The Real Price of Oil - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/fossil-fuels/the-real-price-of-oil <comment> Al-Khwarizmi I see the point the author is trying to make, but in my view (disclaimer: not an economist) the presentation lacks rigor and can be misleading. If you adjust oil prices for the economic output that you get out of a barrel of oil, then you no longer have a price _per barrel_. You have the price of the oil needed to produce X dollars of GDP, which can be a useful metric, but you should no longer call it a price per barrel as what you have effectively done is replacing barrels with a different unit of oil (that varies in time depending on oil intensity) in the calculation.

The result that making that adjustment stabilizes the prices (discounting the peak in the 80s) is not surprising to me. As oil prices rise, the economy adapts to use less oil, so the adjusted metric tends to an equilibrium. Isn't that what supply and demand is supposed to do?

<comment><USER2> Ah, yes. Someone managed to find words for my thoughts. I was left with the same impression that the author had adjusted for multiple factors, to the point that the result was not presenting the same data as he started with. Good that someone could spell it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > This measure, usually called the oil intensity of the economy... ...is > calculated by dividing the total national oil consumption by GDP expressed > in constant monies.

So it's not taking into account the increased offshoring of our economy's oil and energy consumption, and the article chalks everything up to increases in efficiency (or switching to coal).

[http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really- possible-t...](http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/11/15/is-it-really-possible-to- decouple-gdp-growth-from-energy-growth/)

<comment><USER4> Economic efficiency is basically GDP / input, with the input chosen by what you're trying to measure the efficiency of. It's extremely approximate as a measure of anything real. It's easily skewed because GDP isn't a particularly good measure to start with. It's hard to take measures that use GDP very seriously for countries with large offshore banking sectors, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought I'd read an article about new studies that put a value on the various externalities of oil using industries (e.g. pollution, congestion, motor accidents, climate change etc). Instead I got an article that pretends to show some 'actual' price of oil by mixing scales on one axis and presenting a dollar-denominated oil intensity as a 'price of oil' which is just misleading and not terribly interesting because for one it's nothing new and moreover it ignores a whole bunch of factors like outsourcing production to other countries (moving your consumption off the country's books doesn't magically mean it doesn't exist).

<comment><USER6> It's not the articles's fault that it wasn't about a topic that interests you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real cost is in the externalities: CO2 emissions -> climate change -> costs

<comment><USER8> According to a documentary I recently watched (Cowspiricy) the biggest cause of CO2 / deforestation / climate change is the agricultural industry - I need to research the numbers presented in the documentary as it was eye opening and I want to be sure I'm not just being sold a vegan agenda.

<comment><USER9> I haven't found any evidence refuting Cowspiracy's claims, unfortunately, which has cornered me into eating vegan for going on two weeks now.

If healthy vegan food were subsidized as it should be, most of the issues with limited food/dish selection would probably be addressed in no time.

<comment><USER8> I'm probably a horrible person for saying this, but I'm not going to change my diet for this as I don't think there will be a widespread vegan movement based around this (one large enough that will truly disrupt the system I mean).

I think it has to become a political issue enforced with regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Excuse my conspiracy theorist but this article almost sounds like PR.

#1 World Oil Demand Still Growing

[http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/Black-Dog- Ar...](http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/Black-Dog-Are-Plunging- Oil-Prices-a-Positive-or-a-Negative)

#2 The Dow Jones still looks pretty good despite the tumble to 2014 levels

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.DJI&ei=flkKVsud...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.DJI&ei=flkKVsudGIjPUfCvhYAG)

#3 Shangai index it at 2014 EOY levels

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=SHA%3A000001&ei=mFsKVrjhEYu...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=SHA%3A000001&ei=mFsKVrjhEYuWUJyakNgF&hl=en)

#4 Crude oil price is at 2009 and 2004 prices

[http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history- char...](http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart)

So either the oil price is being pushed down now, or it was pushed up before on multiple occasions, and will liked be pushed up again somewhere in the future.

<comment><USER11> Both. Saudi Arabia has been artificially inflating the price of oil for a number of years and is now artificially keeping it low to hurt competitors. Unfortunately for them, this is already hurting Saudi economy more than anticipated and is increasingly looking like a fatal mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think one should consider that GDP itself is a grossly flawed metric.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Average prices of WTI rose roughly 52-fold between 1970 and 2014, in current > dollars

Surely that can't be right? Wouldn't that mean that 2014 price = 1970 * 2^(52) ?

<comment><USER14> Never. -fold is times, so it's 52x

<comment><USER15> [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-fold&allowed_in_fr...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-fold&allowed_in_frame=0)

Even though one might think it's 2^x (fold something in half twice and it's 4 times as thick, three times and it's 8, etc.) it's actually a rather archaic usage for multiplying.

<comment><USER16> Imagine a fan-fold.

<comment><USER17> I think the point is that the term is ambiguous.

<comment><USER16> It's not.

<comment><USER18> No longer as common as it used to be, perhaps even archaic, but not ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pricing of oil is directly managed by an oligopoly of players (govs, large corporations etc) on the supply side, and a diverse group of buyers with few main clusters on the demand side.

Stats, inflation, intensity can be misleading to deduce "what oil should become".

A game theoretic approach seems to be better, where main players are observed based on their moves and the outcomes with probabilities.

</comment><comment><USER20> Price of oil must factor in cost of military presence in Middle East which should be incurred directly by oil companies, not tax payers. Once such adjusted, green energy renewables suddenly become cost effective

</comment><comment><USER21> Free markets, heh?

<comment><USER22> Funny you should say that, given that oil is the classic example of a market controlled by a cartel of non-free governments.

<comment><USER23> Oil cartels can exist without government intervention, the free market does not guard against collusion.

<comment><USER24> Collusion and Monopolies are the greatest enemies of a free market. Collusion and Monopolies = secretive agreements to limit Free Markets.

Collusion and Monopolies happen all the time. The number one defender of Collusion and Monopolies seem to be mos tLibertarians.

<comment><USER25> That's a mischaracterization. Many libertarians believe that perpetual monopolies cannot exist in a free market due to competition. So even though a cartel might form for some time or a company may hold a monopoly on a product, if the prices are not at true market value (too high, inflated, not competitive enough), a competitor will enter the space and undercut the monopoly.

If you're interested in reading more on the topic, search for keywords: rothbard, myth of natural monopoly

<comment><USER23> Doesn't work if the incumbent companies are selling natural resources and have access to all resources in question.

To illustrate, imagine we were in a free market and I wanted to start an oil company to disrupt the prices of an oil cartel. How am I going to do that if I don't have any oil?

<comment><USER25> I'll counter that illustration. Let's assume that there is no oil left that doesn't have claim by an oil company and therefore you are unable to compete directly in the oil manufacturing business. But, what you are really saying is that you think that the price for what utilization oil brings is too high, and thus you can compete with oil with another resource. This means that you could invest in whale oil, coal, solar, wind, natural gas, or nuclear, or something else. If the price of oil is too high, then there is large amounts of incentive to invest in something that might not even exist.

By offering those resources to the same spaces that utilize oil, you are competing with oil. If you are able to take customers from oil, oil will be forced to reduce their prices.

As I mentioned in the previous comment, you should check out the keywords I mentioned. And if you are thinking that I'm missing something, please direct some resources my way.

<comment><USER23> You have to have an option that is better than oil, otherwise it wouldn't work. Imagine if car fuel prices were being kept artificially high, how are you going to compete? If you invest in something new, it has to be better than oil. We're lucky in this case that electric cars have numerous benefits, but suppose for a second that they didn't exist. It's possible to run a car on natural gas, coal, etc... but there are hugh costs to competing... investment in new vehicles and investment in service stations and fuel transport being some of the biggest costs. And who's to stop the oil cartel waiting for you to launch, lowering their prices to undercut you, waiting for the competition to fail, then jacking prices back up again?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PCWorld Exits Print, and the Era of Computer Magazines Ends - <AUTHOR> http://techland.time.com/2013/07/11/pcworld-exits-print-and-the-era-of-computer-magazines-ends/? <comment><USER2> I have to admit, I kinda miss Computer Shopper. Some of my earliest, and fondest, memories of getting started in computing involve poring over issues of that magazine, reading the columns, drooling over the parts advertised in the copious ads, and dreaming about ordering up a motherboard, case, power supply, video card, etc., and building a computer from scratch.

As history would have it, that's pretty close to what I did. I bought a 386DX/40 motherboard and CPU, a whopping 1 _megabyte_ of RAM, and a few other bits, as I pieced together my first PC. Then a guy I went to school with offered to sell me a dead 286 box that had a good power supply, videocard, floppy drives, etc., that I needed, so I bought that, and cobbled together this Frankenstein's PC of a computer. Got myself a 28.8 modem and start exploring BBS's, Tymnet and Telenet networks, reading Phrack magazine, got into phone phreaking and other sordid activities...

Then somehow I got hold of a shareware C compiler, and a copy of Herbert Schildt's book _Teach Yourself C_. That started an addiction that led to Borland Turbo C++ for DOS, and the need to upgrade my computer to an absurd 4 megabytes of RAM.. and eventually to Borland C++ (the full suite), a whole shelf full of C/C++ books, and my earliest forays into this strange world of something called "linux" and "open source". Then came the Internet, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Freshmeat, BOFH, Sluggy Freelance, User Friendly, Dilbert, etc...

