Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant-global-datamining

<comment><USER2> It's disappointing to know that the technology I invented in 1999 (IP location) is now being used in such a massive and unconstitutional manner. No good deed goes unpunished. :-/

Also - everyone should use and support Tor. That has a hint of irony since it was originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory.

</comment><comment><USER3> LOL! That document shows they use GWT to build their internal spook apps. (Disclosure: I work on GWT) I wonder if they review all patches that open source people make to the compiler :)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Current technology simply does not permit us to positively identify all of the persons or locations associated with a given communication (for example, it may be possible to say with certainty that a communication traversed a particular path within the internet. It is harder to know the ultimate source or destination, or more particularly the identity of the person represented by the TO:, FROM: or CC: field of an e-mail address or the abstraction of an IP address)."

That's an interesting statement, especially how specific they got with regards to email. There are tons of email accounts that are used but are not tied to Facebook or Paypal or some other identifying service that the NSA has access. To me this all stinks of the worst-case surveillance state scenario but logically, it's starting to look a lot less sinister than I initially thought it was.

Looking through 3 billion records and tying them to people would require a massive database of Facebook, Google, etc. users, ISP subscribers, and tons of other data. I sure as hell hope that the NSA can't come up with a number of Americans spied on without invading people's privacy and serving more warrants/tapping more sources for information because otherwise it would mean they would already have it!

It's also comforting (in a macabre way) that despite having fifty times more people, the US has more than 10 billion fewer records than Jordan (records = what? Likes? Facebook messages? Emails?)

They also said they track the "path" of the data, does that mean that a lot of the American records could just be inconsequential movements of network data within the US before it is sent back out or delivered?

Looking at this article, it doesn't disprove anything the NSA said. It's a heat map of communications, not people spied on and there's a big difference.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it bears repeating again, as we see yet another major disclosure about NSA programs throughout the world: the NSA has been hacked by someone who is deliberately leaking these documents in some super-Risk game of international espionage. Given that Obama and the President of China are meeting this weekend, my money is on China being the ultimate culprit.

<comment><USER6> "hacked"? It could easily be someone(s) with legitimate access to these documents, couldn't it? International espionage in what way? The leaker(s) could have just sold this information to foreign governments, but they went to Greenwald, a civil liberties advocate and writer working for an American sub- outlet of a British news org.

<comment><USER5> Alright, I'll grant that it may not be a hack. My point is the quality of the leaks and the timing is too good for it not to have some more serious motivation than what appeared to me to be another instance of the NSA 'Trailblazer/ThinThread', etc ongoing whistle-blowing.

<comment><USER6> If you read Greenwald's writing regularly, you know that this is exactly the kind of information about the kind of programs that Glenn has been imagining to exist, for many many years, during both administrations. The timing comes from at least a month of planning; Greenwald has hinted at a "big project" for a while now. The daily releases are just Glenn's style, and it's certainly gaining the attention he, as a civil liberties advocate for years now and a former constitutional lawyer, feels is needed for our democracy to continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems to be already damaging US European relations in a way little has for a long time. Seems just the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER8> There are many green points in the EU section of the map, we may be able to infer that those nations are indeed cooperative with US interests. US-EU relations are damaged only insomuch as the eurodeputies are willing to push against their leaders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >She added: "The continued publication of these allegations about highly classified issues, and other information taken out of context, makes it impossible to conduct a reasonable discussion on the merits of these programs."

I can think of a few other things that have "[made] it impossible to conduct a reasonable discussion on the merits of these programs." That they're classified Top Secret. That numerous attempts to investigate the programs via the judicial process have been stymied under the "military and state secrets privilege." That whistleblowers have been hunted down and persecuted. And the list goes on.

edit: PSA: waterphone, your account appears to be hellbanned.

</comment><comment><USER10> It looks like they do as much spying on Germany as they do on China and US itself. Interesting. I wonder what Germans and the German MEP's will have to say about this in the EU Parliament.

<comment><USER8> How much spying occurs is extremely difficult to measure, I think we can say without a doubt that this isn't their only tool.

One could infer that the colours on the map measure how much surveillance they have to do on their own, as opposed to receiving information from external intelligence networks. For example, green provides the most intelligence information while red is the least cooperative.

Based on that we can assume that Germany is less cooperative -- as a matter of fact we can also assume international allegiances from this map. It appears the US has trouble penetrating the BRIC nations[1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC)

<comment><USER11> Boundless Informant appears to not be an actual spying tool, but rather a GAO tool for monitoring how much spying is going on.

The colors correspond with the amount of intelligence collected. Green is the least, red is the most. If you expand the screenshot at the top, it shows part of a sorted list showing the most. Primary intelligence gathering is focused on Iran, Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and India. 14 billion pieces of intelligence were gathered from Iran in the 30 day period shown here!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 97 billion pieces of intelligence gathered worldwide in a one month period! 3 billion of which are from the U.S. If that's not an example of a massive dragnet surveillance program, I don't know what is.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 In software terms, it seems like someone there built a dashboard for higher- ups, and have promised to listen to feedback in a very enterprise-y "complexity vs reward" triage process.

</comment><comment><USER12> And yet North Korea is green (least surveillance) on this map.

<comment><USER2> That probably has a lot to do with how isolated they are. From back in my days of doing IP location technology, North Korea had less than 50 public IP addresses whereas Antarctica had well over 1,000.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Favorite HTML/CSS only website? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I recently found https://git.sr.ht
At first I was: "Meeeeh" but after some time navigating the site, I was astonished by how fast it is and how easy it is to navigate it. So now I want to discover more sites like it.
What is your favorite, HTML/CSS only website? <comment><USER2> Some of the sites listed here are good: [https://github.com/mdibaiee/awesome- lite-websites](https://github.com/mdibaiee/awesome-lite-websites)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Macs Outpaced PCS in Number of Malware Threats Detected per Endpoint in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2020/02/11/malwarebytes-mac-malware-2019-report/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure what to make of this. On the surface I can see more malware threats being possible as macOS gets more popular. On the other hand, this study was performed by Malwarebytes, a company that has some interest in selling AV software to macOS user.</comment>


Researchers Hack Siri, Alexa, and Google Home by Shining Lasers at Them - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/researchers-hack-siri-alexa-and-google-home-by-shining-lasers-at-them/ <comment><USER2> Dupe. Front paged several times</comment>


Ask HN: Is is possible to add a "Read" menu option to HN - <AUTHOR> I know it can be accomplished by searching my browser history, but it would be convenient to have a section listing the HN articles I have read. My browser history does not include point scores and comment totals, both of which I find useful. <comment><USER2> It's possible someone has incorporated such a feature into one of the third party apps/services/extensions.

I don't have a list of them and mostly don't use them myself, but a number of third party things already exist. You will probably get more helpful and enthusiastic replies if you ask about such options.

HN policy is intentionally conservative. They don't like changing things much. But the membership also has tremendous enthusiasm for providing third party solutions, usually for free. HN staff appears to be happy to tolerate this ad hoc ecosystem and I'm not aware of them getting cranky about it.

Edit: I absolutely suck at finding such things, but here's an old discussion to try to get you started:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310291)

They come and go. Since it's an old discussion, some of the services listed may be defunct.

</comment><comment><USER3> HN maintains a history of all the articles you've upvoted, which you can find under your user profile. There's also a list of comments you upvoted.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to search this list except by scrolling through it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, I didn't know about that.

Ccould a "read articles" possibly be done through the use of cookies on the users browser, rather than being stored on HN servers?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps not very well. I've browsed HN with half a dozen phones, a dozen computers, and several browsers on each and every one. And from time to time I clear cookies within my browsers just because.

The other dimension is it's a low priority relative to the invisible work on HN that makes HN what it is because of what doesn't surface like spam and flamethrowers and blatant astroturfing and injection attacks.

If it's really important, why not hack something up yourself?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Upvote things, HN keeps a list of your upvotes</comment>


Digg responds to "test accounts" controversy - <AUTHOR> http://about.digg.com/blog/info-site-changes-and-test-accounts

<comment><USER2> Imo, their algorithms can be tested in developer environments (testing/development servers). And even if they absolutely HAD to do it on the live servers, then they could have easily removed their diggs after testing.

Their's just making an excuse for a mistake. Their way of handling this is understandable, but probably not the best way to handle that situation.

<comment><USER3> Very true. If it was really testing, why would they stop exactly and immediately when informed by the blogger that their behavior was 'caught'? They would've continued the so called experiment if it was really one.

I think they did it to inflate the number of diggs on the front page stories so that it looked like more people were frequenting the site. That's the reason that there's no apparent bias in the selection of media outlets whose articles the accounts digged up.

<comment><USER4> >If it was really testing, why would they stop exactly and immediately when informed by the blogger

That's absolutely not evidence that it is not testing.

