How much would an iPhone have cost in 1991? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techpolicydaily.com/communications/much-iphone-cost-1991/ <comment><USER2> The bulk of the post is interesting, but this:

"But the fact that so many were so impressed by an assertion that an iPhone possesses the capabilities of $3,000 worth of 1991 electronics products – when the actual figure exceeds $3 million – reveals how fundamentally difficult it is to think in exponential terms."

Is nonsense. The point of a general-purpose computer is that it's general purpose. But people aren't buying an iPhone to get a general-purpose computer, they're buying one to get something that does things. The comparison to 1991 gadgets is in terms of thing-doing, not MIPS and storage and whatnot. The comparison of raw compute power is interesting, but it doesn't invalidate the other kind of comparison.

<comment><USER3> It's a fundamentally different question. The first article asked "how much would it cost to buy devices in 1991 to provide similar functionality?" while this one asks "how much would it have cost to buy the same amount of raw capability?"

This would have been an interesting article except it loses credibility by pretending the two questions are the same, when they are not.

<comment><USER4> > _while this one asks "how much would it have cost to buy the same amount of > raw capability?"_

Even that isn't really what it asks. If you wanted the raw storage capacity of an iPhone in 1991, you wouldn't buy 32GB of flash memory. You'd buy hard disks. 32GB of flash in 1991 would have been slow and poorly suited to the job.

Speaking of hard drives, a GB of storage was not $10K in 1991. It ranged from $4.25K to 2.79K during that year. [http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm](http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm) You'd have to go back to 1988 to hit the $10K/GB price.

<comment><USER2> And of course, it depends on what you're storing. The Radio Shack ad has several things that would use storage -- a VHS camcorder, a microcassette recorder, a portable CD player. All of them used different storage mediums at different prices. If you want to price out the storage for the "1991 iPhone equivalent" the way the original analogy asks, "minutes of audio" and "minutes of video" is the unit, not gigabytes. The article gets away from those terms by posing a different question and pretending it's the same question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting article, but guess what the point is, coming from the AEI. It's actually about gutting social security. If you take their view of incredible deflation in tech products, it cancels out the inflation in everything else. That means the inflation adjustment in social security is less, and in the long run, social security becomes insignificant. This type of messaging is true mastery of the long game.

<comment><USER6> Their inflationary calculations are very tendentious and ignore substitution effects. 32GB of flash memory in 1991 would have cost $1.44 million: Sure. So you wouldn't have used flash memory, you'd have used something cheaper, like audio tapes and film, and you would have had an inferior experience for it... but not $1.44 million worse of an experience. These figures are meaningless. That's why the CPI uses an actual market basket that's meant to represent what people actually buy. People whose payments are linked to the CPI have not in fact seen their payments deflated by such astonishing factors.

The BLS (which is responsible for the official CPI) has a recent overview on possibilities of error and related considerations: [http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-1/consumer-price-index- da...](http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-1/consumer-price-index-data-quality- how-accurate-is-the-us-cpi.htm) Their conclusion: "Measurement of price change in a large economy is sufficiently complex that the accuracy of an estimate is difficult to gauge and is likely to be debated. The CPI cannot claim to be a completely precise measure of inflation and publishes the variance of its estimates. Several potential sources of bias have been identified in the CPI and addressed, though there continues to be debate over to what extent and in what direction bias may still exist and the ways in which BLS can continue to increase accuracy."

<comment><USER7> Sure, members of the public or small and medium sized organizations may have substituted, but if yours was the sort of organization that bought, say, a Cray Y-MP for $35 million, paying $3.56 million and putting this thing on a network would have been a bargain, which makes me think that the authors may not have taken the value of this being an integrated system into account. And even if they pegged the iPhone at exactly the same price as a Cray Y-MP they would still be low due to the iPhone's vastly lower power consumption.

Finding out that this article was written by the American Enterprise Institute made me feel dirty until I reflected on the fact that nothing in the article appears to be grossly incorrect, and discarding an interesting article for some possibly bad political implications seems like a bad way to live one's life.

Another thing that no-one has yet pointed out is that even this article's calculation could still probably be extremely low if the cost of developing iOS and the related apps are included.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 12 cycles of Moore's Law puts that 3.56 million figure at $869.14. Unlocked cost on the Apple store: $749

<comment><USER9> Care to detail your calculation?

<comment><USER8> $3 560 000 divided by 2, 12 times :-)

The effect of Moore's "law" is that processing power doubles approximately every 2 years, while the cost halves.

If 1 "unit" of processing currently costs $1; in 2 years time, 2 units will cost $1. Or that 1 unit costs 0.50.

<comment> T-hawk Moore's law is that the _density_ of discrete components (transistors, storage cells) increases. Cost and speed are knock-on effects. It just so happens that density does drive CPUs to be faster for the same production cost and storage to be either more capacious or physically smaller. But some aspects of computing performance don't benefit from density, like memory response time for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always like to play a game when I'm carrying multiple laptops in a backpack:

What's the latest year that my backpack be a Top 500 Supercomputing center.

The results can be pretty entertaining sometimes.

<comment><USER11> That reminds me of the joke about the A7 in the iPhone being faster than the old PowerPC cores in the G5s, which wasn't the first time that a phone's processor beat an older laptop's, but the first time that the comparison was Apple's to Apple's. Terrible pun, but it happened in what, a 5 year span?

I play the same game, and I love it (no one ever believes me about it, either).

<comment><USER12> I'm being pedantic (sorry), but to the best of my knowledge, there never was a G5 laptop, which is one of the reasons for the switch to Intel.

<comment><USER11> Ah, no, you're correct! I had originally misremembered the statement (going with G4 and laptop), and forgot to change the word laptop to desktop when I switched it to the G5. That was totally my bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Either nothing or infinity. You couldn't build an iPhone in 1991. Maybe if you built a time machine first.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. The word you're looking for is "undefined". Even _with_ four million dollars, it's impossible. As other people have mentioned, it might have been possible to build something that worked in a similar fashion, but it most certainly wouldn't have had even a similar form factor.

It's a product of the technology available at its time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Software was many orders of magnitude more efficient in 1991 than now, so if you're trying to make a functional equivalent (which I'm assuming because the example equivalences are 1000x the size of a phone) rather than a copy, it's important to remember that you wouldn't need either the same processing power or same storage capacity.

An equivalent _excluding media_ , rather. A few copies of peanut butter jelly time would fill up a functionally equivalent iPhone's disk.

edit: MIDI Peanut Butter Jelly Time?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure if you looked at the raw material cost the iPhone would have been a lot cheaper, right? I mean, if you took all of the knowledge on how to build the factories and design the tools and fabrication equipment, and you had people skilled enough to understand it and implement it, the iPhones in 1991 would probably cost a lot less.

