Tech Industry-Funded Think Tanks Work to Overturn California Privacy Law - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2019/04/16/consumer-privacy-laws-california/ <comment><USER3> The fact that a 100% of the think-tanks taking corporate funding (from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Airbnb, Uber, Verizon, eBay) are trying to undermine excellent privacy laws passed by California [0] and Illinois state assemblies should come as a surprise to no one.

The problem is these think-tanks or variants thereof might end up representing the tech industry in most places where it matters anyway, just like how most of the standard bodies have been taken over by them and now slowly approve of features that further their business motives (I am looking at you ITU).

Two ways (there must be more?) I can think of to fix the behaviour of these behemoths:

1\. External: Internet Activism. This has been well underway for a long time now but the corporates are patient beasts. The problem always remains gathering enough support [1] and generally the short attention span of the larger populace.

2\. Internal: The employees. Be critical, put yourselves in akward situations, start demanding answers [2]. The problem might be risking job security? That could be offset by forming a large enough group?

\--

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17420849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17420849)

[1] Btw, the signees of this letter care about your privacy: [https://www.eff.org/document/december-2018-preemption- letter](https://www.eff.org/document/december-2018-preemption-letter)

[2] [https://demandprogress.org](https://demandprogress.org)

/offtopic [https://firstlook.media](https://firstlook.media) is doing a great job. Almost all their articles are of high quality.

<comment><USER4> Is there any law/legal mechanism which could put automatic expiration on new laws? Is there anything I could suggest to my lawmakers for this to happen?

I mean, we seem to be following a pattern:

Big power wants something that directly and negatively impact the quality of life of the majority of the populace.

Populace rises up against this.

Big power 'loses'.

Big power makes the push again next year. People rise up, but a little less.

Big power 'loses'.

Repeat until popular power is worn out and big power gets what they want.

Once passed, popular outrage won't remove it, it's way harder to get support for repealing than for approving.

So...

I'd like to support something that changes that system from working that way.

I'd think an expiration date would due... but I'm open to supporting anything that would break this pattern.

<comment><USER5> Democratically speaking, the only reason Big Power wins is due to the fact that it's incredibly inefficient to stand behind interests of many parties investing small amounts against single players investing huge amounts.

One would think we need interest groups more.

<comment><USER6> > One would think we need interest groups more.

Would love to see more of those, especially in the EU, and the way they have them in the US. I'd love a privacy focused action group, but I don't want to buy a host of unrelated political issues with that. The EFF and similar organisations do a pretty good job at that, would love if we had more groups like that over here.

<comment><USER7> I love the idea, especially as a way of un-bundling beliefs so we're not all beholden to one of two massive and far reaching belief systems.

That said, I worry that it's too easy for small advocacy groups to get steamrolled by bigger interests if they prove to be a problem. Even if they're popular with the public, it just takes a payment to a PR firm of your choice to roll a story that they're selling dead babies and suddenly everyone is confused.

<comment><USER6> True, but EFF and others managed to get past that as well, I think mostly by not overreaching, always being fact-based and consistency. It would certainly take quite a while to gain enough trust and support if you're not ideologically aligned.

I worry that it's just hard to do. It takes a special kind of person (and lots of them) to keep general politics out, even more so when you're successful and advocating your personal politics would be easy and effectful. Oh, and being vigilant so you don't get co-opted by a political movement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So... I'm a worried netizen. I have concerns about data monopolies, privacy, surveillance, the ad-tech industry, cambridge analyticas... which puts me in the hn majority, I guess.

That said, what specifically are we aiming for. Privacy laws? Is there a bullet point of what these laws prohibit/require? Enforcement mechanisms? Standards? Protocols?

"Pro-privacy" isn't really enough, for a political program.

It would be great if one of these think tanks could put forward a specific agenda, preferably one that a large portion of us can support. What is it we want achieved?

<comment><USER9> I think the best approach to informational self-determination is to define that any information concerning you as a person belongs to yourself. Any diversion needs active consent. This is what this think tank (a name for every sweaty office) allegedly wants to get rid off.

I doubt this clear definition is impractical or utopian and could very well be implemented, so I doubt effective privacy legislation needs to be extensive. People consent to share information all the time. That would of course cost an industry that has stakes in information about you, even if that is not their primary business.

Furthermore it is worth to think about if there is any information about you which you are not eligible to share.

It is not trivial to determine if information is personal. Perhaps there should be a formal process to determine that.

<comment><USER10> > any information concerning you as a person belongs to yourself. Any > diversion needs active consent

But in the US that isn't true even outside of the internet. If you walk outside of your home/land, I can legally photograph and record video of you. I can write down what you're wearing, make assumptions about your income based on your address, record you gender/age/etc. All of that is 100% legal - <USER2> willingly give up information about yourself when you go to public places.

You could argue the internet is not a public space but that counters most pro- privacy people's opinions on free speech/etc online.

<comment><USER11> > you willingly give up information about yourself when you go to public > places.

No, I really don't. I just can't do anything about it. I would agree with some form of this "implied consent" argument if going outside were an optional activity, but it's not.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I understand your point, but I don't think going online is an optional activity either.