It's a good point, but it is in no way inconsistent with their explanation. It makes perfect sense because it was (theoretically) supposed to be a small test that nobody noticed. Once somebody noticed it, of course they're going to stop it.

It's consistent with other theories being floated around, but it's important to note that it in no way contradicts their statement; exactly the opposite in fact.

If your theory is correct, why not just do it more directly? Why not do it in a less obvious way? Why upvote random spam sites as well (some of which were created at the same time as the accounts in question...almost as if someone were testing submitting spam on Digg...)

I don't doubt it's possible, but it seems to me people are letting their bias against Digg get the better of their reasoning ability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really get all of the Digg hate recently. It seems that Digg has a perception problem similar to Windows Vista.

Sure they made some technical/communication/process mistakes, but they seem to have fixed most of the ones that are easily fixable.

I personally find Digg more useful these days because of the changes.

<comment><USER6> This is not a small technical mistake as you put it -- especially since trust plays a crucial role in user's perception when they are using Digg. If digg is using such shady practices and cloak them as 'testing', its basically a slap in the face of the digg devout users.

<comment><USER7> Digg users appear to be a thin-skinned, shrill bunch to be honest. Perhaps it's just a vocal minority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Relevant story from yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1832767>

</comment><comment><USER8> I still have yet to find an explanation for what looked like them lying about the # of comments an article has: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741574></comment>


Cradle of Cantonese cuisine welcomes "robot restaurant complex" - <AUTHOR> https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005845/ <comment><USER2> The Chinese really have efficiency down to an art form. The last time I was in HK, I had breakfast at Dai Ga Lok. I put in my order and by the time I ambled over to the next counter, my noodle soup and toast was already ready. It blew my mind just how fast they managed to put it out... and this was with an all- human staff!

It was like that scene in The Founder where Ray Kroc eats at McDonalds the first time and he doesn't understand how he could possibly get his burger ready so quickly.

<comment><USER3> >> _my noodle soup and toast was already ready._

This is easy, just a matter of plating. They probably have a very limited menu (serves 95% just fine) and the rest if just perfecting the system little by little

<comment><USER4> The little chengdu xiaochis I went to in Beijing often had my food up before I was done paying, I would hear the propane stove hose on just shortly after I said my order....

<comment><USER3> at the risk of sounding like an idiot: are Chinese /HK workers more attentive to their job? We've seen the McDonalds and other fast food workers here...not that they get paid to work faster, let's be honest.

Burgers and sandwiches should always be hot and ready to pack especially during peak times. Fries too. Others would replenish them as needed. Soda is what it is, so it should a matter of seconds if everyone worked like their livelihood depended on it. But they system is what it is: teenagers making believe they are working and employers making believe they are paying them. In the end, waiting just a few minutes is fast enough for the customer anyway, so no incentive to change the system.

<comment><USER4> At least in mainland China, labor costs are lower, so they have more workers. The chengdu xiaochi wouldn't be so responsive if there wasn't so much extra capacity (both in terms of workers and a lack of customers because of lots of competition).

I worked at McDonald's as a teenager and we really did work. It was easy to get ahead of the game when things weren't that busy, but often resources were simply over subscribed (not enough workers, too many customers, often both).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one to find this level of competition scary for western countries?

I always thought that robots and automation would be our hope to compete with the ultra-cheap labor in China. Like Apple moving production back to the US and making it profitable with a lot of automation. But if China now becomes a leader at robotics in addition to remaining competitive at manufacturing, then how are we going to compete?

<comment><USER6> > _if China now becomes a leader at robotics_

How was this ever not going to be the case? Robotics will go wherever the manufacturing is. Where else would roboticists get practical real world experience, other than in factories? Obviously there's plenty of robotic manufacturing in America still, but there's clearly no shortage of opportunity in it for China either.

The assumption that America would have the best robotics which would force manufacturing to come back to America seems rooted in little more than wishful thinking.

<comment><USER7> I don't think people would have expected Boston Dynamics to emerge out of the U.S. as opposed to Japan, but they did, and it's telling that they emerged out of a subregion with top rate American educational institutions. Ignore that they were bought out by SoftBank because I think America will consistently churn out top robotics and automation companies in the coming years. All it takes is for there to be a profit signal. Until a field has that profit signal, Americans outside of academia pretty much ignore it.

<comment><USER6> Boston Dynamics doesn't seem like the sort of robotics that's particularly relevant to manufacturing. They've got impressive showy robots but don't know who to sell them to; the military seems ambivalent and now Boston Dynamics is trying to sell them as toys to rich people instead. It remains to be seen if they'll find a viable market like that.

Industrial robotics on the other hand is a mature field, and much (most?) of it has been outside the US from the beginning. Yaskawa and FANUC in Japan. ABB in Switzerland. Siemens in Germany. How many factories have been automated by these companies? How many have been automated by Boston Dynamics?

<comment><USER7> I think the more important AI becomes in guiding robotic hardware, the more America will gain a competitive advantage in manufacturing. At the very least America would be able to eat Germany's lunch. I also believe that America will ultimately "win" the AI race against Asian countries, but many here may disagree with that.

<comment><USER6> It's not clear to me that "AI guided robotics" have much industrial utility. Where those sort of systems might excel is in finding solutions to novel problems. But mass production is all about avoiding the introduction of novel problems in the first place; that's been the premise of mass manufacturing since the 19th century. Parts are made to a spec and interchange with each other, allowing machines without intelligence to make and assemble them.

Which is not to say advanced tech like computer vision or whatnot don't have industrial applications; it definitely does. Industrial robots using computer vision are already common today, used for things like quality control (e.g. inspecting each individual potato chip on a conveyor belt.) I suspect that to the extent other AI systems might plausibly be relevant to industrial-scale production, industrial robotics companies have been investing. I sincerely doubt Boston Dynamics is going to leapfrog Siemens in any foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is interesting though I am not sure if it makes sense at all. Is a restaurant sector a significant vector for covid 19? I have not heard about people getting infected from food deliveries.

Health agencies showing that food preparation ain't a vector:

\- [https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/news/coronavirus-no- evidence-f...](https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/news/coronavirus-no-evidence- food-source-or-transmission-route)

\- [https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-during- emergencies/food...](https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-during- emergencies/food-safety-and-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19) (section A worker in my food processing facility/farm has tested positive for COVID-19.)

<comment><USER9> Have you been in a working kitchen? I've only been in one (a couple of times) and it was the smallest, hottest, least ventilated place I've ever been. While it might not be a transmission vector for customers, it's _definiely_ a high risk enviroent for the staff. Particularly if they interact with wait staff who interact with customers.

<comment><USER8> Yes I agree that it is a risk for for the staff, however it does not seem to be a risk for customers, which is what this concept would reduce.

<comment><USER10> If the staff is at risk, the customers risk depends on how closely they interact with the staff. So while replacing the cook with a robot may not reduce the risk, replacing the server with one will.

<comment><USER6> There are cheaper ways to replace a server than with a robot. For instance, with a counter. You could make an air-locked counter built like a fume hood for a small fraction of what a single serving robot would cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am a foreigner running a rival food automation venture in Guangdong. I had resigned from HN participation but thought to rejoin and post thoughts as this is quite close to our area.

The venture under discussion Qianxi Robot Catering Group (千玺机器人餐饮集团系) who are owned by real estate group Country Garden (碧桂园 / 02007.HK) who invested 2.4B RMB (USD$33.5M) in the company. It has four subsidiaries including Zhiyuan Technology (智源科技), Bijiashun Kitchen (碧家顺厨), Youbisheng (优碧胜) and Biyouwei (碧有味).

Background is that the parent group sees the combination of robotics, agriculture and real estate as a growth area.

It reportedly spent USD$87M on robotics research in the first half of 2019 and will spent "at least" 80B RMB or USD$11.2B on robotics research in the next 5 years. This includes another company in the group '博智林机器人' (Bright Dream Robotics).

For the current robotics restaurant group, in January 2020 it reports that it will "refine its mass production plan and expand its stores nationwide in 2020."

Includes welcome robots, frying robots, dessert robots, burger robots, bartending robots, claypot rice robots, wok robots, cloud track systems and ground delivery robots, etc.

32 wok based cooking robots and a claypot robot that can make 24 claypot meals at the same time.

My own investors have visited this venture and reported that there were technical problems prohibiting its automatic operation. It seems condiments are supplied by the numerous staff, rather than automatically, and many specific robot interfaces are also handled by staff. For the wok robots, it is reported there are 32 dishes made by robots, and it appears that each wok only makes one (fixed program). Note that the packaging for drinks appears to be the largest and most expensive type of take-away cups available which are presumably selected in order to minimize precision, rigidity and consistency related issues with cheaper plastic lid pressure application processes. There is no evidence of self cleaning. The burger frying robot appears to have the following structure based on two Kuka standard light weight industrial robot arms. The left side focuses on parallel burger frying in sets of three. The right side combines the deep fried (fries, possibly 'fish cakes'). The process is as follows.