<comment><USER16> What are you saying exactly? Apple doesn't take raw materials as input and produces iPhones as input. Apple takes components as input. Those components didn't exist.

If someone built a few of them using today's knowledge, it would be expensive. Very expensive.

Only at scale are they cheap. They are only at scale if everyone is buying them. The same process that would cause the scale in components might cause the change in commodity prices.

So your point is hard to understand...

<comment><USER15> My point is simply that the USD is now worth less and the raw materials are now more scarce and expensive than in 1991. You are right in calling me out about the scale though, as I guess that even if you had all the knowledge to create all the components necessary, you still would have a much smaller market and therefore less offsetting of the initial cost. However, if say, you made 2 phones for everybody, maybe that would bring the market up enough to reach the same scale as today's market?

<comment><USER4> If you had all the knowledge to create the components, you would still need a decade or more of industrial advancement to reach the point where you could actually build the necessary components. Knowing how to build every piece of an iPhone wouldn't get you an iPhone in 1991, even if you had all the money in the world. You couldn't build the fundamental technologies fast enough.

<comment><USER15> Industrial advancement IS the knowledge of creating components. Hordes of people at giant companies are improving every minor aspect of the tools that create these components. If we had all of the knowledge these companies have built up at any point in history, it could be implemented. The tools are the HIGHEST cost in creating components because they cannot be changed dramatically, and it's difficult to put them through iterations of improvement because you need to keep using the expensive tool you made to make up the cost of what you paid for it.

<comment><USER4> Industrial advancement isn't just building on knowledge. It's building on infrastructure. You couldn't go back to the stone age and produce steel, because the infrastructure for creating steel simply didn't exist. There were no iron mines, no foundries, no skilled blacksmiths. You could speed up the process, but you'd still be dead before the first steel sword was forged.

Likewise, the infrastructure for building iPhone components didn't exist in 1991. The A7 is built on a 28nm process. The 486 in 1991 was shipping with (I believe) a 0.8 micrometer process. So the infrastructure of the time was three orders of magnitude away from being able to build this chip. And this says nothing of the other components which faced similar technological hurdles. You couldn't make all these hurdles go away. Building up major infrastructure takes time, and no amount of knowledge can reduce that time to zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Today's $1,000 core i7 machine has about the same GFLOP as supercomputer of 1991 that cost $100,000,000.

So $3 million is understating. They couldn't have built anything close to today's smartphone even with $3 billion with B.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is such an odd calculation and application of Moore's law.

Without going into any analyses or details, travelling to the moon should be much cheaper and faster (yes I am aware of low-cost orbital space flights -- and even paying it with bitcoin! --, but it still isn't travelling to the moon).</comment>


Twists and Turns in the Tesla Story: A Boring, Boneheaded Update - noir-york http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2018/06/twists-and-turns-in-tesla-story-boring.html <comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, objective analysis.

The financial arguments speak for themselves, but the personal arguments hit the nail on the head, I believe:

> _With a story stock, it is imperative that you have a CEO who not only is > able to get the market to buy into a big story, but one who stays focused > and disciplined. [...] Elon Musk is a gifted story teller, but as the last > few months have shown, focus and discipline are not his strong points._

> _If you are a Tesla investor, your primary concern should be that Musk, with > his numerous and often conflicting claims about the company, has muddled the > Tesla story and perhaps put the company at risk._</comment>


Ask HN: How do I write a research paper? - <AUTHOR> I've worked on my own startups projects, some more successful than others for a few years, until lately I started freelancing as a full-stack developer and working as an editor for a popular technical blog. I love to read, and I love exploring interesting concepts.
I love experimenting myself, as well. I've been built and continue building several small projects spanning from radio receivers, to rudimentary electronics and Arduino re projects. However, I feel like I'm always a step behind and not really contributing to society as an inventor or explorer. I feel like writing research papers would help.
I'm a college graduate but in a non-technical field, so while I know how to write academic papers, I've never written one published in a peer-reviewed journal. How do I do that? Is there a community for people looking for help that I can contribute to? Is there a place where I can find topics that people would love to see researched? <comment><USER2> I'm working on a research paper, I'm pursuing a coursework masters and I am not required to write a research paper, but one of my professors liked a paper I wrote in his class enough that he wants to go through the process of publishing it to a journal.

I think the most important thing is to get help from someone who has done it before. If I were you I would find research papers that are in the same topic as the one you are interested in and email the authors (most of them put their emails on the papers). Tell them you are interested in submitting a research paper to a journal in their field and that you'd like their help. You would basically write the paper on your own, have them review it and they would propose a journal or conference to submit it to. What they would get out of it would be an easy coauthor credit, which would build their standing in academia.

</comment><comment><USER3> Posted 7 hours ago by dahacker:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3178846/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3178846/)</comment>


How to Overcome Impostor Syndrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/guides/working-womans-handbook/overcome-impostor-syndrome <comment><USER2> I sometimes feel impostor syndrome, but then i think back to all the wildly incompetent people that I have worked with (often in positions of authority over me). I realize I am closer to the top than to the bottom.</comment>


Amazon to begin paying corporation tax on UK retail sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/23/amazon-to-begin-paying-corporation-tax-on-uk-retail-sales

<comment><AUTHOR> Hard to believe Amazon got away with this for so long...

"The group made $8.3bn (£5.3bn) of worldwide sales from British online shoppers but for 11 years all these internet transactions have been booked in Luxembourg."

<comment><USER2> "The group made $8.3bn (£5.3bn) of worldwide sales from British online shoppers but for 11 years all these internet transactions have been booked in Luxembourg."

Written in such a way to make the average person think amazon make £5.3bn profit - which of course they don't.</comment></comment>


Zappos-inspired startup is all about men's pants  - <AUTHOR> http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091009/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_bonobos_pants

<comment><USER2> I don't see how this is in the same vane as zappos. They appear to be really interested in great customer service but ultimately zappos provided a specialized store that sold ANY kind of shoes you needed in ANY sizes in the most friction free way possible. This just doesn't have the same friction free feel that zappos does.

Allow me to purchase any pair of pants in any size made by the manufacturer and return them if I'm not satisfied... at cheaper or comparable cost to traditional stores and I'm on board.

It seems the zappos name is being misused here as an artificial springboard to get people interested in the website.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I saw the words 'design' and 'manufacture', and thought, "This is not Zappos for pants."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also think 120$ for pants is a bit steep. Especially when you consider the other 10$ you have to spend for hemming.

