The Case for Burying Charcoal (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18589/

<comment><USER2> Aside from the carbon sequestration aspect, "burying" charred biomass is very interesting from a standpoint of improving soil quality, as mentioned briefly in the article--though it's not really burying so much as churning it into the topsoil.

As an illustration, it's now known that the rich, fertile soils of the Amazon river basin are actually _man-made_ , via a process of soil enrichment thought to involve burying smoldering wood to create charcoal, then breaking the char up and mixing it into the soil along with manure and other organic waste. The natural soil of the Amazon is actually very poor and infertile otherwise!

See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=934117> (I commented there as well along similar lines)

Related articles on Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar>

<comment><USER3> I read the same articles, and this does seem to have potential in multiple fields - reducing carbon emissions, potentially increasing soil quality and hence crop yields (although I do believe this is specific to certain types of soil) - which may indirectly reduce the requirement for some types of fertilizer.

And one of the amazing things of the "terra preta" of the amazon is that it seems to regenerate itself - unlike modern fertilizing which is generally required annually - this may indeed make it a disruptive technology from ~2500 years ago!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If only we could somehow bury coal...

</comment><comment><USER3> Having just re-read the article, I can only come to the conclusion that it has editorial spin - I can't see how this can possibly reduce CO2 emissions, unless the charring releases enough useful fuel to supplant the original heat required, which is not stated anywhere.

To turn matter into biochar requires heat input - so generally this means burning some sort of fuel - which releases CO2. Leaving the matter as it is, or burying it does not require this fuel, hence the CO2 "savings" are even greater. To do all this to sequester carbon seems to be missing the point, and we'd all be better off by not burning anything in the first place.

What may prove to be useful is the extraction of other products, and the potential soil benefits. If a compelling case can be made for these alone, then it might indeed be useful. The carbon sequestration / global warming aspects seem to only be adding political spin to the issue.

<comment><USER2> _To turn matter into biochar requires heat input - so generally this means burning some sort of fuel - which releases CO2. Leaving the matter as it is, or burying it does not require this fuel, hence the CO2 "savings" are even greater. To do all this to sequester carbon seems to be missing the point, and we'd all be better off by not burning anything in the first place._

Well, organic matter normally releases carbon when it decays, so just leaving it as-is would be carbon neutral, liberating the carbon the plant originally drew from the air to grow.

On the other hand, the pyrolysis process requires energy, yes, but releases very little carbon from the material being processed. The resulting carbon- rich biochar doesn't rot, so the carbon isn't released back into the atmosphere but remains in the soil, while new plants grow in place of the old ones, pulling more carbon from the air.

The claim in the article, presumably, is that the carbon output associated with the energy to heat the biomass is less than the amount of inert carbon added to the soil, making the entire process effectively remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Highly doubtful that the amount of carbon thus extracted would be significant, though. The soil improvement aspect is far more interesting to my mind, the carbon stuff is probably just a way to get more attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Unlike coal, biomass is carbon-neutral, releasing only the carbon dioxide that the plants had absorbed in the first place._

Um... What?

Coal is also "releasing only the carbon dioxide that plants had absorbed in the first place". It's a question of time. If you're burning biomass faster than you're producing it, it's not carbon-neutral.</comment>


Google Receives $25M in Equity Funding (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://googlepress.blogspot.com/1999/06/google-receives-25-million-in-equity.html <comment><AUTHOR> Exactly 21 years ago, Google got $25M funding from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Lead Investment . The announcement also list some other emerging tech companies and it is interesting to see how many of those survived and flourished.</comment>


Refer.ly Custom Profile Names  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.refer.ly/how-to-claim-your-custom-referly-profile-url-74535

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to be anything new. bit.ly and other shorteners have had this before. Not sure why this is front page material, except that there's been a bunch of refer.ly front page posts recently.</comment>


Ultra-Precise Measurements Powered by Quantum Negativity - <AUTHOR> https://scitechdaily.com/ultra-precise-measurements-powered-by-quantum-negativity-highly-counterintuitive-and-truly-amazing/ <comment><AUTHOR> >Quantum advantage in postselected metrology

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17559-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17559-w)</comment>


Developing: Coin Fire webiste seems to have been hacked by GAW supporters - <AUTHOR> https://ihb.io/2015-01-23/news/developing-coin-fire-webiste-seems-hacked-gaw-supporters-15795

<comment><USER2> The article mentions a Wall Street Journal story about GAW Miners and Josh Garza that is well worth reading for those who into cryptocurrencies and also enjoy popcorn.</comment>


Advances in iOS Photography – WWDC 2016 – Videos – Apple Developer - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/501/ <comment><USER2> Finally! The ability to retrieve RAW image data from the camera!</comment>


Building a Language and Compiler for Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://julialang.org/blog/2018/12/ml-language-compiler <comment><USER2> Mike Innes is one of the real rockstars in the Julia community. He has a knack for making surprisingly small and elegant packages which compose so naturally with the base language that they feel built-in.

After a `using Flux`, julia is suddenly a machine learning language, instead of a language with a machine learning library. I'd argue it shouldn't be surprising that he found his way to Julia because Julia is one of few languages that allows one to make such packages.

His other packages such as MacroTools.jl, Lazy.jl and Zygote.jl are also well worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an old Lisp user, I am impressed by Flux (which I started using this weekend, after someone on HN recommended Flux to me) as transforming Julia, like building Lisp up to a new language for whatever problem you are working. I also appreciate how incredibly easy it was to get started with Flux which 'just worked' with CUDA 10 and the GPU in my laptop and the model zoo was great to get started. Really quality stuff!

<comment><USER4> Hah, that someone was me, I'm glad it clicked for you! I had a similar experience of it "just working" when trying a few weeks ago. I particularly enjoyed being able to build and run Flux models interactively just like any other julia code. Also, having a hand written loss function just run on the GPU with no extra effort kind of blew my mind.

<comment><USER5> How "ready" is Flux, for building something like Rasa?

[https://rasa.com/](https://rasa.com/)

<comment><USER4> My feeling is that Flux is a fantastic tool for playing with innovative models which can't be expressed in the usual frameworks. And quite possibly already the best thing that exists for open ended experimentation in ML.

On the other hand, for training and deploying models which are easily expressed in other frameworks you will find a lot more ready made pieces of infrastructure elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since the blog post does not have many code samples, this non-trivial AD example with Zygote.jl is worth sharing (it's from their readme):

        julia> using Zygote
        julia> fs = Dict("sin" => sin, "cos" => cos);
        julia> derivative(x -> fs[readline()](x), 1.0)
        cos
        -0.8414709848078965
        julia> -sin(1.0) # 'true' derivative in 1.0
        -0.8414709848078965

So Zygote can apply AD to an anonymous function that looks up a function in a hash table from user input.

[https://github.com/FluxML/Zygote.jl](https://github.com/FluxML/Zygote.jl)

<comment><USER7> That's pretty impressive.

I notice this in the zygote readme:

"The Julia compiler does not yet support all features needed to make Zygote fast, particularly in the presence of control flow."

Any idea of when the Julia compiler will support these features?

<comment><USER8> Could you elaborate why this is so impressive? As I understand it, it's because things like TF or PyTorch can only AD specific things as part of a spec vs generic functions like this?

<comment><USER9> It's impressive and super super cool, because now any function you can write in Julia, the AD can differentiate.

You don't have to hope that your AD/ML package has that function, you can just write it or find it in a package and punch it straight in. That's awesome.

<comment> 0-_-0 How is that different from e.g. Tensorflow? You can compose any function you want that has differentiable components, and (re)define the derivatives of elementary or composed functions.

<comment><USER10> No tensorflow does not allow you to do that. Tensorflow differentiate a TF graph. Flux differentiate Julia's IR.

Tensorflow has OP(eration)s that are differentiable that you can compose and that's it. If you want to implement something that is going to be differentiable you need to implement it using Tensorflow OPs or add your own OPs to [tensorflow] with their gradient.

With Flux you can take code written by a random guy on the internet that never thought about using his stuff in ML and Flux will be able to differentiate it anyway.

[1]: [https://www.tensorflow.org/guide/extend/op](https://www.tensorflow.org/guide/extend/op)

<comment> 0-_-0 You mean like AutoGraph in Tensorflow?

[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/python/autograph)

<comment><USER9> Still a small subset of the language and features

They've also got to manually implement the Python -> autograph translation for a whole variety of language features (so any language features that get added or changed will break autograph until it's updated.

Flux gets this essentially for free, for the entire Julia language, without the need to manually build that language -> tensorflow translation layer. With the added benefit of Julia's non-trivial performance benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who works in merging differential equations and machine learning, I have found this kind of work essential for what I do. Pervasive AD that allows merging neural networks and diffeq solvers is allowing us to explore all of kinds of new models and new problems. Sure it doesn't impact vanilla machine learning all that much (though Zygote.jl does allow for a lot of optimizations that wouldn't be possible with tracing-based AD), but it definitely opens up a new wave of AI possibilities.