Years later - who knew that this is where it would all lead? _wistful sigh_

Call me a sentimental old fart, but Computer Shopper will always hold a special place in my heart. :-)</comment>


Equifax used 'admin' as username and password for sensitive data: lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html <comment><USER2> I love that the company that used a generic username and password is offering us security monitoring as a service to make up for their lack of security.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yup, this was discovered back in 2017 as discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15233399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15233399)

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe the shareholder class action mentioned is new though (filed Jan 2019).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> its ok guys they changed it to "equifax123" so everything is fine now.

<comment><USER5> -u equifax123 -p admin

<comment><USER6> -p pa55w0rd

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, say you have _some_ amount of personal information leaked in a scenario like this, if you could argue that having that information leaked would make someone more able to commit identity/credit-card fraud against yourself, and it happens, would the company -Equifax in this case- have any direct or indirect liability that could be pursued in a legal capacity for your own personal case?

</comment><comment><USER8> You literally cannot make this shit up... wow! I am speechless !!!

</comment><comment><USER9> Damn how are they not being liquidated to pay for their own class action lawsuit?

</comment><comment><USER10> See:

        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992608 ,
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20993059 ,
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20992378 .

</comment><comment><USER11> This corporation should be dissolved, its assets expropriated, and its management consigned to a gulag.

<comment><USER12> I thought we weren't having the CCP dictate western values

Kidding they dont use gulags, just firing squads

<comment><USER13> This corporation should be dissolved, its assets expropriated, and its management consigned to finding jobs through the classifieds.

<comment><USER11> Let them drive Ubers.

<comment><USER14> They should learn to code.

Oops I'm banned from twitter.

<comment><USER11> Getting banned from Twitter/Facebook/HN/Reddit/etc is grandmotherly kindness.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Advanced Tor Browser Fingerprinting - <AUTHOR> http://jcarlosnorte.com/security/2016/03/06/advanced-tor-browser-fingerprinting.html <comment><USER2> >The most intersting fingerprinting vector I found on Tor Browser is getClientRects. Is strange that reading back from a canvas has been prevented but simply asking the browser javascript API how a specific DOM elements has been drawn on the screen has not been prevented or protected in any way.

This isn't as strange as he makes it sound, it is done to prevent the link color history attack [1]. Most of the other CSS properties aren't allowed on :active or :visited modifiers.

[1] [http://dbaron.org/mozilla/visited- privacy](http://dbaron.org/mozilla/visited-privacy)

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless JavaScript is disabled, this arms race is going to continue forever.

<comment><USER4> Is there a way to take another approach of preventing dynamic data from getting back without an explicit opt-in from the user? This will never happen of course on the regular internet, but for hidden services or some other static-page-only-unless-opt-in surely even if fingerprinting information can be obtained, can we block it from getting back to the host?

<comment><USER5> It seems like a losing battle to me. You'd have to prevent Javascript inserting links into the DOM (it could stick parameters in the URL), inserting images (similar), loading any assets from anywhere programmatically, any AJAX requests, any redirects, setting any cookies... and probably more besides.

...and eventually you'd have some chap like the OP here who will come up with a clever way to exfiltrate information somehow anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of ideas, many of which I've had as well, but I am missing conclusions. On the demo page it tells me my CPU benchmark and some scrolling measurements. Great, but how unique was that now? And how are you going to make the data points into a fingerprint? Because next time I scroll, I will totally scroll a millisecond differently.

<comment><USER7> > Great, but how unique was that now?

He needs to collect data first in order to be able to say something about that. Panoptoclick [1] can report on uniqueness because they have test data from thousands of clients. Perhaps these fingerprints can be added there for the exposure (and because they will work to identify non-tor browsers as well).

> And how are you going to make the data points into a fingerprint?

The two "scrolling deltas" arrays are very different in nature, you could easily drop all the zeros and boil it down to "all 3" or "not all 3". That would give a nonzero contribution to the number of bits of that form an overall fingerprint. Similarly for the CPU benchmark, a phone is not as powerful as a desktop, so a result of "500" on one and "2800" on another are very likely different machines. So bin it to the nearest 500 and you'll have another non-zero contribution. Repeat for client rectangles and so on.

[1] [https://panopticlick.eff.org](https://panopticlick.eff.org)

<comment><USER6> Good points but not even an attempt is being made at using the data. He could have tried his laptop, his phone and his mom's tablet or something, at the very least, though that would probably still be hugely overfitting the data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't believe that any of these will link different Whonix instances on the same host machine. Using Tor browser in the same OS that you use for general work is _not_ secure. Even sharing the same host machine is insecure, where anonymity really matters.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author is missing the point of the Tor Browser. They don't try to make fingerprinting impossible. They want to make the outcome uniform across all users. See "Strategies for Defense: Randomization versus Uniformity" in their design docs [1].

And (as other said) uniformity is increased when using an anonymous/privacy enhancing operating system like Tails or WHONIX underneath.

[1] [https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#finge...](https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#fingerprinting- linkability)

</comment><comment><USER10> Most of these are nullified by disabling JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER11> Disable javascript. Disable user-agent. Run from VM.

</comment><comment><USER12> Demo does nothing for me. I'm dubious how repeatable or unique those results are.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did the author of the article submit his findings to the Tor Project?

<comment><USER14> I'm sure at least one developer of the Tor project reads hacker news.

EDIT:

Far more interesting is the author's most recent article.... wtf

[http://jcarlosnorte.com/security/2016/03/06/hacking- tachogra...](http://jcarlosnorte.com/security/2016/03/06/hacking-tachographs- from-the-internets.html)

<comment><USER15> That one should probably have its own thread.

<comment><USER13> O_o Ouch... indeed...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


One of the greatest science fiction magazines is now available for free online - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970710/galaxy-science-fiction-magazine-online-free-reading-archive <comment><USER2> _If_ magazine is also there:

[https://archive.org/details/ifmagazine](https://archive.org/details/ifmagazine)</comment>


How Working-Class Life Is Killing Americans, in Charts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/opinion/working-class-death-rate.html <comment><USER2> I found this interesting, because I associate education with lack of faith, but that is not the case in the US:

>People without college degrees are also less likely to attend church

So I looked into it:

Moreover, the majority of American adults (71%) identify as Christians. And among Christians, those with higher levels of education appear to be just as religious as those with less schooling, on average. In fact, highly educated Christians are more likely than less-educated Christians to say they are weekly churchgoers.

[https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more- edu...](https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/26/in-america-does-more-education- equal-less-religion/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems to be a significant (and sad) trend.

It's also good to note that the increase in college grads doesn't offset this trend.

"Younger Americans are more likely to have attained a four-year degree than older groups. Among Americans between the ages of 25 to 34, 37 percent have at least a bachelor's degree. Among those 55 and older, just under 30 percent have a four-year degree." (Source: [https://thehill.com/homenews/state- watch/326995-census-more-...](https://thehill.com/homenews/state- watch/326995-census-more-americans-have-college-degrees-than-ever-before))

It seems like the reasons suggested have merit: the numbers start to rise steadily after trade deals that facilitate globalization.

I noticed that one of the reasons mentioned seemed a bit weak:

> "Many people used to associate the meaning of their life with what their > corporation or institution was doing," says Deaton, a Nobel laureate in > economics. Miners and factory workers identified themselves as such. > Warehouse workers, especially those whose paycheck is signed by a staffing > company, rarely feel the same connection.

I wonder if social media and entertainment could be a partial contributor to the numbers increase. With how distracting and/or addictive internet entertainment is nowadays, it's easy for people to lose enough time to become "trapped" and unable to solve their problems.

</comment><comment><USER4> TLDR; just check the charts.

Persons without a college degree die more often of suicide/substance abuse, marry less, are less happy and suffer more chronic pain than those with college degree. Here college degree appears to be a proxy for income and income inequality being the main driver of these effects.

<comment><USER5> And your daily reminder that correlation is not causation.</comment></comment>


Twenty years of free software, part 1: Ikiwiki - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/twenty_years_of_free_software_--_part_1_ikiwiki/ <comment><USER2> I should tell my own wiki software story. It's not a free software story, sadly.

It's 1995, and I'm working as a contractor for a large multi-national telecommunications company. My co-workers on the 24/7 support team have been gathering useful emails sent out by the other IT staff. They had worked on a Perl script to assemble these text files into a single big HTML page, located on our internal web server. When you got a new useful tidbit (such as how to partition the disk space on this class of server), you'd have to re-run the script to generate the new page.

Shortly after that, I learned about HTML forms, and submitting them and generating a response. The Aha! moment occurs, and I decide to make an interactive version of this "notes db".

450 lines of Perl later, I had something that resembled other early wikis, with a couple notable exceptions.

It didn't occur to me to create a markup language to make writing the wiki pages easier. You had to know some basic HTML. Links between pages were possible, the script searched for anchor links and replaced 'NOTESDB' with the actual server URL upon rendering a page for display.