Men hate shopping yes. But Men hate being measured by a tailor more than shopping and driving to the tailor, then driving back in 2 weeks for pants.

<comment><USER5> Indochino is supposed to be good for buying online tailored suits and shirts with "easy returns", etc.

<http://www.indochino.com>

I always thought it sounded interesting, though I don't wear suits often enough to have bought one since I first heard about Indochino.

You'd think if this company could make entire suits to fit (surely "outsourced"), Bonobos could do hemming.

<comment><USER6> I can personally vouch for Indochino. I'm a very slim guy and had always struggled to find a suit that fit just right. I have ordered two suits from them; I sent my measurements and I received a perfectly-fitted suit in less than a week. They even sent a voucher for tailoring (which I never had to use).

I'm of the opinion that you get what you pay for with clothing, and I don't think Bonobos is very expensive for nicely-made pants (you can easily spend much, much more). Indochino happens to be a nice exception. My suits fit as well as (or better than) my friends' $1000+ Italian suits.

Edit: Regarding the "outsourced" comment, Indochino is a team of 6 in Canada that employs 50 tailors in Shanghai.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reads like a new brand of pants you can only buy online, not an online pants warehouse of massive selection.

<comment><USER8> Correct. They make their own pants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know. I just see $120 - $180 men's pants as too high to shake up the market or even be on zappo's level. I dig what these guys are doing, but I feel "niche online retailer" is their ultimate evolution.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's always disappointing when you get articles about your company into major news outlets, but they link to your competitors and not your own site.

</comment><comment><USER11> Bonobos Inc.? Pants for people that want to take them off every hour.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have 3 pairs of these pants. They are amazing. You'll need to tailor them for length, but man the fit is perfect.

The colors and quality are great. I actually found out about them through another post on this site a while back about the private shopping for men: <http://trunkclub.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> The cut really is nice though. Far less baggy in the leg like lots of mens pants are these days. I recommend a pair for the times when you can't get away with jeans, or are outside California :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Not for me. I actually LIKE the loose fit around the thighs. The pant pics on bonobos look really uncomfortable.</comment>


Hyundai-Aptiv autonomous vehicle joint venture has a new name: Motional - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21362322/hyundai-aptiv-motional-autonomous-vehicle-joint-venture <comment><AUTHOR> The company, which plans to test fully driverless vehicles for ride-hailing services later this year, said the new name is meant to evoke the "motion" of transportation as well as the "emotion" of the decision to get somewhere safely.</comment>


Affirm Raises $100M, Bucking the 'Down Round' Trend - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/technology/affirm-raises-100-million-bucking-the-down-round-trend.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Article says $800mm valuation with the new round, but then says they did not release valuation. Also, almost $500mm raised with 800mm valuation? Can't be right.

<comment><USER3> Affirm has taken on a lot of debt funding as opposed to equity funding. Partly because they are in the business of issuing loans and paying equity for the loans would be silly for founders/investors/employees.

The total amount of money raised is probably < $100mm in pure equity, and the valuation is probably a favorable $800mm when fudging the numbers.

With a recent WSJ article citing that 43% of student loan borrowers are currently not paying back debt, and with Affirm largely trying to issue loans to that "millenial" market, we will see how this high risk lending plays out.</comment></comment>


Study of the range of colours used in site logos - <AUTHOR> http://static.colourlovers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/images/top-web-brand-colors.html Amazing to see the spread of logo colours used, and how certain sectors crowd around set colour ranges. <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry - should have added link to company that created infographic and their post about it:

[http://www.colourlovers.com/business/blog/2010/09/15/the- mos...](http://www.colourlovers.com/business/blog/2010/09/15/the-most- powerful-colors-in-the-world)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Amazing to see the range of colours there, and yet how grouped into colour ranges most logos are. Even more so when sectors (e.g social) group predominately around one tight colour range (in the case of social, blue)</comment>


Biohackers are using CRISPR on their DNA and we can't stop it - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631520-100-biohackers-are-using-crispr-on-their-dna-and-we-cant-stop-it/ <comment><USER2> Bodybuilders will probably be among the first. Knockout the myostatin gene and get 2X the muscle mass. That's what happened when they did it with dogs. Can you imagine what it's going to look like? Some of these dudes already look comical.

</comment><comment><USER3> Grr paywalled!</comment>


AMD engineers built Ryzen Threadripper in their spare time - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/amd-engineers-built-ryzen-threadripper-in-their-spare-time/ <comment><USER2> The link should be changed to Forbes[1] as that is the primary source.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/09/05/amd- ry...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/09/05/amd-ryzen- threadripper-the-fascinating-story-behind-the-processor-that-beat-intel)

<comment><USER3> Auto play video on the Forbes site though. :(

<comment><USER4> Not on the AMP page. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleat...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/09/05/amd- ryzen-threadripper-the-fascinating-story-behind-the-processor-that-beat- intel/amp/)

<comment><USER3> Just checked. Definitely is for me. Menu on the left, auto-play video is the first thing at the very top.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Examples of great landing/site designs?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for examples of fun, sexy, clean landing pages. Personally I really like getbuckyballs.com. What are your favorites? <comment><USER2> Here's a treasure chest of examples and explanations:

[http://www.quora.com/What-startup-homepages-are-most- simple-...](http://www.quora.com/What-startup-homepages-are-most-simple-clear- and-effective-and-what-makes-them-so?__snids__=56249689)

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing list thanks!</comment></comment>


Dash Board for Newton OS: a Comic Tragedy in Nine Acts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/masonmark/Dash-Board-for-Newton-OS <comment><USER2> Hmm, is it Newton day on HN? I am guessing that you submitted this after seeing it linked to on today's other Newton thread[1]?

I am the author of Dash Board, so feel free to uh, AMA, as the kids say these days...

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10079507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10079507)

<comment><USER3> Ah, cool. I was looking for a way to contact you, but couldn't find a way on your web site or on the GitHub page, short of opening an issue.

Not that I have anything really interesting to say - just that I really enjoyed reading your write-up. Really interesting and, as mediocre dev myself trying to make a little money here and there, inspirational as well. Thanks for sharing it. (I also used to do development in Tokyo too, and hope to be able to do it again some day, should the stars realign.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this a blog post repo?

<comment><USER2> No, although as it happens, I _did_ also write a blog post about my experience with it:

[http://masonmark.com/dash-board-revisited](http://masonmark.com/dash-board- revisited)

<comment><USER4> Oh, I just noticed the code, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Gaming became the next front in the war over Hong Kong - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/how-gaming-became-the-next-front-in-the-war-over-hong-kong-a887416d1aed <comment><USER2> The universal values are rejected by the chinese. They do not like those. 7 things cannot speak about include that.