<comment><USER12> Neural ODE solver just announced as a Best Paper at NeurIPS 2018 conference. What's interesting is that not only do preliminary results yield significantly less error in prediction vs RNNs. Differentiable models allow for extrapolations well beyond range of observable test data set.

Neural Ordinary Differential Equations

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.07366.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.07366.pdf)

<comment><USER11> I am working on very different approaches with very different applications, but yes the neural ODE (not a solver BTW) is a good example of this kind of application and the effectiveness of the approach. It's a fantastic paper if anyone hasn't read it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As an XLA:GPU person I'm curious how the performance of Julia natively compiling to CUDA compares to using XLA:GPU.

In particular, is this a promising approach, or do you see it as a dead end compared to generating GPU code natively? If it's promising, are there things we need to do in XLA:GPU to make it less awful for you?

(Reasons you might want to use XLA:GPU include, you don't have to reinvent all our performance and correctness hacks for cudnn, and maybe our kernels run faster since we're targeting such a limited domain?)

<comment><USER14> We've been meaning to run this comparison, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I expect it to work and am hoping to see some performance benefits. It should be fairly straightforward to see it working, the only reason we haven't tried so far is that we only have xrt hooked up and the TF infeed ops are not open source, so the existing code doesn't just work. It should be straightforward to hook up the xla service instead, but it's a bit of additional code to write that we haven't gotten to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm tasked with running several ML algorithms on a new hardware accelerator. Currently there is an LLVM toolchain for that new hardware, but no Python support is expected for a while which means implementing a bunch of ML code in C or maybe C++ (not a very pleasant prospect). I'm wondering, since Julia has an LLVM backend would it be possible to emit LLVM IR from Julia which could then be fed into our LLVM toolchain?

One thing that comes to mind here: does Julia use some kind of primitives for various things like matrix multiplication that might be difficult to export at the LLVM-IR level?

<comment><USER14> Yes, Julia tends to be quite good at this kind of thing. Which level you want to operate at will depend on the details of the accelerator. Happy to give some pointers if you can give me a rough idea of the target architecture and what software already exists. My email is in my HN profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd be interested in a direct comparison with similar efforts undertaken by existing frameworks; for example Torch Script[1], which aims to produce a language which shares a syntactic frontend with Python while getting all the goodies that ahead-of-time compilation gives you (symbolic diff, operator fusion, etc).

Seems to me that the primary challenge for any "next-generation" framework or language is getting people to actually use the thing. Sharing a front-end with Python and a backend with PyTorch seems like a good way to bootstrap that.

[1] [https://pytorch.org/docs/master/jit.html?highlight=torchscri...](https://pytorch.org/docs/master/jit.html?highlight=torchscript)

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this feature is in any way different from LINQ for expressions?

In C# you can say

      Expr<Func<float,float>> sin = Math.Sin;

And then write a function

      Expr Derivative(Expr expr) => ...

Which will take the above sin, and compute its derivative as another Expr, which can be later compiled using Expr.Compile()

In C# this has been introduced to make SQL bindings.

So far, the only difference I see is that in C# there's a distinction between expression trees and functions themselves, but in Julia there's not.

<comment><USER17> This isn't really a blog post about a specific language feature so your question doesn't make too much sense to me, which may be why it hasn't gotten any answers. In general, being able to map specific primitives to their derivatives is not sufficient for AD, although I'm sure AD is possible in C#, it's just considerably more involved than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the work being done in Julia, as competition is good, and maybe it would make Python community be more supportive of the ongoing JIT attempts.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Meanwhile, the idea of ML models fundamentally being differentiable > algorithms – often called differentiable programming – has caught on.

> We need a language to write differentiable algorithms, and Flux takes Julia > to be this language.

Recently on HN there was some discussion of this paper by Conal Elliott on automatic differentiation in a pure functional language (Haskell): [https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.00746](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.00746)

This is a rather large and vague question but I'm curious whether people have comments on the relative merits of Julia vs a pure functional language for supporting "differentiable programming" for ML?

</comment><comment><USER17> Also posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18593453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18593453). Maybe a mod could combine the two?

</comment><comment><USER20> This looks awesome, and makes me wonder if anyone done any real-time graphics experiments with Julia? With this great AD and gpu support, I would love to try using this on some graphics applications!

<comment><USER21> Check out Makie [https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Makie.jl](https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Makie.jl)

And the cool thing is, Julia's wonderful generic programming facilities mentioned in the blogpost are used to make Makie generic to backend (GL, WebGL, cairo etc). Relies on this library [https://github.com/JuliaPlots/AbstractPlotting.jl](https://github.com/JuliaPlots/AbstractPlotting.jl)

Here's a cairo version of makie [https://github.com/JuliaPlots/CairoMakie.jl](https://github.com/JuliaPlots/CairoMakie.jl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is gonna be very interesting when this can be combined with a distributed network of specialized CNNs for highly specialized tasks (if there isn't already)</comment>


Firmware.re: a free service that unpacks scans and analyzes any firmware package - <AUTHOR> http://firmware.re/ <comment><USER2> Not much joy when attempting to analyse an OpenWrt firmware image...

Error: 500 Internal Server Error

Sorry, the requested URL '[http://firmware.re/firmgen/uploader_resumable'](http://firmware.re/firmgen/uploader_resumable') caused an error:

Your request is missing a field: resumableChunkNumber

</comment><comment><USER3> Getting lots of HTTP 415 (Unsupported Media Type) errors... is the code available somewhere that one could self host this? it looks really cool

<comment><USER4> The site is just a poor front-end to binwalk, without any attribution back to binwalk project or binwalk authors. Not cool :(

      $ binwalk -Me firmware.bin

The source code of binwalk: [https://github.com/devttys0/binwalk](https://github.com/devttys0/binwalk)

<comment><USER5> This is not true. The site is based on their USENIX Security 2014 paper, "A Large-Scale Analysis of the Security of Embedded Firmwares".

Paper: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity14/sec14-paper- costin.pdf)

Presentation: [http://s3.eurecom.fr/slides/usenixsec14_costin.slides.pdf](http://s3.eurecom.fr/slides/usenixsec14_costin.slides.pdf)

In the paper and presentation they state that they extended BAT; they're not exactly trying to hide it!

[http://www.binaryanalysis.org/en/home](http://www.binaryanalysis.org/en/home)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's very cool idea! But is it still working? It's processing my request for more than hour.

</comment><comment><USER7> I selected 8.2MB worth of files. The site requested almost 100MB of data. Why?

</comment><comment><USER8> Stalls at 20%</comment>


V Programming Language released - <AUTHOR> https://vlang.io/ <comment><USER2> Let's not consider it released until the source is released. So much confusion surrounding this language.

Edit: The author has redacted the binary release and says will release the binaries with the source on July 22nd [1], thus, this post is invalid at this point as nothing is released.

[1] [https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1141625734953390081](https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1141625734953390081)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find these languages that are developed behind closed doors and have no source published a bit frustrating. Even more so when they make big promises.

Just like you can no longer charge for compiler, I don't think it's possible in the future to not publish the source. The truth is, there are plenty of actual open source alternatives to C (zig, et al.), what makes some shadowy language a reasonable alternative?

<comment><USER4> Not published yet. Perhaps the author considers publishing prematurely to be more hassle than its worth?

<comment><USER5> If it's the intention, the author surely has been misguided. A drama is already happening (for example, [1]). While I think it is technically possible to deliver all of them (it should be noted that it is not exactly an optimizing compiler, which makes many things easier), it is natural and understandable that people doubt its premise before the full release.

[1] [https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35](https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35)

<comment><USER6> I'd hardly call it a drama. Claims like it's not possible to build features without AST or codegen json decoders are just ridiculous.

<comment><USER7> That is not what I stated in the issue.

For the kind of features that you wanted in your language, not just generics, requires a form of AST (abstract syntax tree), and if you language does not have an AST, which is technically possible, then you cannot have a lot of the features you have been advertising.

<comment><USER5> I should stress that _that_ is also your misconception. For example, you can implement generics without an AST if you don't care about performance; codegen can either output a single binary mandatorily requiring a sort of vtable (therefore every parametric code will be indirected), or output a partial binary with holes where holes will be patched later (much faster but disallows optimization across hole boundaries).

You should have framed your question as follows: those features can be implemented without an AST, but an AST is a standard and reasonable way to do them and not using an AST would require a strong rationale. So what's that rationale? (And amedvednikov, this is my question for you.)

<comment><USER6> No you don't understand :) It's IMPOSSIBLE without AST. The Odin creator says so. That's why I'm a liar.

V simply generates functions for every type they're used with.

<comment><USER5> > V simply generates functions for every type it's used with.

So you have a "template" function as written in the source code and a list of actual functions generated. You can either generate them as a final step or on the fly as you encounter; in either ways you probably have a mapping from the function name to the function body or something similar. How is that stored?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While it looks nice, it brags about it's compilation speed while simultaneously not offering any optimizations. If you want to have optimizations, C/C++ source-to-source compilation is required, which is slower by factor of 10. After that, a traditional C/C++ compiler runs the compilation/optimization, which again, costs time. What use is fast a compilation, if the resulting program can be slower by orders of magnitude?