A hierarchy was enforced. You could (and should) link between documents, but it was expected that each page had a parent page, and could have multiple child pages, all of which were always listed before the start of the text. The notion of a flat namespace (as was with Ward Cunningham's wiki) was antithetical to how I thought things should work. It is interesting to contrast my thinking at the time to the flow of history since.

I was rather proud of that bit of code, and it was in use for years after I had left the company. I didn't learn about other wiki software until a couple years later.

I should have asked permission to release it as free software, but that didn't occur to me either. I'm not much of a promoter, so I don't know that I would have been able to build up a community around it anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Part 2 of the series: Twenty years of free software -- part 2 etckeeper [1]

[1] [http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/twenty_years_of_free_software_-...](http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/twenty_years_of_free_software_ --_part_2_etckeeper/)

</comment><comment><USER4> In comparing your 10 year post to your 20 year post, I notice that naming conventions have become started to favor clearer names describing the function of software.

Here was a scary part: "I stepped back because I can't write Perl very well anymore,..."

Can you say a little about why you cannot? You've written for so long I thought you would be even better.

<comment><USER5> Haskell has rotted my perl brain.

<comment><USER3> > Haskell has rotted my perl brain.

<3

Can't help mention a talk from flatMap (Oslo) -- How Haskell is Changing my Brain by Alissa Pajer [1]

[1] [https://vimeo.com/96639840](https://vimeo.com/96639840)</comment></comment></comment>


German security experts find major flaw in credit card terminals - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/07/german-security-experts-find-major-flaw-in-credit-card-terminals/ <comment><USER2> Apparently, the JTAG debugging interface is exposed to the outside. You know, the one that should be turned off physically in the CPU itself through a blow fuse on production processors. The one critical interface where you don't even populate the headers and connectors on the finished boards.

As it stands, the only way to fix this is to exchange or repair all devices in circulation.

<comment><USER3> The fact that the JTAG is physicaly there in a usable form at all is shocking. I don't design hardware, but even I know this.

Your spot on about the fix, though I bet you that come christmas, you could still go into a shop and see these exact models in use. That would be truely criminal, but we shall see. Though who audits/controls these things as if it was a car and a safty flaw or any consumer product then you know it would be forcebly recalled right away. Flaw in food packaging even gets recalled instantly, yet I'm not aware of any such conrols that could get this device pulled until fit for human consumption/use.

That all said I sadly feel the only way it will get changed is by active expliotation and insurance companies rasing the premiums of those poor shops using such a device.

I hope the right thing is done, but why do I have little faith in it being addressed in a timely manor, maybe historicaly alot of flaws of such types of devices are usualy patched by the manufacturer by using the denial patch, they deny its an issue and then magicly version two fix's it down the line.

Shame you can't flag a article with a revisit reminder so in 6 months time we can see how things have changed or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the fact that Chip and Pin is susceptible to "Man in the Middle" attacks, affecting all terminals, the bigger issue?

[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland10chipbroken.p...](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland10chipbroken.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Chip and Pin is secure on these devices (the HSM is safe). The attack vector is simulating "there was an error processing your transaction, please retry", where the first transaction went through and you only want to collect the PIN. It seems these devices can route the keypad to _either_ software _or_ HSM, with no way of routing the pin from software to HSM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it amusing how the CC execs admit they couldn't reproduce the attack, and he seems somewhat proud of that fact. Maybe my interpretation is just colored with my impression of execs of large companies. -.-

</comment><comment><USER7> > "This is one lab that has reported (unsubstantiated) that they were able to > do this," she wrote. "No credit card users are at risk."

And if they had released the attack, VeriFone would have cried even louder..

</comment><comment><USER8> So its possible to remotely overwrite the Verifone software to capture PIN numbers. The local attacks aren't as terrifying, since it was already possible to replace them with modified devices to skim PINs. And what about all the HSM PIN-recovery attacks, on which the details are already available? And where are those <1mm thick ATM skimmers they warned us about?

Ultimately, stolen credit card numbers just aren't that monetizable (they're sold for pennies on the dollar, $2-$3 per) and not enough people use their pin numbers at POS terminals. It seems more fraudsters steal using Scareware/rogue AV (its less likely to be charged back, since the victim actively entered their details).

Well-funded organized crime seems more interested in targeting bank logins, or Medicare (losses in the billions, mixed with bonafide doctor-fraud), or maybe home loans and other forms of ID theft.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, suggesting that credit card fraud isn't a real threat to people is just completely out of touch.

From the first hit for 'credit card fraud' on google (the wikipedia page):

'The cost of card fraud in 2006 were 7 cents per 100 dollars worth of transactions (7 basis points).[2] Due to the high volume of transactions this translates to billions of dollars. In 2006, fraud in the United Kingdom alone was estimated at £535 million,[3] or US$750–830 million at prevailing 2006 exchange rates.[4]'

You can say what you like (the page does note that the incidence of fraud as compared to other types of fraud has gone down), but credit card fraud is extremely destructive and is here to stay for quite a while. Dealing with it is not cheap, or easy, or fast.

Credit card fraud is also an enormous threat to merchants due to the fact that chargebacks result in large fees and, eventually, merchant account termination. Merchants have to compensate by being extremely zealous about fraud and actively filtering out customers (legitimate or not) based on heuristics and data to try and avoid processing fraudulent payments - so for the 1% of your payments that are fraudulent, you probably have to throw out 2-5% of them, just to avoid processing the bad ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's disappointing that these guys didn't work with VeriFone before publicizing the attack.

This is FUD, just with different actors.

<comment><USER11> Where did you get that from? From the article:

"Karsten Nohl and Thomas Roth, of Security Research Labs, say that they have been in touch with VeriFone for six months and have provided technical aid to the company and a German government agency. They are now coming forward to put more pressure on the company—and to raise awareness, "preferably before any criminal can reinvent these attacks.""</comment></comment>


Forget Silicon Valley, It Still Pays More to Be a Doctor in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/which-u-s-jobs-pay-the-most-top-ten-professions-by-salary <comment><USER2> LOL, they had to drag Silicon Valley into this, when those doctor salaries seem like minimum wage TC for engineers in the Valley nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this yet another case where they only look at salary, and not total comp (article doesn't say)?

<comment><USER4> At least once one becomes a doctor, he doesn't need run on that leetcode treadmill whenever he changes his job. Nor does he need to worry about being laid off, since beancounters want to reduce expenses.

<comment><USER5> Our interviewing process has three stages, in the first stage you will need to prescribe the correct medication for a patient, the second step show human warmth and caring to a terminally ill patient, and the third step perform a small surgery meant to show your mastery of various forms.</comment></comment></comment>


Automatic Music Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://monthlymusichackathon.org/post/67866125715/auto

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately I can't make this, but here's an automatic music hack I built at music hack day this year in Toronto:

[http://tap-pad.herokuapp.com](http://tap-pad.herokuapp.com)

It uses cellular automatons to generate music and is completely open source: [https://github.com/dmitric/tap-pad-web](https://github.com/dmitric/tap-pad- web)

there's even an iOS version: [https://github.com/dmitric/tap-pad- ios](https://github.com/dmitric/tap-pad-ios)

If someone there wants to play around with the idea I'd be honored!

<comment><USER3> Love it. I had a lot of fun playing around with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This HACKATHON Event is a first for me. Kristin Olsen, who plays baritone for my Sensorium Saxophone Orchestra, informed me of the event and connected me to Jonathan Marmor. I have used simple effective Graphic Scores for various ensembles since the mid-70's as well as the use of playing cards, dice, numerical processes etc. I also compose using standard notation. For Saturday, a sax quartet version of my orchestra will be there to collaborate on Automatic Music. That evening, we will perform a collaborative piece from the Hackathon and a new work in our own repertoire entitled SWITCHBOARD. I composed this piece as a platform for open improvisation. It is based on the initials of each Musician performing using the alphabet to designate duration. We will also perform Terry Riley's IN C for which anyone who can play the composition is MORE than welcome to join in. Hearing Forward!

</comment><comment><USER5> this is going to be a great event, I'm speaking at it too, presenting my old "A Singular Christmas" from 2004 (nee Eigenradio)

[http://notes.variogr.am/post/262976984/a-singular- christmas-...](http://notes.variogr.am/post/262976984/a-singular- christmas-2004)

<comment><USER6> will mr. marmor be playing anything from his hit lithuanian LP "Silence In a Sweater"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! Here's a recording for reference: [http://bit.ly/1kbRpkX](http://bit.ly/1kbRpkX)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is so awesome. Is there anything like this in San Francisco?

<comment><USER8> I know there was an SF Music Hack Day: [http://sf.musichackday.org/2013/index.php?page=Main+page](http://sf.musichackday.org/2013/index.php?page=Main+page)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ahh, looking forward to this. I'll be talking about a thing I made for self- referential composition: [https://github.com/tkell/theultimatemachine](https://github.com/tkell/theultimatemachine)

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone have any good resources or recommendations for getting into this area? (automatic-algorithmic music generation)

<comment><USER11> There are a couple of subreddits geared towards algorithmic music ([http://www.reddit.com/r/algorithmicmusic](http://www.reddit.com/r/algorithmicmusic) and the more general [http://www.reddit.com/r/musicprogramming](http://www.reddit.com/r/musicprogramming)). Definitely cross/post any other resources you find

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some really interesting talks on algorithmic music composition this Friday at 7:30 at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn, NYC.

