No Matter What the FBI Says, Compromising Encryption Is a Technical Issue - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/no-matter-what-fbi-says-compromising-encryption-technical-issue <comment><USER2> Federal agencies didn't flag the San Bernardino killers despite the fact they apparently considered an earlier attack, had connections with known radicalized persons, was radicalized for many years and other serious warning signs.

Having access to encrypted communications is just going add a lot more information to monitor and thus more noise to filter out for federal agencies, who are already bad at catching the red flags.

The answer here isn't MORE surveillance, it's more TARGETED surveillance ie devising much more precise warning patterns to look out for. For example, the San Bernardino killers apparently took out a massive loan and emptied their bank accounts prior the attack.

<comment><USER3> >For example, the San Bernardino killers apparently took out a massive loan and emptied their bank accounts prior the attack.

This happens quite frequently when people are going to make a big purchase or pay off another loan with worse terms. It's not as much of a red flag as you would think.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but taking out a massive loan in coordination with other signs, like buying guns, would start to paint a better picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain to me how a proposed government backdoor into encryption would work? Is every creator of encryption software supposed to build in a master key and hand that over to the FBI?

I ask this in all seriousness, as I cannot fathom how such a system would be implemented, even disregarding the Constitution and the willingness of those creating the software.

<comment><USER6> "Is every creator of encryption software supposed to build in a master key and hand that over to the FBI?"

Including, presumably, not only programmers who're not under the jurisdiction of the FBI, but also programmers for whom the FBI is genuinely "their and their nation's adversary"?

Reminds me of a recent tweet: Homeland Security's new "House Un-American Mathematics Committee": [https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/67290345222221824](https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/67290345222221824)

<comment><USER7> That link 404's

<comment><USER6> Ahhh, sorry. Here: [https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/67290345222221824...](https://twitter.com/puellavulnerata/status/672903452222218241)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "It turns out that somehow, Comey believes that the question of whether to ban encryption without backdoors is "not a technical issue." He told the senators that "plenty of companies" provide services online while still maintaining the ability to read their users' data, and that "plenty" of smartphone manufacturers can unlock encrypted phones. Thus, he concluded, "it's a business model question.""

If you read between the lines a bit, it's clear that what they want is encryption to/from cloud hubs where data is stored using escrowed keys (a.k.a. server-side "encryption"). Many services already more or less do this, so the goal would be to push the entire market in this direction and then eventually to outlaw or otherwise restrict systems that do not work in this way.

This fits in with the dumb terminal / mainframe model of the Internet being pushed to varying degrees by most of the tech giants these days and with Amazon's vision for IoT.

It's stupid and naive to claim that there is some technical barrier to what the FBI wants. It's actually quite easy if we apply a bit of government pressure to push the Internet even further toward the "put everything in the cloud" direction it's already going. Anything in the cloud is almost by definition backdoored.

<comment><USER9> > _Anything in the butt is almost by definition backdoored_

Pretty much. The TLAs are whining because they got used to wholesale vacuuming of butt data, and now the pendulum is poised to swing the other way.

IMHO Apple is merely poking a hornet's nest, because it will be quite easy for USG to force them to modify their centrally-distributed software. The only truly defensible position we have is Free software. Whether there's enough interest/money to support its wide scale adoption is one of the major questions of our time.

<comment><USER10> Not so easy when there is no law requiring them to do so. In iMessage, Apple still has the keys but the forward secrecy is enough to exclude it from CALEA because of the way the "encryption" exception was designed. This of course caused FBI to complain, which among other example of encryption made encryption backdoors a political issue again in the first place.

<comment><USER9> It's USG. Creating new authoritarian laws, especially indirectly applied through companies, is basically _what it does_.

<comment><USER10> Which reminds me that CALEA, DMCA and the like was passed in the 1990s, when not as many people was using the Internet as today. SOPA/PIPA was passed in a time when everyone for example is using Google, which is why the protests was so effective. In this case, such a law requiring backdoors would be likely unconstitutional (it was tried in the 1990s too), which is why FBI is resorting to other methods.

<comment><USER9> I itnerpret the trend the opposite way - lots of people using the Internet, but having no clue how software works and being utterly disempowered with respect to what their devices do. In the 90s, it was the entire Internet community was solidly against surveillance backdoors. Now the majority figures the activities shown on primetime propaganda are what is required to keep them "safe".

> _such a law requiring backdoors would be likely unconstitutional_

Lol, as if that means anything when all ten test cases from the Bill of Rights are failing! I can see such a law being easily gavel-stamped since it's regulating interstate commercial activity.

<comment><USER10> But the number of people using the Internet was relatively small, so nothing has changed really. The only difference is that the majority began using the Internet in the first place.

<comment><USER9> Depends on how one perceives democratic force working.

I don't view the absolute number of calls to congress as important as unstated assumptions about what is "unamerican".

Back in the 90s if you asserted that the government was tapping everything, you were called a conspiracy nut. Because we had a shared societal belief that it was off the table in a free society. This has now been broken.

A politician endorsing a surveillance system that would make East Germany jealous would have been ridiculed by the media. Now they're ridiculed for _not_ supporting such totalitarianism.

<comment><USER10> That was caused by 9/11 though not the increasing use of the Internet. Which also reminds me that the US-EU safe harbor dates back to 2000.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but the cause of it doesn't really matter. The net effect is I feel we're in a worse position for this battle than the 90s. Perhaps the 90s are just safely in the past, but this time I feel this issue will be with us until the tyrants finally get their way, or USG collapses.

And Snowden's disclosures, while great for exposing the conspiracy, serves to normalize the surveillance. Very few people are switching away from butt services as a result, a tacit endorsement of the status quo.

FWIW, if you watch things from before 11sep2001 there's still constant mentions of terrorism. "911" is more of a pretend watershed so we can tell ourselves "everything changed" when in reality the panopticon has been building for far longer.

<comment><USER10> I hope that Bernie wins, and that will help at least as a first step toward change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I watched Comey's entire hearing today. The article here is accurate, but I think that it takes an strongly opinionated view of Comey's guarded and yet honest responses.

Comey knows that the solution to this problem won't be solved with legislation, which is why he isn't going to expend his energy trying to accomplish what the EFF suggests as a solution. One good thing to consider is that the EFF and the FBI both recognize that encryption can be an evil thing and that actions need to be taken to protect the citizens and the government that serves them.

With respect to the debate I'm seeing here in the comments, it seems like, to me, that there is a considerable amount of misunderstanding. What was discussed today wasn't the issue of mass surveillance, but of how or even IF these companies that offer secure communication services could aid in FBI investigations. That is both a technical and a non-technical issue. Comey calls it a non-technical issue simply because he thinks the solution ought to be left to the technical people at each company, and that in principle, regardless of encryption strength, these companies should offer a way to help the FBI in these exceptional instances. I think people here are seeing one or the other side and not realizing that Comey is aware of both.

<comment><USER12> _One good thing to consider is that the EFF and the FBI both recognize that encryption can be an evil thing and that actions need to be taken to protect the citizens and the government that serves them._

It's not a useful classification. Encryption can be used for evil, just as everything else in the world can.

 _Comey calls it a non-technical issue simply because he thinks the solution ought to be left to the technical people at each company, and that in principle, regardless of encryption strength, these companies should offer a way to help the FBI in these exceptional instances._

There's a difference between leaving it to technical people to help, and forcing technical people to help. Legislation is the route to the latter.

There is no way for technical people to help against a good cryptosystem unless that cryptosystem has been subverted from the start. This is the new world we live in, and it's up to law enforcement to either recognize that fact, or weaken American encryption relative to the rest of the world, with predictable consequences.

EDIT: "The Horror of a 'Secure Golden Key'" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8428632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8428632)

<comment><USER13> Everything can be bad, even water can be bad. You need it to live, but then my America, sadly tortured people with it (waterboarding).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If we're going to have an argument over who needs to change their "business model" so the FBI's anti-terrorism mission is easier, gun manufacturers and sellers should be at the top of the list, not software companies.

<comment><USER15> That is the same sort of silliness as banning software but applied to hardware instead. Furthermore, many terrorist attacks have been done using knives and machetes such as the May 22, 2013 Woolwich attack.

<comment><USER16> If your only goal is to prevent _terrorism_ , sure.

Guns should be reconsidered because they kill so many people every single day in "normal" violence. It's sad that it takes a bunch of affluent white people getting killed for us to have a discussion on gun control.

<comment><USER17> Give me a break. Gun control being discussed because there was a mass shooting, not because of their race or socioeconomic status.

<comment><USER18> Why does America care about this shooting in particular? It's a mass shooting _of white people_.

<comment><USER17> That's a baseless assumption. America discussed gun control following the shootings in Charleston, S.C., as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > the FBI will rely on backroom pressure to make companies compromise > encryption, or even eliminate business models it doesn't like.