Other than that, the design of the language looks nice and I will give it a spin at some point. Maybe I'll convert some HPC benchmarks to V and see how they perform.

<comment><USER9> You can build and test faster using the direct to machine code compiler, then use the C compiler for a final production test and distribution.

<comment><USER8> You are right in a scenario where testing is lightweight and quick. I'm sure this can cover a lot of use cases. However, If the testing/development itself involves heavy computation (large integration tests for example), there are diminishing return from quick but unoptimized compilation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What happened to releasing the source code today? [https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137750611389288450](https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137750611389288450)

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/vlang/v](https://github.com/vlang/v) says the source code will be released on 2019-06-22.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, autor promised he use some simple range/lifetime analysis for semi-auto memory management. But seems it's not true: [https://twitter.com/8vit_devel/status/1141573808320647168](https://twitter.com/8vit_devel/status/1141573808320647168)

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't really get excited by new languages but I must say I really like what I'm seeing here going through the docs. This is what I wanted nim to be, but with the safety.

The standard library and package manager + packages will make or break V.

[edit] ow, not open source yet.

<comment><USER13> The safety? What safety does V offer that Nim doesn't?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The too good to be true alarm bells in my head are ringing. There's almost no way it delivers on all of the features listed here. Gonna need a lot of proof to back all of this up.

<comment><USER15> It's a scam. You can promise bells and whistles as many as you want but you have to prove it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This guy is a complete fraud. He's collecting $927/month on Patreon by deceiving generous and hopeful programmers. The claims on the web page are outright lies.

\----

README.txt: Right now there are several dependencies that you need to install: clang, glfw, freetype, libcurl.

web page claim: 400 KB compiler with zero dependencies

README.txt: Missing features that will be available soon: x64 machine code generation without a C compiler

web page claim: V compiles ≈1.2 million lines of code per second per CPU core. (Intel i5-7500 @ 3.40GHz, SM0256L SSD, no optimization). Such speed is achieved by direct machine code generation and a strong modularity.

README.txt: Missing features that will be available soon: hot code reloading

web page claim: Hot code reloading. Get your changes instantly without recompiling.

README.txt: Missing features that will be available soon: REPL

web page claim: V has a REPL

README.txt: Missing features that will be available soon: cross compiling

web page claim: Easy cross compilation. To cross compile your software simply run v -os windows . or v -os linux . No extra steps required, even for GUI and graphical apps!

\---

Furthermore it's really shady to release only closed source builds 2 days before a source release. Why the sudden change of mind? [https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137750611389288450](https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137750611389288450)

There's evidence that this person cannot be trusted: [https://github.com/voltapp/volt/issues/143](https://github.com/voltapp/volt/issues/143) Some quotes from that issue: "Do you go read firefox history?" "Yea, this is really unnerving. I feel like I need to invalidate all my firefox sessions now. What did you do?" "Lol that's what you guys get for running proprietary software."

More evidence of false claims: [https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35](https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35)

I'm all on board with friendly competition, but this is pretty hostile behavior to the open-source community. Be honest about what your software can and cannot do. And release source or GTFO.

<comment><USER6> Wow, calling me a fraud and a scam artist based on these "facts"?..

The compiler has ZERO dependencies, as stated on the website. You can build it with `clang v.c`.

Do you really think the compiler needs glfw or freetype to function? It's for the graphics library to build things like the tetris.v example.

As for clang, It was made very clear that V compiles to C in addition to emitting native code, and that it's much more stable at the moment.

Hot code reloading will be available on June 22.

Cross compiling already works, and you saw this on twitter. How can you claim it's a lie? [https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137537130887077890](https://twitter.com/v_language/status/1137537130887077890)

<comment><USER5> > Hot code reloading will be available on June 22.

What the heck, so you have claimed that it's just a readme or source cleanup but that was actually a huge missing feature. You said that you have high standards [1], but you don't seem to have high standards on what you say.

[1] [https://blog.vlang.io/post/13/Why-isn't-everything- already-o...](https://blog.vlang.io/post/13/Why-isn't-everything-already-open- source)

<comment><USER6> You need to detect sarcasm. Did you think I was serious when I said I was delaying by 2 days to clean up readme?

<comment><USER5> If you weren't serious at that time it'd be a bigger problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> weird how other language creators are ganging up against the author here...

<comment><USER5> Because language creators do know what is possible and what is hard. I think the Odin's creator has made some mistakes when presenting one's criticism [1] but even without knowing much PL knowledge AndyKelley is very clearly showing that it is shady.

[1] [https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35](https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35) (For example, there _are_ ways to implement generics or interfaces without AST, much harder but a possible endeavor.)

<comment><USER6> Yes, Andy Kelley being really reasonable:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20231484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20231484)

Calling me a scammer because "V requires glfw and freetype". I have no words.

<comment><USER5> And also clang. If your initial release only has a code generation using clang, it is your hard dependency. Windows doesn't have a native compiler and it must have a compiler beforehand---so a bare compiler wouldn't work at all! (I know that the initial release lacked Windows. But I have no reason to believe that the Windows version will be different.)

Don't tell me that it is a pre-alpha and will be updated on 22 June, that reads like a sure way to instantly kill your reputation. Always make sure that what you have presented (not what you will present) and what you have said align to each other.

<comment><USER6> C is the L0 language needed for bootstrapping anyway.

You say "also". What else?

<comment><USER5> > C is the L0 language needed for bootstrapping anyway.

So it is your hard dependency. Describe so.

> You say "also". What else?

If you think that they are spreading the misinformation because _some_ of claimed dependencies are actually for stdlib, you should think again. A substantial subset of HN users would think that "zero dependencies" promise extends to stdlib, as it is technically possible to have out-of-box UI and graphics in the stdlib and especially Go was famous of its independent crypto and network libraries. Your statement was not clear enough.

<comment><USER6> The graphics libraries are not part of stdlib, UI only uses system libraries that are preinstalled.

Next?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious but too lazy to look it up myself. SO I'll just ask.

How far does the 'linux' specification go. Say I want to run a V program on AIX what kind of libraries will I need?

What about the 'windows' specification. Do the redistributables support windows 2000/7/Vista/8/8.1/10

We have a lot of different systems on our clients, mac as well. It would be nice to read concrete requirements for running to really see how much effort rolling out a V application would be.

<comment><USER6> V apps run on Windows XP without any issues. Rolling out a V application is just releasing one .exe file.

<comment><USER5> It is not that simple. If you are not careful you may end up using more recent winapi functions and/or constants that do not exist in XP. For example Rust supports XP on a best-efforts basis and as a result has broken XP support from time to time (the "tier 3" support [1] explicitly allows this situation). Unless you can run an automated CI on XP (does that even exist?!) you'd better support only recent OSes.

[1] [https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform- support.html#tier-3](https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html#tier-3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Title is slightly misleading. Only binaries for MacOS have been released. Windows and Linux are coming soon. And the source code is to be released on 22nd June.

<comment><USER19> And macos binary was pulled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> thought this looked interesting a couple of months ago, still looks very interesting now.

transpiring to c means you can sneak it in at work, which is nice

</comment><comment><USER21> No null

No global variables

No undefined values

No undefined behavior

No variable shadowing

Bounds checking

Option/Result types

Generics

Immutable variables by default

Pure functions by default

Immutable structs by default

me> Wow. That's a good feature set to have !

<comment><USER2> Yes, a very good feature set "to have". I think, at this point not even half of them are implemented. The author is doing a major disservice by presenting as if everything is complete in the main website.

<comment><USER6> you can go to vlang.io/play and see for yourself instead of spreading misinformation

<comment><USER2> I must clarify, not out of the features listed by GP, but the features listed on the website. No ill will towards you, but the source of all the problems seems to be - how you present the state of language on the website as if it already has all the features noted there. And you seem to have different standards for feature completeness [1], while others expect the feature to be completely implemented, not just a proof of concept with tons of work still required. Again to clarify, I do like the idea behind this language and hope all the best for it.

[1] [https://twitter.com/8vit_devel/status/1141573808320647168](https://twitter.com/8vit_devel/status/1141573808320647168)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I do not want to blame Go, since I'm programming in Go from quite a long time and I love it, but to claim a programming language which is written in Go fast is exaggerated and an outrageous lie. Go could not match the speed of C/C++ so how can be this programming language declared as fast??

<comment><USER8> It is not written in Go. Go was only used to bootstrap the first compiler. Newer compiler versions are written in V itself.

<comment><USER15> Ok I see now, but still we do not have any evidence about the source code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm gonna jump in here too and ask; why are you doing all this to yourself?

I'm reading the comments, clicking the links to GH issues, reading websites and blogs and comments and you seem to have a following. A loyal one. A vested one. Sure there are detractors, but if you step back and look; all your detractors are fueled either by your inaction, or your lack of transparency. All your supporters trust you, which is what you want. So all you have to do to take the wind out of the sails of your detractors is come clean, stop setting arbitrary forcasts mere hours into the future (pointless, sloppy, rude to your paying supporters), and just be straight. People paid hundreds of dollars for vlang. Do you think they care if there are a few hacks holding it together? They WANT to help you with this, and you claim to "want" their help and support.... SO LISTEN TO THEM!