</comment><comment><USER12> The list of talks is worth exploring. I am glad the term "Automatic Music" is open for interpretation.

</comment><comment><USER13> This might be relevant for people:

A language for live programming music in clojure:

[http://mad.emotionull.com/](http://mad.emotionull.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> This hackathon has always been one of my favorites, because it draws both people with an engineering background and people with a music background, and everything in between.

I like to describe it as the 'hackathon quivalent of a garage band jam session'

</comment><comment><USER15> Go JDog go</comment>


San Francisco Airport First in the U.S. to Reach Deals With Uber, Lyft - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/10/21/san-francisco-airport-uber-lyft/

<comment><USER2> Strictly speaking, incorrect.

Nashville airport was the first in September. They even proactively created a ride share symbol.

<comment><USER3> What was the symbol?

<comment><USER4> I was super tempted to photoshop the iOS share icon with wheels and post it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And they were the first to ban and harass the companies too. Kind of silly they are trying to sound friendly now when other places have always just let them be.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great! Now these companies can become the new government-granted oligopoly that tries to use regulation to block future "disruptive" competition, and the complaint cycle can start anew!

</comment><comment><USER7> What a scam. The airports should be providing car access as a service to their customers, not double dipping and charging drivers for the privilege of driving over their land.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm going to SF next week. What's the best way to get to the centre? I have a Uber account for London.

<comment><USER5> Land at SFO. Get on the BART subway. That's it. You are done, it goes right from SFO to the center of the city. Some people are too lazy to walk around the circle of the airport and use the AirBART train to get to the BART stop at the airport, although personally I find it easier and quicker to just walk.

<comment><USER9> FYI, what you call AirBART is actually AirTrain ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_(San_Francisco_Interna...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_\(San_Francisco_International_Airport\)), which you can also use to get a rental car or to go to the parking garage.

AirBART is the shuttle bus service between OAK and BART. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirBART](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirBART)

<comment><USER10> AirTrain does not go to the parking garage. It was supposed to, but they ran out of money.

<comment><USER11> It goes to the short-term garages attached to the International Terminal, just not the new long-term garage way out yonder.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kodak housed nuclear reactor with enriched uranium - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgear.com/kodak-housed-nuclear-reactor-with-enriched-uranium-14228037/

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Critical Mass Material/176 ft3 radwaste disposed Possession of SNM sufficent to form critical mass ..."_

interesting as the site is also listed #73 ~ <http://prop1.org/prop1/radiated/ny0rept.htm></comment>


Ask HN: What are common things you see in a bad developer? - <AUTHOR> When you're working with a developer what do you find most bad developers do that good ones tend to avoid?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> If you don't have ten years of experience with at least five very-distinct languages (i.e., C & C++ only count once, & Java and C# only count once), you're not really a developer yet -- just an apprentice.

Sorry to say, there's no way to cut the gordian knot there: you're going to have to wait until you gain the necessary experience before you're a benefit rather than a liability.

If it's any consolation, most people with entry level / junior software engineer jobs are in the same boat, & there are whole companies that are essentially doomed because of a monoculture of people who haven't yet reached minimum competence. If you're surrounded by peers that know twelve languages & have been working as a dev for twenty years, then you're in a much better place than most of your cohort.

<comment><USER3> I respectfully disagree with everything you said here. Firstly, you are speaking in vast generalizations about what being a "developer" means. You don't need 10 years of experience with 5 distinct languages to be effective or not a liability. That's bullshit.

I am curious - what kind of development are you referring to here? What kind of things do you think people need 10 years of experience with multiple languages to be effective at?

OP - don't listen to this guy. Focus on writing clean, simple, non-abstract code that reads like a book. Make sure your code reads well and is written with performance taken into consideration and you'll be fine.

To answer the original question - common things I have seen from bad developers are the following:

1) Over complicating/engineering solutions to simple problems. 2) Not using readily available libraries that solve 99% of the problems you'll run into. 3) Naming methods and variables abstract things that don't accurately explain what they're for. 4) Not asking co-workers for help/domain knowledge before they start coding.

<comment><AUTHOR> In defense of the person you replied to, I had the original question framed around my situation more but edited it to be more generic. Thank you for the information!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Treats other people like crap. The better someone is, generally the kinder they are to other folks. Crap developers seem to have an edge to them- it's as if they're afraid they're going to be found out as not being as skilled as they portray themselves as, so they try to avoid that by demeaning others.

</comment><comment><USER5> \- Specialization (as someone said) because they haven't learned how to learn. Being able to learn a new stack, library, or language is really important.

\- Pre-mature optimization and/or perfectionism</comment>


Show HN: GiLA – Visualizing how issue labels are used in GitHub projects - <AUTHOR> http://atlanmod.github.io/gila/

<comment><USER2> "You are accessing from an HTTPS connection and our service is located in an HTTP server."

What?

<comment><AUTHOR> In short, this is the sad life of researchers in Software Engineering. You would think we have all kinds of facilities to setup our own servers and the like. Well, we don't :-( (and I better stop here)</comment></comment>


Has BTC reached a local maximum at 5,000? - <AUTHOR> Like Dan Ackroyd's character said in Trading Places, "Now." <comment><AUTHOR> My other post predicting exactly how the top would play out was flagged, because I'm not a fan of various shenanigans that sadly involve this website, and made a controversial post to that effect.

</comment><comment><USER2> Bag holders will get smoked. The higher it went the more uninformed got on board, many of which were invariably using leverage indirectly or otherwise.

Far cry from erlang dude telling me to mine BTC when it was still under a buck. Something about a whistleblower who got away...

This game has been around for a long time. Once Goldman and others got involved in earnest it was over. At least they've advised market makers and the public that the buy range is below 2000. That's why I said it on my other account; my chart analysis cooborates that support is way the fuck down there.

I'm still incorporating outside info in some form as it becomes applicable. and it's applicable here..

Manage risk.

</comment><comment><USER2> If bounce try sell around 4400-4500. Keep in mind the main idea is still to sell up to 5500, stop loss above

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Currently above 4600, any takers?

</comment><comment><USER3> Lol, no. The market cap is far away, there's just a dip. It will dip further and then it will go up till 6 k

<comment><AUTHOR> What does "Lol, no." mean? You seemed to have described a local maximum with "It will dip further".

I'd speculate on selling 5k-5.5k which may have passed, or maybe not, and buying below 2k depending on how the downtrend shapes up. My stop loss for this single idea is from 5.5k-6k.

<comment><USER3> I sold eth on 390 ( top was 391), bought again at 370. Thought it was going to dip < 300\. It only reached 320 or so

<comment><AUTHOR> Why did you buy at 370 if you thought it was going to dip to 300?

It's going to drop further, Nico.

<comment><USER3> Yes, indeed. I thought it was already recovering :p

<comment><USER2> At least you're not using leverage Nico.

<comment><USER3> Win some, lose some ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Satya Nadella email to employees on first day as CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/feb14/02-04mail2.aspx

<comment><USER2> > Today is a very humbling day for me.

The first sentence of the email, statement that seems entirely appropriate given the circumstances.

Nonetheless, I find it curious that we expect people who reach the highest levels of accomplishment to describe those accomplishments as humbling. It seems natural to us for someone promoted to the heights of their profession, such as Satya Nadella in this case, or the winner of a Nobel prize or an academy award, for example, to describe the accomplishment as "humbling", when logically speaking it should be anything but.

Is such a statement part of a defense mechanism against egotism that prevents the honored individual from loosing the discipline that allowed them to excel in the first place? Is it an attempt to say, "this doesn't change me, I am still who I was before"? Is it just a manipulation, a defense against envy and derision, an attempt to reduce the motivation of others to "take them down a notch"? Or is it something else?

Without thinking about it too deeply, it seems right to read that Satya Nadella is humbled to become one of the most powerful corporate executives in the world, but why? And is it correct?

<comment> merry-year > Today is a very humbling day for me.

When I read that I knew this guy would fail as MS CEO. It's a proper jungle out there and a humble Indian guy will be eaten alive by the aggressive confident westerners.

<comment><USER3> I think most will ignore your comment for what it is but I want to respond.

He didn't become CEO because he played it nice. I'm sure he's been as aggressive and mean when he's needed to be to advance himself and his work.

It's humbling because out of the many many top candidates he got the job. It's humbling to be considered at that level among your peers and be picked.

I would venture to say that he mixes the best of east indian tradition and western tradition.

The board is filled with very capable people, especially John W. Thompson. He was the CEO of Symantec and took that company from its early beginnings to a major player.

Time will tell if this was a right pick for CEO but I believe that most will be very happy with the choice as its a good contrast to what Steve Ballmer was.

<comment><USER4> It's humbling not to be chosen, but to look at the task set out before you and realize how small you are in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I liked this part of his letter:

 _We sometimes underestimate what we each can do to make things happen and overestimate what others need to do to move us forward. We must change this._

</comment><comment><USER6> As an ex-MSFT employee and somebody who actually got a chance to talk to Satya I found the letter to be very true to his personality. Excited to see what he does in Redmond.

<comment><USER7> Is he a conservative type of manager who will try to come-up with completely new kind of products or someone who will keep chasing Google in Apple in what they do best?

