><USER39> probably a good thing, you wouldn't want most of the calls to be answered by people very unhappy to be cold-called by some random foreigner...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Reminder: A trumped-up Swedish arrest warrant is the reason that Julian Assange has been trapped for years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London and denied his right to asylum... all for journalism that made the US government look bad.

Don't travel to Sweden. Don't support the Swedish government in any way. They are cooperating in a large-scale effort to censor the types of things you can read about in the newspaper.

</comment><comment><USER5> Watch the Swedish Prime Minister answer The Swedish Number.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S087OHdCG8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S087OHdCG8I)

</comment><comment><USER41> I can only praise the idea and wish it to be an initiative that others follow. It sure helps connect people around the globe.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm working on an application, submitted to fellowship, that will allow people to confess about something and others will be able to comment on this confession.

This topic makes clear that I need really good, and fast, moderation tools

</comment><comment><USER43> The prime minister answering the call :)

[http://youtu.be/S087OHdCG8I](http://youtu.be/S087OHdCG8I)

</comment><comment><USER44> Skype has something similar back in 2005. You could ring random person and have a chat.

I dont understand obsession about Sweden. It is expensive country in decline with high crime. There are better places in Europe.

<comment><USER45> We're in 64th place for crime, just behind UK and Australia and way behind the US (obviously). But Japan is absolutely great if you're looking for low crime rates, and the food is fantastic too.

[http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp](http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp)

<comment><USER46> That index claims that there is less crime in Colombia and Russia than in the US. Also that there is less crime in Azerbaijan than in New Zealand.

<comment><USER45> Yes, sorry that was a terrible reference; I should have been more careful. But take instead the murder rate from Wikipedia (which gets stats from the UN): Sweden is in place 205 out of 218 countries and no other nordic country is lower except Iceland (and the rate in Iceland is not accurately measurable since they had only a single murder).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

This despite the fact we're in the top ten for gun ownership: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Swede-roulette

</comment><comment><USER48> This reminds me of [https://mapc.am/](https://mapc.am/), a browser based variant.

</comment><comment><USER49> [https://vimeo.com/162594920](https://vimeo.com/162594920) though

</comment><comment><USER50> Does the Swede in question get notified beforehand about the source of the call?

<comment><USER51> No. They simply get a call where the caller ID is the "Sweden number". However, they can hang up at any time if getting abuse calls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wonder how long will it last until it is filled with junk calls

</comment><comment><USER53> Cisco Web Reputation is blocking this domain for malware.

<comment><USER54> Another case of malware blocking gone wrong. Well, it's not malware, but if you don't trust it, you can probably use the archive.org version of the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Ingenious; Will also reduce suicides;

<comment><USER51> Let's clear this up once and for all; That Sweden has a high suicide rate is a rumour and not true. Sweden's suicide rate is below the average of the OECD countries. Feel free to read up on it here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Sweden)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Low tech chatroulette.

</comment><comment><USER57> OT: i submitted this 3'days ago, I wonder how this got resubmitted.

<comment><USER58> Me too. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11449020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11449020) :)

<comment><USER57> I thought you can't post the same link twice?</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Web Services revenue rises 81% year over year - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/07/23/amazons-cloud-makes-the-cut/ <comment><USER2> 36% of Amazon's operating profit is now from AWS. That's crazy!

<comment><USER3> Bezos long ago figured out that the best tax strategy in modern America for a public company is to operate without profit. The company operates with a relatively (to the revenue) small loss, maintaining positive cash flow by issuing and selling additional stock. Selling new stock is (remarkably) tax free. The dilution is negligible since the stock is valued by the revenue (not profit so much). Everybody benefits: executives are now compensated mainly by the RSUs and options, and the corporate profit is only a tax drag that does not really affect this compensation.

<comment><USER4> If the point of a business is compensating its employees, that might be a strategy. However, that isn't the point of the business. The point of the business is to generate money for the shareholders. Over the short/medium term, shareholders might be content with growth and revenue. Over the long term, without profits the business has nothing for shareholders.

It really isn't a tax strategy any more than being unemployed with no income is a tax strategy. Amazon's strategy seems to be keeping margins low enough that it's hard for others to compete with them, in the hopes of great long- term profits.

While the stock may be valued on its revenue, that valuation is premised on the idea that Amazon will be making a lot of profits from that high revenue in the future. Investors aren't buying Amazon stock believing that it's avoiding profit as a tax strategy to funnel money to employees. They're buying Amazon stock believing that it's the future of retail and that being the future of retail will come with enormous profits.

<comment><USER5> The point of a business is whatever its shareholders want it to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how much of that is people forgetting to shut down unused EC2 instances

<comment><USER7> It really feels like they design the thing to make that happen.

I got stung for over $100 just as a casual user, because I never guessed that I had to click through all the (slow loading) regions to see the instances and volumes and snapshots I might have burning money.

The web interface is a total clusterfuck.

<comment><USER8> Whenever I've had a similar issue, I've emailed to explain and been given a full refund.

<comment><USER9> Me too. Happened 2 times to me already. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Off Topic, Previously I was always put off by Amazon's design. You can click on anything Amazon related, AWS included and see some fugly UI and layout.

And i got to check AWS again and i am pleasantly surprised things have improved dramatically!

<comment><USER11> _Summary: Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world 's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design._

[http://www.nngroup.com/articles/amazon-no-e-commerce-role- mo...](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/amazon-no-e-commerce-role-model/)

<comment><USER12> That report is a decade old. While I'm not going to hold up Amazon as the ideal e-commerce design, the site has been drastically altered since 2005 and many of those complaints are invalid now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that it rose about the same amount as Microsoft's cloud revenue which was around 90%.

Anyone has numbers for Google?

<comment><USER14> Seems like Google does not like to share details on a regular basis: [http://fortune.com/2015/04/24/google-cloud- numbers/](http://fortune.com/2015/04/24/google-cloud-numbers/)

Side note: numbers between Microsoft and Amazon are not directly comparable because Microsoft includes SaaS solutions such as Office 365 in their cloud revenue. So it is not Azure versus AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone explain how Amazon is different (in investor mindset, not legality) from a Ponzi scheme? It seems like retail companies (and even some startups) exist solely by churning investors with new money. Everyone invests based on expected profit at the end of the rainbow, and a lot of money is made selling to the next set of investors who want to carry on rainbow-chasing.