There are hundreds of comments in this thread (many of which from shills and throwaways) that you could chop off at the knees by simply not jerking everyone around. Do yourself, and vlang, a favor and either embrace open- source (and all that entails) or don't. Just do something to stop all the drama. I haven't been able to learn ANYTHING about vlang (and I don't know if I want to) because of all this bullshit.

<comment><USER23> > many of which from shills

This breaks the site guidelines. Please review them and follow them when posting here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER22> What else should I call an account that was created today with 10 posts on this one thread?

I also broke the rules intentionally by using caps instead of asterisks. For that I apologize, but regardless of HN rules there is something going on in this thread. More than simple honest discussion.

<comment><USER23> Internet users are a million times too quick to jump to the conclusion that other internet users must be dishonest, shills, or spies, simply because they hold a different view. The explanation is nearly always much more mundane. Meanwhile such accusations are toxic in their own right—they have a poisonous effect on HN. That's why the guidelines rule out making these insinuations. I've posted a lot about this if you or anyone want more explanation: [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturfing).

To pick just one possible explanation, sometimes people feel so strongly about a topic that they are propelled into making a new account where they had previously been lurking. I don't know which account you're referring to, so I don't know if that's the case here. However, you don't need to "call" them anything. You can respond if you want to, as long as you do so thoughtfully and substantively and without personal swipes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Edit: if you mean [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kingkong2022](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kingkong2022), we banned that account for egregiously breaking the site guidelines. A better way to express your frustration would have been to flag the egregious comments (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). That brings them to moderator attention. You could also have emailed us at email@example.com, which would have brought it to our attention sooner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The claims in the homepage are completely refuted by the readme in the downloaded package. The compiler is not 400 kb dependency free. It requires shit ton of stuff. The codegen as well as hot code reloading is not present, so even the compiler performance claims and hcr on the homepage are lies. Even Rust like memory management that they claimed is not there. Volt is said to be written in Vlang using the UI present in this download. But the readme says that the UI package does not run on Linux, so how can Volt be written in Vlang?

Honesty I don't see why the hype behind Vlang and why so optimistic comments here.

Vlang feels worse than a pre alpha software with a good marketing team that is just trying to make money. It does not even have the features it claims it has. But just look at its patreon, it gets much more than odin lang, which IMO is much further into development than vlang is.

That said, it would not be so bad if the developer did not make false claims and just say that this is pre-alpha software, but instead he makes bold claims and fights for them aggresively (see issue by gingerbill linked elsewhere on this page), which can now be seen that all of them have been lies.

Edit: (posting my comment from below) [https://support.patreon.com/hc/en- us/articles/204914235-How-...](https://support.patreon.com/hc/en- us/articles/204914235-How-do-I-report-content-that-violates-community- guidelines-)

People with patreon accounts should report this guy.

<comment><USER6> > It requires shit ton of stuff.

No it doesn't. You can build the compiler with `clang v.c`

> But the readme says that the UI package does not run on Linux, so how can > Volt be written in Vlang?

The UI package is not available for everyone on Linux yet. Doesn't mean I can't use it.

> hot code reloading is not present

It will be on June 22.

Why do you spread lies and even ask to report me based on these lies? Are you the developer of Odin, who started a similar thread 3 months ago?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there some sort of prize in the world of programming languages for coming up with names where you have to append "programming language" to every search query to find what you want?

If so, all the single letter languages are getting stomped by Go, which is already used for a verb, noun and a preexisting programming language [0].

The technology to pick new and easily searchable names has existed since it was invented in 2005 by computer scientist Randall Munroe of xkcd. Language designers should use it. There are still unique 4 letter combinations available!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go)

<comment><USER19> Worst part? There's already a vlang. [https://vlang.org/](https://vlang.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is no longer any excuse for Go to exist.

There is no longer any reason for separate scripting languages.

There is no longer any legitimate reason to write C code.

Rust had better watch its back.

I may soon begin to resent C++.</comment>


Apple and the Futurist - <AUTHOR> http://www.alittlemadness.com/2009/08/18/apple-and-the-futurist/

<comment><USER2> Developers started flocking to the App Store because they saw a great opportunity, a gold rush (fueled like never before by media).

If a consistent part of them would leave now (and I believe they won't), it would be even more appealing for other to join since there would be less competition.

<comment><AUTHOR> I decided to keep my predictions out of the post, but in reality I agree it is unlikely that there will be a mass exodus of developers. I do, however, wish developers would concede that they're getting what they ask for if they end up on the wrong side of an App Store policy decision. And in my more optimistic moments I hope developers understand that we do have some power to get behind fairer policies.</comment></comment>


How would you go about getting traction? - <AUTHOR> http://harperlindsey.com/2011/01/13/how-would-you-go-about-getting-traffic/

<comment><USER2> -Make the featured Swayable centered and prominent.

-Put the stream somewhere else, it's distracting.

-Move on to another featured Swayable once I voted on the current one.

-Most importantly, this part: "reveal the results | see the comments | add a comment | flag this Swayable embed on your site | Swayable URL: <http://swy.bz/VZDYop> | share" is overwhelming. I would replace them with Like and Tweet buttons with provocative titles (e.g. "John thinks that Britney Spears is better than Lady Gaga! What do you think?").

</comment><comment><USER3> This is definitely a chicken-and-egg problem. Until you get more users, you're not going to get the really interesting sways.

You definitely want to make sure you create a feature to determine which users have the most sway.

Ways to get traction: Find things that people vote on now. With March Madness coming up, maybe do something around that? Or well known debates with passionate online communities?

</comment><comment><USER4> This is definitely a website where the main reward is getting feedback. The more feedback each individual gets, the more likely that person will return. Therefore, the best thing that one can do in this situation is to forget about traction and features and focus 100% on community building.</comment>


Richardfontana/GPL.next - Fork of GPL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/richardfontana/GPL.next <comment><USER2> Wow, I think it's pretty outrageous to call a license that is not backed by the FSF _GPL.next_. His argument that GPL is a generic term doesn't convince me at all.

<comment><USER3> <https://github.com/richardfontana/GPL.next/issues/13>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Richard gave a talk which touched upon this at FOSDEM earlier this year:

[https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/schedule/event/the_decline_o...](https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/schedule/event/the_decline_of_the_gpl.html)

(Sadly I cannot find the slides online)

</comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't say what it does anywhere that I can see. The readme concerns itself with how it's allowed and compatible with the GPL, but I can't know what it's for unless I read the entire license.

<comment><USER6> one important thing is clarification and removing leftovers from negotiations between multiple parties involved in the gpl3 license text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the main difference between this and the original GPL ?

I'm not a lawyer so I ask here, why I would use GPL.next instead of GPL ?

</comment><comment><USER8> For those looking for some context, I found some slides:

"The Decline of the GPL, and What To Do About It"

Richard Fontana, Red Hat - Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit 2012

[https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs20...](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_fontana.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Discussion thread on LWN (with the author, Richard Fontana): <https://lwn.net/Articles/505589/>

</comment><comment><USER6> i wonder why this happens only now. richard fontana has been pretty open in his criticism for a while...

<comment><USER10> Because it was forked and rewritten BY Richard Fontana

<comment><USER6> huh. i know. but why now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Totally serious question: isn't the GPL GPL'ed in some way?

<comment><USER6> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL>

<comment><USER11> Ah, I see. Thank you. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is anyone involved a lawyer? After reading the discussion that went into the removal of the acceptance clause I became a little worried.

<comment><USER6> yes. many persons involved are. (richard fontana is redhat's top lawyer.)</comment></comment>


A website where you can share your opinions on any subjects, even controversial - <AUTHOR> https://www.argoledo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The difference between this website and others is that your posts are not ranked based on dislikes or likes, even if people don't agree with your opinion your post can get to trending, which makes sense since everybody has a different opinion about everything.</comment>


Why Facebook Will Go Bankrupt?  - <AUTHOR> http://modernmarketingjapan.blogspot.com/2012/07/why-facebook-will-go-bankrupt.html

<comment><USER2> Look out for my new series: "Why link bait will end up on HN?"</comment>


Speaker's Tip: Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1989-speakers-tip-dont-tell-the-audience-you-arent-prepared <comment><USER2> I tend to extrapolate this tip into a more general rule: no meta-talk.

For the speaker, preparing the talk has been top of mind for the past N hours/days/weeks. Not so for the audience. If you think about the situation from _their_ perspective, you'll realize they don't want to hear about how you prepared the talk or how you approached the talk (usually). They want to hear your thoughts on the topic -- the result of your preparation.

This rule generally eliminates phrases like "while preparing this talk, I realized...", "when Joe asked me to give this talk...", "I didn't really prepare for this talk...", "I get nervous giving talks like this...", etc.

In almost all cases, you can simply strike those phrases from the script and your talk will be more focused and concise for it.

<comment><USER3> "This slide has my favorite joke of the talk"

"Sorry this slide has a lot of text on it, I usually try to avoid it"

Reading slides is also idiotic.