<comment><USER8> I think MS's strategy thus far has actually been pretty good. It's a company with good strategic vision mired in terrible execution.

WinPhone7 was a great product on paper - still is - that was released half- baked missing a great number of features that consumers expected to be standard. It was further undermined when Microsoft decided to cut the early adopters and run (WP7 phones that never got the WP7.5 update).

Hell, even the much-maligned Kin I think was a great idea. In an era with stupidly expensive data plans, the idea was to come up with a social-media- only (Twitter, Facebook, SMS) device coupled with a kid-compatible cheap monthly plan, based on the existing expertise of Danger. Then they decided to rewrite the whole tech stack, pushed the product way out of its launch window, and lost out on the core offering: cheap plans. What ended up launching was nowhere near what was envisioned.

I believe Windows 8 and the merging of touch and desktop was, and still is, a great idea. A platform that can seamlessly transform between mobile and desktop contexts can be incredibly powerful and reflects the combination of MS's traditional strengths in work-products and the newer consumer mobile space. Of course, the execution there was well off the mark - Metro was foisted upon the desktop context and was strictly inferior to what it tried to replace, and key productivity tools were removed in the name of unification.

MS gets the big picture, but they keep fucking up the details. Here's hoping Nadella can turn this around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty weak when you compare it with Steve Job's "Fuck Michael Dell" talk when he came back to Apple in 1997. [http://lilly.tumblr.com/post/11230723028/steve- jobs](http://lilly.tumblr.com/post/11230723028/steve-jobs)

<comment><USER10> Different companies, difference circumstances. In 1997, Apple needed to be scrappy just to survive. Microsoft in 2014, is still an enormously profitable company that has been in a lull for most of the last decade. For an email to start the process of waking a sleeping giant, I thought the tone was good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As I read that email, I wondered - would the typical MS employee read this with skepticism...or truly be inspired, hopeful, and ready to take action?

<comment><USER12> It seems like the usual "Hi, I'm the new CEO" letter can't be very inspiring. I mean, it would be rude for him to slam Steve Ballmer _right_ after replacing him -- he needs to have some tact. And, he can't be to enthusiastic and claim that they'll be making devices with rainbows shooting out of their SD card slots -- that'd make everyone say, "Who does this guy think he is?"

I'm sure everyone read it with a neutral response, because it was pretty boilerplate (as it kind of has to be).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Boring generic corporate pep talk email. It would've been better with GIFs. Doesn't give me much hope for the future of Microsoft. Seems like more of the same. I was really hoping for an outsider with new ideas that could energise the organization and make tough decisions.

I wonder what the sentiment is on the ground among softies.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Who am I?

I am 46. I've been married for 22 years and we have 3 kids."

-> Who cares?

<comment><USER15> Are you American? I was wondering about this too. As a Frenchman, I had the same reaction as you, but I think Americans care a lot about this. I've been told for example that in the US it would be completely impossible for a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family.

I find those cultural differences fascinating

<comment><USER16> > I've been told for example that in the US it would be completely impossible > for a president to be elected if he didn't had a solid marriage and family.

That may be true now, but there have indeed been unmarried Presidents. Just saying.

<comment><USER17> Just 2 bachelors. Happened in 1857 and 1893. And I agree, it would never fly in today's political environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Sent from my iPhone" xD

<comment><USER19> Go back to Reddit. You don't belong here if you can't make an intelligent comment. Sorry.

<comment><USER20> If you think HN comments are anything more than Reddit comments dressed up in ostentation then you would be well-served by paying more careful attention to the actual content of what you read in the future.

<comment><USER19> No I recognize that for sure, but at least in those cases, the poster took time to dress up the comment and type original words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > our core value of empowering users and organizations to "do more."

Oh they are going to ditch Windows and Secure Boot and help develop Linux for mainstream users? This must be the news of the year!

Every day they continue requiring Secure Boot on Windows RT, this lie continues to get bigger.</comment>


Coursera reaches 4 Million students - <AUTHOR> https://www.coursera.org/welcome

<comment><USER2> I wonder how many of these have completed a course.</comment>


How not to write a job post  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackerearth.com/2014/01/write-job-post.html

<comment><USER2> I commented on a similar post a couple of months ago but will re-paste it here.

A good job posting in my opinion must include:

\- LOCATION or REMOTE. You can talk all about your great company, awesome team, great perks but if you don't tell me where do I need to go, it is really not very useful.

\- COMPANY NAME: I hate it when recruiters post "Fortune 500 client". Really ? Could you be any more specific ? </sarcasm>

\- SALARY RANGE: "Market Rate Salary", "Salary: Competitve", "Salary: commensurate on experience" is all bullshit. Give me a range. I understand that the exact salary could depend on how good you are but every employer has a range. Specifically big companies. Also, please make the range reasonable. 60K-150K is bullshit because then you are just throwing numbers for the sake of it. 60K-85K or 100K-130K is more reasonable.

\- TEAM DESCRIPTION: Describe the team as much as possible without necessarily revealing personal info. I would rather like to read "We are a team of 5 people spread across the globe where 2 of us do the back end dev in NYC.......". Don't give me generics like "Excellent motivated team working on world changing projects looking for the next ninja to join our awesome team". Really again ?

\- WHY ARE YOU LOOKING TO HIRE: This is a must for me. Is this position open just because you have some cash to burn to show good to the management that you are "growing" the team or is there really a pain point that can be addressed by hiring. What problems are you facing currently that could be solved by this hire ? It is better to be needed than being a nice to have.

\- BENEFITS: This one is a nice to have. But again be specific if you can. You offer 401K/pension ? awesome. now tell me what the employer match percentage is. Or at least link to your HR benefits site if it is externally available. I am always surprised to see how little you know about benefits until you are hired. In the US, health insurance is a big deal. I want to know upfront what kinds of plans are offered which could impact my salary requirements as well.

<comment><USER3> A couple explanations from a recruiter (why recruiters do these things): \- Company name: Agency recruiters don't post company names typically because they are afraid other recruiting companies might steal their clients. If a competitor agency sees COMPANY is hiring, they might call and try to compete for their business. This is a huge fear in the contingency recruiting world, but in the retained world it isn't as big an issue. (I post client names, but my business isn't contingency)

\- Salary range: The problem with posting a salary range is that candidates only hear the high number. Most will say that isn't true, but I've been recruiting for 15 years and whenever I gave a salary range to candidates of say 100-120, they would automatically expect that they would get the 120. Any offer below 120 was considered lowball. I'm sure there will be some who say they wouldn't feel that way, but it happened almost every time.

\- Team description: Interesting that you mention personal info. It seems the trend is starting to move towards publicizing the members of teams where that could be a recruiting tool. If you have great engineers that are willing to have a somewhat public face for your company, many companies seem willing to use that to their advantage in today's environment. The risk of exposing team members to poaching by other firms used to be a larger concern, but now most people can be found via LinkedIn, GitHub, blogs, etc.

\- Why you are looking to hire: When it's growth and new projects, I'll usually list it. When it's a replacement due to termination or turnover, don't expect that to be advertised.

\- Benefits: Again, if the information is positive we tend to list it. If they are industry average, they typically aren't worth mentioning.

It's possible to write job descriptions that will get great responses while including none of the things you list here (except perhaps location).

<comment><USER2> "The problem with posting a salary range is that candidates only hear the high number."

Sure but if you want great candidates, why does that matter. Make the candidates work for that high number. Let them prove it. If you the employer thinks it is worth giving that number, then they will give it. If you think that there is a risk that a mediocre candidate might demand that high number, then it is the fault of employer for not being able to negotiate correctly.

"It seems the trend is starting to move towards publicizing the members of teams where that could be a recruiting tool. "

I agree with you here. Team description are definitely getting tricky in the world of social stuff. Where do we draw the line ? Publicly exposing your team members (specially at startups) can mean poaching attempts by others.

"When it's a replacement due to termination or turnover, don't expect that to be advertised."

Sure but that still doesn't change the fact why you are hiring. You don't want to say "we fired someone" sure but why can't you at least say "one of our team members left and we need someone to take over his role". There is a reason for this. Good candidates want to know if they are going to be join a role which was already there OR is a new role being created for a new requirement ? These things matter to a great candidate but obviously not to a medicore one.

"If they are industry average, they typically aren't worth mentioning."

Thats just a lazy way of saying "we are too lazy to tell you the benefits because well everyone gets it". Sure, but it impacts my decisions as a potential job seeker. Do you give 15 days or 20 days of vacation to start with ? I think thats important because for someone like me who is self employed currently, those are the things I want to know if I want to go fulltime because 5 days could mean thousands of dollars.

<comment><USER3> I'm actually turning my response into a full blog post, as I think many people will get something out of it. I'm not trying to argue that the methods used by recruiters are the best for candidates, but rather explain them in terms of the recruiter's perspective and motivations.

Salary range - It matters when you have candidates who have a false sense of their own value. If I'm hiring an Android dev for a client and I know the salary goes up to 140K, what is the use of telling that number to the person 2 years out of school who is only worth 80K at this point? The reason salary ranges exist is that a company realizes they will get some variation of experience. We can call people "Junior" and "Senior" all day long, but it matters little when we get applicants of varying experience applying for the same job.