What does this imply for FOSS? I can't really see the feds organizing a sit down with the maintainers of the hot new crypto algo repo hosted on Github.

<comment><USER20> In the US, publication of source code is free speech protected by the first amendment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States)

<comment><USER21> Site note: publication/distribution of runnable binary code isn't necessarily 1st amendment protected. There aren't any laws[0] about it, and there haven't been any federal court decisions[0] over it.

[0]that I know of. IANAL.</comment></comment></comment>


40billion.com: Get funded by friends, family & fools - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.org/2008/08/02/40billioncom-get-funded-by-friends-family-fools/ The 3 F's stand for friends, family and of course: fools. The FFF fund is often overlooked as a viable option for getting funding. There are some drawbacks to getting money from these groups of people and one of them is getting everybody organized. <comment><USER2> awesome, this was an idea i was considering doing since it was missing in the space. i hope this is well done, as it could mean good things.</comment>


Is Google App Inventor A Gateway Drug Or A Doomsday Device For Android? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/11/google-app-inventor/

<comment><USER2> What a shiny toy! I always loved Basic, Logo, Apple's old Cocoa programming language (the visual app creator, not the framework), and Lego Mindstorms. Some of these environments were better for actual hacking than others, but they were all amusing.

It saddens me to see such a cool toy presented in terms of platform politics, and to see people arguing that allowing more people to write dodgy programs is _bad_. My goodness, I personally wrote a lot of dodgy programs back in school.

<comment><USER3> I agree. As much as people complain about what Visual Basic did for application development, to a fifth-grader the ability to create a GUI with a mouse is pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's what Visual Basic was for Windows - it allowed hordes of developers to write GUI applications for the first time.

It's both. A gateway drug and a doomsday device.

It reminds me of Scratch and Borland's ObjectVision. The educational slant is probably a preemptive strike against Microsoft's attemps to capture the higher educational market through free tools and bundles. Seems a natural move.

<comment><USER5> If its like VB for Windows, then it's still good news. But god help us if it's like Frontpage :|

<comment><USER4> Not sure. VB ruined a lot of programmers. I am not sure I would have survived VB if I hadn't had a proper intro to OOP with Smalltalk and Actor.

<comment><USER6> I'd be willing to argue that VB widened the pool of potential programmers more than it ruined existing programmers. I started Windows development in VB, and I moved past it in a year or two, but as a 14 year-old, I probably never would have started if my only option had been C++/MFC.

VB has a valuable place in the programming pipeline, because it helps the novice see his programs in terms of what he's used to interacting with. Starting him there lets him get a taste for it, and when he runs into a problem that VB (or AppInventor) can't handle, he says "okay, how can I solve this problem?" and moves onto the more powerful (and more esoteric) stuff. I wouldn't touch VB6 for real-world applications development today, but I readily recognize the role it played in getting me to where I am as a developer today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doomsday Device? Really Techcrunch? Because all of those WYSIWYG sites were doomsday devices for the web, right?

It's not like the app store (on Android or iOS) is currently composed of nothing but spectacular apps. Most of the apps in both app stores are pretty crappy.

Recommendation is already a very important way that people find apps. I had an iPhone for a year, and I basically never blindly searched the app store. Maybe for a magic 8-ball app. But all the major apps I used were recommended to me by friends with iPhones, mentioned on some blog I read, etc.

And even people that I know that occasionally browse apps browse the "top" pages, which filters out the crap (more-or-less).

Also, it's _Google_ that helped people sort through the crap on the web. If it really becomes a problem, I'm sure they have some people who could develop algorithms to make the good Android apps rise to the top of searches.

<comment><USER8> The android market is a much smaller ecosystem than the web. If most of the apps there are already useless, as the writer says, this will just exacerbate the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Visual Basic got me into programming in middle-school. The way you suck the children in, is to give them a tool like this, with almost instant efficacy, it allows them to grasp that their ideas can be made real, and that it is not as impossible as they might have thought, then you should promptly give them a problem that VisualBasic/Scratch/Inventor cannot solve.

</comment><comment><USER10> @rbanffy, you and I are on the same page with this one. I just commented in the other section with something along the same lines:

"I saw this on twitter this morning and noticed a glaring similarity in the GUI design and that of MIT's SCRATCH programming language geared at teaching children how to program. They both utilize the concept of visually displaying code segments as "building blocks" which fit together like puzzle pieces to give a visual representation of whether or not code will work.

I commend the approach to get more parties interested in programming and mobile web application development. Perhaps this opens up a whole new world of potential for getting mobile applications development into the classroom at a very young age. On the downside, we might end up with an influx of even crappier Android applications in the market. I already have a hard enough time filtering through the crapplications as it is.

Here's the link to SCRATCH for those unaware:"

<http://scratch.mit.edu/>

<comment><USER11> 'They both utilize the concept of visually displaying code segments as "building blocks" which fit together like puzzle pieces to give a visual representation of whether or not code will work.'

Sounds like Lego Mindstorms as well.

<comment><USER12> Things like Lego Mindstorms help kids move on to the next step - maybe Visual Basic or Python. No one starts off with programming, it's usually WYSIWYG or similar paradigms.

<comment><USER11> "No one starts off with programming, it's usually WYSIWYG or similar paradigms."

Or Excel.

People do the weirdest things with it, folks who would be perplexed if you suggested that their improvised use of a spreadsheet made them a hacker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Actually, I see two very important use cases that don't seem to be coming up.

1) This should allow devs to get to something resembling a MVP quickly to validate a new idea.

2) I think this will make android the preferred platform for mobile vertical apps., the kind of one-off solutions that are not profitable to bigger players.

<comment><USER14> It could make for an excellent live interface prototyping tool as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is Techcrunch a sensationalist tabloid or last bastion of quality journalism?

<comment><USER16> Techcrunch is Gawker for people interested in startups.

Incidentally, this quote from Nick Denton applies to TC as much as it does Gawker:

"We don't seek to do good. We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention."

[http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/07/with-ad-revenue- up-35-gawke...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/07/with-ad-revenue-up-35-gawker- media-returns-to-pageview-bonuses-and-plans-checkbook-journalism/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh God. Let the crapstorm begin...</comment>


Apply HN: Mechanical Mind – AI Assisted Engineering as a Service - chroem- We are developing software which automates much of the design work for engineering problems in structural mechanics, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics.  Computational topology design and optimization allows engineers to offload work to a computer, boosting their productivity.  These techniques produce nonobvious designs which outperform those created manually.  Widespread adoption of this technology will allow major advances in fields such as transportation, power generation, and aerospace.
Despite the power of topology optimization, it has very little adoption in industry.  We believe that this is due to large barriers to entry, in the form large capital overhead from very expensive software licenses and the cost of HPC hardware.  This is where Mechanical Mind comes in.
We plan to bundle our topology optimization software with compute services offered through AWS in a simple pay-as-you-go format.  Users will be able to parameterize their design problems via a CAD plugin, then simply upload the compute job to our servers.  Upon completion, the result is returned and the user is billed.
Typically, most topology optimization is based on a continuous approach, however we tackle this problem with a new discrete combinatoric method.  This simplifies our solution search space and allows us to infer information about what sorts of solutions exist where.  Also, as quantum computers mature, this solution approach directly maps to qubits, allowing near instantaneous solving by quantum methods.
Here's a simple proof of concept demo where a set of optimal cooling fins are designed to minimize the core temperature of a thermal body.  Note that since this was run on a consumer laptop, the breadth of the search was limited for performance reasons.  With more computational power, the quality of the solutions will improve.
https://imgur.com/a/T08nA
Any feedback or questions are appreciated!  I'll be dropping in and out respond to them as they come. <comment><AUTHOR> How big is the market? And how easily users will switch given if they are comfortable with the existing software?

<comment> chroem- Excellent questions!

Engineeing services have 167 billion dollars of annual revenue in the US, and 773 billion globally. Because this software augments engineers' productivity while simultaneously improving the quality of their work, we expect to be able to achieve an appreciable percentage of that revenue number at full maturity.

Current adoption of topology optimization software in industry is negligible for the reasons mentioned earlier. Only the largest players in the market have access to it, and even then it's only applied to a limited domain of problems. Our goal is to bring this technology into wider adoption in industry by making it more financially accessible. We are aiming at small and medium sized engineering firms.

We also plan to integrate this software with the CAD platforms which our users are already familiar with, by offering a selection of plugins for these existing software packages.

<comment><USER2> First, I really like your startup, best of luck with it :)

>> Only the largest players in the market have access to it, and even then it's only applied to a limited domain of problems

In that case, why it's applied only to a limited domain ? It's not a financial issue, the fixed costs are already paid ? Or in most cases capacity if full and it would require expensive purchases ?

<comment> chroem- Thanks!