Being a programmer I understand you may ask the logical question - which 7 things. The lady expose this has gone to jail. ...

Try to search it should be around.</comment>


Sexql: Execute SQL against Excel files in the browser - <AUTHOR> http://sheetjs.com/sexql/ <comment><USER2> Really? You couldn't come up with a SFW name for what otherwise looks like a clever idea?</comment>


SCVNGR Raises $4 Million From Google Ventures - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/24/scvngr-google/

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to see a fellow DreamIt Ventures startup getting a nice round of funding!</comment>


The Internet is too unsafe: We need more hackers - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-internet-is-too-unsafe-we-need-more-hackers-c9742fc1a03b <comment><USER2> I think being a hacker, phreaker or cracker became so illegal it really scared people off experimenting and learning about computer security the practical way.

Now there are obviously great security people around, but the path one needs to take to become a professional in the field seems to be more theoretical and rubber stamped.

For me this is why I focused more on just software engineering with less focus on network security. I get paid to hack without worrying about the police knocking on my door for experimenting and exploring.

<comment><USER3> The opposite is true; it is much easier today to engage with computer security legally than it was in the 1990s. And the consequences for crossing the line are generally smaller.

It's easier for lots of reasons, many of them banal, like the fact that you can get a modern Unix system on your laptop in minutes for free, and tear it down and bring it back up on demand with virtualization, or the fact that everyone has Internet access and nobody has to bounce through an X.25 Internet gateway or an outdial to get to IRC.

It's also easier because huge amounts of vulnerability research have been published since the 1990s. The cutting edge of vulnerability research in the 1990s is almost unbelievably primitive compared to what's available in open school curricula now, let alone refereed vulnerability research venues. In the 1990s, basic details about things like stack overflows or even temp file races were _permanently_ embargoed and made available only to large-company system operators. Most of what's disclosed today _by vendors_ would have been decried as unethical by the security community in 1995.

People that want to do active vulnerability research today can participate in thousands of bug bounty programs, none of which existed in the 1990s. And, despite what the prevailing sentiment on HN would indicate, I think it's actually a bit rarer for people to be prosecuted for undirected, non-monetized hacking than it was in the '90s.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I was comparing the situation to circa 2000 onwards. Not around the time when Linux came out.

I think th is sentiment regarding bug bounties programs kind of solidifies my point. Corporate America and the government has made only the type of hacking they benefit from legal, while experimentation is off the table.

I'm not so much advocating for a free for all by the way. I think there is difference between curiosity and malicious intent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The current state of "safety" online was actually a masterclass in growth, trends and thresholds of open platforms. Each interation could only bear so much.

In the dialup and early broadband phase, looking "under the hood" and learning about everything that was there was common practice. It was a 10 course meal daily for the life-long learners.

Up until 2000'ish, there were only "certain types" of people online, with trust and integrity being self-regulated and intact.

Between 2000'ish and 2007'ish, we saw substantial growth of broadband and wifi, expanding the userbase further, while attention was starting to be paid to internal security. Enter the ad explosion of popups, the occasional virus exploit and post-dotcom wisdom (/s) of the economists, and the self-regulating model erodes practically overnight.

The smartphone bubble is where "all types" had access to the vast trove of resources that we used to call an information superhighway.

Fast-forward to the present and when you open the hood, theres now several yellow warning stickers (idiot alerts) and all of the doors internally are starting to be locked as common practice.

It looks like the modern crux of safety is the mix of three types (there are more) of fundamental operations of open platforms; (almost) full trust backends/platforms, self-regulating models and software packages (the bulk of OSS, linux, etc) and the current full lockdown approaches to research, exploration and security.

I guess we can officially say "the more the Internet changes, the more unrecognizable it becomes", but data is still the most valuable asset and will most likely migrate to "safest path routing", rather than using the "three billy goats gruff" model that the Internet has become.

</comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately it doesn't pay well to be a hacker, you're better off being a software engineer. So yea, I guess the internet can rot until there's a way to do white hat hacking at scale.

I've looked into this, in order to transition from software engineering into a cybersecurity niche it requires a drastic pay cut. Sure if you're the self- employment type you could try doing bug bounties, but the top 1% make like 35k a year on average, and everyone else makes peanuts or zero. That is still better than starting a startup, but you're also better off being a day trader where 10% of people make a better living with only 2 hours of trading a weekday and two hours of analysis and strategizing in the morning, maybe then you could find time to hack systems just for fun.

The other thing you could do is become some kind of consultant and make better money consulting companies and running pen tests for them, but if you can do that you could just as easily make more money building out and consulting on custom software solutions...

And if you don't care about the money fine, but eventually someone that does care about money will come along and do it better than you anyway and eat your lunch.

Now, to leave this post on a positive note and not become a target for downvote gangs, I'll propose this: the way to have more hackers at scale is to grow every software engineer to be a security conscious engineer by default, such that they are constantly looking for vulnerabilities throughout development and deployments to production. It works well because I'd say engineers spend maybe 4 hours a day actually working and the rest is thinking about problems, which can happen in parallel with hacking quite nicely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points indeed.

As for your proposition - I agree. A simple way to do this would be to have, for example, a day a month where the organization's engineers try to break into their own system.

It's common to write tests and follow best practices here and there, but developers often won't actually dedicate some serious time to actively try to break into their own system as an attacker.

I think this could be fun and beneficial for all involved.

<comment><USER6> I worked at a company where we did this. It was indeed fun, and we learned some things about our system that showed up some security issues. It also made everyone think more about what a curious attacker could do in a short amount of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We need better protection for whitehats. Every government is anti-hacker at some level.

<comment><USER8> On its face, hacking, even the white hat kind, is no different than saying we should allow trying to steal from stores to check if their loss prevention functions are working. As far as the government is concerned, people shouldn't be trying to steal or hack to begin with.

Obviously, if a company hires somebody to try and steal to check their LP, or if a company hires somebody to break into their network, it's different (and I know there have been issues with one part of a company trying to prosecute somebody that another part tried to hire, but that's just stupid corporate governance).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, yes and no. Ethical hacking is bounded by "scope". Organizations specify exactly what is allowed and what isn't. Also, the general guideline is that you must stop once you reach data.

An ethical hacker will find out your door is open and warn you without going inside. If they go in and steal, they're not a white hat hacker.

And if you have an open door with something interesting inside, a black hat hacker will eventually find it anyway.