The salary range, particularly when talking about those least qualified for the job, often creates an inflated sense of value that translates into potentially losing a candidate who feels somehow snubbed because they didn't get the max of the range. People aren't realistic about their value in most cases, and the range just reinforces that issue.

Reason for hiring: I see your point about replacement candidates, but most don't use job specs as a way to both screen in and potentially screen out candidates. I do like specs that screen out (if they want you to work 60 hours, I'd like that to be in the job spec).

Benefits: Again, we're advertising what is different. We could potentially write every single detail of the benefits package, including what the plan is and how much your copay will be if you go to the podiatrist without a referral, or whether or not our HMO covers chiropractic. That might be a dealbreaker for the person with the bad back, but it doesn't matter much to most people.

PTO is important to you, and to most - so that is something that is usually worth mentioning, but is only mentioned in most cases when it is above average. Most people will assume 'average' when reading a job spec unless it is otherwise stated. You'll assume 40 hours a week (probably), so if the company expects only 25 hours or if they expect 80 hours it is worth mentioning. If it's 40, should I mention it?

The job post is to get you to apply to something you are qualified for and hopefully interested enough to want to learn more (as well as screen out those who are unqualified or would obviously not be interested due to a dealbreaker), and we're not able to give every single point in it. Even if we did give every detail, you are still going to actually MEET the people, and you might not like them (or they might not like you). It's how we start a conversation with an applicant, but it's certainly not how we end it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can I have a quick micro rant here: I don't want to know about perks when I'm job hunting. Tell me about the type of work (not a wishlist of skills you want), the ball park pay (not a range), the location (I'm looking at you, agencies), the level (entry level vs management) and the type of hours (I'm the type of weirdo that has a life outside of work). I don't care if you have free lunch or free t-shirts. I expect to work hard and get paid for it. P.S. Forget the marathon gauntlet interview with multiple skype calls; that's why I send you a copy of my resume and give you references. OK, rant over. Please carry on. Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER5> I consider perks as a part of the salary. Let's take an extreme case: free food. If I can eat for free 5 days a weekend, that's a lot of money I don't have to pay!

<comment><USER6> > Let's take an extreme case: free food. If I can eat for free 5 days a > weekend, that's a lot of money I don't have to pay!

I think the extreme perk there is "5 day weekend", not "free food".

<comment><USER5> Indeed... When I write "week", my brain autocompletes with "end". My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a few things I want to know about when looking at job posts: tech stack, target salary, what the company is, and a small list of perks. This will give me an idea of what the office environment is like.

I hate it when job postings start listing out needed skills. I read one the other day listing 5+ years of HTML5 and CSS3 experience. When it comes to years of experience, you're more likely looking for a particular level of knowledge and some people are going to get there in a year or less, and others will not get there no matter how many years of experience they have.

<comment><USER8> It also is a red flag to me when I see that - I know I am performing close to on par with some people with industry experience of 10+ years on the frontend. All things equal, you will want the rising star, since that person hasn't hit a ceiling yet, and there's a decent chance you can get away with underpaying that person.

<comment><USER7> The real kicker is that while a lot of frontend skills are still valuable and very relevant, it's also a space that's changing rather quickly.

People set in older patterns who haven't adapted aren't going to be as valuable as people versed in the newer patterns and tools. And those people won't be as valuable as people familiar with the older patterns who also adapt and keep up with the current state of things.

<comment><USER8> Also agreed. I do envy those with more experience with me who are doing more with current technologies, since they have the advantage of having done it longer.

But it makes me wonder what the heck are these companies thinking when they are looking to hire if they care about # of years. You can be in the industry for a long time but be terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apart from very confused about what an adjective it, this article nails it. Just because it's "ninja" and "rockstar" instead of "monetise" and "synergy" doesn't make it any less meaningless jargon.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can't access because the site is down, but I have a lot of feelings about this topic. Specifically, please never, _ever_ , use one of these words to describe the developer you are hunting:

ninja, cowboy, rockstar, superstar, virtuoso, obsessed, "lives and breathes code", knowledgeable about some arbitrary activity or hobby to show how quirky and social the team is...

It gets tiring, as a professional, to read these job postings that sound like they're an ad for a teenage boy's summer camp. Usually the non-programmer postings will read like, you know, jobs for adults. Also, when you're asking for a "virtuoso" for your 60k junior dev spot, I don't know whether that means you don't know what that word means or you're just delusional. Either way, it sounds like everyone definitely has a puffed up ego.

<comment><USER11> Looking around these days i see a lot of ninja and rockstar requests, can't agree more with your post.

Also even for non-programmer jobs like sys engineers/admins i see a lot of hacker and superstar postings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In my mind, a job posting, and the responses to it, are just intended to start a conversation.

Getting all worked up over what is or is not in the posting seem kind of silly to me. If you don't like the way it was written, fine - don't apply.

If you have questions, just apply. If they contact you, ask those questions. If they don't contact you, the answers didn't matter anyway.

Applying for a job is not a declaration that you want to work there. It is a statement that you are interested in discussing it more. All the real information gathering, in both directions, happens during the interview process.

</comment><comment><USER9> If your job ad doesn't give some indication of salary, then it's literally useless to anyone worthwhile who might otherwise consider applying. Good candidates will only apply for jobs that they feel are worthy of them. If they can't even tell whether you're going offer $10k less than they're already on, they'll just move on to the next listing.

</comment><comment><USER13> And site seems down :-)

<comment><USER14> Should write another post - How not to setup a blog!

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be one sentence - never use openshift.

<comment><USER15> Why not? It worked well for me when I got HN'd and I hadn't even setup caching (though I did have Cloudflare). And that was on the free tier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone have a mirror of this? It seems to be down...</comment>


Using ZeroMQ Security  - <AUTHOR> http://hintjens.com/blog:48

<comment><USER2> I wonder how long before saltstack adopts this? Something tells me not long at all.

[1] [https://github.com/saltstack/salt](https://github.com/saltstack/salt)</comment>


Dolphin (wii/gamecube emulator) 3.5 was released - <AUTHOR> http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-dolphin-3-5-release-announcement

<comment><USER2> Someone needs to port Dolphin to Wii homebrew.</comment>


Reinvented email solution for free, helps to send videos, 1 GB mails and more - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailsoc-reinventing-email-after-44-years/x/12596828#/ <comment><USER2> This is amazing. I interpret it as a clever and hilarious parody of what GMail has actually become.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting, will be good if it is free and open for developer usage</comment>


Boeing seeking to reduce scope, duration of physical tests for new aircraft - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-airshow-boeing-certification-e/exclusive-boeing-seeking-to-reduce-scope-duration-of-some-physical-tests-for-new-aircraft-sources-idUSKCN1TH0A3 <comment><USER2> In my experience as a mechanical designer physical testing, especially system level integrated testing, is the only way to find errors in the "unknown unknown" category. In a complex system (mechanical, electrical, software, biological, basically all of them), there usually exist interactions that are very difficult to predict. Software-based simulation can help, but is only as good as the models which are used to describe the underlying physics. In my experience, these models aren't nearly good enough, and without testing, you can't even say what is wrong with them.

Full-up testing isn't always possible, but it shouldn't be abandoned only because it is costly or difficult.

<comment><USER3> One of the things I continue to find disturbing when interacting with the markets we work in (e.g. self-driving & other highly-automated systems) is the growing hope that simulation will somehow bail people out of having to do real world validation, let them take significant shortcuts, or make assurance claims that can't really be made.

We deal in formal verification for some aspects of what we do, and that lead to a conversation that went roughly like this:

AV Exec: "Can we use formal methods to prove that our simulator is as good as reality?"

Me: "No. You can use formal methods to prove your simulator implementation more closely adheres to your simulation model."

AV Exec: "Isn't that the same thing?"

Me: "No. Your simulation model is definitely wrong."

AV Exec: (looking at me both disappointed and despondent)

Me: "Look. It's important to understand that simulation isn't creating an approximation with a known correspondence to reality. Simulation is fabricating an entirely new reality with an opaque correlation to our reality."

AV Exec: "Then how am I supposed to use simulation to prove our system is safe?"

Me: "You can't."

Despair on both sides of the table ensues.

<comment><USER4> I'm lucky that I'm generally met with people who trust me when I say the simulation is not the reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the thing. I don't doubt that since the controversies with the MAX earlier this year, a great deal many people at Boeing are taking a hard look at everything around them and figuring out how to do better.

I'm also sure that this article could be embellishing the facts. It's entirely possible that the very smart people who think about aviation engineering all day are supremely convinced that some of the digital tests can absolutely replace physical tests that were in place for decades. I'm not even remotely qualified enough to offer an opinion on that, so I won't.

So here is my question. Boeing is a very large company beholden to shareholders, and kept in check by a declining number of other checks and balances. Should we, the public, trust that Boeing will pay close enough attention to maintaining safety as an utmost priority? Or should we be demanding that more oversight and regulation are put in place?

<comment><USER6> > It's entirely possible that the very smart people who think about aviation > engineering all day are supremely convinced that some of the digital tests > can absolutely replace physical tests that were in place for decades. I'm > not even remotely qualified enough to offer an opinion on that, so I won't.