A uniform shaped, pre-cut half-bun is grilled and then placed on a new sheet of packaging. Pre-chopped lettuce is added by extracting an apparently weight- measured portion from an apparently hidden rotary dispenser. A chicken burger is fried and then lifted by pneumatic suction. Apparently either the burger or the top of the bun can have sauce applied, or the algorithm has changed. The top is placed on the burger then it is packaged by a complicated folding mechanism. Finally the result is stuck together with a sticker then lifted and placed in the output queue.

Esimate cost of burger system: 2 linear motion systems + 2 robot arms + custom aluminium + grippers + pneumatics + stock framing + heating systems + industrial control systems + air extraction system + frying system + deep frying system + sauce dispensers. Conclusion: expensive, likely over USD$40,000 in parts before labour and design.

Our venture - Infinite Food - retain what we believe to be a global technology lead in the sector and look forward to launching our world first service supplying personalized food retail from a network of kiosk form factor automated restaurants. invest at 8-food dot com if interested.

<comment><USER12> > 2.4B RMB (USD$33.5M) Should be either USD$335M or 240M RMB, no?

Anyway, I wonder whether software development for robot can utilize open- source platform, or does it need proprietary software exclusively?

Also, how configurable these robots for different or new menu?

<comment><USER11> Right you are, $339M at current exchange rate. Anyway its silly money.

The problem with open source platforms are that they generally provide tooling to target only generic motion systems, and generic motion systems are poorly matched to most specific tasks when it comes to real world metrics. Even if they can perform a task, they tend to be cost, time, space or programming inefficient, require additional complexity (eg. vision system pairing or very high complexity actuators/effectors), come with reliability challenges, etc. Efficient execution relies upon whole domain conception, which includes software, process engineering, mechanical engineering, food safety, cost, reliability, serviceability, manufacturability, IP protection and other considerations.

The domain is simple in conception, but very complex in execution.

The robots by this competitor are not reconfigurable at all, they have one for burgers, one for stirfries, one for basically boiled rice stew, one for ice cream, one for drinks, etc.

We are far more advanced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know if there are videos of the robots in action? The GIFs are choppy and don't show enough

<comment><USER12> [https://youtu.be/YPoAjRxyBQQ](https://youtu.be/YPoAjRxyBQQ)

<comment><USER14> That was pretty slick.

Although those robots sure do look expensive. For now. But once you build out the software, the replication costs are minimal. And the robotic machinery will eventually get cheaper, when mass produced.

This video was released just before the virus hit. So it's perfect for our solitary and isolated post-pandemic world.

<comment><USER12> Not to mention that it seems that Chinese have higher trust with robots [https://www.scmp.com/tech/big- tech/article/3033143/almost-90...](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big- tech/article/3033143/almost-90-cent-chinese-workers-trust-robot-more-their- human-managers)

Whearas I assume in US, "human touch" is still preferable, e.g. Preferring human operator vs robovoice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love the way it's pretty clear this won't work.

It'll be full of people out the back, faking the experience and constantly repairing robots, for the diners to get the performance.

A great practical robot for a restaurant is a dishwasher.

These robots are straight from Disney.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am not sure sure how much these robots learned as the article claims based on the gifs they are specialised production like robots doing a single repetitive task each. Still impressive but not much different than a modern car factory.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this the way to turn services like Uber Eats profitable?

Instead of small restaurants, you could have ala carte factories cranking dishes under different brands. At scale investment in automation makes more sense.

<comment><USER18> If you mean online-only ghost kitchens, they sure do work (even without automation). They already exist today (I believe former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has a ghost kitchen venture).

Right now, most ghost kitchens have one major shortcoming: they lack a compelling narrative. Restaurants don't just sell food -- they sell a story, a distinction. They sell a distinct style of ramen or pizza or pasta because the chef brings their culture and training to the product. Standard markup gets you margins, but a compelling story coupled with good execution adds a premium.

In this regard, pure-play ghost kitchen food feels empty and generic. There's no story or flair behind it, just a factory production line. For the "food as fuel" demographic -- this doesn't matter. Food is food, pizza or pasta is the same anywhere. For people who believe "food is culture" \-- this matters a lot. I'm not going to order pizza from a generic Grubhub place named "Sam's Pizza".

One way around this is perhaps to have restaurants with pre-existing narratives to lend their name/brand and process to a ghost kitchen operation. The Filipino chicken chain Jollibees -- which has name recognition -- is trying this out, so we'll see.

<comment><USER19> Honestly I think if the "robot" food is truly incredible and delicious, I don't buy that the story will matter much at all. That paired with high value relative to cost, likely leads to a world where only the edges survive, "fine dining" like experiences and cheap but good options. Agreed with the power of ghost kitchens leveraging brand, this is what sweetgreen does to help with their distribution

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Robots make terrible waiters!

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

</comment><comment><USER21> Robotic food preparation (at least for fast, simple meals) would be welcome in the post-Pandemic world.

<comment><USER6> There's little if any evidence to support fear of Corona transmission through food. You get corona by breathing it, not eating it. Restaurants have taken a hit because their dining areas are dangerous, not their kitchens (not to the consumer anyway, the employees are a hazard to each other.) I've been eating 7-11 hotdogs this entire time in a city that's been locked down for months; they never stopped food prep because there's really little reason to stop it.

For that matter, our world has been "post-pandemic" for longer than recorded history. It's not even the first pandemic in the modern era.

<comment><USER21> > There's little if any evidence to support fear of Corona transmission > through food.

You're probably right, but there's perception. And that's very important for marketing. Pizza delivery companies are advertising their pizza as "untouched by human hand" from the time they emerge from the oven to the time they get to your door.

> It's not even the first pandemic in the modern era.

We have short attention spans. Not everyone is a history expert/pedant like you.

<comment><USER6> If my intent was to be pedantic, I would have pointed out that we're not _post_ -corona because it's still ongoing. My actual point, which I had hoped you would infer, was that _people have short attentions spans._ I see little reason to believe corona will have lasting profound social impact when previous pandemics in the modern era did not. Judging by road traffic, people are already beginning to return to their normal lives even though this pandemic still hasn't run it's course. I think in a few years it will be nearly forgotten, just like the other pandemics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This makes sense at scale. The restaurant seats 600. Some form of assembly line is essential.

<comment><USER14> The economics of this might be interesting.

Say they are only targeting to make $1 per meal.

And they're opened for 14 hours a day, 10 am to 12 am midnight. And say they're always operating at full capacity. And each table has a 45 minute window between turnovers, so you eat your meal in 45 minutes. So you've got about 18 rotations throughout your day. And assume the 600 seats are always optimally filled.

Then, 18 x $600 = $10,800/day

Then, in a year, this could theoretically become: $3.94 million/year.

You could always adjust your numbers, like if they target $2 in profit per meal, then this could theoretically be $7.9 million/year.

Then, at these rates, the initial capital outlay for these robots, might just be worthwhile. Say, you spend $1 million for the robots and machinery, then, it would take 3 months to recover that cost.

Of course, you also have to factor in other costs like the front workers, cleaners, security, and dish washers (unless they have a robot for that too).

But at least you don't have to pay for a cook anymore. But you will have to pay for a Quality Assurance guy to watch the robots.

And most people prefer to eat during the lunch and dinner rush, so you won't get to hit the full theoretical operating capacity, thus limiting your profits. But you can try to make more in profit per visitor instead.

<comment><USER11> Average meal delivery prices in second tier cities approximate or exceed 20RMB per meal. After ingredients at least 15RMB or 75% of that is potential margin. Roughly, this demographic covers at least the higher earning ~60% of the Chinese population or 840M people if you can scale it. Now, according to various sources food delivery networks currently deliver USD$35B/year to 400M unique users in China. Replace that with robots and you are talking faster itch scratching, better personalization, higher reliability, more choice, higher cleanliness, 24H availability, smoother experience (no "where are you I am outside" phone calls). So, forget your $10,800/day figure. Think USD$35B/year = ~USD$100M/day, discounting any growth. Now grow that, value the market position and lock-in in addition to the cashflow, and you have an idea of the real opportunity... that's how we see it, anyway.

<comment><USER14> My estimate was for 1 restaurant location.

The company can build out 10,000 robotic restaurants like this, which may bring you closer to your estimate of $100M USD per day.

But, there's also competition. Which will limit your earnings.