Most licensing is done on a per-seat basis for existing solutions. Additonally, the firms capable of swallowing the initial capital cost tend to be quite large and segmented into multiple divisions, e.g. Boeing or General Electric. Different divisions have different priorities within the company, different operating budgets, etc. Often a division's revenue won't be enough to justify the investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea and even cooler business model. In terms of design and product planning, I'm curious about how many prospective users you've talked to and what pain points they identified. Have you demo'd your prototype for any of them?

<comment> chroem- Absolutely! One of the other issues that hasn't been mentioned already but seems to come up a lot is the relative lack of different solution constraints available in these existing packages, preventing the use of optimization beyond parts intended for a limited set manufacturing processes. It is _extremely_ difficult to create solution constraints from a software development perspective when working with a continuous solution approach, and yet it is trivial to do so with a discrete approach. This gives us a major advantage and allows us to generalize our software for more engineering problems, letting us reach wider adoption.

Most of what we have right now would still be considered in the "bench test" phase, but we're making progress towards something which could be demonstrated in industry. Our primary focus at the moment is making it easier to import and export CAD geometry to and from the optimizer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have evidence that your target customers are willing to go for a pay- as-you-go model? My personal experience with companies in the design and engineering space is that they hate non-fixed costs for tools and are generally willing to shell out larger sums of money up-front to "own" a tool (or contracted tier of use) outright rather than worrying about how much it will cost them over time as they create more designs/simulations.

<comment> chroem- Good question!

"Pay-as-you-go" is definitely open to interpretation, and whether we offer billing on a per-job, monthly, yearly, or contractual basis is still something that we're discussing. In the end, we're probably going to go with a mixture of these options, though right now our primary focus is on building a good product.

Most engineering software is already licensed on an annual basis, so recurring billing is definitely quite standard within engineering software tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How will users trust your results, particularly in safety critical applications?

What are the main limitations of your approach?

How do you ensure that the parts you generate can actually be fabricated?

How do you plan to find your customers?

<comment> chroem- Good questions!

We use standard and well proven simulation techniques that have existed since the first half of the 20th century. We are however also verifying mesh convergence on each compute job, as well as verifying the output of the solver.

Topology optimization is inherently very computationally intensive by nature, though thanks to advances in computing that's becoming less of an issue.

A big component of topology optimization is the application of solution constraints. Users simply choose their manufacturing process, and then the software will mark all solutions that can't be manufactured by that process as invalid. So for example, when optimizing an injection molded part with a 2-piece mold, the optimizer will throw out any solutions which feature overhangs or internal cavities.

We're planning on riding the current buzz surrounding AI and automation in general. We plan to launch a social media campaign highlighting the effectiveness of topology optimization by comparing the performance of parts designed by our software versus those designed by a human competitor. Once we gain our initial userbase, growth should be straightforward once our business partners prove the advantage of using our software in industry.

<comment><USER5> How big is your team and what are their backgrounds?

Do you have a specific industry/customer you'll target first? Are they already using engineering services firms for this work, and can you do it cheaper/faster?

Are they really on social media? I would have thought that these people would be more likely found on a trade-show floor. This sounds like a pretty sales- heavy market, how will you get past the relationships a lot of incumbents will have built up over time?

Or is your plan to go after new entrants / give access to firms who want it but can't get it yet?

How do you prove your part is better than the human designed one, what's the key metric for 'better' for your customers ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

For the record, I think this is a really cool idea and probably the future of a lot of the downstream end of mechanical/process engineering, but execution is going to be everything.

I'm working with a lot of optimization right now in computer vision applications, and we're seeing the compute restrictions come down pretty quickly around this stuff too. It would be nice to have a general optimization engine somewhere I could just dump my problem into though.

<comment> chroem- Good questions and thanks for the feedback!

We're currently focused on the development of the software and getting a shippable product.

Our target demographic is small and medium sized engineering firms, who then go on to use our software assist in the design of products for their customers. The social media campaign is simply a fast, cheap means of establishing an initial presence despite being currently unknown. It will also allow us to reach smaller, more agile players quite well. But yes, our goal is simply to allow widespread adoption of this technology rather than uproot the current solutions being used in limited amounts by very large firms.

Essentially, we aim to do for topology optimization what Microsoft did for operating systems.

"Better" depends on the problem at hand, though typical measures of performance are cheaper, lighter, stronger, etc.

You're right that this is certainly a computationally expensive field, however our value proposition to potential customers makes up for that. Our business partners will have a clear market advantage, being able to produce higher performing designs while having greater engineer productivity than their competitors.

<comment><USER5> Suppose that for whatever reasons, automating mechanical design doesn't stick with your customers. What would you do then?

<comment> chroem- Good question.

Although that would quite frankly be pretty surprising, given the immense value we offer our customers, the next step would be to spin off the technology we've developed to an existing topology optimization software vendor. We're breaking new ground with this software, and some of our developments would undoubtedly be highly valuable to established companies in this area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Why won't the big guys don't attack that market today ? and why won't they attack you and win when you start show hints as a credible threat ? Is that because you use discrete search, hence have lower compute costs ?

<comment> chroem- Topology optimization is still a new and emerging technology and it's viewed somewhat as an exotic engineering technique. Most software vendors recognize this and figure it makes better business sense to charge exorbitant prices to major players while focusing on their core products elsewhere. Also these vendors have been in the business of selling software directly, rather than as a service, for nearly half a century now and have yet to enter into the software as a service market. It remains to be seen how willing or able these companies will be to pivot to a software as a service model, especially given the size and age of their codebases. (Ansys was designed for punchcards!)

Also, yes, we do go about solving things pretty differently from existing players. Other solutions use very old, very large finite element solvers which were never really intended for this sort of thing in the first place. Our discrete finite difference approach allows us to make a lot of performance optimizations and iterate very rapidly through the search space. For example, we don't need to remesh each iteration and we can also look more directly at the nature of the search space, letting us make better decisions about where to traverse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hello, is it something like Tosca by Dassault? Thank you and good luck.

<comment> chroem- Thank you!

It's analagous in that both are topology optimization solutions, however we are targeting a different market segment and also offering this as a networked service.

<comment><USER7> Why not just general analysis-as-a-service? Tosca is already a somewhat niche product within analysis software.

FE and such analysis programs cost $X000/seat, but selling relatively few seats. How will you make money selling 'per simulation' or hourly compared to licenses?

Definately an interesting concept

<comment> chroem- Thanks for the feedback!

Engineering analysis is already a pretty much solved problem. Topology optimization, however, has a lot of benefits that have yet to be realized, and it's much more well suited to the SaaS model because of how computationally intensive it is, since the analysis needs to be performed many thousands of times.

Because we outsource the capital cost of server hardware to AWS, we can scale linearly with demand which allows us to accept lower margins than our competitors. Our strategy is to make up for lower margins by reaching a much larger audience in industry than our competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pardon my ignorance of Computational topology design. You parameterize the problem and define a "cost" or "reward" as well somehow in the CAD plugin?

<comment> chroem- The short answer is yes.

Simulations via the finite difference method or finite volume method (depending on the problem type) are used to evaluate the fitness of each candidate solution on the server.

Using the plugin, the user can select from a number of objective functions, e.g. minimize mechanical stress in this area, maximize heat conduction in that area, via the native selection features of their CAD program. The plugin then performs meshing of the geometry, applies boundary conditions (e.g. forces, thermal loads), bundles it all together with information about the objective functions, and then ships it off to the server for evaluation and optimization. The user can also select from number of solution validity constraints to ensure compatibility with the manufacturing process that they have in mind.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: If your Back end is Elixir/Phoenix, what is your Front end Stack Like? - <AUTHOR> I love using Elixir/Phoenix to build APIs.  I find myself wishing for Elixir on the front end as well.  Have seriously considered ReasonML/React but have concerns about hiring if I ever expand.<p>For people that have a backend in Elixir/Phoenix, what is your front end stack like?  Do you like it? <comment><USER2> [https://phoenixframework.org/](https://phoenixframework.org/)</comment>


Exploit vendor drops Tor Browser zero-day on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/exploit-vendor-drops-tor-browser-zero-day-on-twitter/ <comment><USER2> The incentives to develop Tor exploits, target Tor users, and the attack surface of the browser could seem to make using it at all an exercise of poor judgement.

You basically add some anonymity but change your threat model to include an extremely high likelihood of injection attacks, and practically provoke every state level agency to monitor you, where they might have previously ignored you.

This was the pgp problem in the 90s where you would essentially be sending a tracer round across the network saying, "hey everyone, these two people are using encryption!"

Tor is a great effort and it gets people involved in privacy, but onion routing to exit nodes on the internet has diminishing efficacy, and I think everyone needs a clearer articulation of what and whose problem it solves.

<comment><USER3> > onion routing to exit nodes on the internet has diminishing efficacy

How about onion routing to peers? Tor provides a great backbone to do this yet so few applications employ it. I have ideas of course, but in general, it's very easy to have a desktop app on your home computer that fires up an onion service you can access from anywhere including mobile. Why more apps that don't have high bandwidth requirements don't use it I'll never know.