<comment><USER9> An ethical cracker might take a CD box with one of those radio tags and wave it at the bleepy scanner thing to check if the scanner's working, but they wouldn't walk out the door with a fridge under their coat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been coming to a similar conclusion. In recent consulting memory, I have seen enterprises with thousands of EoL Windows 2008 servers and vulnerabilities that won't get patched until a catastrophic event forces the businesses to replace them.

There is a trope about suppressing forest fires that has come around in a few different areas, where by suppressing forest fires with controlled burns of scrub the only fires that do occur are the ones that consume the fuel- intensive old growth forests creating super infernos. Nassim Taleb talks about it in the context of "suppressed volatility," where most attempts to reduce volatility in complex systems just cause risk to bottle up, as though there were a law of "conservation of risk," at play.

We don't have "more hackers," right now because the incentives just aren't worth it. Oddly, enforcement of hacking laws and high profile busts of worm/malware writers have had the effect of discouraging the low level hacking that would clear the scrub out of corporate networks - leaving a lot of super vulnerable and unmaintained infrastructure tucked away behind forgotten firewalls.

I have been trying to figure out how to get positioned product wise for this next extreme event, which I think will be caused by all these crappy security controls that removed the low hanging fruit while letting massive data risks age into a super fuel for a tail risk event. Gaming out the scenario of what companies will need when all that old infrastructure in-effect goes up in flames mainly yields migration tools for legacy code into containers that can be moved into cloud environments in a forced move, un-sticking vendor lock-in, BYOCredentials, some kind of liability mitigation for all the PII it will compromise and customer alternatives to locked in dependencies, etc.

From a product perspective, I have a contrarian view where I'm less interested right now in what people in companies say they want, and more in how to be positioned for the Forcing Function event that their risk exposure has them set up for. Enterprise demand is a synthetic effect of political positioning and leverage, and not user desire that startups and consumer products respond to.

Forest Fires: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15961-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15961-y)

Taleb riffing on a similar theme via FSBlog: [https://fs.blog/2012/11/learning-to-love- volatility/](https://fs.blog/2012/11/learning-to-love-volatility/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Is there somewhere a list of insecure patterns in versions of popular frameworks? This is how I'd organize results. Instead of treating each implementation separately, work on finding insecurities of sites that do have white-hat-friendly policies. Any findings can be reported, patched, and documented against the software/version that was mis/used.

Every implementor then only has to review/subscribe to the versions of the software they use. Any custom software would still have to be handled differently but I presume that patterns of use of frameworks and libraries either makes up a larger portion, or will trend in this direction.

</comment><comment><USER12> Really, how many hackers are needed for everyone to stop saving passwords in plaintext?

<comment><USER13> If they are using plaintext passwords, I wouldnt be suprised their next step would be using MD5 or SHA1 or self made crypto...

<comment><USER14> This is exactly the place where good defaults and good tutorials are incredibly important. PHP is notorious for this mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hackers are/should be the short sellers of the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Internet is too paywalled: We need more archive links

[https://archive.is/dn6fN](https://archive.is/dn6fN)

</comment><comment><USER17> hahahaha cool how can one be a good hacker?

<comment><USER18> I think generally being a hacker is a mindset. Being able to answer a question like "how can one be a good hacker" is fundamental to that mindset.

I dont mean that in a dismissive way, I mean that to hack you are tinkering and figuring things out with your own mind rather than asking others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For all you hacker types out there. I'm a software engineer who knows very little about security. Any good resources to learn it?

Currently my company just assumed that Spring handles all those issues for us.

<comment><USER20> Security is mutli-faceted, so it's hard to know where to start. I like to help people begin by getting them to learn the fundamentals. A lot of security training is changing your mindset (perspective) on situations.

Two books I like to start this process:

* Threat modeling by Adam Shostack

* CISSP all in one handbook by Shon Harris

You don't need to get a CISSP cert, but the resources and education are generally applicable in most situations.

<comment><USER21> If you're looking for something more practically related to securing the code you write, the OWASP Top 10 (and OWASP in general) is probably the best place to start. Many modern frameworks like Spring have lots of nice security features baked in, but I've still seen plenty of low hanging Top 10 vulnerabilities in Spring apps -- most often caused by simply failing to use allowlist (formerly known as whitelist) validation on key inputs.

It is astonishing how often people neglect basic programming best practices (input validation, error handling, logging, access control) which in turn leads to security vulnerabilities. My theory is this is caused moreso by Agile Management forcing developers to cut corners, rather than just developers being ignorant/lazy.

[https://owasp.org/www-project-top- ten/OWASP_Top_Ten_2017/Top...](https://owasp.org/www-project-top- ten/OWASP_Top_Ten_2017/Top_10-2017_Top_10.html)

Threat modeling can be a good practice to learn, because it gets you into the habit of thinking about how you could hack each new thing you're developing.

I dont think the CISSP is a good recommendation for this person's case, unless they plan on becoming a cyber security manager.

<comment><USER20> That's not my point suggesting CISSP. The book I recommended takes the reader through the different OSI layers for networking and security, a basic intro to threat modeling, and other stuff that is fundamental to security. One can always skip the managerial stuff, but it doesn't mean the CISSP book is not a good recommendation.

Also, having a developer understand the value and need for code security from the perspective of a security person is important to the overall success of an infosec program. Otherwise both engineering and infosec are going to be grating on each other.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Many Genes Do Cells Need? Maybe Almost All of Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-many-genes-do-cells-need-maybe-almost-all-of-them-20180419/ <comment><USER2> This line of thinking really highlights how building models that predict phenotype from genotype assuming linear and independent genetic contributions, though useful for predicting something like height [0] [1], is not going to generalize sufficiently to solve the lofty goal of personalized precision medicine even with an explosion in data.

Biologically, we know tons and tons about the interconnected biochemical pathways that _cause_ a lot of activity in the cell. It's impressive that statistical modeling approaches that ignore this knowledge earned by thousands of humanyears worth of work can work so well in some domains, but I'm wary of the possibility of academic communities isolating themselves from empiricism and continuing to make mathematically-convenient assumptions, which in the long-run helps no one but themselves.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16392877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16392877) [1] [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/19/190124](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/19/190124)

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is ignored by the scientific community at all. For example, Eric Lander's group has a pretty nice treatment of why additive models can't explain heritability [1]. And this is coming from the same Eric Lander who has done some of the key work in complex disease / additive genetic modeling.

Imagine you're in a world where you are handed down some knowledge there are Newtonian models, and more advanced models that use relativity, but you don't know what the constants are yet. We're still looking for the Newtonian constants. We know there is much more out there once we understand the basics. But the basics are still worth understanding.