If Amazon were to stop and start making a profit, wouldn't they immediately be undercut by the next generation of quasi-ponzi companies who are now willing to sacrifice short term profits?

<comment><USER16> It's not like Amazon is issuing a lot of new stock, so they aren't making any money if the stock changes hands.

[https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/shares_outstanding](https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/shares_outstanding)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm trying to understand why large companies use AWS for their primary infrastructure. Both AWS and Azure are obscenely expensive when compared to buying servers and colocating them somewhere. The cloud model works well for bootstrapped startups, but anyone with the resources to buy and manage their own servers is crazy if they use AWS or Azure as their primary server platform.

<comment><USER18> Is it?

Cloud providers bring you not just localized infrastructure, but distributed infrastructure, with clear mechanisms for scaling as needed, plus support, etc. With AWS, you have a predictable cost, predictable up-time, and ability to scale at peak, and your costs are spread over time, rather than all up front.

With your own servers you have to build out to handle peak load (and run mostly dormant during non-peak hours), across multiple locations, to achieve the same availability.

I'm not sure the costs for the convenience of AWS are so obscene in such a case. They may still be higher, I honestly don't know, but the convenience benefit is huge. They key bit is that AWS' costs are largely -known-, whereas the costs of DIYing aren't.

Per Netflix's blog post about why they use AWS for serving everything except video content - "We could have chosen to build out new data centers, build our own redundancy and failover, data synchronization systems, etc. Or, we could opt to write a check to someone else to do that instead."

Oftentimes for enterprise, having all your infrastructure in place, done right the first time, with someone else eating any costs associated with the unexpected, and ready to start building your application on, is worth the cost. For enterprise, paying a known amount to avoid risk is oftentimes worth it.

<comment><USER19> Yes, it is.

"If you're used to designing and deploying applications in your own data centers, you need to be prepared to unlearn a lot of what you know."

Which is it? Did it save them money because they didn't have to "build their own redundancy and failover" or did they have to build a bunch of custom tools like Chaos Monkey because "I knew to expect higher rates of individual instance failure in AWS, but I hadn't thought through some of these sorts of implications." ???

From reading Netflix' blog, it's clear that it was a huge learning and engineering effort. That cost has to be taken into account and added to the fact that across many AWS offerings, you're looking at as much as a 10x price / performance penalty versus dedicated or collocation. I'm unconvinced that they couldn't have done it cheaper and better through more transitional approaches, and moreso that it's a meaningful indicator for anyone else.

AWS has been massively innovative. But it's _much_ more expensive, and a huge part of their business is sales and getting CXOs onboard, not necessarily providing good value.

<comment><USER20> "That cost has to be taken into account and added to the fact that across many AWS offerings, you're looking at as much as a 10x price / performance penalty versus dedicated or collocation."

This.

The pricing is especially egrerious in bandwidth charges which for AWS are almost pure profit.

Amazon is only cheap if you don't use it.

<comment><USER21> I've heard that the prices are egregious only in bandwidth charges and that other things were not as bad. Does anyone have concrete numbers to compare?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The drop in operating profit from Q1 to Q2 2014 of about 50% (~$100m) made me look into some of their acquisitions being made for AWS.

Might be able to get more clarity into what they are paying for these undisclosed acquisitions prices, assuming their cost for constructing data farms stays relatively constant.

\- Peritor (Ops, Mar 2013)

\- ClusterK (Apr 2014, $20M-$50M)

\- Amiato (NoSQL, May 2014)

\- 2lemetry (IoT, Mar 2014)

\- Annapurna Labs (Jan 2015, ~$370M)

\- AppThwack (Mobile testing, Jul 2015)

</comment><comment><USER23> But is it even profitable? Operating profits don't include capex. And data centers full of xeons are expensive.

<comment><USER24> Operating profits take a charge for depreciation of capital assets over the (tax) economic life of the asset. So, AWS is charged between 1/36 and 1/60th of the value of the server per month for 36 or 60 months. (Exact schedule of depreciation is facts and circumstances dependent.)

But it's not like they're making a profit just because the servers are "free".

Source: I ran tech ops for an e-commerce company you've likely heard of for ~half a decade.

<comment><USER23> They could well be making that profit exactly because servers are free. AWS operating profit q2: $400m, for a $1.6B/year run rate.

A fascinating post from Benedict Evans looks at Amazon's capex/sales ratio from 2009 and looks at what free cash flow would have been had Amazon preserved that ratio through 2014 instead of incurring massive capex. They would have had another $5B over the year previous to that article. [1] Obviously some of that is warehouses, but unless they speak to how much of that is datacenters, I don't see how anyone can assume aws is actually profitable.

[1] [http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon- has-n...](http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no- profits-and-why-it-works)

<comment><USER24> There is a well understood (and "generally accepted" [GAAP]) formula for operating profits:

Operating Profit = Operating Revenue - COGS - Operating Expenses - Depreciation & Amortization

AWS Q2 conf call slides: [http://phx.corporate- ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9M...](http://phx.corporate- ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9Mjk2MTUxfENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1&cb=635732807364984824)

You can see on slide 15 "Segment Results-AWS" that the segment profit for Q2 was $391MM on net AWS sales of $1.842BB. Both numbers are for the quarter.

The article you linked talks about FCF, not operating income, and free cash flow is still hit with, in Amazon's case, what appears to be capital lease payments. (See slides 21 and 22 for the FCF reconciliation for newly acquired capital equipment, which they don't break out at the segment level.)

E&Y audits Amazon's financials. I'm not sure what evidence you have to suggest that Amazon is improperly "not counting" server expenses in AWS profitability numbers, but that would be an extraordinary claim, which would require some substantial evidence to overcome the presumption that E&Y and Amazon finance are correctly reporting.

It is true that E&Y has not signed a full-year audit for a year when AWS broke out AWS P&L separately, as that only happened for two quarters so far.

<comment><USER23> But your capital lease payments aren't included in (ie removed from) that operating profit. Since you don't know which is larger, I remain befuddled how you claim aws is profitable.

<comment><USER24> Capital lease principal payments are absolutely charged against operating profit per GAAP.

If Amazon is breaking out a segment P&L for AWS, they are no doubt making a good faith effort to correctly charge operating expenses, including capital leases, against that P&L. They also don't break out their electricity costs to run their DCs nor their engineering costs attributable to AWS, yet I'm confident that they are charging those costs against the AWS segment as appropriate.