<comment><USER4> Tor could be the future protocol of the Internet of Things if big corporations wouldn't want to sell all your data.

[https://github.com/n8fr8/talks/blob/master/onion_things/Inte...](https://github.com/n8fr8/talks/blob/master/onion_things/Internet%20of%20Onion%20Things.pdf)

<comment><USER5> > _Tor could be the future protocol of the Internet of Things if big > corporations wouldn 't want to sell all your data_

I tried to use the Tor browser. The problem isn't "big corporations" but speed, latency and my MacBook fans spinning when I try to read the newspaper.

<comment><USER6> Are you sure that last one isn't the newspaper website itself? They're notorious for that and it would be surprising if you could actually push enough traffic (maybe ~1Gbps sustained?) through a Tor circuit to max out even one core on Tor itself.

<comment><USER7> Or Bitcoin mining...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised no one is discussing how unethical Zerodium is. Selling undisclosed vulnerabilities to the government for a tool designed to protect users from government oppression is about as unethical as you can be.

<comment><USER9> Can you really call TOR a tool to "protect users from government oppression" when the project itself is majority-funded by the US Department of Defense?

<comment><USER10> Yes you can.

You just need to accept that the US Government's agenda of regime change in Vietnam, China, Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Venezuela, North Korea, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey is the correct course of action of the continuing development of international human rights.

Also it helps to ignore any chance that there could a majority of the population who sees their government's action as necessary, just, or even acceptable. They're simply wrong and uninformed due to the oppression of their government. Western European liberal capitalist representative democracy is the only successful government which stands the test of time, we have nearly 200 years of data to support this, every other model by comparison simply doesn't work.

<comment><USER11> >You just need to accept that the US Government's agenda of regime change in Vietnam, China, Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Venezuela, North Korea, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey is the correct course of action

I would like to see some citations that the US is pursuing regime change in Vietnam, Egypt and Ukraine. The US is a direct supporter of both the Egyptian and Ukrainian governments and on fairly decent terms with the government of Vietnam.

>Also it helps to ignore any chance that there could a majority of the population who sees their government's action as necessary, just, or even acceptable. They're simply wrong and uninformed due to the oppression of their government.

How do you gauge the support for censorship within non-democracies like North Korea especially when opposition to censorship may be brutally punished? I'm not saying that the population of North Korea is anti-censorship, I don't know what they believe. I'm curious how you arrived at the conclusion that they are pro-censorship.

<comment><USER10> To your first point.

The goal of TOR is to subvert local attempts to control internet access. Generally this takes the form of censoring pro-western internet views as the internet in its more open access form the internet is a product of the western hegemony and its filled with praises for the western hegemony's polices and its propaganda.

Attempts made by Governments to censor the external internet, and attempts made by those outside of the government cannot escape the political elements of their actions. The goal is either the preservation of the current regime, or the change/overthrow of the regime/party/structure all political actions boil down this.

In light of these facts. The diplomatic relationships effectively serve as a short term tools, while projects like TOR are long term tools. The former exists for PR, and making concrete treaties. The later exists for building political divisions over longer periods of time which can trigger national instability and crises. See: Arab Spring.

        How do you gauge the support for censorship within non
        democracies like North Korea especially when opposition to
        censorship may be brutally punished?

DPRK regularly has multi-party elections so I think we could gauge how the people vote?

<comment><USER11> My first point was that you were saying the US is working to bring about regime change in Vietnam, Egypt and Ukraine. I suspect this is not the case for the reasons I gave, but I'd be willing to look at any evidence you have for this.

>DPRK regularly has multi-party elections so I think we could gauge how the people vote?

In a country such as North Korea where even minor disagreements with the government result in torture it seems unlikely to me that a non-secret ballot would be an effective way of gauging public views on controversial issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hrmm, can execute JS in FF's JSON viewer it seems. Still even with JS available there are more steps required to deanonymize.

> This Tor Browser exploit was acquired by Zerodium many months ago as a zero- > day and was shared with our government customers

Of course it was. The surface area of browser tech is just so large. We need a subset of html+css and a browser that only renders that with a really simple implementation (plus side, low bandwidth and terminal friendly). Not a full browser with features conditionally disabled. I haven't put enough thought into client-side scriptability so I'd punt on it for now, but I did put thought into other parts the other day [0]. Many onion services don't want all the features of the modern web anyways. The TBB can still exist for users of full sites of course.

0 - [https://github.com/cretz/software- ideas/issues/92](https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/92)

<comment><USER12> There's no need to go that far. Just do what Mozilla already did for legacy addons: kill them.

<comment><USER3> For this issue and for JS execution maybe. But there are so many features in modern browsers that the cat-and-mouse game of waiting for vulns to know you've hit all of the places for fingerprinting and other deanon is untenable. Couple that with extensions TBB bundles by default, e.g. https everywhere, and the surface area is even larger.

TBB has value for general browsing, but secure browsing needs to be by document format as much as implementation. Right now, the only reasonable option for onion services is to have their site browsed via the large, feature-rich bundle. Unfortunately, it requires a good bit of funding to build a document browsing platform of any size so I definitely understand the current practical approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Speculation: Zerodium has an 8.x RCE and burns the 7.x noscript bypass to get users to the new version. Added bonus of publicity.

<comment><USER14> That's an interesting explanation. "We have decided to disclose this exploit as it has reached its end-of-life and it's not affecting Tor Browser version 8 which was released last week. We also wanted to raise awareness about the lack (or insufficient) security auditing of major components bundled by default with Tor Browser and trusted by millions of users." is the explanation provided by Zerodium. End of life? Raise awareness? Sounds like shitty PR to me... There must be other explanations. Anyone has any idea, beyond the one already provided above?

<comment><USER15> Maybe there's a slight chance that they just want to undermine Tor and make people question its security.

But honestly, the parent's idea seems quite likely.

<comment><USER16> If they're in the business of buying and selling Tor browser zero-days, I'd think they shouldn't be undermining the adoption of the Tor browser...?

<comment><USER15> Some agency might want to do that. Could have just paid Zerodium to make such a strong statement.

<comment> loa-in-backup Cheaper than decrypting and mitm-ing all this traffic. Scare ordinary people away, more likely it is to random pick a valid target

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Strip the javascript engine out of the Tor browser, it has no reason to be there. It beats the purpose of using Tor if you're gonna allow Javascript to run.

It'd be much easier to just strip it all out, despite breaking site support in the process. Especially since Tor is usually used to access hidden services instead of the clearnet.

<comment><USER18> Firefox doesn't work without a JavaScript engine.

<comment><USER19> what about just toggling javascript.enabled ?

<comment><USER20> I can confirm that setting javascript.enabled to false would have prevented that bug in older versions.

I've always thought that the highest security setting would set it to false on its own, but apparently it does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, that's quite the vulnerability.

Several years ago, the FBI used JS-based identification scripts on an entire hidden-service hosting service to identify visitors.

[https://www.wired.com/2013/09/freedom-hosting- fbi/](https://www.wired.com/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/)

I wonder if it's already being used in the wild by governmental agencies.

<comment><USER22> The article says:

> This Tor Browser exploit was acquired by Zerodium many months ago as a zero- > day and was shared with our government customers.

It's a possibility that it has been used. I'm not sure if a government would buy an exploit and not use it before it's patched, unless they couldn't find any use for it. This exploit is different than the one the FBI used on the child porn site though. They'd need to combine it with something that can bypass the Tor Browser's socks5 setting. It would be a much bigger deal if they had an exploit that could do that.

<comment><USER23> > This exploit is different than the one the FBI used on the child porn site > though

I was wondering if this was related to the Playpen case. I thought the FBI refused to release any information on that (and subsequently charged were dropped against several of the people they arrested).

Who has discovered with was the Tor Brower's socks5 setting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Woah! I'm wondering - is this a side effect from disabling JavaScript using NoScript instead of using the "javascript:enabled" flag in about:config ?

Also, what's a good way to capture all HTTP traffic (after decryption) to find/analyze exploits like this being used against me?

</comment><comment><USER12> An important takeaway from this is that legacy addons in Firefox were dangerous. The API was too large and powerful for most developers to use safely.

Web Extensions were designed with security in mind and are much safer as a result.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is it ever valid/legal to accept multiple content-types like this? Or is this a regression bug that was introduced?

<comment><USER26> This isn't even "multiple content-types", the value is just malformed. The ";" would normally introduce parameters to the content-type, such as in "text/plain; charset=utf-8". Here, "/json" is just garbage.

It isn't allowed to have multiple content-types. (And it would make no sense.)

<comment><USER25> My thought was for a "mixed media" like multi-part form data. Maybe the response would be text/plain; text/json (or shortened because the first one is text/plain to just /json).