1 = [http://www.pnas.org/content/109/4/1193](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/4/1193)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hypothesis: it's not so much the _content_ of the genes that's brittle, as that there are very few proteins as "smart" in how they walk the genome as CRISPR is (and even it's no Einstein.)

There are likely cellular genetic repair mechanisms—especially in "small" genebases that don't use fancy tricks like methylation/acetylation—which "hardcode" assumptions about gene number, gene size, positions of important proteins, etc.

Just because DNA itself is a robust data-structure (with features like start- stop tags, commented sections, etc.) doesn't mean that all the algorithms (proteins) that have evolved to utilize that data-structure query or mutate it in equally-robust ways.

Imagine a codebase started off by a brilliant and strict engineer... and then followed on by a million forks-of-forks-of-forks, all done by average Joes just "scratching their own itch." That's the type of software encoded in 99% of the DNA on Earth. The codebases where "every line counts" and has been carefully selected for are far fewer—mitochondria, certainly, but i hesitate to name any other clear candidate.

<comment><USER5> > _Imagine a codebase started off by a brilliant and strict engineer... and > then followed on by a million forks-of-forks-of-forks, all done by average > Joes just "scratching their own itch."_

I would be careful with that example, before you start to sound suspiciously creationist. At least, the Christians I know that deny evolution tend claim everything was created perfectly and since has only slowly degenerated over time.

<comment><USER6> As you meet more Christians you will find more variation in what they believe. All should consider themselves "Creationist", but there are MANY competing ideas, from Ken Ham "5000 years old or bust", to Catholic "could be billions of years", and a lot of version in between. For instance, a friend of mine is a biology professor at the local university, his PHD is in fish evolution, and is a very conservative Christian.

<comment><USER7> Francis Collins is a well documented example of a Christian who very much contrasts Ken Ham as the current head of the NIH and director of the Human Genome Project. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins)

<comment><USER8> It comes down to what you hold to be true. If you believe Genesis is historical fact, then the interpretation of the science facts are wrong. If you believe the Bible is true and that the interpretation of science facts are true, then you see Genesis in a figurative interpretation. If you reject the Bible, then you will see the narrative of the Bible as false and the scientific interpretation as true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In bacteria at least it's well-established that natural selection favours a smaller genome -- hence why antibiotic resistance will be dropped if the selective pressure is removed.

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately, it is not dropped completely, just reduced in the bacterial population. It would seem a simple idea to just rotate antibiotics (use for a few years then put on the shelf for a few years), but once a bacterial pathogen acquires resistance it never really loses it and once you start using the the antibiotic again the resistance roars back very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What definition of gene are they using is this article?

<comment><USER12> The same as everyone, I. e. a protein-coding segment of DNA?

<comment><USER11> No that is not true, there are genes that does not contain protin coding segments.

There is no clear definition where a gene starts and ends. Some define it as a segment that codes for a specific feature but that is a recursive definition.

Here is an article about what I mean:

[https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/archive/2000/8975-genetic- de...](https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/archive/2000/8975-genetic-determinism- is-dead-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-gene-27122000)</comment></comment></comment>


Over-55s pick passwords twice as secure as teenagers' - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21871-over55s-pick-passwords-twice-as-secure-as-teenagers.html

<comment><USER2> I foresee a future article: "70 Million Yahoo Passwords Leaked"</comment>


Ask HN: Help me choose a new pc monitor in 2019 - <AUTHOR> So it's come time for me to upgrade my current monitor setup.
I run a macbook pro 2018 (top specs) as my primary machine, so looking for a new monitor to replace my 200 year old piece of junk secondary monitor I already have.
At work I run a Dell 34" ultrawide curved display and it's quite nice, have enjoyed the wide screen..
At home I have narrowed down my search to the following (comments with each):
- A.) Philips BDM4037UW/00 40-Inch 4K UHD LCD PC Monitor- (3840x2160)- (Display Port, HDMI, VGA)
Looks like a nice option, curved and 4k, so offers decent screen real-estate
- B.) LG 43UD79 43 inch 4K UHD IPS Monitor (3840 x 2160, 4x HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C, 350 cd/m2, HDCP 2.2)
A slightly larger option, not curved, but seems to be a bit better overall than the Philips (43, IPS, USBC..)
- C.) Philips 499P9H/00 48.8" Super Widescreen VA W-LED Black Curved Multimedia Monitor (5120x1440/5ms/1xDP/2xHDMI)
A lovely high resolution super ultrawide display, looks great and I'd choose this, but not sure if perhaps the vertical height offered by a 4k monitor would be better?
- D.) Samsung UE55MU9000TXXU 55-Inch Ultra HD Smart Curved UHD LED TV - Black
A low input lag curved tv monitor, essentially just going wild and seeing if perhaps this could be the best of both worlds?
I am primarily a software developer and spend most of my time writing code, testing it and browsing the web. Occasional gameplay, but would never dare call myself a professional.
What would you choose and why? Are there any obvious winners from this list? (or something else perhaps...) <comment><USER2> They're all too big, honestly. 40" wont get you good PPI to stare at 4K all day. Max 32" I'd say.</comment>


Designing For Social Traction: Solving 3 Big problems of Social Software - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gridbag.com/designing-for-social-traction-solving-3-big-p

<comment><USER2> This is an excellent summary on this topic. It's also big and imposing :-)

Probably the best thing I got from it was the summary of how different sites (Posterous, Tumblr, et al) keep a "conversation" going about how far you are through the early stages of the site, making recommendations about what to do next. It's neat to see different sites doing this, and I don't think there's an existing standard method.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't agree more. A very clear and well formed approach.</comment></comment>


RFC 7725 – An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7725 <comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant Life of Brian reference in the explanation example:

> _This request may not be serviced in the Roman Province of Judea due to the > Lex Julia Majestatis, which disallows access to resources hosted on servers > deemed to be operated by the People 's Front of Judea._

Are there well known websites making use of this status code already? I know reddit uses it for content blocked in some countries (Germany & Russia) [0][1]

0: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ChillingEffects/comments/3gw9g1/201...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChillingEffects/comments/3gw9g1/20150813_ip_blocks/)

1: [https://i.imgur.com/r3GVPfu.png](https://i.imgur.com/r3GVPfu.png)

 _Edit:_ As someone points out in the Reddit thread, 451 is not a coincidence [2]

> _The title refers to the temperature that Bradbury asserted to be the > autoignition temperature of paper._

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451)</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome Extension to create links to any part of a web page - <AUTHOR> https://www.aavshr.dev/projects/anchor <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, this is a prototype of a chrome extension I built over a weekend to create links to any part of a webpage.

There are still a few bugs in its current state and does not work entirely for all websites. I only picked up javascript recently (you can tell from the source code) and would love some suggestions/contributions.