This is really the foundation of the problem. Members of Congress are not aeronautical engineers, so they're in the same boat as you. Aeronautical engineers work for aircraft makers, so they have a conflict of interest.

Then, because they don't really know what they're doing, they tend to require things that _reduce_ safety, either by requiring measures that aren't cost effective and thereby blow your entire budget including the money that could have been spent on other safety measures with better cost/benefit, or are overly rigid in requiring the specific solution to a problem which was the state of the art three decades ago when the rule was enacted even though safer alternatives are known today.

So why doesn't the government higher some regulators with some relevant industry experience? Well, they tried that, and then we got all of this revolving door nonsense where, to use an example closer to home here, former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai is now running the FCC as a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon Communications.

Then we get proposals to prevent regulators from going back to industry when they finish, to try to prevent that. But the government _already_ has trouble attracting talent when they're paying substantially less than private industry does, and the jobs tend to only last for one administration until the next one comes in and replaces them with their own people, so how are they ever going to get anyone good to do a job that will a) pay less than they're making already and b) by law end their private career even though their tenure in government is likely to be less than a decade?

It's possible that we're better off not specifying _how_ to make airplanes safe but instead imposing significant liability on companies and individual engineers who make ones that aren't. (This works in industries where the smallest company has a multi-billion dollar market cap. It's obviously less of a deterrent when the manufacturer has no exposure to the jurisdiction of your courts or is small enough to file bankruptcy every time there is a problem, but then we're no longer talking about Boeing and Airbus.)

<comment><USER5> You make a compelling case as to why regulation can be problematic! I can't find any part of your assessment that I disagree with.

What do you think about reforming how we regulate though? You point out that the revolving door problem stems from the fact that attracting the right people is hard when you're not offering them the right salary and career security. Surely there's ways to make that possible in the public sector!

Given that regulatory bodies really ought to be non partisan and focused on a particular field or industry of activity, perhaps the institutional heads could be selected via a more democratic process (rather than just whichever buddy helped out an elected representative win their campaign) and given guaranteed minimum terms?

And as to the problem of turnover throughout changes of political administration, isn't that perhaps also merely a policy problem? Why does the FCC or HUD need to be gutted and repopulated during a transition of political power? Those departments still have to report to the executive and congressional branches of government, so are their staffing choices something the White House should just be able to change on a whim?

<comment><USER6> > You point out that the revolving door problem stems from the fact that > attracting the right people is hard when you're not offering them the right > salary and career security. Surely there's ways to make that possible in the > public sector!

It's actually pretty hard. The first problem is that if you paid them the amount it would take to attract good people, it's easy for opponents to score cheap political points by charging you with wasting tax dollars or comparing the high salary to that of unskilled workers. Meanwhile a high salary increases the perverse incentive to fill the position with cronies as a reward for political support, which is the opposite of helpful.

There may be ways around it if you're creative, like making a benefit of the position that you and two generations of your descendants get free healthcare and college tuition / loan forgiveness forever (provided you do the job for at least two years). Then that's worth potentially quite a lot of money and provides a suitable incentive to attract good people, but makes it harder to take cheap shots because the total cost is indeterminate in both time and amount. Meanwhile you attract just the sort of experienced greybeard you want, who can do the job for a few years as the final leg of their career before retirement and in so doing provide financial security for their children and grandchildren.

At which point it becomes sort of a meta problem, because to bring that about you need honest and creative people in the legislature to make good rules, which was kind of the original problem -- how do you get good and honest lawmakers and exclude incompetent and corrupt ones, when the people choosing them have insufficient time and expertise?

> Given that regulatory bodies really ought to be non partisan and focused on > a particular field or industry of activity, perhaps the institutional heads > could be selected via a more democratic process (rather than just whichever > buddy helped out an elected representative win their campaign) and given > guaranteed minimum terms?

Making them directly elected positions might help, but it's more like trading one set of problems for a different one. Now it's an elected position, but are random airline passengers going to care about who gets elected? (Boeing will, of course.) How do you get honest specialists who know what they're doing to even run, and how does a random voter tell the difference between that person and an industry shill prior to putting them in office? How do you prevent the foreseeable result when there is a disaster not long before an election and people elect a strongman to Do Something About It, only to ruin everything with bluster and incompetence?

> And as to the problem of turnover throughout changes of political > administration, isn't that perhaps also merely a policy problem? Why does > the FCC or HUD need to be gutted and repopulated during a transition of > political power?

It's because they make policy. If a Democrat replaces Trump they're certainly not going to keep his head of the EPA. Giving them guaranteed terms that are of similar length to the President's doesn't strike me as something likely to change much in a helpful way -- and you still have the same issues in choosing who to select to begin with.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, my suggestions were just spitballin'. I have exactly zero experience formulating good public policy :) I find it fascinating though since I have no illusions that even the best policy nerd is ever gonna come up with an optimal solution, but I'm positive there's plenty of low hanging fruit!

> how do you get good and honest lawmakers and exclude incompetent and corrupt > ones, when the people choosing them have insufficient time and expertise?

I think this is the crux of the problem, but I also think it's actually a problem no matter what. Because if you don't regulate, you're just basically crossing your fingers and hoping shitty people don't climb the corporate ladder at Boeing / AT&T / Volkswagen / whatever.

> How do you get honest specialists who know what they're doing to even run, > and how does a random voter tell the difference between that person and an > industry shill prior to putting them in office?

Well I guess in my head I figured that if it becomes an enviable electable position, then you're creating healthy competition for it. In the same way we sort of all collectively hope that competent and benevolent people will run for Congress, the presidency, etc. By making the positions individually electable and clearly demarcated, I would hope that then the public is making decisions for that role more based on competency, rather than charisma. Put differently, I'm not a huge fan of representative democracy because I think it inevitably descends into cult of personality, but I don't necessarily have something I can hold up as a better way ;)

> If a Democrat replaces Trump they're certainly not going to keep his head of > the EPA.

Yeah but that's my point. The people making policy in the airline industry, or the telecom industry, or whatever, should ideally be formulating public policy in the most bipartisan way possible. If you made those roles independent from the current ruling party, then it would mean that those organization heads would need to maintain healthy ties to the major parties, since they wouldn't be able to effectively carry out their role if they're only pals with Bernie and are universally hated by all conservatives. I'm probably just hopelessly naive, but I think it should be the moderates who are making decisions about how to maintain airline safety, not some hyper partisan cronie of the DNC or RNC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like Reuters is trying to draw a connection between this and the 737 Max crashes, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that better testing in silico would not have caught that issue just as well as physical testing

<comment><USER8> And let's not forget that too strict requirements for _new_ airframes is part of what led Boeing to keep modifying the original 737 design instead of building something that would require new certification for both planes and pilots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's time for the Feds to insist that Boeing return to developing aircraft in an adversarial manner, where dedicated teams try to break everything the primary engineers build. Adversarial engineering is the only proven reliable way to build safety-critical systems. It costs more initially, but it's less expensive than the penalties and lawsuits later.

<comment><USER10> So what you're saying is they need competition?

<comment><USER9> They have competition from Airbus. But this is too coarse-grained in time to provide the necessary incentives to improve safety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not really against testing something in a simulation, but in this case would the simulation be using the same software that designed the thing in the first place? Because in that case you're not so much testing it with software as just removing any testing altogether.

</comment><comment><USER12> Boeing 777 wing loading test: [https://youtu.be/Ai2HmvAXcU0](https://youtu.be/Ai2HmvAXcU0)

</comment><comment><USER13> > _expanding the use of digital analysis over costlier physical testing_

Oh no.

> _For example, when vibrating a fuselage on an enormous platform to expose > weaknesses - known as fatigue testing - the vast majority of the time the > tool itself breaks instead of the airframe, according to a person with > knowledge of past tests. Such work is costly and has reliably confirmed > engineers' expectations, he added._

Is this just hubris, or is this real? That's a lot of confidence to place in a software model.

<comment> chroem- It's not software: it's mathematics. You don't build a bridge by successively creating bridges with more and more structural reinforcement until the bridges stop falling down. Instead, you calculate the appropriate size of the columns using a model and only build a single bridge. This is no different.

Finite element methods are such a known quantity that we're able to design nuclear weapons without ever testing them in meatspace. If it's good enough for nuclear weapons, I am strongly convinced it's good enough for something as simple as stress analysis.

<comment><USER14> I'm neither an aero engineer nor a nuke weapons designer but I am pretty sure that nuclear weapons are a whole lot more complex than a plane.

As for not testing nukes, I'm damn sure they test the relevant non-nuclear parts such as the lensing (conventional) explosives.

> ...for something as simple as stress analysis

Of _entire wings_? From the article "..such as using machines to bend the wings to extreme angles and shaking the fuselage until it cracks"

Your job isn't in this area I guess. I'm sure of it.

BTW the model is only as good as its inputs so if you have a defective batch of components (and wasn't there very recently a case where a bunch of deliberately below-spec aluminium parts were delivered to various aerospace companies which cost lots to rectify) then your model had better refelect that defect. But how are you going to find out? With pure maths?

<comment> chroem- > Your job isn't in this area I guess. I'm sure of it.