<comment><USER4> Some people absorb info better when they view it, others when they hear it. Consider it pre-prepared closed captions and then _perhaps_ it's OK?

<comment><USER5> Then why talk? Reading is faster than listening. And this alone will get your audience horribly out of sync with you.

Use slides as a support structure, don't duplicate what you are seeing. And if you really want to make all those happy that prefer reading to listening don't just dump your uncommented slides on them afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would exempt Paul Buchheit because this is an integral part of all his talks.

<comment><USER2> Spontaneity? Or announcing a lack of preparation at the beginning?

As Jason notes in the article, spontaneity can be a huge boon. I don't immediately see how the latter can be, though it's possible.

I suppose paul may truly be an exception, but it seems that I would get just as much out of his talks (which is to say, a ton) whether or not I knew how much time he had spent in preparation.

<comment><USER6> Announcing a lack of preparation. All PB talks begin with him saying that he hasn't prepared anything; that it doesn't matter anyway, because he doesn't have anything to say; and that in fact no one has anything to say. From which he proceeds to tell you interesting things.

<comment><USER7> What a very strange comment.

I wish I had heard one of these talks.

<comment><USER8> If you haven't seen it yet, here is a highlights video which has a brief portion of Paul's talk as well as links to the justin.tv archived stream.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=910426>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Instead of "Don't tell the audience you aren't prepared", I'd say simply "Be Prepared".

Paul Buchheit started his talk at Startup School by telling the audience that he was just going to wing it. I'd say he had one of the best talks of the day. Even if he didn't spend a second thinking about what he was going say, it was pretty obvious that he was very well prepared to give a good talk based on previous experience.

That said, I can see where Jason is coming from. Setting expectations is an important part of public speaking (actually it applies to a lot of things). If you tell me you haven't prepared, the first thought that immediately comes to mind is that the talk isn't going to be very good and I'm certainly more likely to zone you out.

<comment><USER9> I guess that's the thing, if Paul was winging it _but_ has a great deal of experience doing the same thing, that's totally different from Joe Random turning up at a (paid-for) conference without slides or script and saying 'Er, well, I didn't prepare...'. Unless Joe Random is a celebrity of some sort, people will get pissed off.

As a total aside, winging it can be great. I far prefer that style to people who are clearly reading from a script of sorts. My performance background's in improv so I'm biased, but I strongly recommend anyone who wants to take up public speaking spend some time in improv workshops. Once you can structure a longform narrative from nothing but a word shouted by an audience member, giving a talk is _easy_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems aimed squarely at Paul Buchheit, considering it's less than a week after Paul did exactly that at Startup School.

Interestingly I enjoyed Paul's talk more than Jason's.

<comment><USER11> In person he claimed to have liked my talk :)

I'm not sure if anyone understood, but the "winging it" was supposed to be a metaphor for startups themselves. You can never be truly prepared.

<comment><USER12> The other thing is that you clearly didn't completely wing it. You had prepared slides, as a start.

<comment><USER13> No he didn't. I saw him writing the slides as other presenters were speaking.

(Not that I'm criticizing him. Some of my best projects in school were written the day they were due.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _People take days off of work, spend hundreds on a conference ticket, travel for thousands of miles, and pay hefty rates for flights and hotels to come hear you speak, and you tell them you didn't have time to prepare a talk? What's cool about that?_

But of course, the speaker takes days off of work, travels thousands of miles, and pays hefty rates for flights and hotels to come talk to you for free. I am not sure why anyone would expect excellence in that situation.

<comment><USER15> I've gotten paid expenses for several conferences, and I'm not really a 'somebody'. Depending on the conference, 'somebodies' can definitely expect to be paid a little something; although of course it may pale in comparison with other revenue they may make, depending on the person/field.

<comment><USER14> And when that happens, I expect the talk to be of higher quality. That's the standard I hold myself to, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recently spoke at Stack Overflow's Dev Days in Toronto. I started by saying that I am very shy and have difficulty going to networking events and conferences where there are large groups, but that there's something I wanted to share, and it was important enough for me to climb up on stage and stand in front of them.

A few people later thanked me for the candour, but on reflection just because that resonated emotionally with some people, that doesn't mean my talk was actually _better_. Perhaps the people who responded emotionally to my 'confession' were more attentive to the ideas in the talk, but it could just as easily be that they were distracted and absorbed less of the content.

This post and the commentary from HN folks is giving me something to think about. Thanks everybody.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a specific facet of a more general rule of public speaking: _don't apologize_. It has nothing to do with your presentation, and it's likely the audience wouldn't have noticed, anyway--so why point it out?

There is an exception to this rule, though: if the condition is A) painfully obvious, and B) out of your control, you can apologize. Examples: air conditioners in room broken, or jackhammers next door. But don't apologize for your own stuff; that's just tacky.

</comment><comment><USER18> Some speakers can get away with it, whether as a form of humor or setting completely unreal expectations (ie. I am not prepared, but then blows the audience away with their knowledge).

Normal people can't do it (which most certainly includes myself!)

</comment><comment><USER19> The besr tip I could give is to join Toastmasters.

<comment><USER20> I wonder why the "reply" after your correction comment (the one which just said "best") is in italics?

(I'm replying to this comment instead of that one so I don't destroy the thing I'm commenting about)

<comment><USER19> I put an asterisk after the corrected word, wonder if that matters.

<comment><USER20> Yup, it worked for my test comment. So that's a (terribly minor) bug in HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree that it is ultimately disrespectful to the people attending, but on the other hand most of them have come just to look at you in person, see you talk (about anything really) and don't really care what you talk about or how well you are prepared. If they respect you they'll think anything you say is insightful.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I used to write freelance articles sometimes I would string for the local daily and weekly newspapers. As such, they would assign me local crime stories -- usually something that sounded interesting. "Naked man in rowboat with .22 rifle floating around shooting at birds" or some such.

I used to have one source inside the police department that could make anything at all sound boring. He would start each interview off with "Well, it really isn't that interesting, but I'm happy to tell you a little about it."

After 20 or 30 minutes of taped interview, eventually I would agree that yes, it really isn't that interesting.

Since then I've made it a point never to say something bad about your presentation or story. If it's rotten they're going to figure it out anyhow, and no point in spoiling the suspense for them.

<comment><USER22> _"That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you, don't do it for them._ <http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays/status/4811790555></comment></comment>


Montana's No Speed Limit Safety Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://www.hwysafety.com/hwy_montana.htm <comment><USER2> This analysis is a joke. Have you looked at the data on this page? It is inconclusive. The context is insufficient. What about overall traffic, weather, non-fatal accidents? other factors such as visiting travelers or data by county. Nowhere do I see data demonstrating any speed safety paradox. Comparing fatalities in only two years? and look at the green and red boxes between 1998 and 1999 for averages.

If you want to do a real study, start walking through some data covering a wider range of years, like the 2003 reports here (which covers fatalities by county going back decades):

[http://www.doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/annualreport...](http://www.doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/annualreport2003.asp)

Then you also have to consider improvements in auto safety over the years and how many of what kind of car and driver demographics were in the fatalities.

Edit: More traffic and fatality data:

[http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualrepo...](http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualreport2008.pdf)

[http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualrepo...](http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualreport2007.pdf)

[http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualrepo...](http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualreport2006.pdf)

[http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualrepo...](http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualreport2005.pdf)

[http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualrepo...](http://doj.mt.gov/enforcement/highwaypatrol/forms/annualreport2004.pdf)

<comment><USER3> The article alleges that matters of fact were also lied about, such as the nature of the effect on highway funding.

If there were a study that suggested similar conclusions, what would the result be? More lying?

It seems to me that the proponents of the law should have the burden of conclusive proof, not the opponents.

Speed limits are a major imposition on drivers. They would have to have a significant effect on fatalities to be worthwhile. What about spending the same effort on other life saving approaches, such as mandating safer vehicles? Is that more efficient?

<comment><USER4> > It seems to me that the proponents of the law should have the burden of > conclusive proof, not the opponents.

Why? It seems like the norm is speed limits, I thought that the burden of proof rested with those contesting the norm.

<comment><USER5> Depends on what you mean. If Montana currently had no speed limits, and someone was proposing that Montana impose speed limits, should such a motion then place the burden on the opponents to defend the current practices, or should it be on the proponents that are proposing new practice? Trying to say, "well everyone else is doing it, so it is 'the norm' and we should just follow their lead," is rather disingenuous. You can't propose a new idea counter to an existing idea, then try to push the onus of proof onto the supporters of the existing idea while skirting any proof of the new idea.

Similarly if the tables were turned, the proponents of removing the speed limits should have the burden of proof placed on them as well.

<comment><USER4> Eh, maybe. As far as I can tell, the speed limit was repealed in Montana without much to back that course of action either. I don't see how you can put the burden on the speed limit group when that burden was not borne initially by those who supported its repeal. Seems to me that under that regime whoever can get the law passed most sneakily gets to put a heavy burden of truth on the other team, and then say that they're in the right.