What evidence do you have that Amazon is not removing the capital lease principal payments from the operating profit they're reporting? It's not like they could possibly imagine that's going to "fly"...

<comment><USER23> hmm... I'm going through their 10q and taking notes =P

I try to post here this weekend

<comment><USER24> I'll be here to read it. (not trying to be snarky, just confirming that I'm interested enough in the thread to follow what you write)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think it will only continue to grow (for the next 5 years).

</comment><comment><USER26> It's only a matter of time before they split AWS from Amazon, just wondering why they're waiting so long.

<comment><USER18> Don't forget that AWS came out of Amazon's need for infrastructure. Amazon is dogfooding with AWS, and that's one of the reasons AWS remains in the lead when it comes to cloud compute platforms. They keep launching new, useful services, that come out of real business use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Bezos ... Click Here For 100 Reasons Why Shortsighted Silicon Valley ADHD Investors Hate Him"

</comment><comment><USER28> now thats some nice growth!

<comment><USER14> The entire cloud is growing at a similar rate. Comparing market shares seems more reasonable at this point:

[https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/aws-market-share- reache...](https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/aws-market-share-reaches-five- year-high-despite-microsoft-growth-surge)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Web crawler for social profile links - <AUTHOR> http://www.stalky.in <comment><USER2> Pretty cool. Do you have any particular use-cases in mind? I could imagine it rolled into a bigger suite of social media management tools for brands. It could help them follow the people who follow them on other channels or something. Not sure about the consumer use-case, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Not sure who would use it :P It was just a fun project. But I do think there should exist such a service which aggregates and organises all social accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool - just curious (not playing devils advocate, I really don't know) how does this do a better job than say a Google or Twitter search?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't get all social profile links with google for celebrities : Eg: See this

[https://www.google.co.in/#q=barack+obama](https://www.google.co.in/#q=barack+obama)

Also for doing user searches in social websites, I don't get the results I am looking for:

Eg for query "Barack Obama" from Facebook graph api: I get :

{

      "data": [

        {

          "name": "Chi Linh Bui",
          "id": "248865755297304"
        },
        {
          "name": "Barack Obamanana",
          "id": "318956448258150"
        },
        {
          "name": "Barack Obamalad",
          "id": "1378793772451152"
        },
        {
          "name": "Barack ObamaObama",
          "id": "239939292867248"
        },

....

Screenshot: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/tbqmo5tzospcnsc/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/tbqmo5tzospcnsc/Screenshot%202015-11-09%2006.47.11.png?dl=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It dies when I search with a name containing umlauts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that a celebrity name ?

<comment><USER4> It can be in a celebrity name. It's just a character that breaks the site.</comment></comment></comment>


It's been 500 years since California has been this dry - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/biz/flame-engulfed-california-hasnt-seen-drought-like-this-for-500-years/2015/09/14/24b67fa7f6b9a2f517640cfaa3d3acc8_story.html?tid=kindle-app <comment><USER2> The drought is affecting several western states, including Oregon where I live. The severity here isn't (yet) as extreme as in California, but it definitely is having palpable detrimental effects on water supply and agriculture in parts of Oregon.

There's been ongoing study of this weather phenomenon by various research institutions including Oregon State Univ. Apparently a "blob" of warmer-than- usual water in the northern Pacific is associated with the drought condition. It's uncertain if it's connected to global warming--that's a subject of ongoing study.

There's a lot more information here: [http://www.climateprediction.net/new- climatology-results-for...](http://www.climateprediction.net/new-climatology- results-for-western-us-drought-experiment/)

The graphic data presentation is quite interesting, e.g., comparing California, Oregon and Washington. The research relies on distributed computing to run experimental climate models, some HN readers might be interested in participating.

</comment><comment><USER3> Then we are due for an ArkStorm or Atmospheric River.

From the USGS:

"...This document summarizes the next major public project for MHDP, a winter storm scenario called ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1,000). Experts have designed a large, scientifically realistic meteorological event followed by an examination of the secondary hazards (for example, landslides and flooding), physical damages to the built environment, and social and economic consequences. The hypothetical storm depicted here would strike the U.S. West Coast and be similar to the intense California winter storms of 1861 and 1862 that left the central valley of California impassible. The storm is estimated to produce precipitation that in many places exceeds levels only experienced on average once every 500 to 1,000 years."

[http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1312/](http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1312/)

<comment><USER4> An interesting report, but is there any reason to conclude that "we are due"?

If the lack of rain is random (like flipping a fair coin), the expected time to event would still be 1000 years. Believing that "heads" is more likely after a string of "tails" is the classic Gambler's Fallacy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy)

If on the other hand the current drought is caused by a change in climate, there is even less reason to believe that we are due for a gigantic amount of rain. If the coin is biased (bent) logic would conclude that one should bet that recent performance _is_ an indicator of future performance.

While it's not impossible for alternation to be most likely, it requires some physical process that would explain it. Interestingly, weather in the Central California often does follow multi-week cycles, with hot inland weather leading to rising air at the coast, leading to fog flowing inland, leading to a cooldown[1]. But I don't know of any process that would explain this for century scale rainfall. Do you?

[1] This article offers an explanation of the "fog cycle", but with the cautious wording "Until recent years, the conventional explanation for the fog's behavior was a simple one". I wonder if there is now better knowledge: [https://baynature.org/articles/cutting-through-the- fog/](https://baynature.org/articles/cutting-through-the-fog/)

<comment><USER5> "An interesting report, but is there any reason to conclude that "we are due"?"

Yes, El Nino, which may bring torrents of rain this winter to the US west coast. The combination with epic drought will be disastrous, whether or not if fulfills the mythic criterion of an "ArkStorm'

FYI: occurrence of rain or lack thereof is not like flipping a coin; this is more like a chaotic system with non-linear patterns evolving; once we see a large-scale pattern that occurs, and we identify it recurring through time such as El Nino, we can spot its tell-tale signs ahead of time and warn folks that worse may be on the way. Nevertheless, there are no guarantees, all we can do is wait and watch- But it certainly changes our Prior to know about these recurrent global-weather-scale patterns.