Source: [https://github.com/aavshr/anchor](https://github.com/aavshr/anchor) Backend Source: [https://github.com/aavshr/anchor- backend](https://github.com/aavshr/anchor-backend)</comment>


Machine Learning Gender and Racial Biases from Language - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robotics/artificial-intelligence/ai-learns-gender-and-racial-biases-from-language <comment><USER2>
      The idea of AI picking up the biases within the language
      texts it trained on may not sound like an earth-
      shattering revelation. But the study helps put the nail
      in the coffin of the old argument about AI automatically
      being more objective than humans

Was... _anyone_ arguing that a model trained on a natural-language corpus would be entirely unbiased? What a magnificent strawman.

<comment><USER3> Google has argued that for years.

<comment><USER2> Where?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Breaking News: Algortihm designed to learn how humans use words learns how humans use words

<comment><AUTHOR> Touche

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> this NLP might be missing perceptions on parts of different groups of listeners. Different cultures may correlate language and race / gender differently

</comment><comment><USER6> Arrgh. Where is the link to the paper?

</comment><comment><USER7> First off, this isn't AI, it's machine learning.

> The idea of AI picking up the biases within the language texts it trained on > may not sound like an earth-shattering revelation

That's an understatement.

> But the study helps put the nail in the coffin of the old argument about AI > automatically being more objective than humans

Again, this isn't AI, and anyone with knowledge on the subject has always known that a traditional machine learning algorithm is only as good as its training data.

This also seems like a case where the researchers are simply unhappy with the results they received, rather than being able to show that the results are wrong.

<comment><USER8> This is how I like to think about it: the term _Artificial Intelligence_ is like artificial sweetener. It isn't sugar.

Machine Learning is _artificial intelligence_. When / if computers (or whatever they evolve in to) actually become _intelligent_ we'll have to drop the the word _artificial_.

Artificial, adjective:

1\. made by human skill; produced by humans (opposed to natural ). eg. artificial flowers.

2\. imitation; simulated; sham. eg. artificial vanilla flavouring.

3\. lacking naturalness or spontaneity; forced; contrived; feigned. eg. an artificial smile.

<comment><USER9> _Artificial_ in this context means "man-made", not "fake" or something. If we create intelligence, it is artificial intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The word 'bias' implies that the belief is incorrect. If the information is correct, it shouldn't be called a bias. It is simply a conclusion.

For example: "It also tended to associate "woman" and "girl" with the arts rather than with mathematics."

This is a correct and valid conclusion. In all societies, women tend to engage in artistic activity more, while men engage in mathematical/systemic study more. (This is even more true in places which are more free like Scandinavia, than it is in less-free places like Iran. Iran has more women in tech studies.)

An AI learning this is a success, not a 'bias'. It doesn't mean no women should study these things; it's not a statement about what _should_ be at all. It's simply an observation about the physical configuration of the world.

II

What these researchers are really discovering is that AI thinks without morals, and that this reveals the barriers that their own moral convictions and ideologies have placed in their minds.

An AI has no fear, so it's not afraid of reaching contrarian or politically- incorrect conclusions. It doesn't know social pressure, so it doesn't know to manipulate its impressions to follow the socially-acceptable beliefs. It doesn't know about the Overton window. It has no concept that its conclusions might lead to some undesirable outcome. It doesn't do motivated reasoning. It doesn't understand the concept of _should_. It simply describes the world (through the lens of the data available to it). What they've discovered is not that the AI is becoming biased, but that they are biased since they're not willing to reach morally-forbidden facts.

Their own bias appears because they've signed up to the reprehensible idea that the only reason people should be treated equally is because people are the same. Which is absurd. The correct morality here is: people are different and we should treat them equally anyway.

III

"To understand the possible implications, one only need look at the Pulitzer Prize finalist "Machine Bias" series by ProPublica that showed how a computer program designed to predict future criminals is biased against black people."

Of course it is. Black people are more likely to commit crimes. Therefore, like being male or being young, being black is a factor that one can apply predictively to an estimate of someone's likelihood to commit crimes. This is definitely true, it's just that people 'mindkill' themselves into not seeing it because most people are willing to blind their minds to fit into a socially-accepted morality and thus achieve personal benefit. What's the point in believing the truth if it doesn't benefit you?

Of course, being male or young are both just as inherent and unchangeable as being black. But nobody is going to complain when the machine realizes that youth and maleness predict criminality. We all know which facts are permissible and which facts are immoral, and thus forbidden.

Religion never went away, it just became non-theistic. If medieval Christians invented and AI that concluded there was no God, you can be sure they'd want to 'fix' its 'bias' too.

IV

Language lesson of the day!

Fact: A piece of knowledge which is morally acceptable. Bias: A piece of knowledge which is morally unacceptable.

<comment><USER11> > Black people are more likely to commit crimes.

Given the existing biases is the systems involved, black people are more likely to be identified by the existing biased system as having committed a crime, because they are more likely to be investigated if suspected (or even without a reasonable basis I of suspicion) of having committed a crime, more likely to be prosecuted given the same degree of evidence, more likely to be convicted given the same degree of evidence, and (as a result of all that) more likely to have a criminal history which subjects them to additional law enforcement scrutiny and systematic bias on top of that more directly due to race.

The degree, if any, to which black people are more likely to _actually_ commit crimes is difficult to tease out since all statistics on this area are affected, directly and indirectly, by these systematic biases.

(On top of that, there's the bias from the fact that things have been made crimes, or more sever crimes, _specifically_ , in whole or in part, because black people were, at the time, more likely to do them.)

<comment><USER12> Why are people so adamant in denying the potential that blacks on average may in fact commit more crimes? Even considering that the system is biased, is it really so difficult to accept that there really IS more crime in poor, minority neighborhoods?

It is as if those who kowtow to political correctness don't understand that bias can exist in both directions, and when it comes to making decisions that affect society in general, both types of bias cause problems.

<comment><USER11> > Why are people so adamant in denying the potential that blacks on average > may in fact commit more crimes?

If you read GP again, you'll note I never sent the _potential_ at all. I just note that all the bases for the claim—made in the post it responds to—that that is a _fact_ and not a _potential_ rests on data affected by known sources of bias whose magnitude cannot be independently measured and corrected for.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Professional audio on Linux will never work - <AUTHOR> http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4720189&cid=46088321

<comment><USER2> This reminds me, the other day the Slashdot iPod review got dragged out and yet the really strong opinions I remember (though who knows how much was elaborate trolling) was that Open Source was never going to work, e.g. "how will the programmers get paid" etc.