<comment><USER11> Yes. We made the strategic decision control production, already have our own 1000m2 factory with heavy equipment enabling nearly full internal production and absolutely intend to build tens of thousands of units ourselves. Incidentally this means we can produce far more cheaply than if we had outsourced through contract manufacturers (default approach of foreign foodtech firms), and also in conjunction with modular design means we can pivot rapidly should we generate upgrades or revisions to hardware. You would be surprised how much convenience matters in the food retail market: the consumers tend to see only the immediate itch-scratching option, and mentally discard the competition. Just look at the recent explosion of 'food' in convenience retail chains globally since around Y2K, reportedly their largest growth area for decades.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Even the LastPass Will Be Stolen - <AUTHOR> http://www.martinvigo.com/even-the-lastpass-will-be-stolen-deal-with-it/ <comment><USER4> I'm a LastPass user and everything here was pretty much as I expected with one exception - the unencrypted metadata in the vault. That's extremely disappointing. The ECB stuff isn't really used any longer, the OTPs are kind of hacked on, no surprise there. I was willing to tolerate that stuff for an overall decent solution.

But now realizing that they're handling URLs in this way... I just can't use it anymore or recommend it in good faith.

So what do I do?

\- KeePass looks nice, has multiplatform support and browser extensions but the crpytography in it is sketchy, custom KDF and stuff going on... mobile support might also not be so great though I'm not positive.

\- PasswordSafe has better looking cryptography, though still not up to where I'd like it to be as well as a worse UI, worse browser support, etc. And last I checked I think Linux support was sketchy.

\- There are an infinite number of questionable proprietary solutions that have similar problems to LastPass, usually far worse actually...

\- and a few open source solutions that look good but completely lack in the UI and integration departments.

So I'm about to take KeePass, gut the crypto, replace it with simple scrypt and AES-OCB or chacha20-poly1305 and hope I can wind up with something I'm comfortable using - anyone have a better suggestion?

<comment><USER5> Take Schneier's advice and write down your passwords: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_yo...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_your.html)

I suppose this is a problem if someone breaks into your home and gets into wherever you keep your notebook and steals it but frankly that's hardly the only problem you have in that scenario.

<comment><USER6> > We're all good at securing small pieces of paper.

Not true, as it turns out. I created passwords for my users and put them on a laminated card as a courtesy, with instructions to keep it in their wallet, purse, etc. They were turning up stuck to keyboards, shelves next to desks, etc. Some people are really crap at securing small pieces of paper.

<comment><USER5> I'll bet you if it were the details to their own bank account they wouldn't do that! It's a problem of how much people care, really (or how much they think the organization cares).

<comment><USER6> I think Schneier's (and my) mistake was assuming people know to value their passwords. It's getting bad when the Head of IT, however, is one of those sticking the password to his desk :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> With the recent security issues surrounding LastPass, it makes me wonder, is the bar set too low even for professional products? Does LastPass not do this testing on their own? Does LastPass not reach out to the security community and contract to have this testing done, proactively? I mean, these folks pulled this off in their 10% time...

<comment><USER8> I don't know, how much is the security bug bounty on LastPass? $1000 according to Bugcrowd [1]. But what would be the right value?

That's the only way we ensure it's economically more viable for hackers to resell their security leaks to LastPass than to pirates. An economic approach would claim that the total available bug bounty scheme must be worth the same as the potential stolen value of the contents, otherwise it's still valuable to exploit the leak rather than publish them. The only savings that LastPass can make is over the gap between insured value and their ability to not have leaks.

[1] [https://bugcrowd.com/lastpass](https://bugcrowd.com/lastpass)

<comment><USER9> I doubt most small businesses could afford a bug bounty that would exceed potential illegal profits from selling an exploit to bad actors. I don't think the economics work at any scale. Could Google, Apple or Microsoft even outbid a nation state seeking to purchase an exploit?

<comment><USER10> No, but I think as long as the bug bounties pay enough to keep someone comfortable (along with added notoriety/resume padding with it), you'll have enough moral people choosing to reveal them to the companies rather than bad actors. Maybe that's naive. $1k bucks though probably isn't that number. More like $50k or $100k for 0-day level stuff.

<comment><USER5> Well, maybe, but states don't just have more resources to buy exploits; they also have more resources to devote to finding them in the first place.

<comment><USER11> States are not really the buyers to be concerned about. In many cases, the state already has tools that give them enhanced access to target data, all the way up to the authority to obtain and execute warrants. The people that are really worrisome are private malicious actors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> LastPass always represented a single point of failure for me, although still bettter than what people usually do - same password across all services.

I recall one interesting method involving no third-party services is a concatenation of a random string combined with some of the letters of the service I'm using. E.g. the first and last letters of the website I'm on. So if the random string is xPv4rz and I'm on HackerNews, the string becomes hsxPv4rz.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that you don't have control over password requirements, so you'll rapidly accumulate exceptions. What if they require (or assign) a PIN? Security questions? What if they assign a number as your login? Require a special character? Forbid special characters? Require >6 chars? Forbid >6 chars? Forbid your password from matching previous passwords? What if they don't show you the domain? What if the domain changes during login (see: Cambridge Savings Bank)? What if the domain changes over time? What if the company name changes? What if they lock you out after 3 attempts and you burn up all three trying to remember the variation you were forced to use?

I tried the combination scheme for a bit over a year. I was in denial about how poorly it was working until I started getting politely teased by casual acquaintances about being the guy who could never remember his passwords. There are accounts I'm still permanently locked out of. It was bad.

By comparison, LastPass has been great. More secure passwords, less forgetting them. Eventually I want to move to a password archive that's physically separate from the computer, but for now I'm happy with no longer dreading login screens.

<comment><USER14> Well regardless of your scheme, you should still write down your passwords!

Just because it's not feasible to lug a moleskine with that long long list of passwords to everywhere as a "password manager" solution, doesn't mean that you shouldn't write them in that notebook, which you store in a safe place. Not for quick & easy access, but for _backups_.

You don't have to do it on paper, but it's a good choice because it's low- tech, easy for anyone to use (bus-factor, next-of-kin) and exactly as secure as your common sense, making it exactly as secure as anything else you can use.

Being unable to access accounts, because you forgot the passwords, that you didn't write down anywhere is equivalent to losing data because you didn't make backups. Which we also tease people about, right?

Have you written down your LastPass master-password anywhere?

<comment><USER13> The tone of your lecture suggests that you think I disagree. Which is odd, because from where I'm sitting your central claim looks like a corollary to my conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well-written article and some things I had thought of myself but ignored. It's not that other systems might be more secure, but reducing attack surface is important. So, is there something that lets me access my passwords on all my computers and phones without having to manually sync? Perhaps something + Dropbox?

<comment><USER16> I've been using Dropbox/ownCloud + KeePassX/KeePassDroid for years now. Putting the password in is a manual step, but that also means I feel like being more in control. Very happy with the setup.

<comment><USER17> As someone with very little knowledge of encryption etc. please advise - <USER2> safe is dropbox? I would have guessed it would be a relatively frequent target for blackhats.

<comment><USER18> I would consider it not safe because it was on of the companies mentioned on the NSA slides. You can still sync your Keepass(x) file with Dropbox if you have a good password (key file is recommended) on the database file.

Instead of Dropbox you can also use [https://spideroak.com/](https://spideroak.com/) They have a really handy program which let you control a lot of things and they are a "zero knowledge" cloud provider, all your data is encrypted. Snowden recommends them: [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/17/edward- sno...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/17/edward-snowden- dropbox-privacy-spideroak) For $12 dollar a month you get 1 TB, which you can use as a safe off-site backup location.

<comment><USER19> Note that, while SpiderOak is arguably more secure than Dropbox, they rely on a hybrid security model wherein they still have your encryption key on their server, but encrypted with your local password. This matters because if your password is ever compromised, however briefly—say, by using the mobile app or the website, neither of which are supported in a secure manner (they make this very clear)—then all your data would be permanently compromised, with no way to rotate your keys and re-encrypt your data before someone gets access to it, short of blowing out your account. I get why things work this way, but still, yuck.

<comment><USER20> Also worth pointing out that neither Dropbox nor SpiderOak are fully open- source, so you are having to place some degree of 'blind trust' in either service. It is in their own best interests to have great security so that customers trust the product, but this cannot be verified by someone outside the company.

<comment><USER21> SpiderOak'er here; as a reminder, we also offer Encryptr, our own password manager: [https://spideroak.com/solutions/encryptr](https://spideroak.com/solutions/encryptr)

Which itself _is_ open source: [https://github.com/SpiderOak/Encryptr](https://github.com/SpiderOak/Encryptr)

<comment><USER22> Been using this for a while and I'm liking it so far.

When are exporting and offline access coming?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is also QTpass: [https://qtpass.org/](https://qtpass.org/) [https://github.com/IJHack/qtpass](https://github.com/IJHack/qtpass)

</comment><comment><USER23> If we choose to still use LastPass, what are the best practices to make these exploits less usable? They have some at the bottom, but I was wondering if they missed any.

Looks like there is an option to disable store dOTP on each machines? Kind of a pain to change on every device, but OK. Sounds like a good idea. What else is there?