Anyway, this generalization

> The lower–than–US fatality rates on the German Autobahn (where flow > management is the primary safety strategy), and now Montana's experience, > would indicate that using speed limits and speed enforcement as the > cornerstone of US highway safety policy is a major mistake.

is totally out of line in an article that doesn't even address the technical question of statistical significance or deal with potential biases Montana's or Germany's automotive demographics put on the data.

<comment><USER6> I agree, the fact that the german Autobahn is compared directly to US highways is laughable. It's comparing apples and pears: not relevant.

<comment><USER7> Why can't you compare apples and pears? They're both fruit that grows in trees and they both have similar use culinary purposes. I can make cider out of both, and the results are actually quite similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Almost everywhere I drive, people usually speed. As a result, the speed limit is a constant distraction - I have to pay attention to what it is on the current stretch of the road (some of the roads I have to drive on to get to work change speed limits 3-4 times) _and_ to the average speed of people in each lane, and figure out whether it's in my best interest to drive at the speed limit, or whether I'm going to have people constantly merging around me if I don't speed.

If the speed limit was gone, I'd just pay attention to the velocity of other drivers and make sure I have plenty of room in front of me to stop - which I try to do anyway. I wish some states or counties would try making changes to speed limit policies.

<comment><USER9> They would except for two powerful motivators to maintain artificially low limits:

1) On city and suburban roads, parents demand extremely low speed limits in the name of child safety. This results in 25MPH and 35MPH zones on roads where reasonable drivers would normally travel 40MPH or higher.

2) Traffic ticketing is a significant source of income for the local government and police agencies. Artificially low speed limits allow speeding tickets to be written on a regular basis.

<comment><USER10> Don't forget it gives authorities a reason to pull over almost anyone without needing a reason (except speeding which everyone is doing)

<comment><USER6> Personally I think speeding IS a reason. It's true that people can keep safe distances without speed limits, however it's undeniable that people who go much faster than the average speed are dangerous. Limiting the speed is one way to try to get everyone to drive the same speed. It's a system and as long as everyone sticks to it, there are less accidents. If you change the system, no problem, but don't give this as an example to declare a country a police- state. Your speed is completely in your control.

<comment><USER11> If that is the case, then they should pull over everyone who is speeding and give them all tickets. They don't do this. Everyone behaving normally is always in violation so the police pick and choose who they give tickets to.

The extreme version of that is called a police state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
      > What about the extreme of No Speed Limits on 4 lane
      > Interstate and rural federal–aid primary two lane highways?
      > These same fact–based engineers point to the German  > Autobahn,
      > where, with no speed limits, authorities are consistently
      > reporting lower fatality rates than comparable US highways.

This is an unfair comparison. Getting a driver's license in Germany is _much_ harder than in the US.

<http://www.german-way.com/driving.html>

(I am not a German, and only have the slightest idea of the actual laws from German class in high school.)

<comment><USER13> I've spent quite a bit of time driving in Germany. I have some random observations about German _Autobahnen_ leading to no specific conclusion.

* Autobahns have narrower lanes, and fewer of them relative to US Interstates. The most I've seen is four per side near Berlin. Two is standard, even in fairly high-traffic areas. Three is becoming a little more common than it was a few years ago, but it's still quite rare.

* Lane discipline is usually quite good. Passing on the right is illegal except for in traffic jams, and it's fairly rare that anyone does. Failing to cede the left lane to passing traffic when the right lane in clear is also quite rare.

* Drivers wishing to pass often become impatient with anyone using the left lane to pass at a slightly lower speed than they would prefer.

* Traffic jams are exceedingly common, often due to construction zones, which have even narrower lanes and very low speed limits. During a traffic jam, traffic comes to a stop, and occasionally moves for short periods of time at low speeds. During an extended stop, it is common for drivers to get out of their cars and chat, referred to as an Autobahn party.

* Very slight imperfections in the pavement usually lead to a _Straßen shäden_ (damaged street) sign and soon after, a complete rebuild of that section of highway. It's rare to drive for an hour without encountering a construction zone.

* Most cars drive at speeds between 80 and 90 mph when there is no speed limit. Truck and cars pulling trailers are limited by law to 60 mph. On occasion, a car, usually a high-end German make will drive by in the left lane at around 150 mph.

* I have never seen an accident on an unlimited-speed section of Autobahn.

<comment><USER14> My experiences are the same as yours, but you've clearly spent more time there than me.

I would say the two greatest differences between German Authobahns and US interstate traffic comes down to two factors: \- road condition and maintenance. The Autobahn roads are near perfect in design, drainage, signage and smoothness \- driver attitude : as you noted, 'undertaking' or passing on the right is not only illegal, it is considered to be rude. Someone driving faster than you is in a hurry, not throwing down a challenge to you. You let them on their way, not try and impede their progress. A single flash of the lights to a slower vehicle to move right is not considered rude. \- I would disagree on the average 80-90 mph on the unrestricted sections. I would estimate that most occupants of the 'fast' lane in ordinary vehicles would be doing 100-120 mph.

Another bonus of the Autobahn system is that 'normal' cars are more popular than SUV's because you just can't drive SUV's that fast, unless you have a high-end Mercedes, Porsche or BMW. Having an artificially lower speed limit encourages oversized vehicles because the speeds are low enough that their mass and frontal area don't affect progress and fuel consumption as much.

While I would say the study probably has some merit, it's very important with these time based studies to allow for the increased driver survival rate in more modern cars. I did not see that with this study, but it can be a crucial factor.

<comment><USER13> I don't think the _Autobahnen_ are perfect in design and maintenance; in many areas, I think they don't have enough lanes for the amount of traffic they're required to handle. Freeway traffic jams are more common in Germany than in any other country I've spent a significant amount of time driving in. I would also classify the maintenance as excessive; they're so eager to repair minor problems with the road that there are severe delays resulting from road construction on a significant portion of drives over an hour.

WRT speeds in the fast lane: I wasn't talking about the average for the fast lane. I was talking about the average for all lanes. It's common to see economy cars driving at similar speeds to the trucks.

I think fuel prices have more to do with the unpopularity of SUVs than any other factor. Regular gasoline here in Florida costs around $2.50/gallon. In Germany, the price is around $7/gallon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is similar to a project that began in Drachten, Holland

The removal of traffic lights at one major intersection saw accidents fall from 36 in four years to two over the next two years, and the average time for vehicles moving through the intersection fell from 50 seconds to 30 seconds, despite a rise in the volume of traffic.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drachten#Traffic_experiment>

</comment><comment><USER16> I love ideas that solve social problems with brain dead simple solutions.

Unfortunately it's unlikely this solution will last or spread to other states for two reasons: a) It takes the control from the authorities and gives it back to the people. b) Because the states make a lot of money from speeding tickets and it will be a lot harder to give them if there isn't a speed limit.

<comment><USER17> It is also unlikely to spread because the solution (no speed limits _outside city limits_ ) covers a lot of territory in a sparsely populated area like Montana and covers almost no roads in the dense urban centers in which the vast majority of the population lives and drives.

Additionally, it is not giving control back to "the people", it is giving it to _the driver_ and that is not necessarily what "the people" would want in all situations.

<comment><USER18> in sparsely populated areas, people spend a lot of time on the minorish highways, going back and forth between the populated areas. going somewhere 30 miles away isn't a big deal, because it isn't 30 miles of stop lights and cross traffic.

<comment><USER19> More to the point, you _have_ to go somewhere 30 miles away all the damn time. If you live in a big city, you don't have to go to another city to see a medical specialist or to go shopping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cars would probably sort more efficiently between left-lanes and right-lanes based on their desired speed with the removal of an artificial anchoring value. And if lower same-lane variance in speed is achieved, there would be fewer dramatic changes in tailing distance between cars and fewer lane changes required, resulting in fewer opportunities for accidents to occur.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't know about others, but driving above the speed limit (i.e. 75 in a 55) forces me to pay extremely close attention to everything that is going on while driving. That way, I'm actively engaged in passing people, constantly scanning ahead to maintain safe following distances, and constantly updating my awareness of the "bubble" that surrounds my car and where I can go should a situation unfold on the highway.

Then again, I have to put up with New Jersey drivers here in Philly, so that usually involves an entire repertoire of techniques to put them safely behind you. For example, as I'm approaching a Jersey driver in the left lane doing 55, I'll pull the car nearer to the median so they catch my Xenon headlamps in their driver's side mirror. This is preferable to flashing high-beams because it's not perceived as road-ragey and casually alerts the yellow-plates that you want to get by.

The MSF courses teach this driving style to motorcyclists, that in all situations you want to know exactly where you would go to escape an accident, and in general you want to accelerate out of any situation where you are put at risk.

It's aggressive defensive driving at its best.

<comment><USER7> I just moved out to Philly from central PA and the drivers out here are driving me nuts. In the 10 years of driving I did back home, I think I saw 1 person run a red light. Today, I'd be lucky if I got to see only _at a single stop_ on my way to work in the morning. I've been here for 4 months and I've already seen two accidents from people running red lights and stop signs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I understand this correctly, by passing a National Speed Limit back in the 70s, tens of thousands of people died due to increased accidents (or more)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is not a "paradox" in any way, it's merely a counter-intuitive result of research.