I will do mental gymnastics to try and figure out if something was meant to be a certain way or not.</comment></comment></comment>


Principle: Animated Designs - <AUTHOR> http://principleformac.com/

<comment><USER2> Love how the video starts with "Meeting? OK give me 5 minutes" and then shows how quick it is to create a prototype that even runs on hardware.</comment>


Games Physics: Basics and Implementation of Predictive Collision Detection - <AUTHOR> http://codetheory.in/game-physics-basics-and-implementation-of-predictive-collision-detection/

<comment><USER2> I've done a lot of amateur research into this field, but I am by no means an expert. Either way, I have a few comments. Let's take this line for example:

      ball.y += ball.vy;
      ball.vy += gravity;

It looks okay and seems to match the constant acceleration kinematics formulas, but what we're really doing is Euler integration, a first-order numerical integration method. It's pretty bad even for numerical integration, so we should use fourth-order Runge-Kutta (RK4) instead [1].

Taking a look at the collision detection, look at this line of code:

      ball.y = platform.y - ball.radius;

It works in the given situation, of course, but wait a minute - if the ball is moving at 5 cm/frame and, at that particular frame, happens to be 1 cm above the platform, then the ball will move only 1 cm/frame! This means that the velocity has apparently dropped to some nonsensical value! But we can't move it anywhere else, because we haven't checked for collisions yet, and this example also assumes that there is only one other platform the ball could collide with - if it was an acute corner of two platforms, then we're in a bit of a rough situation.

Lastly, in this particular line of code:

      ball.vy *= -0.4;

The value, 0.4, is called the coefficient of restitution. In his particular case, where the platform is immovable, it's fairly reasonable (if we had immovable objects in reality!) but obviously a more sophisticated collision will need to consider energy factors.

Conclusion? Collisions are hard [2]!

[1] <http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/integration-basics/>

[2] ftp://www.myphysicslab.com/beta/Collision-methods.html

<comment><USER3> I made a flash game at one point with gravity as the core feature, tuned the acceleration, etc, then added collision detection. The simplest way I found was to give everything a destination x, y first, then collision detection checked current to destination vector and updated destination with the results (drag, bounce, etc.). Destination then became current. The downside was the multi wall reflection caused n + 1 collision checks (n being number of collisions). This wasn't an issue for my game, but one with lots of collisions could have slowed it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The proper term for this type of collision detection is 'Continuous Collision Detection.' The math breaks down when you introduce rotation and you end up having to binary search to find when the collision will occur

<comment><USER5> For games, there are two different parts of the physics simulation: Integrator and collision detection/response.

The integrator uses a lot of math. It gives the positions of everything at time t and time t+D, where D is the timestep. The integrator functions under the assumption that no collisions occur.

The collision detection/response system takes as input the integrator's output, namely the positions of everything at time t, and at time t+D. It finds the earliest collision, say at time t+d where d < D, and does something about it -- usually changing position and velocity of the objects involved -- and then re-runs the integrator from time t+d to t+D, again stopping to process the earliest collision.

The important point is that your results are "good enough" if the collision detection just assumes objects travel in a straight line at constant velocity between their positions at t and t+D. The exact path is something that's confined to the integrator, and only linear paths exist in the simulation outside of it.

Of course there are various optimizations and corner cases you have to take care of -- like making sure colliding objects don't immediately register a second collision when the integrator is restarted, and bounding the number of collisions an object is allowed to experience per frame (to handle for example a ball resting in a V-shaped cup from alternating collisions between the two pieces of the cup thousands of times per frame).

And you can optimize since you don't actually have to re-run the integrator for objects that didn't change their physics state (position/velocity) due to the collision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've generally heard this referred to as "continuous collision detection" predictive implies we care about collisions in the future, where in fact, we just care about all collisions in the frame.

</comment><comment><USER7> Aye, decoupling the rendering (visual "frames") from the simulation speed and physics in general can be tricky!

I remember I wrote a fun little OpenGL game [1] some time ago, with flocking agents aka boids. I had a lot of fun making the creatures' "thinking speed" independent of the rendering speed and the simulation speed of the virtual world itself.

[1] <https://github.com/piskvorky/PredatorPrey>

</comment><comment><USER8> Further reading on the subject of physics simulation.

[review paper discussing lots of techniques] [http://depts.washington.edu/amath/courses/533-winter-2011/St...](http://depts.washington.edu/amath/courses/533-winter-2011/Stewart00.pdf)

[A PhD thesis with good background material] www.visionday.dk/VD05/graphical/slides/kenny.pdf

</comment><comment><USER9> Error establishing a database connection

<comment><USER10> Use the cache, Luke: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Acodet...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Acodetheory.in%2Fgame- physics-basics-and-implementation-of-predictive-collision-detection%2F)

<comment><USER11> How did you find that? My google search for the link [0] showed no cached link/button.

[0]: [http://codetheory.in/game-physics-basics-and- implementation-...](http://codetheory.in/game-physics-basics-and- implementation-of-predictive-collision-detection/)

<comment><USER12> Just type cache:<http://example.com/> into Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just use havok

<comment><USER14> That is overkill for a _lot_ of things. For others, it's useless... it's very hard to make good arcade-style "physics" with a full-blown physics simulator, and totally unrealistic stuff may not be possible with it at all... but those things still may need collision detection.

<comment><USER6> While I generally agree that "just use havok" is a bad approach, havoc, along with most physics engines, are able to be used for just collision detection, and not response. In many cases, it may prove useful to use an existing engine even for very unrealistic things.

<comment><USER14> That's a great point. I probably wouldn't do it with a HTML5 shooter with hundreds of projectiles though... what I mean is, those engines still have to check "what shape is it, oh, it's a circle, so now check what I am colliding with..", while you e.g. know the projectiles are circles and the walls are orthogonal planes. This may not always apply, of course, and I agree that as soon as you enter more complex territory you can save yourself a lot of pain by using a "proper physics engine".

<comment><USER6> > what shape is it, oh, it's a circle, so now check what I am colliding with

While this is true, consider that the huge library of built-up optimizations in a well used collision library like Havok very likely makes up for these checks.

Alternatively, they generally offer a lower level API such that you could just always call: `Havok::CheckCircleAAPlane` and then not have to worry about Havok doing it's dispatch. But then again if you don't use Havok's spatial culling you're likely missing out on a whole lot of optimizations, and advantages to using Havok.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Arizona Nuclear Missile Bunker for $400k - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/16/old-nuclear-bunker-for-sale-arizona-desert-includes-original-equipment <comment><USER2> That really looks interesting, with 12 acres of desert property, but even assuming that there are no toxic chemicals in the bunker, it would cost a lot of money to fix up as a nice residence.

Some people with a lot of money like to have a comfortable bunker. Assuming that it was not used for survivalists purposes, adding a clear dome to let in daylight, and lots of room for workshops, hobby trains, etc. I live in Arizona (central mountains) and I am familiar with the general area around Tucson where I think this is located.

That for posting this - fun link, and I enjoyed the 3D tour.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it wasn't for the damn NIMBY zoning, we could replace it with 20 smaller market-rate silos and 10 low-income subsidized silos.</comment>


Ask HN: Stop Using My Pics Without My Permission - <AUTHOR>

Are there any services that scan the web to see if people are using pics of you without your consent? <comment><USER2> Google reverse image search

[http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/images/searchbyi...](http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/images/searchbyimage.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> If the pics were taken in a public place then (in most jurisdictions) you have no legitimate complaint. Arguing about just what constitutes a public place could be a fun way to spend a lot of money on lawyers.</comment>


Could "View Source" Ever Vanish from the Browser? - <AUTHOR> I've been working on a session to teach kids a little bit of "hacking," and it involves introducing them to the "inspect element" feature of the browser and letting them edit the contents of a web page. The thought is that, by letting them play with the HTML and code of their favorite websites, they can learn a little bit about how it all comes together. But a haunting thought came to me: what if websites started closing off their code and making it proprietary, shutting people out from that layer of understanding. Could this ever happen, or am I being paranoid? <comment><USER2> Yes, it could and there is a good chance it eventually will.

Not because it would be actually possible to hide it but because code has/will become so complex that it wouldnt really make sense anymore. Take, for example, sites like Facebook or Gmail: even the developers tools barely help understanding them, let alone the raw "view source".

This (human understanding) will not get better with an intermediate language like WebAssembly (which should not be considered an obstacle though). And this does not take into account a possibly even more drastic change in technology and the web (or whatever the web would be called then).

</comment><comment><USER3> How would they do that? By which I mean, "What technologies would they use to accomplish it and what would their rationale for doing so be?"

It's already been possible to 'hide source' for years on the web, either in the form of compiled swfs for Flash files or, these days runtime code or output spat from server side complexity.

Without a fundamental re-write or philosophical change on the internet though, there's little to fear that 'the majority' of sites would go this route in any imaginable near to mid-term future.

Conversely, anyone paranoid or arrogant enough to do so could do, shooting themselves in the foot a little, now.