<comment><USER24> There are some good recommendations at the end of the article/presentation, but also note that Lastpass seems to have fixed (at least some of) the issues already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Its interesting that the unix world outlook of simple tools doing one thing make this simple. My encryption layer is encfs, my storage and sync layer is dropbox (although I used unison a long time ago) and I don't use the browser interface layer so I hand type passwords. At least this way I never forget any. Oh and for password creation I use pwgen for important stuff (the credit union) and silly names for unimportant stuff (social media)

Individually those small simple tools are well optimized and pretty safe. Yet monolithic top to bottom windows style all in one solutions always fail miserably such that it smells impossible to actually implement. Which it might be, for practical, and possibly legal, reasons.

This is interesting because its a real world example of what happens if you let the general public be unix sysadmins.

It is possible, that just like some knowledge is only for the cognitive elite, some computer automations and features are inherently by the complexity of what they do, only for the computational elite. If this isn't a specific example of something on that borderland, its an interesting topic to think about in general.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thank you for sharing! Lastpass user here

-country restriction enabled - CHECK -2fa enabled - CHECK -TOR disabled - <USER3>

<comment><USER27> Where is disabling TOR connections in LP settings? Can't seem to find it.

<comment><USER28> Vault -> Account Settings -> Show Advanced settings

<comment><USER27> Ah! Not sure how I missed that, thanks.

<comment><USER28> You're welcome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> PasswordSafe + DropBox

[http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/](http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER30> Dropbox is the weak link, as your encrypted datafile is likely accessible to a determined 3rd party.

<comment><USER31> If an attacker is able to find my storage repo, identify my database file, discover what type of encryption I'm using, and figure out the key to decrypt it, then you know what, they've earned my credentials :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Could I use multiple services like LastPass, and then have my password be the xor of all of those? That way each service would have to fail at the same time, or I would have time to change the stolen piece?

<comment><USER33> The XOR of two ASCII password characters tends to produce characters in the control code section of ASCII, which you may have some trouble convincing those services to store. You could define your own XOR based on an enumeration of password characters, but that's getting into a lot of work for this idea... it had better be good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "What I am saying is that LastPass adds Javascript payloads to your encrypted vault in cleartext. Javascript code that will be injected and run in every page load in the domain's context. While this is a legitimate feature, it gives LastPass the possibility of stealing all your credentials."

Ouch ouch ouch. How did they think that was a good idea anyway?

</comment><comment><USER35> LastPass has jumped the shark. Major vulnerabilities were disclosed in 2011 and now 2015. Their purchase by LogMeIn is not inspiring. I closed my account and started using KeePass (by way of KeePassDroid) stored in Google Drive. This way only I control the encrypted data.

<comment><USER36> Data uploaded to Google Drive is not data _only you control_. You may believe only you control the _unencrypted_ data, but that is up for you to decide. If you read the entire post the author states:

"To finish, we want to point out that the security team at LastPass responded very quickly to all our reports and lot of the issues were fixed in just a couple days. It was very easy to communicate and work with them.

We have seen media and tweets mentioning that we "hacked LastPass". We did not hack LastPass. We also don't feel comfortable with those claims. What we did is find a number of bugs, bad practices and design issues which we used to obtain the vault key and decrypt all passwords in different scenarios. There is no bug-free software and any future research on other password managers would likely have similar results."

... which is doubly worrying if you do not control the data you believe to be securely encrypted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Product idea: a smartwatch with stored passwords combined with an USB plug- adapter for a keyboard (daisy-chain style). Eventually, computer manufacturers could incorporate the USB adapter into the computer itself.

<comment><USER38> [https://www.blooky.com/](https://www.blooky.com/)

Although, I'm not sure they met their kickstarter goal.

<comment><USER39> Nope, not met. $4001/$250k. Ouch.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339603800/blooky- wirele...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/339603800/blooky-wireless- bluetooth-password-key)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> 165 sloc of bash + gpg = [https://github.com/drduh/pwd.sh/](https://github.com/drduh/pwd.sh/)

</comment><comment><USER41> The only workable self-hosted solution I found was TeamPass, but i'm nowhere knowledgable about itsec to make an audit.

[https://github.com/nilsteampassnet/TeamPass](https://github.com/nilsteampassnet/TeamPass)

<comment><USER42> It may have changed recently, but as of about a year ago, a TeamPass installation on a corporate network was my ticket as a pen tester to go from plugging into the network to domain admin in 4 hours. Not the best of signs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Whenever an article like that appears about a proprietary password manager, I just wonder if there has been any audit on the popular open source ones like KeePass. In fact I've heard that KeePass has some security issues. Is KeePass more secure?

</comment><comment><USER44> What do you guys think of clipperz? Is it safe?

</comment><comment><USER45> Fucking depressing.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER46> I just keep my passwords on a publicly visible website.

fastmail --- 31&84$ _KsATbUIOPalrwdklwdfjljklwdfljk31 &84$_KsATbUIOPal$*KsATbUIOPalrwdklwdfjljklw

apple --- CNK7wt5a2QcJ2T/qm9J+oc3JUvg/cR/uIrJ2qPgAePk

Then I mess with things. Say Rot5 for the last five characters of my Apple password and ROT8 for fastmail. Not exactly what I do but you get the idea.

However, setting up the ATV4 took a few hours.

<comment><USER7> I can't wait for the detailed HN post explaining how this scheme was defeated.

<comment><USER47> # this should be a start, it still needs output all permutations of the cipher applied over all possible substrings in the ciphertext because not all parts may have the same cipher applied and it also needs to brute force a salt up to a reasonable length to precede/follow the output text since salting passwords with a memorized constant is common.

def ceasar_permutations(ciphertext):

        alpabets = [ascii_lowercase, ascii_uppercase,'0123456789',' ~!@#$%^&*()_+``-=[]{}:";\\\<>?,./]']

        for perm in permutations(alpabets):

            alphabet = ""

            for p in perm:

                alphabet+=p

                for i in range(0, alphabet.__len__()):

                    shifted_alphabet = alphabet[i:] + alphabet[:i]

                    table = str.maketrans(alphabet, shifted_alphabet)

                    print( ciphertext.translate(table))

<comment><USER46> It is almost like I left out important parts of how I retrieve my passwords.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-prophecies-of-jane-jacobs/501104/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I read Jane Jacobs as part of a research writing class in college, focused on American cultural health. Essentially, the class was structured as the professor asserting Jocabs' work as the core thesis of the class, with our main paper for the term to either concur or dissent with it. (And hence, the class had two components -- reading Jacobs' work and a few select others the professor picked, dissecting the arguments and sources used, and then building a list of related materials, finding them (eg, at the main state school archive), reading those chosen materials, and writing a paper based on them either concurring with or dissenting from the main body of work.

I won't claim to agree with her 100%, but like many people I disagree with, articulating what we agree on, what we disagree on, and why is very informative about my own views on a topic.

So, at 18, it was very formative to interact with several of her books about city structure, how culture both emerges from and influences that structure, and related works and topics.

</comment><comment><USER3> The second to last paragraph:

> No reader of Jacobs's work would be surprised by the recent finding by a > Gallup researcher that Donald Trump's supporters "are disproportionately > living in racially and culturally isolated zip codes and commuting zones." > These zones are latter-day incarnations of Higgins: marooned, amnesiac, > homogenous, gutted by the diminishment of skills and opportunities. One > Higgins is dangerous enough, for both its residents and the republic to > which it belongs. But the nation's Higginses have proliferated to the point > that their residents have assumed control of a major political party.

The entire article is nothing more than an attempt to cast everyone living outside of metropolitan areas as backwards bumpkins. It's as offensive as it is transparent.

<comment><USER4> Just because you find it offensive, and that it is transparent, does not make it _wrong_.

<comment><USER5> Stereotyping: It's OK When We Do It

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read _Life and Death_ when I was 20. I was a CS student working late at night and the only other students working that late were the architecture students. Getting coffee one told me that _Life and Death_ was _their_ book.

So I read it. Getting a good recommendation for a book out of your subject area is gold. Jacobs is very readable.

One idea of hers that has always stuck with me was Gradual Money vs Cataclysmic Money. She also railed against the pointless new.

</comment><comment><USER7> I discovered Jane's work very recently through the "The Economy of Cities" (I haven't read her classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" yet but I've read others) and it's been a real eye opener for me. It's was very enlightening to discover a theory on how important cities are to growth and well-being.

Some of her concepts such as "import replacement" (a free market process of discovery and division of labor within a city) can be very helpful for cities aiming to mimick San Francisco / Silicon Valley such as Lille in France (with its Euratechnologies neighbourhood, where I work) or Shenzen (now that it's losing its toy factories and moving up the economic laders). And the importance of "eyes on the street" for everybody's safety, of diversity of shops/works for economic resilience, of serendipity for the process of innovation (the creation of new work, in Jane Jacobs terms), etc.