I'm a mechanical engineer. My point is that stress analysis is the oldest, simplest, and most well understood application of finite element analysis. I can't even begin to imagine the multiphysics that goes into simulating a nuclear weapon, but if we are willing to bet our entire nuclear deterrent on it, it seems reasonable to skip some additional rounds of physical tests that are mostly a formality at this point.

Also, defective materials are caught much earlier in the manufacturing process through quality assurance methods, before they become airplanes. And then you apply a factor of safety on your calculations for added assurance.

<comment><USER15> > I'm a mechanical engineer. My point is that stress analysis is the oldest, > simplest, and most well understood application of finite element analysis.

I am not a mechanical engineer.

My understanding is that some composite materials used in modern aircraft manufacturing can fail in ways unlike classic aircraft aluminum (i.e. suddenly, without prior visible signs of stress/wear).

Is that relevant here?

<comment><USER16> I am a mechanical engineer, and yes it is. The composites are simply too new to have all their properties adequately modelled yet. And they are a moving target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice...

<comment><USER18> I think (since the topic is software testing of physical things) that this classic applies.

> Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried > it. - Knuth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is another instance of market failure with the mantra of 'freedom', self regulation and 'good intentions' spectacularly coming undone.

Boeing's CEO is incredibly still in office inspite of damning evidence of incompetence which is a straight indictment the whole concept of 'shareholder interest' and accountability.

Can anyone provide one instance where shareholder interest has ensured some kind of accountability of management? Why shouldn't Boeings top management be fired for seriously damaging the company and the brand?

<comment><USER20> Boeing's share price hasn't gone down, therefore they haven't actually damaged the company.

<comment><USER19> If this doesn't affect Boeing's share price what will?

This raises even more questions about the stock markets accurately reflecting business sustainability, revenue pipelines and brand damage given 737 Max orders are now essentially over. [1][2]

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-14/boeing-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-14/boeing-s-600-billion- in-max-orders-at-risk-as-airlines-retreat)

[2] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-737-max-deliveries- fell-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-737-max-deliveries-fell-in- march-11554826316)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Boeing cost cutting as the Max runtime defects pile up - aircraft groundings, returns, and cancelled sales. My confidence in this rationale is non-existent.

</comment><comment><USER22> They are asking for more trouble by doing this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Brilliant PR. Let's have more Boeings crash.</comment>


Omega-3s in the blood may boost risk of aggressive prostate cancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-04/fhcr-hpo042511.php

<comment><USER2> _Analyzing data from a nationwide study involving more than 3,400 men, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that men with the highest blood percentages of docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, an inflammation- lowering omega-3 fatty acid commonly found in fatty fish, have two-and-a-half- times the risk of developing aggressive, high-grade prostate cancer compared to men with the lowest DHA levels._

Correlation isn't causation. There are literally a billion possible factors that could be responsible besides a direct relationship. Of course, the same applies to any research demonstrating the efficacy of Omega-3s, too.

This is the problem with a lot of nutrition studies: a huge number of completely false associations were and still are being invented because of an inability to control for important factors. For example, the "fiber theory" of health has turned out to be almost completely false: it appeared to be "healthy" because eating fiber meant eating fewer (digested) carbohydrates. The fiber itself did almost nothing for health.

It gets worse when massive chains of correlations are assumed to be causes. A is correlated with B, B is correlated with C, C is correlated with D, therefore A causes D. The whole mess of saturated fats, cholesterol levels, heart attacks, and heart disease is a case of this.

<comment><USER3> link to the paper: [http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/04/19/aje.k...](http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/04/19/aje.kwr027.abstract?sid=f3bdb522-3db9-44aa-8702-5d07ee3abe98)

I guess that a paper won't get accepted in Am. J. Epidemiol without proper consideration of such correlation.

The studies generally try to control for homophilly, contagion and confounding etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [The following assumes there is a causal relationship...]

As a reader of Mark's Daily Apple and a follower of a Paleo diet, this study surprised me. Yes, the study can be argued against, but I have a more fundamental issue: "optimizing" your diet may be impossible. The needs of the human body and the composition of nutrients/macro-nutrients in food are both wildly varying and neither was "designed", so it's possible that strategies which keep you in great health in young/middle-age will produce ill-health later on. There's little evolutionary pressure exerted by grandparents on grandkids and prostate cancer is usually a very slow growing, late stage disease, so it shouldn't be inconceivable that a young/middle-age favoring diet harms late-stagers.

That said, prostate cancer (which my father had) has a very high survival rate, so I'd happily trade a litany of conditions potentially caused by a "non-good" diet for prostate cancer caused by a "good" diet.

<comment><USER5> In numbers: there are about 300k male deaths per year from heart disease in the US, but about 30k from prostate cancer;

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good advice from the submitted article: "'Overall, the beneficial effects of eating fish to prevent heart disease outweigh any harm related to prostate cancer risk,' Brasky said. 'What this study shows is the complexity of nutrition and its impact on disease risk, and that we should study such associations rigorously rather than make assumptions,' Brasky said."

There is a lot of scholarly literature on the general issue,

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=docosahexaenoic+acid+pro...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=docosahexaenoic+acid+prostate+cancer)

and it will be interesting to see how the trade-offs are resolved.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hate how much play study's like this get in the media. Anyway, some links discussing it:

[http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2011/04/prostate-canc...](http://high- fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2011/04/prostate-cancer-paradox.html)

<http://perfecthealthdiet.com/?p=3309>

<http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fish-oil-prostate-cancer/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Discussion of this study

<http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fish-oil-prostate-cancer/>

<comment><USER9> That was a really interesting analysis.

"To top that off, this study derails the otherwise consistent train of research showing that DHA seems protective at best (and neutral at worst) when it comes to prostate health. In 2001, a study of over 6,000 Swedish men found that the folks eating the most fish had drastically lower rates of prostate cancer than those eating the least. Another study from New Zealand found that men with the highest DHA markers slashed their prostate cancer risk by 38% compared to the men with the lowest DHA levels. And yet another study tracking Japanese men in Japan and Brazil found that omega-3 levels in the blood were consistently linked with a reduction in prostate cancer."

(I'll keep taking my fish oil supplements until I hear something much more concrete)</comment></comment>


Entire Tech Company Locked Out of Office Because of an Umbrella - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/neerajka/status/1173997679363407872 <comment><USER2> 1\. Climb down through the drop down ceiling 2\. Cut the drywall behind the umbrella from the other office. Reach hand through and take the umbrella., Then put the cut piece back in, tape it, mud it, sand it, paint it. Done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Couple of industrial suction cups and a coat hanger and I'd have them in within a minute or two.

</comment><comment><USER4> It wouldn't take too much force to snap that umbrella, surely?</comment>


New York City's future that never was - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/01/30/nyregion/30future-ss.html

<comment><USER2> I love retro-futurism. Those giant buildings, those bustling metropolises, so often monuments to art deco architecture.</comment>


Amazon launches Amazon Payments, a PayPal competitor - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/09/technology/amazon-payments/index.html <comment><USER2> CNN really screwed up this story (and issued a correction). Amazon Payments isn't remotely new; most of this stuff has been around 6+ years. The only new thing is better support for reoccurring subscription payments. A nice new feature, but the whole project is nothing new.</comment>


Sucking carbon from the sky may do little to slow climate change - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/2015/08/sucking-carbon-sky-may-not-slow-climate-change

<comment><AUTHOR> "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded last year that reaching a key emissions goal—roughly equivalent to limiting warming to 2°C by 2100—would rely on the deployment of one or several CDR technologies. Deploying them could cost more than a trillion dollars, one expert estimates.

The new study puts the concept of CDR to the test—without getting into the specifics of which technology to use. The authors used computer simulations to figure out what would happen if engineers removed a whopping 5 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. Achieving that goal, equivalent to removing roughly half the amount of CO2 that is now emitted from manmade sources, would require a gargantuan global effort. (To visualize the scale, imagine 5000 new facilities each roughly the size of a sports stadium.)

Yet the scientists found the environmental benefits of such a massive technological campaign were surprisingly small, especially in terms of protecting the ocean from the impacts of climate change. One key impact of rising CO2 levels is seen in the pH of ocean waters—the global sea surface has been acidified by roughly 0.1 units and impacts on marine shells are beginning to show. But the experiment demonstrated that the CDR campaign had only limited effect to reverse that trend: Without the CDR the surface pH was reduced by 0.75 units by 2200; with CDR the acidification was reduced 0.7 units, the team reports online today in Nature Climate Change."</comment>


Peter Florjancic: Slovenian inventor extraordinaire - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/13048155

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

"Gold lies on the streets and you just need to dig it up with ideas. Ideas are like the shovel," he says.</comment>


Jerry Yang Resigns From Yahoo  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/17/jerry-yang-resigns-yahoo/

<comment><USER2> More discussions here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476665></comment>


HQ Trivia App Resurrected by Anonymous Investor - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hq-trivia-app-returns-1287371 <comment><USER2> I wonder if in this lockdown era, it might have a new lease of life.</comment>


Is it time to dump the iPhone and go Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/01/my_fling_with_a_droid_is_it_finally_time_to_dump_the_iphone.html

<comment><USER2> One of the better articles illustrating the differences between the iPhone and the Droid.</comment>