Your main concern should be, i'd've thought, messy and compacted code that uses a mashup of irrelevant and bloated frameworks, because that way lies bad habits and obfuscated education...

HTML as is though? i'd not concern myself.

<comment><USER4> "runtime" code still has to be downloaded

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's already gone from the majority of browser market share; mobile browsers.

<comment><USER2> Well, mobile browsers are generally very restricted in many ways. Nobody would realistically use a mobile device (in their current incarnations at least) for debugging or any sort of development, despite what many people try to convince us of (the decline of regular computing environment and the sole ascend of those touch thingies :) )

<comment><USER5> That depends.

In the developing world, mobile as the regular computing environment is a fact of life.

For most of the big tech companies (Facebook, Uber, Google's search arm, etc.) mobile is probably where they encounter their users the most.

<comment><USER2> I am talking about development, not use (which on mobile is still mostly passive). I edited my previous posting to make that clear.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


River crossing puzzle (.swf) - <AUTHOR> http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/riverIQGame.swf

<comment><AUTHOR> Also called Japanese IQ Test. Very similar to the Fox, Rabbit, and Cabbage puzzle from Fargo (tv 2014)

The rules:

1\. Only 2 people on the raft at a time.

2\. The Father cannot stay with any of the daughters, without their Mother's presence.

3\. The Mother cannot stay with any of the sons, without their Father's presence

4\. The thief cannot stay with any family member, if the Policeman is not there.

5\. Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft.

Please don't post answers in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER2> To start, you must touch the big round blue button. I can't understand the instructions, but after playing for a while, I can guess them. But still I can't win.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://imgur.com/SbuAisZ](http://imgur.com/SbuAisZ)

</comment><comment><USER4> For anyone wondering, there is indeed a solution to this puzzle. Be persistent!

</comment><comment><USER5> There are whole books of these kind of puzzles, some dating back 1000 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know any titles?

<comment><USER5> I googled 'puzzle chicken fox grain' which is the well-known example but I got only websites but no books. Sigh. One day we'll have a search engine that you can tell what you want instead of whispering keywords into the dark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My wife speaks Chinese. That helped :)</comment>


Donald Knuth: Surreal Numbers [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPn2AdMH7UQ <comment><USER2> Several times in the video he mentions loosing a piece of inspiration because it's flowing too fast for writing it down.

I wonder how many ideas and insights have been lost throughout history to this phenomenon.

Sometimes you crack a problem from an unexpected angle and an entire forest of insights fall down onto you. You take a minute to type the first one but already some of the others are lost forever. Plus you broke out from the free flowing zone.

Will we ever come up with a tool to fix this tragedy?

<comment><USER3> > ...loosing a piece of inspiration because it's flowing too fast for writing > it down

I've been using the voice recorder on my phone to capture inspiration for years now (plus journals, ambient recordings, etc). I've got 1,700 recordings now, and whenever I dive deep into a new project I listen through the relevant ones for help.

<comment><USER4> If it's been years, how do you know which of the 1700 are the relevant ones? Are you tagging or transcribing them? Seems like this would be a good use case for even moderately accurate transcription of the audio files by software -- the way even moderately accurate OCR of a bag of scanned PDFs can provide the fodder for search tools like Spotlight to interactively surface approximately useful results.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I usually tag them when I'm done. Would love to have some good transcribing software for deeper search though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some quick googling turns up [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00973165729...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0097316572900635), which cites a French paper in footnote 9 as the origin of the name surordinal, almost certainly the one Knuth refers to. Someone want to tell him?

>In 1967, writing in French, Pierre Jullien [9] generalized the concept of an ordinal slightly to what he called a "surordinal." He announced several results, among which is the statement that the class of "surordinaux" are wqo.

>9\. P. JULLIEN, Theorie des relations. - Sur la comparaison des types d'ordres disperses, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Se'r. A 264 (1967), 594-595.

<comment><USER6> Write a comment under the video, the numberphile people will definitely see it and perhaps pass it on

<comment><USER5> Done.

<comment><USER6> It's not showing under recent comments for me?

<comment><USER5> That's weird, only shows up for me. I just reposted without the link and it does show up in incognito, so the link must have filtered it.

Youtube comments suck, can't even get paragraphs formatted normally.

<comment><USER7> Heh. I was just following along with some Unreal Engine tutorials yesterday. Unfortunately the engine has changed since the tutorials were uploaded, so some kind souls pasted the new C++ code in the comment field. What. A. Mess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently the book is available on archive.org

[https://archive.org/details/SurrealNumbers](https://archive.org/details/SurrealNumbers)

By the way: does any one know whether all downloads on archive.org can be considered legal? It is amazing how many old books which, however, aren't old enough to be out of copyright can be found on that site.

<comment><USER9> [https://blog.archive.org/2016/06/02/copyright-offices- propos...](https://blog.archive.org/2016/06/02/copyright-offices-proposed- notice-and-staydown-system-would-force-the-internet-archive-and-other- platforms-to-censor-the-web/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N6cOC2P8fQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N6cOC2P8fQ)

day9 (an esports personality, with a math degree) tells the story of graham's number and how donald knuth invented up arrow notation for graham's number to be possible.

He tells it quite entertainingly with a great ending. (I was just showing this to a coworker this morning).

</comment><comment><USER11> Suprised that Donald Knuth is making such a categorical error. Per his description of Conway's construct, these numbers are progressively higher dimensional. In a same manner that we can not faithfully order a mix of Real and Complex numbers -- is 1.000001+i > 1.000001? -- we also can not meaningfully speak of a partial order of a set of numbers that include the form <:>.

p.s. Re. "worked for 6 days and rested on the sevent" and "J.H.W.H." \-- woah there cowboys. Get ye down to earth. ;)

<comment><USER12> I can't watch the video right now. But I can confirm that one can define what it means for a surreal number to be smaller than another surreal number in a meaningful way: So that the surreal numbers are totally ordered (for any two surreal numbers a and b, either a < b or a = b or a > b) and that the usual expected rules for transforming inequalities hold (for instance that the "<" sign reverses when multiplying with a negative number).

This total order is also very useful. Namely one can associate surreal numbers to positions of a large class of two-player games. The sign of the associated surreal number (whether it's positive, zero, or negative) then tells you which player possesses a winning strategy. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number#Application_to_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number#Application_to_combinatorial_game_theory) for more information on this point.

<comment><USER11> > for a surreal number to be smaller than another surreal number in a > meaningful way

By definition! He was discussing ordering a mix e.g. π-sn, π, π+sn, π+smallestRealNumber.

<comment><USER13> Those words are translations into conventional words, which are fairly real- number-oriented. They aren't really quite accurate. (It's fair to say that English words aren't _really_ real numbers, but it's also fair to say that's what most mathematically-educated people would interpret it as.)

Look, taking on one or the other of Conway _or_ Knuth on a topic like this would be a sobering prospect, but both of them at once? Maybe you should be phrasing your "objections" in the form of questions.

<comment><USER11> > questions.

How can one meaningfully speak of comparative measure between constructs that occupy distinct dimensional spaces. Question mark. (point well taken! :)

<comment><USER14> > How can one meaningfully speak of comparative measure between constructs > that occupy distinct dimensional spaces?

Because there is only a colloquial, not a mathematical, relationship between the notion of order, and most notions of dimension. An 'order' is any binary relation obeying certain properties (antisymmetry, transitivity, and, depending on whether you want a strict order, possibly irreflexivity); one can put an order on a set without any concern about whether it obeys your or anyone's intuition, as long as it satisfies those properties.

<comment><USER11> Thank you. So it is correct to think that such orderings are ~toplogical in contrast to the our ~geometric intuition?

<comment><USER14> This sounds a little snarky, but I mean it sincerely.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to define the notions of "approximate topological-ness" or "approximate geometric-ness" of an order in any rigorous way, so I am reluctant to answer the question. I would agree that trying to fit the order on the surreal numbers into an existing geometric, or even probably topological, intuition is likely to fail. For me, the order is in some sense a _combinatorial_ construction; but I don't know any way to make that rigorous other than that the definition is game-theoretic, and I think of game theory as a particular kind of combinatorics (as probably no specialist in either field ever would).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Random observation: On the bookshelf behind Prof. Knuth in the video, Stephen Wolfram's book "A New Kind of Science" is clearly visible.

</comment><comment><USER16> So am I getting this wrong? Isn't this exactly how a float described in bits? If you had infinite memory then this would possibly be implemented with floats.

<comment><USER17> No, floats have explicit exponent and fraction parts. For the "finite-ish" parts of the knuth construction, the maximum size depends on the "generation" of the construct. A "knuth"-string float would have a variable length, depending on the amount of precision necessary to express the value you seek.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only words that come to my mind when I hear the name Donald Knuth are "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".

The original context is different but I wonder if we can ever compute all the wealth and impact that has been created by the practitioners of his art.