And by the way, her books are an easy read too ! I'd say a real "classic" : even more 40 years later there's still some real insights for non-urbanists.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/jane-jacobs- str...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/jane-jacobs-street- smarts)

I read this recently, which I found to be a more interesting take on Jacobs. In particular, on how easily linked article wants to blame trump on rural and commuter neighborhoods as uniquely isolated and un-diverse.

I agree with the take from the New Yorker article that cities don't organically solve this problem even if mass development is kept out -- the history of urban life in the US over the past ten years seems to be a _reduction_ in diversity, especially in areas without a lot of recent development, due to skyrocketing rents and trendy-but-not-diverse incoming populations.

I see more real diversity - people of different backgrounds interacting and doing the same things - in a lot of suburbs these days than in more urban cores, where's it's largely reducing to a relatively homogenous set of affluent residents and the more-diverse-but-non-resident-and-distinct set of Uber drivers, restaurant staff, store employees, etc.

Or, to quote:

> She believed in that virtuous, reoxygenating circle whereby density—and > short blocks and small green spaces—guaranteed diversity. This no longer > seems so, at least not in Manhattan. In the past fifteen years, the density > of my Upper East Side block has remained constant, and the play of old and > new buildings, parks and streets is unchanged. (No one can build without > several years of planning hearings.) But we have lost two toy stores, a > magazine store, a cigar store, and a stationery-and-card store, and gained > two banks, a real-estate office, a giant Duane Reade drugstore, and, to the > bafflement of the neighborhood, three French baby-clothes stores. (The best > theory is that these are part of the settlement in hedge-fund divorces.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Also highly recommended (and critical of some of Jacob's core views): Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser.

</comment><comment><USER10> This book is very long, but a good way to spend a few months for anyone interested in urban planning.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

[https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses- Fall/dp/039...](https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses- Fall/dp/0394720245/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477274954&sr=1-1)

</comment><comment><USER11> I apologise that I only got 1/2 way through this article. It said very little to me.

The article spent a bit of time talking about decline of empires. I watched a few documentaries on the topic yesterday. A central theme that recurred was environment and conflict with other regions. This was the point where I decided that this article wasn't for me. I'm no historian, but, the analogy lost me. This and the lack of details about her theory.

<comment><USER12> It ends with a reference to Marx.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't everything? In a way?

<comment><USER14> Your comment didn't (which is a saddening reaffirmation of Marx' theories).

<comment><USER15> Isn't everything a reaffirmation of Marx' theories?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Darwin's Children Drew All Over the "On The Origin of Species" Manuscript - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/blog/2014/2/darwins-children-drew-vegetable-battles-on-the-origin-of-species <comment><USER2> If you visit Darwin's home in the UK you'll also see that he had a slide made that fits on the staircase so his kids could slide down it. And there's a section about the effect the death of his daughter had on him. Clearly, a guy who loved his kids.

<comment><USER3> Say what you want about Darwin's ideas and how they have been used and abused by others, but everything I hear about this guy endears me to him.

I'd like to think if I were in alive his time and lived in his neighbourhood that he's the kind of man who could tell a fantastic story, dazzle you with his knowledge and various ideas, but above all be humble enough to treat you with the same respect.

I wish I could say the same for scientists today, so many I've run into are so focused on their own area of research that they have lost the ability to relate that learning and wonder they see to anybody who isn't just like themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "news" takeaway from this is for those of us who are fathers to young children, we can still involve our children in our work, be actively involved in their lives, and still be incredibly successful. I know I'm guilty of sometimes thinking my kids "get in the way" of my career. This is an excellent post for setting us straight, thank you for this. I need to be reminded of this once in a while!

<comment><USER5> My ideal, beautiful children have never interfered with my work in the slightest, and my ravishing wife has never complained that (as was alleged about Richard Feynman) I never annoyed her by being lost in thoughts about Calculus. My children turned out perfectly, and my wife always looks like Ellen Page on her best day ([http://www.nerdacy.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ellen_page...](http://www.nerdacy.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ellen_page-wide.jpg)).

The reason? I never married. I never had children. Life is complicated enough without looking for trouble.

<comment><USER6> Do you also play computer games on easy mode?

But joking aside, I personally must say that the chaos that having children brought to my life is a positive aspect of the whole experience. It keeps me from becoming complacent and has forced me to develop some intrisical organizational habits and discipline.

<comment><USER5> > Do you also play computer games on easy mode?

:) Computer games are no problem -- they never say, "What have you done for me lately?" Win or lose, you can walk away.

I emphasize I'm not pretending that my choices are suitable for anyone else. To each his/her own.

<comment><USER7> > :) Computer games are no problem -- they never say, "What have you done for > me lately?" Win or lose, you can walk away.

You've never played an MMO...

<comment><USER5> > You've never played an MMO...

It's true, I confess it. :)

My favorite South Park episode is the one where the boys spend their time immersed in World of Warcraft -- [http://www.southparkstudios.com/full- episodes/s10e08-make-lo...](http://www.southparkstudios.com/full- episodes/s10e08-make-love-not-warcraft)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To be honest, those drawings are pretty good and very creative.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone help me understand why the writings of great authors, theorists of past are barely legible. More examples like, War and Peace[1], or Lord of the Rings[2]. I can barely comprehend a word, let alone the whole text.

[1]:[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Tolstoy_-...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Tolstoy_- _War_and_Peace_-_ninth_draft.jpg)

[2]:[http://biblioklept.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/tolkien- manus...](http://biblioklept.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/tolkien- manuscript.jpg)

<comment><USER10> I think it's because they write mostly for themselves and mostly as fast as they were thinking of things. It's better to have to interpret something for your publicist, then to lose a thought you had while focusing on writing.

There's some notable exceptions by the way, you can't have a post on academic handwriting without mentioning Dijkstra:

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1300.PDF](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1300.PDF)

Funny, I hadn't recently read the article I linked before posting it, and in the first paragraph he actually explains why he writes so prettily. Although the context is programming notation:

"[..] the underlying idea of which is that, even if you have only 60 readers, it pays to spend an hour if by doing so you can save your average reader a minute."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any hint that the children understood part of the topics or the drawings are totally unrelated? (I prefer to use "hint" instead of "proof", because it's easy to cherrypick some drawings and find whatever meaning you want.)

I have a daughter and when she asks what I'm working in, I try to explain it. (Usually Maths or Physic. Apparently, I always start the explanation with "It's complicated. ..." because she mocks me.)

For example, I think that the topic of artificial selection is easy enough to explain to a child, and it's not difficult to make a drawing about it.

<comment><USER12> I find, if I can't explain the nitty gritty details, I can still talk about why the work is interesting to myself and to other people, what it's like to work on it, and why it's fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if carrot horses and blueberry camels are more ecologically friendly than their contemporary counterparts. They are most certainly more delicious.

</comment><comment><USER14> 25th April, 1840, Emma Darwin's diary - "Babbage".

Charles Babbage. Neat.

<comment><USER15> I noticed that too ... perhaps Darwin and Babbage were going to collaborate on a book (tentatively titled "Computation of the Species by Natural Selection") which dealt with the probability of traits being passed on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ah, and here I thought the title was linkbait for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Children) .

</comment><comment><USER17> "Much flatulence. Had an egg & toast this morning."

<comment><USER18> That caught my eye as well! No mention in the article, but on the scribbled out page of Emma Darwin's diary, she's describing how she's been ill, and what she's been eating (interestingly, I suspect she was trying to see if what she ate helped/harmed how she felt).

Starting on Sunday, it says:

Sick from half-past 12 to 5. 9 or 10 __ ___ copiously ___ ...

Took only ____ 2 raw eggs ...

Eliza __.. afternoon

slept tolerably but much flatulence.

had an egg + toast this morning.

feels [sic?] pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Famous Fact: the second half of the title of the famous book is:

"or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."

</comment><comment><USER20> isnt it great: interested browsers can also check out the Darwin Manuscripts Project, a collaborative initiative based at the American Museum of Natural History.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Origin of species, daddy? Oh, oh look at how my king eggplant slashed those horrible red carrots out of the land daddy!"

This was the best news of the day. :)

<comment><USER22> * aubergine

<comment><USER3> technically they are called aubergines and eggplants, but saying 'aubergine' gives blanks stares anywhere I've been in North America. As a designer I love fancying up eggplant dishes on restaurant menus with 'aubergine' in the name if they'll let me, and then still include the word 'eggplant' in the description of the dish for those who aren't aware of the meaning.

<comment><USER22> Yes, I was merely pointing out that Darwin's children (being British) would not have called it an 'Egg Plant'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I hope he flogged these little creationists bastards ! ;-)

<comment><USER23> At least 2 creationists under-appreciate my attempt at humor :-)

<comment><USER24> You're relatively new, so you may not know yet that HN generally doesn't like comments that are just jokes. The moderation system exists to promote the signal over the noise, and one-liners are mostly noise.