Yet here we are now, living in that future utopia where even large majorities of popular proprietary software and services is based upon Open Source code.</comment>


Ask YC: Where can I get a list of YC funded companies? - <AUTHOR>

I think there are about 100 of them. <comment><USER2> I don't think there's any public list of non-launched YC companies, but the ones which have launched are listed at <http://ycombinator.com/faq.html> .

</comment><comment><USER3> The latest number I heard is 102, but I think it's more, if you consider adding the latest round that included divvyshot.

You will find some here: <http://ycombinator.com/faq.html> at the first question. And you will find some here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator>

Also consider searching TechCrunch for ycombinator, as they write about the startups that's funded by YC.</comment>


Microsoft now claims that Linux falls short solely on server-side - <AUTHOR> They said: "However, sometimes your solution is focused solely on server-side operating systems, and that's where Linux falls short." (http://www.whymicrosoft.com/Pages/linux.aspx)<p>I only remembered a joke:<p>"Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. "No" is the answer!"<p>(via nixCraft - https://www.facebook.com/nixcraft/photos/a.431194973560553.114666.126000117413375/911435992203113/?type=1&theater) <comment><USER2> Their statements about Windows being more secure than Linux were also pretty hilarious.

<comment><USER3> Why?

Windows 2008/R2/2012 has really great defaults (secure by default), automatic updates, everything external disabled by default, and tons of under-the-hood improvements to mitigate unknown vulnerabilities.

With Windows Core the attack surface shrinks even smaller.

In the last few years I cannot think of any automatic malware spreading via Windows Server 2008 or onwards but I can think of several instances where services running on Linux distributions have been impacted to different degrees.

The Linux kernel is definitely ahead of the Windows kernel both in terms of security but also in terms of technology. However the Linux operating system (as in "normal" Linux distributions) are highly inconsistent and many have insecure-by-default configurations (like Apache/PHP/MySQL running out-of-the- box, but often with an insecure PHP and updates not installing for several more days automatically).

I'd say that the statement that Windows Server is more secure than Linux (operating system) is likely more true than it is false. But frankly a lot of people in the Linux space are so arrogant that they don't really take security as seriously as they could. Even with mounting reports of infected Linux servers spreading malware, spam, or being used to launch DDoS attacks.

Are Linux servers as big of a threat as insecure Windows clients? No. No they're not. But that is largely a numbers game, there are maybe 150+ Windows clients for every 1 Linux server. But if we're talking server Vs. server, Linux would likely be the number #1 most commonly infected in 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ha! Tweeting that Microsoft joke. Hadn't heard that before.</comment>


What is this link? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/fizzy/admin <comment><USER2> Perhaps it was meant to be a testing endpoint and got skipped while removing and releasing?

</comment><comment><USER3> How did you end up there?</comment>


NASA's Puffin Is Way Cooler Than a Jetpack - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/01/nasa-puffin/ <comment><USER2> Cool. It looks like it would be a big strain on the neck, having to hold your head up like that, but on the other hand, it's only for short flights...

But the real questions is: how do you see the ground while you're landing, if you're facing up?

<comment><USER3> This needs some VR goggles. Not only would they solve the neck strain problem, but could assist non-professional pilots with landing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's with the FedEx plug at the beginning of the video? Is it just to make it look "airporty"?

</comment><comment><USER5> I disagree. Jet Packs are way cooler.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you think every schmuck will be able to handle one of these, forget it. This is what I always think of when I see a "lol flying car!" story.

Lacking door-to-door autopilot, you'll still have to take all the usual pilot's training. Remember that idiot who nearly ran into you today because he/she was texting and trying to drink from a Starbucks cup? People have a hard enough time handling two dimensions--but when you screw up piloting your Puffin, you don't get a fender bender, you get two 1,000 lb objects dropping from 4,000 feet into my back yard.

</comment><comment><USER7> This isn't really new. It looks very similar to the Convair Pogo. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XFY>

</comment><comment><USER8> Not a fan of the head-first approach. Crashes and the aforementioned neck strain.

On the other hand, I would imagine it would be possible to construct an L-shape sitting cockpit that could rotate in relation to the engines so that the pilot would be head-up in both takeoff/landing and flight.

</comment><comment><USER9> My sense is that the Osprey is pretty complex due to it's VTOL features. I don't quite see how this is any less complicated, I wonder how reliably this could be made to operate.

<comment><USER10> The entire rotor assembly on the Osprey pivots. On the Puffin it is fixed and the entire craft changes its orientation between takeoff, flight, and landing. Whether that makes it more reliable or easier to operate, I have no idea.

<comment><USER11> It sure does. Changing the orientation of the Osprey's rotors must subject the whole assembly to some nasty forces.

<comment><USER9> Ah, good points here guys. I had not thought of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is a federal agency developing this? How is this in the national interest?

<comment><USER13> NASA has a long history of working on jet packs. Initially these were proposed for hopping around the moon:

<http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/RPIF/beta/>

<comment><USER12> Regardless of precedents I see no justification for taxpayer dollars.

<comment><USER3> Umm... flying mech commandos? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No bugs in my teeth? That definitely makes jetpack > puffin. Electric jetpacks are a way off, though, so it definitely wins there.

Free protein!</comment>


Linus' blog: Happiness is a warm SCM - <AUTHOR> http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/06/happiness-is-warm-scm.html <comment><USER2> I found his example rant informative:

[http://www.mail-archive.com/dri- email@example.com/...](http://www.mail-archive.com/dri- email@example.com/msg39091.html)

<comment><USER3> Nifty. Not at all what I want to use Git for, but nifty nonetheless. I like seeing my mistakes and reasons for doing things.

<comment><USER4> > I like seeing my mistakes and reasons for doing things.

I suppose the point of Linus' rant is: would you want other people to see your mistakes? (goes without saying you would want them to see your reasons for doing things.)

<comment><USER3> I would love to! The other day I was trying to figure out why a particular bit of code was added to libpoppler, but the author had compressed all his commits into one massive 800 line commit. Totally useless to me.

<comment><USER5> There's different "mistakes" that can be made. Unnecessarily squashing (what you described, in git terms) is a mistake, but not really of the kind Linus is talking about. He's talking about things like "I committed a couple of commits, then took a different approach with a couple of more commits, then realized that didn't work and went for a different answer, then took a couple of commits to clean up the resulting debug code". There's no reason to leave all the temporary debug code (as opposed to permanent logging code) in there, or to leave the abortive approach in the history for others. Extra stuff like that just imposes cognitive gain for no value, in general. (If you have a specific case where that's not true, go for it, but you're probably still better off just dropping some comments into the final code.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>