</comment><comment><USER19> So Knuth wrote up treatise as a dialog between students. (I havent read it.) Hofstader uses mathe-philosophical dialogs in Goedel Escher and Bach. The Greek philosophers like Plato and Zeno often used such dialogs. Then too Hofstader wrote his book in 1976 as a postdoc at Stanford, two years after Stanford prof Knuth published his Surreal book. Maybe there is an influence.

<comment><USER20> I imagine it's because the dialogue format flows naturally compared to the traditional monologue paradigm in books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is to this day unknown about surreal numbers?

What are the important/fun/etc. conjectures?

<comment><USER22> I believe that there has been some work trying to define integrations and derivatives for function No->No , and that while there has been some good progress, there are still significant problems with at least one of the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the kind of book I'd imagine is on a reading list for young adults and precocious children who want to bend their mind. I'm going to assume it's being taught at Altschool and Ad Astra. It's a total gem of a book. I recommend it for those that enjoy math as well as those that dislike math at any level.

</comment><comment><USER24> not mentioned in the video: conway got the idea for surreal numbers by playing and studying go.

<comment><USER25> Haven't watched the video yet, but then Conway and others formalized a bunch of theory for 2-player combinatorial games like Go, using surreal numbers for game states. (e.g. the number * = {0|0}, or, whoever moves first wins.)

<comment><USER22> {0|0} = * isn't strictly speaking a surreal number. It is a member of a class that the surreal numbers are a subclass of, called the class of Games.

The definition of a surreal number requires that everything on the left set be less than everything in the right set, but 0 is not less than 0 , so {0|0} does not name a surreal number.

Games do not have this restriction.

The surreal numbers form a field (except that it has a proper class of elements instead of a set of elements) , while the Games do not form a field. The Games do however form a group under addition iirc. Yes, that seems true to me.

The Games represent all perfect information 2 player games with what is iirc called the normal play condition (i.e. you lose iff it is your turn and you have no valid moves), and are such that there is no sequence of moves by the 2 players such that the game never ends.

(Chess for example, is almost a Game , except that it is possible to reach a draw in chess, and the win conditions are somewhat different.

Tic-Tac-Toe with the change that, instead of winning when you have 3 in a row, you win when it is the other player's turn and they have no valid moves, and you cannot move if the other player has 3 in a row, is a Game in this sense.)

Note: I think that Games is often capitalized because of it being a proper class, but I am not sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wrote a magazine article on surreal numbers:

[https://ianopolous.github.io/maths/surreal](https://ianopolous.github.io/maths/surreal)

<comment><USER27> Neither Firefox nor chromium manage to render your mathematical expressions, which makes the whole thing hard to read.

<comment><USER28> Unless you're writing LaTeX frequently. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> from what he's describing professor Donald Knuth had a channeling session when he wrote the theory of surreal numbers :)

</comment><comment><USER30> I love how a famous forefather ( turned 3:16 experimenter and muser on metaphysics, etc ) suddenly throws in how he wanted to role play cheating in a hotel during the course of research in Oslo, and that was his wife's expectation if he was going to squeeze composing another book into their marriage.

It was so nonchalant it was just thrown in as if he was describing the napkin with the theory on it:

[https://youtu.be/mPn2AdMH7UQ?t=5m31s](https://youtu.be/mPn2AdMH7UQ?t=5m31s)

"Because we liked to have an affair in the hotel room."

"So that was the plan."

<comment><USER31> What is a 3:16 experimenter?

<comment><USER32> I guess this refers to Donald Knuth's "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated": [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/316.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/316.html) >The text found in chapter 3, verse 16, of most books in the Bible is a typical verse with no special distinction. But when Knuth examined what leading scholars throughout the centuries have written about those verses, he found that there is a fascinating story to be learned in every case, full of historical and spiritual insights. This book presents jargon-free introductions to each book of the Bible and in-depth analyses of what people from many different religious persuasions have said about the texts found in chapter 3, verse 16, together with 60 original illustrations by many of the world's leading calligraphers. >The result is a grand tour of the Bible -- from Genesis 3:16 to Revelation 3:16 -- a treat for the mind, the eyes, and the spirit.

<comment><USER33> And for thr profane:

[http://www.larry.denenberg.com/Knuth-3-16/](http://www.larry.denenberg.com/Knuth-3-16/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who here enjoyed university academically? - <AUTHOR> I'm a 3rd year computer science major. Trying to come at it with an open mind. I just can't get around to genuinely enjoying and finding use of practicality or relevance in any of my classes. I do enjoy building and designing stuff though.<p>I wanted to see if other entrepreneurial-minded people felt the same way. Who else? And why? <comment><USER2> The trouble with CS courses is that you will never use half of what were taught. But you will only find out which half was useful ten or so years down the track. University courses should expand your mind, teach you critical thinking and foundations. It's an investment for the long term.

The way I see it:

If they are teaching you Java - then it's a waste of time.

If you are learning C, Lisp/Scheme, compilers, algorithms, databases, logic, math, etc - then some of it will be very useful in the years to come.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not an entrepreneur but I loved University and still take classes, especially in Mathematics whenever I can!</comment>


Moebio Framework – A JavaScript toolkit for data analysis and visualizations - <AUTHOR> http://moebiolabs.github.io/moebio_framework/ <comment><USER2> Seems like another kitchen sink library to me... Demos are impressive, but when is someone going to write a JS viz library in a more declarative fashion like outlined in Grammar of Graphics? They all seem overly imperative (draw this pixel, then that pixel) or rigid, non-composable functions taking huge configuration JSON blobs.

<comment><USER3> >"Google Play - Read The Grammar of Graphics for $103.41"

I wonder what negative impacts textbook pricing has on software development.

If I was going to start a graphics library as a non-profit side project, that'd be a big barrier.

<comment><USER4> I agree it's a barrier to have such crazy prices, but there are free resources available, especially on a topic as popular as Grammar of Graphics. Hadley Wickham (in my mind, synonymous with the concept, since he implemented Wilkinson's ideas in R's ggplot package), for instance, has numerous materials on it, including a short primer ([http://vita.had.co.nz/papers/layered- grammar.pdf](http://vita.had.co.nz/papers/layered-grammar.pdf)). It might not be as exhaustive as the Wilkinson text, but surely there's enough material out there to implement GG in JS, especially considering there's successful implementations in other languages?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As usual, nothing in the homepage to indicate why anyone should choose this toolkit over existing, mature competitors (like D3) in the same space.

Unless you're legitimately doing something that's never been done before, just saying "it does X" isn't very interesting. How does it do X _better_?</comment>


Google will launch buy buttons on its search-results pages  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/can-google-outsell-amazon-and-ebay-1431730741-lMyQjAxMTE1ODEwNTYxMTU2Wj <comment><USER2> Interesting how power is being consolidated all the time, creating stronger monopolies: Facebook taking control over publishers by integrating their content. Now Google taking control over suppliers by creating the sales lead/conversion. Power consolidation just like what happened with the banks.

The end result means less competition, higher prices, less democracy, more mass surveillance and population control/manipulation.

The Internet is becoming the opposite from what it was in its early days.

<comment><USER3> If the internet is becoming democratic, what explains the increasing number of new, massive and independent internet businesses?

<comment><USER4> VC's funding $$ hoping that they will be bought by said monopolies in < 5 years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> psa: "Can Google Outsell Amazon and eBay?" is the title of the article (enter the article page via google search if hit with a silly paywall / register page)

Anyways ... ... in my opinion, there is no way Google can outdo Amazon, it is not the "one click" button that makes me shop on Amazon but the great customer support who go out of their way to help you.

Google on the other hand and "support" have never belonged in the same sentence :( Seems like "providing support" to customers is to "low brow" for Google, and I am an avid google product user both hardware and software.

<comment><USER6> The support question is really interesting. If Google is the company that takes the money, they will be the company that people would expect to handle refunds, returns and general support. Unless Google is planning something new, there's no way that they are geared to deal with the barrage of consumer support issues that will appear.

I don't see why the majority of online resellers would be concerned by being "reduced" to "back-end order takers". That's the easy part of the business, while payment and customer support is the expensive and annoying part. Most consumers are not loyal to any one online reseller anymore, Amazon excluded perhaps.

If I was to pick where I would want to be in terms of online retail in the future, I would want to be the business with the warehouse and just supply eBay, Amazon, Google and any direct shipping customer I could find. That's where the money is in the future, at least that's what I believe.

<comment><USER7> So now Google is the Uber of Amazon...?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This too, will fail - just like almost all the other things Google has stuck its nose where it doesn't belong.

<comment><USER9> In fact if I recall correctly Google also experimented a couple years ago with a "email signup" field in search ads, but that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. Not that it is surprising because if you are searching for something, would you really "interact" with it before clicking the link? Save for a few exceptions, like Google Now-ish results (i.e. information), it doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They are already facing monopoly charges in various country, this will definitely hasten the results of these.