<comment><USER23> Why so serious ? <insert Joker pic here>

OK I will learn my lesson and try to remain on topic. Thanks for the pointer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Live Code Reviews with Open Source Authors - <AUTHOR> http://hangouts.readthesource.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> About a year ago some friends and I started meeting up monthly in a Google hangout to explore the internals of open source software we use everyday. Our motivations were simple: know our tools inside and out, learn from the works of better hackers than ourselves, and hopefully get a jumpstart on contributing to the repos we love.

At first we treated the hangouts like a study group, but the sessions quickly evolved into one person preparing in advance and guiding the rest of the group through what they had discovered. Then one day, the authors of PolymerJS showed up to take part as we were dissecting their code (thank you, Twitter!). Around the same time, we had been getting requests to record the sessions for folks who couldn't make it.

Eventually, we put two and two together and realized we ought to invite open source authors to read us their own works, broadcast live and recorded for posterity. What a great way to learn to write _kick-ass_ code, pave the way for new contributors to a given project, and spread our enthusiasm for all things FOSS!

We're now promoting and archiving these hangouts at [http://readthesource.io](http://readthesource.io). Last week we had Scott Corgan guide us through Superstatic, the static file server behind Divshot.com. On October 16th at 12:30 Pacific, Chris Matthieu and the Octoblu team will give us an inside look at Meshblu, a machine-to-machine instant messaging network and API that powers the Internet of Things (formerly known as SkyNet.im).

We have a few more unannounced hangouts in the pipeline and we're actively looking for more guests. Our intention is to continue covering both popular projects and not-so-well-known, but uniquely interesting ones. In the mean time, we'd love to get your take on the general concept as well as our execution.

Thanks HN!

<comment><USER2> Very cool idea guys. As someone who makes a living using open source software, it's scary how little I know about the internals and the work that goes into crafting it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Forrest, we'd love to see more Bloomington people join in! Great things going on in your neck of the woods ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've learned a ton tuning into Read the Source. We're all responsible for at least making an effort to understand the tools we're using. Reading the source is a good start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oakley, we love it when you show up. You always have great questions for the discussion!</comment></comment>


Foxconn using forced student labor to build Sony's PS4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamesinasia.com/report-foxconn-using-forced-student-labor-to-build-sonys-ps4/ <comment><USER2> While you're ranting at Sony/Apple, don't forget to spare some outrage for the Chinese professors, managers, bosses etc. who are willing participants.

Sony are the customer, and could share some blame, but honestly, this smacks of a couple of professors from the uni getting nice kickbacks (ie. "consultancy" fees) and everyone looking good to some local government officials for their "modern" internship programmes. That's generally how stuff works in China.

<comment><USER3> The companies who happily make use of suppliers who utilize this kind of labor are just as culpable.

They can take their business elsewhere, but obviously, capitalism being what it is, there's no incentive to do that.

<comment><USER4> Capitalism being what it is, no one is required to buy a PS4 or anything else that they do not want to (please do not take me into a rat hole about healthcare or other government mandated purchases). If the only source of water was to purchase it form a corporation that enslaved people I'd get your point, but we're talking about a PS4... it's a video game console... a PS4 does not matter that much if you really care about taking care of workers.

<comment><USER5> You don't have to go across the ocean to find labor issues. The agriculture industry in the U.S. has questionable labor practices, and everyone has to buy food. There is little transparency with how food is produced, just like how there is little transparency with how the PS4 is produced, at least to the average consumer.

Lack of transparency and awareness channels is why grassroots consumer boycotts cannot be relied upon to improve society/humanity.

<comment><USER6> It's not just on the producer to create transparency. It's on the consumer to want transparency. There is also a lack of desire for knowledge by the consumer, in either food or PS4 production.

Saying "there's little transparency" suggests that the world (and not a small, vocal protest community) is clamoring for information, and the accused company / industry is failing to provide it. When, in reality, most people really don't care.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. Lack of transparency is to the benefit of the companies, and they prefer to keep it that way. You are not going to get an honest answer from a company on a touchy subject unless it's already in their marketing/press releases. Usually customer inquiries are handled by powerless and uninformed employees who are not in the loop, and have no power to accurately answer difficult questions. This goes for negative customer experiences, as well as things like working conditions. Companies know that an individual voice is weak and the masses have trouble congregating. At the same time companies often have large marketing budgets to push either what they want people to believe or distractions.

There is also the matter of time. Companies have plenty of time and a unified goal to sell their products all day long. Meanwhile consumers have to split their attention between dozens of different and pressing tasks. Becoming a one-man consumer watchdog group is a job in and of itself. I think it's unrealistic to expect or rely on a majority of consumers becoming experts on all the products they purchase, as well supply chain logistics and day-to-day geopolitical rumblings.

Even if consumers are willfully ignorant, it still does not excuse abuses or poor practices. Your second paragraph is akin to the philosophical tree falling in a forest, "If a Chinese factory worker is abused and nobody cares, is he really being abused?". Of course he is, and consumer ignorance still does not make it alright for the company to exploit the worker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "But students have said that once they got to Foxconn, they were assigned to jobs that had no relation whatsoever to their fields of study, including grunt work like distribution and shipping."

Sounds like a lot of American internships haha. But seriously, people have given me advice to try "working at a McDonalds" or "work as a dishwaser" to gain some experience outside of sitting in front of a computer all day.

<comment><USER8> McDonalds might not be too bad, if you keep your eyes and ears open. They have great operations, that turns unskilled labour into steady source of income.

<comment><USER9> Plus they teach great customer service. When my step mother was in retail she would always hire people with McD's on their resume because she knew she wouldn't have to teach them how to treat customers.

<comment><USER10> I was just thinking recently how good customer service is for McDonald's and fast food as a whole. McD's has 'served billions and billions' and scaled their workforce to an impressive extent while still retaining food safety and decent customer service. A philosophy of technology professor in college loved to use them as an example as the pinnacle of engineering, from supply chain down to point-of-sale. And while minimum wage might seem demeaning, they invest a lot more in people than many companies and (sadly) is one of a few good employers in many towns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's terrible! I will definitely remember this when I go to buy a next- generation game console.

Posted from my iPhone 5S 64GB (Gold)

<comment><USER12> Sometimes I wonder if competitors attempt to dig up dirt like this.

<comment><USER3> I don't care who digs it up if it's factual.

<comment><USER13> That's a very dangerous attitude. The availability heuristic is very real when determining attitudes and beliefs, especially at scale. When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives? Of course not. Who has time for that?

If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about that?

Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse and closing your eyes to factors affecting it - such as manipulation attempts, as this could be - is bad mental hygiene.

<comment><USER14> > When you hear something bad about company X - especially when it smacks of > "dirt", as this does - do you then go and perform analysis on other similar > companies, in an effort to re-balance your perspectives?

Well maybe some people don't have such a naive view of the world where they assume nobody is corrupt until it's slapped in their face (And even then). Some people can look at stories at this and not think "Hey fuck the PS4 for using forced labor, Ima buy a Xbox One instead".

> If all the dirt on political party A was laid bare in the public, but B > managed to cover theirs up, it could swing an election. Do you care about > that?

So you would argue in that case it would be better to see party A's actions covered up so that there would be a fairer playing field between the two?

> Availability of information is extremely important in the public discourse > and closing your eyes to factors affecting it

But he isn't closing his eyes, he's got them wide open. He's just saying that he doesn't care who bringing him his info as long as it's factual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am not going to defend the Chinese this time. How stupid is that? How much money can you save by hiring students? While I don't think top managements like the CEO has any idea of this (I really doubt), they are still responsible for this horrible practice.

Here is the actual press from the school.

[http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html](http://www.bxait.cn/html/2013/01bxxw_1009/2881.html)

It basically said "the students (total of 45) had made a milestone, breaking Foxconn's record." The press praised the students for their hard work. It was written so.. idk how to explain it... the kind of statement you get from a government news press. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER16> More importantly this is about as close to "mortgaging your future" as you can get. Take Chinese students, in a high-tech degree program which could equip them to earn 6-figure salaries...and waste their time forcing them to provide free-labor doing unpaid menial assembly jobs.

The Chinese optics on this are absurd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If this involved Apple, the article's headline would be "Apple using forced student labor to build iPhone"

<comment><USER18> Indeed. This title should properly reflect that Sony is responsible.

<comment><USER19> Maybe they don't know though. Imagine you contract out some work, say building a website, to party A. How do you know they did it? Maybe they sub-contract.

While I'm sure Sony's contract has lots of details in it, there is probably no "don't trick university students" clause and Foxconn saw an opportunity to do something underhanded and increase profits.

<comment><USER20> It's someone's job to know. I knew a buyer at a major office supply company. The buyers' responsibilities included occasional visits to the factories where suppliers made the products that were bought and then put on sale in the stores. This particular company had standards that they held suppliers to. When a buyer found workers at a factory with duct tape on their mouths, people living in squalor in the "dormitories", child labor or any other nonsense it was not uncommon for those suppliers to be thrown out of the store if it was not corrected. This was for a few million dollars worth of back to school supplies.