</comment><comment><USER24> Also working from memory. Before the speed limit went away the ticket was only something like $5 as an F.U. to the feds. So effectively, there wasn't much of a deterrent then. After the limit went away you would get hit not with speeding, but reckless driving if you were going too fast, and that's much worse than a speeding ticket. Today, the speed limit signs are back up. There are a lot of very dangerous roads in Montana where you just can't go without a speed limit.

Maybe the reason the fatalities went up is because people feel they have to stick close to the limit even where it's not a smart thing to do. However, people in Montana should know all "reasonable and prudent" because of the horrible road conditions in the winter.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of dangerous roads where you can't do without a speed limit? Bullshit. People can keep to a safe speed without being forced to on pain of ticketing. The advisory signs (the yellow ones) didn't come down when there were no speed limits.

<comment><USER24> As an example, I lived in a neighborhood where there were a lot of people living and our only way to get out was to get on a highway where people routinely drove at 75 mph or higher. There was a wide corner on one end which hid oncoming traffic (but not enough of a corner to slow people down) and a hill on the other end which also hid traffic. At these speeds you typically have freeways with on/off ramps, we had to pull out directly into it. The city ended up putting in a light farther down the road to protect a bigger neighborhood but that didn't help our own. This road wasn't obviously dangerous because of the road itself, the danger was from people getting on the road at low speeds.

Montana has lots of these types of spots because of a state of drivers used to driving at high speeds on roads which service a lot of very spread out communities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I want to run for governor on this platform: per-lane speed _minimums_

It would be hard to collect data to back up my hypothesis, but based on my observation on the highways, slow drivers cause the most traffic and dangerous situations. If someone is going slow in the fast lane, everyone has to pass them on the right. This causes a huge bottleneck of people merging into the middle lane.

If we need speed limit laws at all, they should define a speed for each lane: 85mph in the far left lane, 75mph in the next, etc. Pick your lane and go your speed. Everyone in each lane should be going the same speed. It's safer and more efficient.

<comment><USER26> _I want to run for governor_

Isn't what you describe a legislative, not executive function?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think the article is trying to hit at something more philosophical about driving and speed limits in general.

The article had a lot of conclusions made, without the needed studies documented. I wish I had the studies at hand to prove most of the conclusions.

I personally doubt the results laid out about Montana (in the article presented) Only on a matter of time frame, the educational practices, and the licensing protocol (that dominates american culture). People drive the way they are educated, and a LARGE part of that is from their parents. REGARDLESS of the tests and protocol new US drivers must go through.

HOWEVER, statistically speaking, There are things that the "engineers" and other nations have proven to be more effective then speed limits and warning signs. Mostly lack there of.

I think the problem goes beyond the laws, The designator would be the education, licensing, and philosophy of driving. Change those things in favor of the statistically correct method of driving, and well...

You want statistics, compare educational training across platforms and nations. Compare Money (education, licensing, upkeep, and running costs, (ie fuel)) Compare daily driving habits, (public transportation in Europe is... better, to say the least)...

It would be a complex algorithm to say the least... But my personal conclusion would be FOR personal judgment. Speed limits be damned...

</comment><comment><USER28> This appeals to my common sense. The most dangerous drivers I encounter are the ones on the low side of the speed limit causing chain reaction lane scrambling. Besides setting realistic speed limits we need cops to spend their time enforcing minimum speed limits. Someone with a pickup truck full of crap going 40Mph with other cars blowing past them at 80Mph is just not safe. In the age of GPS asking these people to use backroads for low speed travel is completely reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER29> The title is slightly incorrect--there has never been a time in montana that there is no speed limit. The speed limit in the absence of a posted numerical limit was the "reasonable and proper" number.

It is certainly a complex area. I know that one of the issues was that out-of- state people were going there and acting as if there were no limit.

I think there are other measures of usefulness of such limits as these--one is wear and tear on the roads. The other is property damage. There is a famous case of icing in Chicago a number of years ago where the express lanes in the outbound Kennedy saw a massive pile-up. There were complaints about bad design of that part of the highway, even extending to some officials. The engineers responsible for the design pointed out that the road was designed for the posted speed limit. If you have ever driven on the Chicago expressways, the posted speed limit isn't even thought of as a challenge--it is totally ignored.

Thus, here is one incident of property damage as a result of speed limit violations.

So the issue is more involved than just the death toll. Injuries were not noted in the statistics either.

Disclaimer: I grew up in Montana, and still have family there.

<comment><USER30> Re: "The title is slightly incorrect--there has never been a time in montana that there is no speed limit"

== SNIP ==

During a challenge of such a ticket in 1998, the Montana Supreme Court declared the Reasonable and Prudent Speed Limit unconstitutional, on the basis of vagueness. Remember the Governor, Judges, Highway Patrol et al wanted speed limits, rather than ruling the way the MHP was enforcing them was wrong, the Court struck down the law altogether so they would be forced to have speed limits, thereby circumventing the legislature's blocking of their collective efforts.

To their chagrin, during this last 5 months of no law whatsoever Montana reported its modern low in fatal accidents.

== SNIP ==

<comment><USER29> Ah, you are correct. I was thinking of the time during the reasonable and proper in which it was often quoted that there is no limit in Montana.

I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I used to do a lot of Greyhound travelling in the late 90's. We were going through Montana one night in either '97 or '98, and the bus driver was certain he could make that bus do 100. I really was wishing for a speed limit then. Of course, 2hrs later, he fell asleep behind the wheel and we all had to yell at him to stop the speeding bus before we wrecked.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is perhaps applicable on interstates.

But not having a speed limit on other roads makes them completely impassable to bicyclists and pedestrians.

<comment><USER3> Has this been tried?

Designing roads to promote desired speeds may be more effective than speed limits at reducing bicycle and pedestrian fatalities.

<comment><USER32> It is. But considering how many roads we build like freeways in this country, well-enforced speed limits are necessary for now.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: MentSpot – Connecting mentors and mentees - <AUTHOR> https://www.mentspot.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Maurice here, I built this webapp.

The idea is that instead of searching for hours via LinkedIn, Facebook or IRL to find a suitable mentor, this app makes it easier to connect with a potential mentor in just a few clicks.

Would love to hear what you think :)</comment>


A Mathematician May Have Just Solved a a 160-Year-Old, $1M Problem - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3j3kk/a-mathematician-may-have-just-solved-a-a-160-year-old-dollar1-million-problem <comment><USER2> Slides: [https://www.slideshare.net/JohnLakness/the-riemann- hypothesi...](https://www.slideshare.net/JohnLakness/the-riemann- hypothesis-116341039)

Assuming that the Todd function has the necessary properties, can someone please explain to me the contradiction?</comment>


Postach.io Turns An Evernote Notebook Into A Blog - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/postach-io-turns-an-evernote-notebook-into-a-blog/ If Tumblr get's purchased you might want another blogging platform. If you haven't seen this yet, give it a try! We just got TechCrunch'd :) <comment><USER2> Great to see this on here. Hope postach.io and quoterobot get further attention over the next few months. Both really great products, and Shawn really seems to know what he's doing.

Wish the team the very best.

Full disclosure: I am a user of both products and got to know Shawn via QuoteRobot about 6 months ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support Khuram, and for using our products!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FYI: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5445293></comment>


Show HN: RubyBeats - A Tweets Aggregator for Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://rubybeats.com

<comment><USER2> Interesting, are you just doing a search using the twitter api for hash tag #ruby using jquery or a ruby gem? I see I can login to your site with twitter, but that seems to be down at the moment. I guess I'd just like to know generally how this functions as I'm thinking of doing something like this for a personal project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the interest! We are using Twitter's streaming api, tracking hashtags like #ruby, #rails. Yep Twitter sign in seems to be broken, will fix it asap. Signed in users can reply/retweet. If you need any help please email me "girish at cuberoot dot in"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did GitHub remove the Explorer link in head? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Did it change to the "All" link?

That link points towards [https://github.com/explore](https://github.com/explore)</comment>


Foodspotting, a Flickr-Meets-Foursquare Service for Foodies - <AUTHOR> http://www.foodspotting.com/ I'd love to hear what you guys think about this site. I had an idea to create a menupages.com but with reviews for each dish. They seem to be attacking this idea with a different approach. If the end goal is to get reviews for dishes, I don't think it will work since it's somewhat difficult to do so and I think reviews need structure which is something they don't have. <comment><USER2> I've been participating for a couple months now and always kick myself when I forget to take a pic of my food – not only is this fun, but it's a great way to keep track of where you eat out and what you eat.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a great idea as well. I'm not sure if the end goal is to have reviews of dishes. If so, I think you need a more structured approach. A Yelp with menu reviews.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of those ideas that seems obvious the second you see it. And wish you'd come up with yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing our site, Payjo, and thanks for the great feedback everyone!

</comment><comment><USER5> Great concept, great execution.

But I would suggest targeting one-or-two local markets - I typed in my city, got invited to be "first", service over for me.