[http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/el-nino-set- strongest-...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/el-nino-set- strongest-150913093902800.html)

<comment><USER4> _occurrence of rain or lack thereof is not like flipping a coin_

Yes, absolutely. El Nino is a fine reason to believe that the pattern will change. At a decadal scale, there is reason to believe that recent drought is a predictor of future rain. My point though was that there was not (a priori) a reason to believe that "It's been 500 years since California has been this dry" would imply "we are due" for a 1000 year storm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> uBlock didn't allow the new site design at all, and I didn't really like it either.

Here's the link to their "classic" view of the article: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/201...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/2015/09/14/scientists-say-its-been-500-years-since-california- was-this-dry/)

<comment><USER2> Yeah I noticed that too. However, with current Firefox the "Reader View" worked well, and I was able to read the article just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is a guy driving away from Anderson Spring fire: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lVPB3HI9Wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lVPB3HI9Wg)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's the last thing on most people's minds right now with the drought, but an ARkStorm style event this winter (or even just heavy persistent rain and flooding) could be disastrous for the Sacramento delta levies, which are in a very delicate state. Hoping for a slow and steady refill of the reservoirs this winter...

<comment><USER9> I hate to be the harbinger, but it's shaping up for just that kind of scenario: "El Nino set to be strongest ever" [http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/el-nino-set- strongest-...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/el-nino-set- strongest-150913093902800.html)

<comment><USER10> The question is whether the "Ridiculously Resilliant Ridge" \-- the name for the blob of warm water sitting in the pacific -- will continue to prevent the moisture from reaching the costal states, as it has been doing for some time now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Driest surface in 500 years. I wonder how long it's been since the aquifers have been at their current levels.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, everything I read on the current trends in California's climate just keeps sounding more and more dire. I was stuck inside all weekend due in large part to thick smoke and ash; I don't want to live in a drought or on the cusp of a drought every year for the foreseeable future and I don't think it's real smart to breathe smoke from wildfires year after year either.

California could mitigate a lot of this, and probably will, eventually. But, it's only been about 6 years since the CRU email leaks led to it being dubbed "climategate" and a whole bunch of people loudly declared that it was proof that AGW was a vast climate scientist conspiracy. There's going to be a tremendous amount of resistance from all angles to any attempts to mitigate the effects of the climate in California.

So I started looking for work out of state a while ago, and will keep looking.

Nice place, but it would be dumb of me to stay here.

<comment><USER13> Hmm...there's resistance within California from the inland counties that are heavily Republican, but politically the Democrats are largely in the driving seat, plus as far as water management goes the coming infrastructure public works are backed by the voters in a ballot initiative last year, which is probably politically insurmountable. A sufficiently disastrous flood in the central valley will sideline the remaining political opposition to a great degree. Betweent he drought and the El Nino this is going to be a pretty rough winter which I think will firm up support for mitigation measures.

I'm curious to know what you consider the safest places in terms of environmental safety and sustainability.

<comment><USER12> I've no idea, honestly. As a practical matter, first I have to find someplace I can work. And there are no utopias.

There are a few things I'm not fond of: tornadoes, wildfires, periods of extended drought, heavy traffic, extremely high crime, dislike for Californians (Oregon & Montana). A few things I don't mind: cold and snowy Winters (it's just mountaineering with more infrastructure and support), regular storm seasons, earthquakes and hurricanes. A few things I really appreciate: mountains within a couple hours' drive, lots of outdoor activities, younger and more active and better-educated populations. Maybe Utah? (But: [http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-utah- drought-20150530-st...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-utah- drought-20150530-story.html))

Unfortunately, snowfall over the entire Rockies seems to be on a declining trend ([http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2011-06-10-clima...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2011-06-10-climate- change-global-warming-rockies-snow_n.htm)), so any place that relies on the Rocky Mountain watershed is going to be dealing with drier conditions for the foreseeable future.

I'm open to suggestions.

<comment><USER14> > dislike for Californians (Oregon & Montana)

Have you considered that the dislike for Californians is due to them turning any state in which a great number of them settle…into California?

It's a perfectly natural process: whenever we leave a place, even if we dislike some aspects of it, it's still our home. We're liable to find our new homes just fine, oh 'except for just a few things.' Add up enough ex-pats, and razor-fine margins on many issues, and suddenly a relatively small number of people can have a relatively high impact on a state, while the natives residents look about themselves and wonder what the hell happened to their own homes.

Those natives then move, and the process repeats itself…

<comment><USER15> Yes, but there may also be something more insidious at work here.

[http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Class...](http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Pacific%20Northwest%20History/Lessons/Lesson%201/1.html)

It's an interesting essay, but I would call your attention reason six.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Equifax website hacked again, this time to redirect to fake Flash update - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/equifax-website-hacked-again-this-time-to-redirect-to-fake-flash-update/ <comment><USER2> Equifax was loading this script: [https://aa.econsumer.equifax.com/aad/uib/js/fireclick.js](https://aa.econsumer.equifax.com/aad/uib/js/fireclick.js)

This script, from Fireclick Web Analytics, then loaded a script via Akami CDN that was hosted for a Fireclick domain, netflame.cc: a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/5462/3h/hints.netflame.cc/service/script/www.annualcreditreport.com

So this package was not coming from Equifax, but was being injected by a compromised analytics provider.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly the threat that Monday's post about Circle CI was about! Literally 3 days to a concrete example!

<comment><USER4> Could you please give me a link to that? Are users in danger of a possible hack?

<comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15442636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15442636) \- No more a danger than on most sites, it's just something to consider

<comment><USER6> The difference pointed out in the headline being that when NYT, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc, have compromised scripts they can serve fake flash updates. If CircleCI has them they can compromise my source code and API keys.

The vulnerability might be the same, but the danger to users is not.

Excerpt for reference:

 _This is a problem because the CircleCI browser context has full access to the CircleCI API, which is hosted on the same domain, so all eight of those companies ' scripts can make requests to CircleCI API endpoints. Furthermore CircleCI customers frequently either include credentials in source code or as environment variables in CircleCI. Set these, and you are trusting that CircleCI won't get compromised, or at least, your application is at most as secure as CircleCI is._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe now they'll add the Hacker Safe badge to their site so this never happens again.

</comment><comment><USER8> I assume this must be because after the initial hack, every kid with a script pointed it at Equifax to see what they could get too. I would not want to be in the IT department at that company right now.