I wonder what made them choose this time to reveal such a feature.

</comment><comment><USER11> If Google improves their customer service, I would give them a shot. Their domain name register seems to function well.

Personally, I don't have any loyality to Amazon. It's just another big company who slowly raised their prices, along with spotty customer service.

I don't know why companies get to a certain level of success and change-- thinking customers won't notice? I saw this happen to Costco. They changed their "complete customer satisfaction policy" and they did me a favor; I only buy what I need from the store.

Not just electronics, but every product is affected. They still sell grey market luxury watches--that you can't return, and if they break--Costco Horologists repair them. The manufacturer wants nothing to do with watches bought at Costco. Products bought at Costco are scrutinized by a low level employee when you return an item. If you are a dramatic person the store manager might overrule the counter person. It's just not worth the effort anymore. I will take Costco to court when my Omega stops working--just on principle. "It's a great deal sir. If it stops, just return it. It's a no brainer. That's what's great about our store!"

So bring on the competition! I don't buy like I used to. My purchases right now are for survival.

</comment><comment><USER12> > The buttons will accompany sponsored—or paid—search results...

Big Fail! The retailers that pay Google for the listings have little chance of being the cheapest place to purchase. So this endeavor will degrade into providing either sales for services where prices are meaningless or sales for non-comparable high-markup items. Anyone remember Groupon?</comment>


Google Play SSL Connection error – Google Play down - HeartBleed? - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/

<comment><USER2> Just tried and it worked for me?

<comment><USER3> Same. Working Here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do we need to change all Google account passwords? I think I saw somewhere that Gmail was vulnerable to Heartbleed for example. And if we do, why haven't we been notified about doing that yet?</comment>


America Is Becoming Less Religious - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/america-is-becoming-less-religious-secular/ <comment><USER2> This shows that younger generations are less likely to be religious, but there's no indication that they will not become more religious as they age.

The best "proof" it provides for the assertion is this: > According to GSS, "unaffiliation" actually increased for all age cohorts over the past few decades, but most dramatically for the youngest among them

So maybe we can say America is (very slowly) becoming less religious, but it's still over 70% for the youngest age group listed here

<comment><USER3> This chart from the friendly article gives a very clear indication that "unaffiliation" is growing across all age groups:

[http://pix-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/838/religion_5.png](http://pix- media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/838/religion_5.png)

Note that ~10% of 20-somethings in the 1990s were unaffiliated, and 22 years later those same now 40-somethings have gone up to ~17%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> General indications are that the US is more than twice as religious as anywhere in Europe (Poland might be highest, catholic countries seem to have mpst persistence of religion). We are atheist, muslim, or generally not bothered.

<comment><USER5> If any Poles say otherwise, feel free to correct me, but my impression of Poland's religiosity is largely dependent on the strong role of the Catholic Church in recent historical affairs (Pope John Paul II, keeping Polish culture alive during USSR era, etc.) and less on the population being more "religious".

I don't think the majority of Poles are actively "Catholic" in their religious metaphysical beliefs, but rather they all belong to the church because of its cultural importance. I could be wrong, however, as I don't live there.

It makes me wonder about other countries where the church plays an important cultural role (Italy, for example.)

<comment><USER4> It is hard to tell from raw data whether there are cultural differences. Who knows why Americans appear to be more religious?

<comment><USER6> Americans (outside of big cities) are genuinely more religious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see what they've done there with the color coding (all variants on Christian being blue) but that is totally unreadable. I'm not colorblind but the only way I can identify what is being shown is by counting the stripes and legend entries (second stripe from the bottom is the second from the bottom legend entry). I swear _" Protestant (Black)"_ and _" Jehovah's Witness"_ are literally the same color.

Are graphic designers no longer hired for this sort of thing? Or do graphic designers no longer care?

<comment><USER8> Grey = not religious

Blue = Christianity and clones

seems pretty clear

<comment><USER7> I am interested in which Christian variants are less popular with younger generations than others. That data is presented, but poorly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if there is a way to distinguish the evolution of "values" as opposed to the support of an organized religion. So while organized religion may fall from favor, the value systems aren't going anywhere. And I don't think this is such a bad thing, I just wish the supposed "secular" folks could stop congratulating themselves for not going to church.

I say this because I see conventional "secular liberal" values as deeply christian - one of the biggest being our obligation to care for the poor. A scientifically organized society might well look at spending on the poor quite differently, and not in ways we would recognize or agree with.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious if there's any survey data along the line of "Do you attend religious services once or more per month"

Cultural identity tends to get so intertwined with religion that you can't always separate the two.

<comment><USER11> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States)

See also:

[http://www.amazon.com/American-Grace-Religion-Divides- Unites...](http://www.amazon.com/American-Grace-Religion-Divides- Unites/dp/1416566732)

<comment><USER10> Interesting, the linked page displays that up to 80% have a religious affiliation, but the wiki article says that only 36% actually attended religious services.

<comment><USER11> A large percentage of Americans participate in religious activities without even knowing it, but these results are pretty typical given how these surveys are usually conducted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This only shows that people no longer self-identify as strongly with traditional religions. This doesn't actually show that America is becoming less religious though in either beliefs or practice.

</comment><comment><USER12> Less religious, but perhaps more orthodox.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank god!

</comment><comment><USER14> hallelujah

</comment><comment><USER15> Stacked bar charts are terrible.

</comment><comment><USER16> Without getting into a religious argument about truth, science, the existence of God, etc...

I think there is a real unintended consequence of younger generations turning away from all forms of religion or absolute spiritual truth in any form. In short, there is a set of morals and ethics that is deeply rooted in Christianity and Judaism that for a long time helped steer this country in a generally good direction. In the absence of any great sense of moral authority, right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, etc. you have a completely situational and relative morality.

That is to say, what is right and wrong depends on who you are, what you believe, and your own personal sense of justice or fairness. Eventually, things are only wrong if they are deemed illegal, and laws can be written to say anything or do anything. At some point the only thing that is "wrong" is upsetting someone more powerful than you. As in, it's only wrong if you get caught or get in trouble.

For example, many international companies play on the fringes of the international tax code by routing money through various shell companies and intermediaries so as to avoid paying taxes in various countries. If it was the mafia and they sold drugs instead of software or advertising, it would be considered money laundering, which we should all agree is illegal and wrong.

Now, when people read stories on that topic, they comment that Google or Apple aren't doing anything wrong because what they are doing is "perfectly legal", even if they are going out of their way to avoid the spirit of the law. Shareholders are fine with this behavior because they are greedy and it makes them more money. As long as nobody is thrown in jail, what does it hurt right?

A stronger moral standard would be to say that if you are doing business in a country, you should pay a reasonable and fair tax rate along with everyone else doing business in that country. To skirt tax obligations through financial maneuvering and engineering the flow of money is somewhat akin to stealing.

I am not pro media companies ripping people off, but people take a very similar approach to illegal file sharing for their favorite shows and movies. If something is available for rental or purchase at a reasonable price, people should pay the $1-4 to rent or about $5-15 to buy. However, many people choose to download things illegally without any intent of paying the producers of their favorite movie, game, or tv show. At some point, theft is theft.

I'm not saying that life is perfect if everyone is a Christian believer or anything like that. What I'm saying is there are morals and ethics that are falling by the wayside amongst Christians and non-Christians and I've seen nothing in secularism, athiesm, or agnosticsm that is doing much to replace them.

I don't know where we end up as a country, but the trend away from faith and any sense of moral or ethical absolutes is going to be one of the worst unintended consequences of the modern "enlightenment" of science and technology.

For all the technical or intellectual progress we've made in the last 100 years, morally and ethically we seem to be worse off.

<comment><USER17> It looks like we stone people to death less and don't burn witches and less likely to put your penis inside a metal tube to prevent masturabation.

Now, if somebody would teach more people not to put their dirty feet on seats that would be nice.

I definitely like your argument that all of those old books were written as a life rulebook, but it got kinda carried away after and I think we're due for update, like bible 2.0 or something.

<comment><USER18> Will Bible 2.0 still tell us how to treat our slaves and rape victims?

<comment><USER17> Well, hopefully? As well as telling that abortions are up to the woman, contraception is ok and gay people are actually just people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What does it mean for a person to be "secular", anyway? What a weird label to self-identify as.

<comment><USER20> Generally it means that you do not identify with a particular religious sect. It may also mean that you do not believe in the organized supernatural ideas that most religions do.

<comment><USER19> Exactly, but that doesn't tell us if you're actually religious or not! You may or may not have a personal religion. That's why I found it weird in this case, where the while point of the survey was to know if people are religious.

<comment><USER20> IMO, religion is something organized and part of a community. "Spirituality" is when it's something personal (and, as I get older, I am coming to believe is an important part of my life, even though I don't believe in anything supernatural.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mind blowing flight control HCI for people who are serious about drone filming - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/163223379 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://skywand.com](http://skywand.com)</comment>