There's no way someone enters into a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract for high end electronics without ever visiting the factory and knowing what goes on there. They know damn well what kind of conditions exist and chose to do business with the supplier anyway. If they didn't know then they're too stupid to have their job.

<comment><USER19> I may just be cynical but I think there are still shenanigans going on. Like the link posted above

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6525582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6525582)

You can't be everywhere all the time and you have to actively do audits to make sure you're satisfied with your factory conditions.....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is pretty widespread. There was an interesting investigative piece last year done by a HK station [1], but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available online. Plenty of kickbacks going to the local government/schools to keep the students flowing.

This made the headlines last year too except it was Apple that time:

32,000 Students Choose: Build Your iPhone 5 Or Get Expelled From School [2]

China Contractor Again Faces Labor Issue on iPhones [3]

[1] [http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/](http://programme.tvb.com/news/pearlreport/episode/20120409/)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-stud...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/09/11/32000-students- choose-build-your-iphone-5-or-get-expelled-from-school/)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said- to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to-use- forced-student-labor-to-make-iphones.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER22> ...the PS5, on the other hand, will be built by the players themselves, as the games will just be transforms on robot-guiding, chip-stamping, box-printing...

<comment><USER23> Computational complexity theory tries to find equivalence classes of problems that can map to one another. Each class has a primary representative such as TSP (travelling salesman problem) or 3-SAT that memorably capture the essence of the class. While it's not clear that you can map Grand Theft Auto to anything useful, you might be onto something here: Imagine a mechanical turk system where the grunt tasks are remapped onto inherently enjoyable gameplay scenarios. It would be an arbitrage play between turk vendors needing menial tasks done, and players needing entertainment. Recaptcha is a (brilliant) example, but I don't know of others. Maybe UAV control might be one. (Note that mapping one valuable task to another enjoyable task is a different idea than the "gamification" fad of inventing events to adorn with tawdry badges.)

<comment><USER24> It wouldn't have to be a full time task but could be inserted into a game to provide a change to the flow. For example putting together an iphone from pieces found in an old cardboard box while zombies are trying to break in the door you just locked. This is kind of like the use of in game advertising in that when done well it doesn't actually detract from the game but adds to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One man's forced labor is another's "real world work credits to finish your degree". This seems to be a storm in a teacup that will naturally play very well for historical reasons.

</comment><comment><USER26> Getting student interns to do the grunt work is an outdated practice? I was almost convinced that was standard operating procedure at most North American tech firms.

<comment><USER17> If you think tech internships are bad, you should look at literally any other field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently mentored two high-school interns at a Fortune 500 tech company. My goal was to give them a real experience in what it's like to work at a big company (code for I had no budget to woo them w/ fancy dinners, concerts, toys, etc.) and to give them real work. They built a useful mobile app. I gave them minimal supervision, directed and helped when I could... based on their feedback I think it was a huge success. I'm glad the company I work for considers interns as an opportunity to train up the next generation of great programmers, managers, and leaders, and practically realizes these people are their next employees. If I'd exploited them as menial labor (getting me coffee, processing mail, doing boring work) they'd lose out and my company would too. Perhaps China has a labor pool large enough to develop and exploit at the same time (that's sad if they do).

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds a lot like the unpaid internship positions I've seen offered at plenty of startups.

Just on an industrial scale.

</comment><comment><USER28> While I want to stop buying such stuff, where does it end? A quick look at my favourite supermarket shows that almost 90% of the products are "Made in China". How do I know they were not made under similar circumstances? Or the t-shirts that are made in Bangladesh that I can expect to be made pretty much under the same conditions of forced labour. I would love to buy things made in USA or Canada but that is not happening. I have tried to do this in the past and I am even willing to pay extra dollars for this, but I find most companies have shifted manufacturing to China. My recent conversation with a company went like:

Me: Where do you manufacture your products? Company: We used to manufacture them in Canada but we shifted to China. But rest assured, our quality is the same and blah blah blah.

So my point is, we do not have a choice. You can boycott Apple or Sony PS4 now, but it doesn't end there.

<comment><USER4> Where do you live? It's odd to me that 90% of the products at your favorite supermarket are made in China. Like bananas, oranges, bread, beer, hamburger, celery, avacados, beans, cereal, milk, fish... these do not seem like things that are made in China if you live in the Western hemisphere. I know I have many things made in China, but they seem to be more physical long-term goods; toys, electronics (maybe?), physical things.

<comment><USER28> I was not talking about eatables. I was talking about electronics and non- edible stuff. Should have clarified.

<comment><USER4> No worries. I do not think 90% of the thing I buy from Walmart and other common "supermarkets" in the South Eastern US are from China, but I cannot vouch or the labor laws of these sources... that doesn't mean they're bad, it means I need to pay more attention to these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "One student, for example, majored in finance and accounting but has been assigned to a job that entails glueing together parts of Sony's Playstation 4...."

Am I the only one who thinks that sounds great? Why shouldn't finance an accounting guys get some insights into the working conditions of people "below" them?

</comment><comment><USER30> 99% of all internships in Poland are not paid for. And you HAVE to do them to pass the course. Yet I am yet to see an article talking about "forced student labour" building anything in Poland. Maybe because the same issue in China is more sensational?

</comment><comment><USER31> Any company that has suicide nets and barred up windows is breaking some serious humanitarian laws. Free labour aside, the bleak truth for many of these students who are going down the professional track is that their country's industry isn't large enough to offer most of them placements.

Despite being smart, hard working and well educated, many will have to go into manufacturing like this after they graduate. The article talks about Xi'an that's roughly in the centre of the country, a good distance away from the international East coast where the majority of the professional appointments are.

<comment><USER29> I don't understand how people can go on pointing at the suicides when it is well known that suicide rates are lower at Foxconn than the average Chinese suicide rates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do you know saddest part in all this?

These kind of jobs might be the only way those students can earn enough(to pay for their education) in hopes of a better life later. I've been is such a situation before, and it totally sucks. But that is the only available option before you. Imagine having to this, when you have no other options left. I mean these people are not lazy, not stupid and very capable. But they have to do this because of scarcity of opportunity.

<comment><USER29> ... until they graduate and get high paying jobs in finance. Is it really so bad to have to work "student jobs"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Guess what, Foxconn makes boards for Linux boxes as well, blaming Sony and Apple for using Foxconn and ignoring that everybody else uses them as well is absurd.

</comment><comment><USER34> Banks do pretty much the same thing with their internships... which, of course, just makes it even bigger argument against this type of modern slavery...

</comment><comment><USER35> Just don't forget, sweatshops are better than no employment at all. Though it is bad that they exist, they are a sign of progress.

<comment><USER36> Except that these students aren't getting paid for their work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a serious problem for Foxconn. I think that they should voluntarily appoint international-standard labour auditors to vet all their labour practices and to phrase recommendations as to what exactly their management should seriously consider changing. The foxconn management may not always be aware of sensitivities in their overseas markets. With small changes in their procedures, they could already achieve quite a few things. It is not a problem to hire students and interns, but they should beware of anything that could make it look like indentured labour.

<comment><USER38> >The public-relations fallout concerning their labour practices has become a serious problem for Foxconn.

What do you mean by this? What are the ramifications of this "serious problem"? Are they making less money?

<comment><USER39> Consequences do exist, although it's still very minimal. This may prompt Sony to do something as significant as Apple's move though and actively audit the companies they work with -

        In one case, Apple terminated its relationship with a
        component maker after discovering 74 cases in which
        underage workers were being employed. Apple also found
        that an employment agency had forged documents to allow
        children to work illegally at the supplier.

        Apple reported both the supplier and the employment
        agency to the local authorities, the company said in its
        latest annual report on the conditions in its supply chain.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor- aud...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/technology/apple-labor-audits- uncover-underage-workers.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER40> > " This may prompt Sony to do something as significant as Apple's move > though..."

Where do they [or Apple] go if not Foxconn? Foxconn is _huge_. Moving production elsewhere, even outside of a major product launch, is likely in the realm of the infeasible.

<comment><USER39> I don't know much about this stuff but presumably Foxconn has competitors - Samsung and Qualcomm maybe? I'm not sure Foxconn would even fail the audits at this point, they copped a lot of flack for their appalling work conditions and suicide rates in 2010 which I believe contributed to Apple's stance on work conditions since it reflected terribly on them too.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides)

<comment><USER41> Foxconn... really doesn't have any competitors at scale. Maybe Quanta, but that's it off the top of my head. They are unlike any other company in the world. Too big to fail, and too big to give a shit about human rights sounds about right for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Forced labor leads to better US consumer prices!

</comment><comment><USER43> Sad thing is - the target audience for the PS4 doesn't give a damn. As long as it is not them and they never have to see the people or be affected in a personal way because of it, they are happy to look the other way.</comment>