<comment><USER9> If the average script kiddie can meaningfully compromise your infrastructure, aren't you already screwed? Pretty much every automated attack possible is launched at every internet addressable server on a daily basis. I ran a web server for a couple years with nothing on it but nearly empty personal sites and files, and over 50% of its hits were automated scans and attacks

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This isn't fair and they need to slow down; I want my small claims lawsuit to pay off before they put themselves out of business.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, good luck showing damages. You basically have to wait until your identity is used for fraud, and then probably tie it specifically to the breach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Noticed this on Monday. After registering for fraud alert, they send an email that has link to [http://www.equifax.com/fcra](http://www.equifax.com/fcra) for free credit report. This was getting hijacked. But not if you used [https://](https://)

<comment><USER13> Why would they send you to a http at all if they already have https. This just seems like complete incompetence. It's not like they have an excuse like their ad networks don't work with https.

<comment><USER14> I know of companies with typos in their links that they email. These typos lead to scam sites. I've contacted them and they haven't yet fixed it. There needs to be a serious re-evaluation of the costs associated with failing such basic security measures like using https and just making sure you send people the correct link. Right now it isn't even a slap on the wrist.

<comment><USER15> If the site supports HTTPS, they should just preload HSTS to avoid future problems with HTTP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Part of me says "wow, what blatant incompetence", but the part of me that does IT consulting is not surprised.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am not generally a fan of heavy handed regulations but the government needs to step in and shut Equifax down _right now_. Literally pull the plug on everything they own.

<comment><USER18> Updating James Madison:

 _If everyone were honest, neither greedy nor malicious, did pay attention, were competent, including securing their apps, and didn't have either fires, floods or roads, no regulation or government would be necessary._

<comment><USER19> I think we should still strive to move towards being that way. Greed and maliciousness breed greed and maliciousness and it's be good to root them out wherever we can.

<comment><USER20> In the absence of civil institutions regulated by the people, regulation does not disappear. The mantle is picked up by corporations. It's our choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems to be a random occurrence, I was able to trigger a pull of the infected page with the full request records:

[https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/dWEfQI/http://www.equifax.com/f...](https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/dWEfQI/http://www.equifax.com/fcra)

Interestingly, I ran into a similar issue with Yahoo earlier this week serving almost identical advertisements so this may be more widespread.

</comment><comment><USER22> I used to work for Experian (I know, not Equifax, but it's an equivalent company).

None of this surprises me. These companies will do _anything_ they can to protect and maintain revenue streams. This includes avoiding security.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nothing surprises me these days. [http://www.snopes.com/2017/10/05/equifax- contract-irs/](http://www.snopes.com/2017/10/05/equifax-contract-irs/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Makes me think. Can I ask my bank to stop sharing my data with Equifax. Would they honour the request? Anyone working for a bank, what do you think?

<comment> jon-wood At least in the UK it's a legal requirement for banks to share details with credit rating agencies, so no, they couldn't if they wanted to.

<comment><USER25> I don't believe that's true. (If it were, I could set up a credit rating agency, have all the banks share details with it, and then have free credit reports for my own (hypothetical) consumer lending business, rather than paying a pound or two for each pull.)

Care to cite the specific law? I'd be very interested in knowing, if such a law exists.

<comment><USER26> Oh, you think it's a fair playing field?

If you're not old chums with the right person in government, you won't be classified as a credit rating agency.

<comment><USER27> I assume that there _has_ to be a legal definition that outlines what will qualify a business as a credit rating agency. The requirements are probably cumbersome, but something must be written down somewhere to objectively define the requirements.

<comment><USER28> What counts as objective is determined subjectively by people with vested interests.

<comment><USER27> As soon as I clicked reply, that thought immediately jumped into my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does Randy Abrams has a website? Does anyone knows anything else about the source?

EDIT: Found it: [http://randy-abrams.blogspot.com](http://randy- abrams.blogspot.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> So which IT employee is going to be thrown under the bus _this_ time?

</comment><comment><USER31> These people need to spend some money and get some good IT staff. The people at the top are getting all the cream, while the people that actually keep things going need an upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER15> Equifax (and other sites that should care about security) should use Subresource Integrity, which prevents resources from being hijacked.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/Subres...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/Subresource_Integrity)

</comment><comment><USER32> CSP.

</comment><comment><USER33> ,

</comment><comment><USER34> what. again?

</comment><comment><USER35> What's their excuse this time ? A single worker brought in a cat that bit our entire server facilities power supply ? Or some random guy who handled credentials was picked up by Aliens.

<comment><USER36> You know how "admin:admin" aren't very good credentials for a supposedly secure production system dealing with sensitive information? Well, turns out, neither is "admin123"

<comment><USER37> Issue closed. Credentials updated to admin123! For increased security.

<comment><USER38> Can we keep this noise on Reddit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Since when is it ok to publish this without a single shred of evidence to support the dude's claims?

Laughable to say the least.

Dude probably got owned locally.

<comment><USER40> Just tried [http://www.equifax.com/fcra](http://www.equifax.com/fcra) myself...it redirects to obviously shady sites, right now.

Edit: Currently it's doing it only for specific client user agents. Try an android one. This javascript is driving part of it: [https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/5462/3h/hints.netflame.cc/se...](https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/248/5462/3h/hints.netflame.cc/service/script/www.annualcreditreport.com)

Edit: Found the bad bits. They are here: [https://aa.econsumer.equifax.com/aad/uib/js/fireclick.js](https://aa.econsumer.equifax.com/aad/uib/js/fireclick.js)

See the part that starts with document.write()

Edit: maybe a red herring. Sure looks shady though.

<comment><USER41> What's the stack used for the real https version? I got redirected there (I guess malware doesn't like Safari desktop or uBlock origin saved me) and felt like I fell through a time warp to 2007 (update: 2004, in actuality) with the form Equifax presents. So much low-res skeuomorphism I almost got nostalgic.

Not necessarily related to the security issues, just curious.