Localizing gives you huge advantages for PR / marketing / user interaction / etc. and you lose very little in the "getting traction" state.

<comment><USER6> I'd prefer the ability to broaden the search radius personally. I live in Maryland, but work in DC, with an office in Vienna, VA. I'd either like to set home points for all three of those, or broaden the radius from the middle location to encompass the outer 2 locations.

I'm sure this is a freaky edge case, and will likely never be implemented, but if I could multi-home, and have a filter that included locations near any of the three, I'd be gold.

<comment><USER4> Interesting idea!! For now, at least, it does save your last 5 location searches for easy switching between them.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Taxa – A tiny language inside JavaScript to enforce type signatures - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dmotz/taxa

<comment><USER2> Lately I've seen on HN a few attempts to add runtime type checking to JavaScript. I'm happy with that, as in my experience adding a bunch of asserts in strategic places can really speed up prototyping and development, you become more confident, and chances are that you can catch bugs earlier. In the same vein I wrote a library that adds runtime type checking based on type combinators [1], check it out, we can share some ideas.

[1] [https://github.com/gcanti/tcomb](https://github.com/gcanti/tcomb)

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice if there were a drop-in, pass-through replacement for Taxa to use in production environments. It might even just be a configuration flag: t(true) or t(false), for example.

That way, while debugging, I could use Taxa's type-checking. Then by changing one line or setting the flag differently, I could disable it in production.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking along the same lines and just pushed up an addition to do so. (t.disable())</comment></comment>


EvilGnome: Rare Malware Spying on Linux Desktop Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.intezer.com/blog-evilgnome-rare-malware-spying-on-linux-desktop-users/ <comment><USER2> >EvilGnome's functionalities include desktop screenshots, file stealing, allowing capturing audio recording from the user's microphone and the ability to download and execute further modules.

I'm glad this is still considered malware in the Linux world at least, and not just "analytics"

<comment><USER3> This is considered malware in any world.

<comment><USER4> I think this was a tongue in cheek comment about Windows 10 «analytics».

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This incident made me think that the hackers planned to hijack some popular extension. this would make the more damage.

My (unpopular) opinion is that GNOME should see what are the most used extensions, accept that people want those feature and bring those features into GNOME or make those official extension and not third party, so you at least control what most people would install.

<comment><USER6> GNOME has been nuking features for a while, _recommending_ people to go and install extensions.

Extensions work by monkey-patching and once you have a critical mass of them, you're guaranteed to run into some glitches where one monkey-patch messes up the other. I like the KDE approach more where features are actually baked into the DE. It's much easier to reproduce bugs and fix bugs that can depend on different features being enabled. Everyone benefits.

<comment><USER7> > GNOME has been nuking features for a while

That's an understatement. GNOME is so notorious for removing features that I recall jokes on Slashdot 15 years ago about how the next version of GNOME will just have a giant "Do Stuff" button in the middle of the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that this requires for a user to actually download and run this malware, it doesn't randomly get into someone's computer by itself:

> This implant is delivered in the form of a self-extracting archive shell > script created with makeself

<comment><USER9> Most malware is. The question becomes how good they are at tricking people to install it.

<comment><USER8> I'd expect very little success, most people on Linux download software from repositories or other trustworthy places (e.g. Steam).

Though some people do tend to install stuff via "curl | sudo bash"... but i think this malware is the least of their concerns :-P

<comment><USER9> With npm, pip and random github repositories used for plugins in various applications I tend to disagree. It's not like it is uncommon with third-party additions to package managers such as apt either.

<comment><USER8> I do not consider all 3rd party places as untrusted (this sort of thinking leads to walled gardens) and i'd put these under "downloading from trustworthy places" in the sense that they are more of a way to download something and less a source themselves (e.g. you can download a pip package from both a trustworthy developer and untrusted developer). Of course the more layers between you and whatever you want to download, the harder it becomes to judge things.

For example i'd trust an apt repository or pip package developed by -say- Blender developers, regardless of it being a 3rd party repository or delivered through pip.

<comment><USER9> Neither do I. But even if I download a pip package from blender and it depends on 14-third party packages - how on earth am I able to assess the risk/trust of that?

I most certainly trust that there is no ill intent from them and that it didn't raise any flags during testing. But even if I believe they have the resources to audit everything I might be getting a newer and infected version.

And even if my trust of a programmer/entity is rock-solid it is hard to guard against their account being compromised, that is all it takes for most 3rd party sources.

<comment><USER8> You can't really, but at some point you have to trust someone, otherwise everyone would recreate everything from scratch. Though TBH what i had in mind wasn't really the "let's download live code from random places" repositories like npm and pip, but more "static" repositories where all dependencies are either part of the repository itself or assumed to be already on your system.

<comment><USER9> And my point was that linux users depend on such repositories all the time.

There will probably be quite a few wake up-calls where this is exploited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I imagine this is targeting Redhat Desktop installations then, as Red Hat is pretty big on GNOME, and as we all know, GNOME/Redhat has been at the spearhead of many unpopular systems, such as NetworkManager.

So my guess is, they're targeting Redhat Desktop, because it's the most likely Linux desktop to be seen in the corporate space. My old university had RHEL client machines.

Maybe they're just trying to get ahead of the curve with this?

Edit: Also, lately there has been more noise from more governments about using Linux, so yeah, getting ahead of the curve.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but don't Ubuntu and Debian also come with GNOME as the default desktop?

<comment><USER12> They certainly do. Worth bearing in mind that this attack seems to be XOrg only and current versions of Ubuntu now default to Wayland.

<comment><USER13> Not the LTS's which are over 90% of installs.

<comment><USER14> 18.04 LTS is GNOME

<comment><USER15> He means the LTS's are Xorg not Wayland

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The more uniform linux (and linux desktop) becomes the more easier and more valuable target it becomes as well.

Systemd, GNOME3, DBUS - they are essentially omnipresent on "modern" linuxes these days. The questionable safety that was provided by snowflake installs is evaporating fast.

<comment><USER17> Ed. Never mind, can't read apparently.

<comment><USER18> I reads the opposite. He said such systems are easier targets because of uniformity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm very surprised to see that this malware hasn't been stripped of symbols and metadata, or disguised them in some way. It makes me wonder whether this is an amateur operation, or deliberately designed to give the impression of one.

Although it could be a diversion, I wonder if the mention of Rostov (a city curiously close to Crimea) has any significance.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Linux desktop remains an unpopular choice among mainstream desktop users ..

Because it's virtually to buy a computer in the shops with a Linux Desktop pre-installed. Even online Dell manages to keep a Linux Desktop computer well hidden on their website.

> .. in the beginning of July, we discovered a new, fully undetected Linux > backdoor implant ..

How does this "fully undetected Linux backdoor" get onto the Desktop in the first place, without the end-user explicitly downloading and installing this Linux "implant".

> .. We have named the implant EvilGnome, for its disguise as a Gnome > extension ..

Thanking you, so the "implant" disguises itself as a Gnome extension and resides on some third-party website.

> .. The malware is currently fully undetected across all major security > solutions ..

So, the defect resides in the security solutions :]

</comment><comment> ga-vu So, basically, disable Gnome extensions and you're fine.

<comment><USER8> No, do not download and run random stuff from shady places and you're fine. This relies on you explicitly downloading and running a self-extracting shell script, it doesn't get installed by itself.

<comment><USER21> Who is to say that future versions of this won't be paired with some arbitrary browser/email-based RCE. This is the persistent threat, a payload if you will, not an exploit itself.

<comment><USER8> If someone can force download and install an application through browser/email then the issue isn't with the application being downloaded and installed but whatever allowed the application to be forcefully downloaded and installed (that is, your browser/email client).

<comment><USER22> you're being dismissive because it sounds like a such an RCE could only be the result of gross negligence. let me paint a more plausible scenario.

many gnome-based distros (fedora, for example) ship with firefox and the "gnome extensions" plugin for firefox pre-installed. this extension allows you to install extensions directly into your shell from extensions.gnome.org just by clicking "install".

suppose an exploit was found that allows sources other than extensions.gnome.org to trigger the firefox plugin to install a shell extension.

seems much more likely now, doesn't it?

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure how much of a possibility this is because i do not know exactly how GNOME extensions work - the linked malware is not a real GNOME extension, it just pretends to be one by placing itself in the directory where GNOME extensions are placed, but it really is a shell script. But assuming that this is the case, as i said above the issue would be with Firefox and/or the Firefox extension, not with GNOME being extensible or the user being able to download and run shell scripts (the two things that enable this to work) in their computer (and really the "GNOME being extensible" part is minor, the only reason the malware uses that is to hide itself, it isn't even a real GNOME extension).

The main reason i am dismissive is because if you think this is a real threat then you'd have to also think anything you can run on your computer to be a real threat - which, IMO, is absurd and at that point you might as well turn off and throw your computer out of the window.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joe Rogan Goes Off on California Quarantine Measures - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V6jQNYkwlA8 <comment><USER2> These guys think just because they have made a lot of money know they're medical experts</comment>