Edited to add: The site has a Copyright of 2004. None of the JS tools are later than that. Is this really the current site in use? Unchanged for 13 years... wow. Would be sorta cool, you know, if it wasn't completely hacked.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter waterflow problem and loeb (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://chrisdone.com/posts/twitter-problem-loeb <comment><USER2> I heartily recommend this short accessible article to anyone interested in loeb:

[https://github.com/quchen/articles/blob/master/loeb- moeb.md](https://github.com/quchen/articles/blob/master/loeb-moeb.md)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=waterflow+loeb](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=waterflow+loeb)

Didn't get attention here when the story was new:

</comment><comment><USER4> Usually the companies I've interviewed with don't like their candidates sharing the problems they failed at afterward. I wonder how Twitter feels about this one getting out?

<comment><USER5> (this wasn't posted by me)

I think the golden rule is nonsense, or a recipe to be exploited; I try to live my life by reciprocal altruism or tit-for-tat with a cooperative opener.

The point is, if twitter feels bad about candidates sharing, they should make a lot more effort to treat candidates with respect. I had a pretty terrible interview experience: I was an internal referral, and despite that, I not only had to sit on recruiter for updates, but after a full day interview they dropped all contact. I'm a big boy: if the answer is no, that's no problem, it's not a fit. But very basic courtesy would have them drop me an email after I gave them a day of my time. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but I've heard plenty of stories similar to mine.</comment></comment>


Gordon Brown: Building Britain's Digital Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22897 <comment><USER2> Being old enough to remember the Alvey Programme and having worked on the EU ESPRIT programme I'm just a wee bit skeptical when I hear a politician making any announcements about funding one particular area of CS research.

The Semantic Web has always appeared to me to be good old symbolic AI with a dash of angle brackets.

</comment><comment><USER3> The thing that bugs me is that fast-broadband, from what I can tell, has been rolling out _just fine_ without any government interference. I wouldn't want the government to take credit for and therefore stewardship over something that the private market can easily achieve by itself.

Maybe they have been more involved than I thought, though. Need to investigate more.

<comment><USER4> * fast-broadband, from what I can tell, has been rolling out just fine without any government interference.*

Only in built-up areas with a high population density.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow.

It is utterly incredible what an election you are likely to lose will prompt politicians to promise.

Over here the election has begun in earnest, with the big guns coming out in just one day to promise big new initiatives - from a industrial strategy for green energy and biotech, to UK Space Agency to Semantic Web-enabled government departments.

Some of this is aiming in the right direction, like releasing OS maps, broadband for digital poor and access to government processes online. But some of this terrifies me - "allowing users of government services to identify themselves simply and definitively" sounds like an ID card online.

I love that Gordon has been listening to some of the right people. I am scared that my government is going to try and go online when they support things like the Digital Economy Bill copyright sections. Whoever wrote this speech did not do the policy work on clause 17.

roll on may 6th

<comment><USER6> The tories have been surprisingly on-the-ball with support for open source IT and similar so with both main parties supporting positive moves in this direction the only problem will be if they're all talk and do nothing about it when the time comes to actually take action.

Oh, just burst my own bubble there.</comment></comment>


You're Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist - <AUTHOR> http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-killed-police-officer-terrorist <comment><USER2> Without some notion of absolute numbers, the comparison is pointless.

Last I heard, both of those causes of death are almost negligible compared to things like heart disease, cancer, and car accidents. So I have some doubt about this statement by the author

> The point of the quote is to focus people on sources of mortality society- > wide, because this focus can guide public policy efforts at reducing death.

With that said, yes, people are irrationally afraid of death by terrorism. But comparing that to their chance of death by cop is not illustrative. Comparing to their chance of death by traffic accident would be more relevant.

<comment><USER3> It's relevant because a vastly expanded police presence has been erected in response to terrorism, but police are statistically more dangerous to the population than terrorists.

If we want to stop terrorism without trading it for something worse, we need to deal with the root of the problem: an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy that costs more that we can afford, makes us insecure, and benefits only a tiny elite.

<comment><USER4> > If we want to stop terrorism without trading it for something worse

Terrorism is a political tool. There is no willingness for it to stop. On the contrary. Both the aggressor and the victim will politically benefit from it. The "victim" will push for more State Power and more population control, and the aggressor will use any act of retaliation to recruit more people on their side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is PDF original source for Author's statistics is referencing [ [http://www.start.umd.edu/start/announcements/BackgroundRepor...](http://www.start.umd.edu/start/announcements/BackgroundReport_10YearsSince9_11.pdf) ]. Of a particular interest is bar graph on the bottom of the second page. Ironically it comes out to about: US citizens are

eight and a half times

less likely to die due to terrorism on US soil (Before and after war on terror). That is just what statistics can do if you take any two numbers and start doing "science" with them. As far as I can tell the statistics author quotes actually compiled from different sources, which makes it even more questionable. I do not doubt the number provided by author is correct, however I just demonstrated that correctness is not enough, you need to treat your data and questions you ask of that data carefully in order to come up with something useful.

Original post below:

_________________________

There is a lie, there is a bold lie, and there is statistics.

These are only a few variables that might contribute to that number:

1\. There are actually vastly more cops compared to terrorists.

2\. Terrorists do not discriminate targets. Cops usually have a very specific set of people they are targeting (I.E. carrying guns and shooting at other people/gangs).

3\. How many of those people killed by cops, were trying to shoot back? Terrorists usually kill people who do not fight back.

I am all up for this kind of statistics, however this one seems a bit sensationalist.

<comment><USER6> True, but the whole point is that the cops are a bigger danger to life and limb (and perhaps liberty) than terrorists. But ask 100 people on the street which is a bigger danger and you'd probably conclude (at least from their answers) terrorism.

That means that society is improperly calibrated to actually reducing mortality and there's no better way to recalibrate than some kind of sensationalist headline that really makes the point.

<comment><USER7> Two things that people are _horrible_ at reasoning about, probably for biological reasons: Really massive numbers. Really really small numbers.

It only gets worse when you throw in something emotionally charged, like risk. Humans are absolutely _awful_ at evaluating risk rationally.

Consider the standard HN example of robotic cars that are safer by an order or magnitude or two than human-piloted cars. The first time somebody will be killed by a robotic car (and it _will_ happen eventually) the public will be calling for heads on a platter, even though the robotic cars are safer than human-piloted cars that kill hundreds _every day_.

<comment><USER8> Personally I cannot wait for my own robot car, so much free time will be given back to me.

However the irrationality that comes into play with a robot car killing a human means that the creators of such cars are going to go above and beyond to do what they can to prevent it. By virtue of human irrationality we get safer robot cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Only 8?! With so many police officers? That's an amazing performance if true. But I suspect that police-caused fatalities are just being underreported here.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States#Lists_of_Killings)

<comment><USER9> I do not 100% trust local police departments to decide whether or not they killed someone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wouldn't trust the Cato "Institute" with providing the result of 1 + 1, let alone a whole study.

<comment><USER12> Why? It's fairly obvious where their predilection lies. Have they exhibited a track record of less-than-reputable analyses? (Honest question, not trolling)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Not_ how you estimate long-tail risks!

" _The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011. That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war._ "

Since 2011, there's been no major tsunami, nuclear meltdown, or global financial crisis... so the probability of any those things happening must be zero.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well we need to condition that probability on "while you are doing something perfectly normal".

<comment><USER15> I hear people get executed in Bart stations for no reason, but not by terrorists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The statistical likelihood of something happening isn't super relevant to how we as human beings deal with things. Fear is a huge motivating factor. While we do not live in a perfect world, police, by design, decrease fear while terrorists increase it. That's why we commit money and resources.

A nice analogy is the difference between flying and driving. I know many people that have a fear of flying and refuse to get on a plane, but are perfectly comfortable behind the wheel even though it's statistically much less safe. How people feel about things is important.

</comment><comment><USER17> If everyone in the world (except say 0.0001% of people) took MMR vaccines, then you would probably be 8 times more likely to die of an MMR vaccine than Measles.

Does that mean everyone should stop taking the vaccine?

</comment><comment><USER18> What is the old saying... " what is the difference between lies and statistics?" Lies intentionally deceive. I think there is also a statistic I saw that said that the increased hassle caused by the TSA procedures caused more people to drive than fly which ended up killing more people in traffic accidents than were killed on 911. There are a lot of statistics like that. But I think the main point is that the threat of terrorism is vastly over blown, which I think most informed people understand.

</comment><comment><USER19> How many police officers conduct mass casualty attacks causing maximum loss of life?

How many terrorist atrocities are foiled, preventing statisticians from incorporating them into the sample?

This is the equivalent of saying "You are 8 times more likely to be killed in car crash by debris than going through the windscreen."

Yes. Only because the seatbelt exists.

Similarly, the only reason terrorist deaths are so low is because of the phenomenal amount of resources we dedicate to the detection and prevention of terrorism.

<comment><USER20> "Similarly, the only reason terrorist deaths are so low is because of the phenomenal amount of resources we dedicate to the detection and prevention of terrorism."

You are going to need to offer actual proof of this, because it doesn't at all follow from anything you said.

(and is unrelated to the statistics in the article).

In fact, i'd bet it's just the opposite. You spend a phenomenal amount of resources preventing a very small amount of loss of life.

(and nothing the FBI or other agencies have offered in response to requests for "foiled terrorist plots" seems to dispute this at all)

<comment><USER19> It follows exactly what I have said. The statistics in the article are not relate to anything either.

Whether the deaths from terrorism are low in comparison to other phenomena is not the issue.

My statement was that "the only reason [edit]deaths from terrorism[/edit] are so low is because of the phenomenal amount of resources we dedicate to the detection and prevention of terrorism."

A truth which is self-evident.

If proof is required we can simply compare and contrast with nation states who do not have technological or economic resources of the US or UK _and_ who are facing a terrorist threat of similar dimensions.

There is nothing more to prove here. The article is nonsense, it is fallacious correlation and simply clickbait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _It's been quickly retweeted dozens of times, indicating that the idea is > interesting to many people._ //

Never thought of tweets as MVPs for blog posts before.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is an abuse of probability. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

</comment><comment><USER20> The studies here have so many statistical problems it's not even worth talking about. It may be true, it may be not true. You can't just take stats from multiple sources and directly compare them without any thought. It doesn't work that way.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a real-world problem. Some warrants are absolutely indistinguishable from a home invasion, and mistakes are well documented in the press (but not reported widely enough, IMO). I remember one in Denver around 2003 that particularly horrendous.

</comment><comment><USER24> And thirty times more likely if you are a minority.

<comment><USER25> That's what I was about to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In my country (UK) I believe the chance of being killed in either way is so close to zero as being something I can entirely ignore.

</comment><comment><USER27> The relevant xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/1252/](http://xkcd.com/1252/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Unless you happen to be in the same room with a police officer and terrorist.

Also, Domino's pizza delivery drivers a much more considerable threat to Americans than all the terrorists in Afghanistan. You could go on all day with such comparisons. I'll bet popcorn kills more people than Al Qaeda. And through asphyxiation!

</comment><comment><USER29> Does that mean the police has successfully prevent terrorists to commit the killings?</comment>


Quantum darwinism – From quantum to classical - <AUTHOR> https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/quantum-classical <comment><USER2> Nature Comms paper: [http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150812/ncomms8908/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150812/ncomms8908/full/ncomms8908.html)

Abstract - Quantum Darwinism posits that only specific information about a quantum system that is redundantly proliferated to many parts of its environment becomes accessible and objective, leading to the emergence of classical reality. However, it is not clear under what conditions this mechanism holds true. Here we prove that the emergence of classical features along the lines of quantum Darwinism is a general feature of any quantum dynamics: observers who acquire information indirectly through the environment have effective access at most to classical information about one and the same measurement of the quantum system. Our analysis does not rely on a strict conceptual splitting between a system-of-interest and its environment, and allows one to interpret any system as part of the environment of any other system. Finally, our approach leads to a full operational characterization of quantum discord in terms of local redistribution of correlations.

Related arXiv preprint: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8640](http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8640)</comment>


This link will disappear after 365 views - <AUTHOR> http://www.blinklink.me/b/VpSTgCqc8Y0

<comment><USER2> snapchat for links.

</comment><comment><USER3> Didn't last long. Interesting experiment.</comment>


2018 European Software Conferences. Any Favorites? Why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Business of Software Europe - [http://businessofsoftware.eu/](http://businessofsoftware.eu/)

Sister conference to Business of Software USA - [http://businessofsoftware.org](http://businessofsoftware.org)

<comment><USER2> It seems disingenuous, even sleazy, to submit this question and then answer it by plugging your own conferences ([http://thebln.com/team/](http://thebln.com/team/)).

(Also, at least as of this writing, you didn't even disclose the affiliation, though I don't think disclosure would resolve the conflict of interest.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Clumsy maybe. If I wanted to be sleazy, I would have used a false account for one or both comments. I have updated my profile though. Thanks.

Apologies. Wasn't meant to be - I thought that was clear on my profile but I haven't updated it for a long while. I want to see if there was a single place for all of the key software events to be listed in a single place and I wouldn't want our events to be missed off as we think they stand up against others. [https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/6-cant-miss-conferences- if...](https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/6-cant-miss-conferences-if-you-want- to-grow-your-business.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from Design School for Software Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/10/09/lessons-from-design-school-for-software-engineers/ <comment><USER2> As a software engineer, I've always been fascinated by the amount of critique that designers go through with their designs. While we do have code review, I'm not sure our architecture/design choices go through the same level of scrutiny. And I wonder if we'd be better of if it did.

Having said that, I'm sure it's a double-edged sword. No one wants to feel like someone is tearing apart their code.

<comment><USER3> Some places have 'engineering design documents' which are written early, shared widely and invite comments. It's much cheaper to spot issues at this stage than once a lot of code has been written.

<comment><USER4> I always write a design document first for anything larger than a few days' work. A few pages of prose is enough, written in Google Doc or Quip or whatever is the comfortable sharing+commenting standard within the org.

Even if nobody else ends up attentively reading the document, it's valuable for myself as a point of reference after the work is done. It can be humbling to go back and read my own assumptions.

Usually some of the text can be transplanted into more permanent engineering documentation (Wiki or whatever), so it's also a good habit for documenting beyond just inline comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Have you ever met somebody who was always against exploring suggested > changes to their code in a pull request? Perhaps they got upset if somebody > else went in and refactored some code they worked on in the past?

There are at least three dynamics going in here that overlap and get conflated frequently.

1\. Ego, inability to accept criticism. Obviously this is just something the engineer needs to grow past.

2\. Sometimes another engineer not familiar with the codebase will do a drive by commit. They need to make a specific change and find the code around that change to be confusing, so they refactor it to be easier to understand in isolation. However they don't understand the idioms and patterns of the codebase as a whole, and the net effect is that the system as a whole becomes less coherent and maintainable. This creates both-sides-are-right arguments, like, "Yes you did give that variable a clearer name, except we use the other name consistently everywhere else, so if you rename it here you should rename it everywhere, and it's not really worth doing a such a big refactor and invalidating everyone's familiarity, is it?"

3\. Familiarity. When you work in the same system for a long time, you develop a mental map of how everything works. That map can be a source of great productivity. Sometimes it's actually not worth making an improvement because it will necessitate the long term maintainers having to relearn how things work, and they have other things to do more important than this improvement.

</comment><comment><USER6> Any advice for dealing with co-workers that are too attached to their code?

</comment><comment><USER7> lesson #6. quit design school and buy $100 worth of course work on Udemy.</comment>


The New American Divide - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm very interested in thinking about how start-ups could address these so- called "cultural inequalities" - the article doesn't really cover the role of technology in its exploration of interesting trends and growing gaps.</comment>


Working with git? These aliases will save you even *more* hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.draconianoverlord.com/2010/03/04/git-config.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Tongue-in-check submission as it mimics this post, currently at 70 points and on the front page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567123>

Which, IMO, are pretty basic aliases. Definitely good, but not front-page-of- HN good.

Anyway, if the title worked for him... :-)</comment>


Should an architect also be a coder? - <AUTHOR> http://ponderousprog.blogspot.com/2008/05/rabbit-hole.html

<comment><USER2> One key to happiness and success is to never get involved with the side of the business where this question is relevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> The question is incomplete. It should be rephrased to specify time, e.g. should an architect also be a _former_ coder or should an architect be a coder 2 hours a day/month/year? I suppose someone could try to advance an argument on whether someone could be architect without ever writing a line of code, but I doubt that someone would get very far.

<comment><USER4> _Former coder_ implies disappointed coder, doesn't it? Or otherwise what could be the reason for giving up coding, aside from illness and death? So an architect in the mainstream sense is someone alive and well who is NOT loving programming. A perfect candidate for managing programmers, indeed.

<comment><USER5> "Former coder implies disappointed coder, doesn't it? Or otherwise what could be the reason for giving up coding, aside from illness and death?"

I disagree, being a former coder myself. As time went on, I found I could be much more effective by leading a team (and then a company) where other people would write the code. When you're writing in a high-level language, you've got a compiler that is generating machine instructions based on your high-level code. When you are writing "managed code" in the .NET Framework, there's an additional layer of abstraction-- you are writing (for example) C#, which gets compiled into IL, which gets JIT compiled into you've got a compiler writing Intermediate Language code which is then compiled into machine instructions. Becoming an architect (or product manager, etc.) is adding additional layers of abstraction (and power). Your ideas are still getting transformed into machine instructions-- there's just a few more steps along the way.

<comment><USER4> Except becoming a "pure" architect exactly means to give up coding. Drawing diagrams on the whiteboard or any kind of an UML editor - and only doing that is not programming. It's probably called "drawing diagrams", but never "coding". So I suppose what I said about disappointment is still true.

<comment><USER5> I can only speak for myself and say that it's probably been 5 years since I've written a line of code that ended up in production, but I don't consider myself a "disappointed coder". I still like to code in my spare time-- but at the office, I think I can be more effective writing code indirectly through coders rather than writing code directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My answer in simple, an Architect should be a potential GOOD coder; this implies that he was a good coder and can sit down when necessary and piss some nice code.

I have been in the business long enough to know that an architect with no solid coding experience generally design either a weak system or a fancy disastrous system.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone ever advanced a plausible argument for how you can be an effective architect without also coding? This seems like the same conclusion everyone comes to when giving it even a modicum of thought.

<comment><USER5> Without coding, or without ever having coded?

I wouldn't hire an architect who had never coded; but, I don't have my architects writing production code.

<comment><USER7> Don't you worry about them getting rusty or having an insufficient understanding of the code base?

As an architect, I relinquish the bulk of the coding to our other programmers, but if I didn't do some of it, I would lose touch with the realities of the code base.

<comment><USER8> The key is that once you stop coding you start getting rusty.

An effective way is for the architect to code the proof of concept. Once most of the issues are understood he can start bringing more engineers to the team.</comment></comment></comment></comment>