<comment><USER11> I'm not willingly giving up any information by being in a public space, because I don't have any choice about being in public spaces. Any information people gain about me is being taken, not given freely.

> I don't think going online is an optional activity either.

I think that can be debated, but let's say you're right: that just reinforces my point.

My essential point is that the "public space" argument isn't terribly meaningful. Actual consent can only be given in the absence of coercion. If being surveilled is a requirement in order to simply function as a human being, then consent doesn't enter into it.

And, in my view, all of the arguments about privacy and spying hinge on the issue of consent. If data is being gathered about me without my consent, then I'm being spied on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't wait for the CA law to come into effect. "The law, set to take effect next year, gives California residents the power to view the types of data companies collect from them, request that the data be deleted, and allows residents to declare that their data not be sold to third parties."

Does anyone know if the law includes the ability to demand that data third parties have collected be deleted as well? Will I be able to tell what third parties already have my data from the source of collection?

</comment><comment><USER13> At this point the statement and other gestures that a company "value's your privacy" is just a default poster someone puts up, while they do other things.

<comment><USER14> We value your privacy at $0.0003 per click!

<comment><USER13> I'm working on a side project and the setup is basically that you get to see all the data I have on you. Granted this is a tiny project that is largely just for me, but as a policy that seems like that is the most clear cut way to go.

<comment><USER10> The big data players have tools for this. For example:

[https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/](https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/)

<comment><USER13> That's interesting, I wonder how that came about.

<comment><USER10> Yeah kind of cool. I believe tools like that came from either mass opt-out tools by the Network Advertising Initiative or the Digital Advertising Alliance.

[http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1](http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1)

<comment><USER11> Those tools are worthless, though. I wonder if Oracle's is any better.

<comment><USER10> They accomplish what they intend to do, its just that most users want them to do more.

If you use that tool on all of your devices (and don't clear your cookies/etc) you will be opted out of those vendors tracking. But that doesn't accomplish since that type of targeting only makes up maybe 15% of targeted advertising. All that tool does is get you shittier ads. (Oracle's just shows you what data they know about you, it doesn't actually delete or opt you out).

<comment><USER11> > They accomplish what they intend to do, its just that most users want them > to do more.

That hasn't been my experience. When I've used the tools, the opt-outs have failed for the majority of the companies in the list (as reported by the site itself).

That said, as you point out, they're pointless even if they worked correctly as you still have to engage in all the blocking that you usually do regardless.

> (Oracle's just shows you what data they know about you, it doesn't actually > delete or opt you out).

Ah, so Oracle's offering is worse -- worthless by design rather than implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is so sad to see the bad actors in the tech industry pushing so hard to advance policies that are harmful to society at large and people individually.

It is even more sad that I'm not the least bit surprised by this.

<comment><USER15> Standing by for employee protests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish I could say I was surprised by this... but I am not.

What I am really curious about, are any of these companies linked to Apple?

Considering the very public stance they have been recently taking. The article does not specifically mention them either way (and they are the only of the big ones missing).

<comment><USER17> Not sure about Apple but I like that all the companies linked are all supporters of NN. Almost as if a public face, NN, and a private face, think tanks to overturn privacy laws.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't necessarily tie net neutrality and this together, since NN supports them as much as us. Considering it most likely would be them footing the bill (or loosing traffic) without NN

<comment><USER17> >I wouldn't necessarily tie net neutrality and this together, since NN supports them as much as us.

How we know? Because they told us that? They would be funding thinktanks to pass NN if they had to. The truth about NN is only ONCE was a carrier ever really found to be selectively throttling for non-congestion reasons in the mid-2000s and the FCC shut that down immediately. NN still allows for throttling if you claim it's for congestion.

YET... SV likes to promote the idea of a slow internet without regulation.

Just because you agree with the idea doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to the propaganda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The US should just implement Convention 108+ like the rest of the world.

</comment><comment><USER19> Are public companies required to show which organizations / think tanks they are a part of and what role they play therein as part of their periodic financial updates (quarterly or annual)?

The thing with money and speech in politics is that speech _must_ be loud enough in order to be an effective agent for change whereas the effectiveness of money is considerably more independent that. By loud, I mean a quality more like the amount public awareness and genuine understanding a given issue has.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there any possibility to recoup losses incurred while accessing siloed and hostile websites trying to pull my private information? I'm using some privacy enhancements in browser, and major websites don't work properly because of them. Is it possible to win a claim for incurred losses at least in time, if not in data leaks?

</comment><comment><USER21> Data is being called the new "Oil" and it's only a matter of time that tech becomes as maligned as the tobacco and oil industry.

</comment><comment><USER22> yet, courageous and far-sighted individuals working towards federated and private data models pre-FB, struggled to find any funding, and were vocally criticized for "asking for money" or "trying to charge money" by intellectuals .. idcommons dot org

</comment><comment><USER23> TL;DR: the key is to insulate lawmakers from concentrations of wealth.

A law that prevents corporations from spending resources on politics would do this. Or low contribution limits could work, to limit billionaire influence.

A lot of comments in this and other privacy threads correctly worry about the combination of "diffuse costs, concentrated benefits" and the electorate's short attention vs sustained private lobbying. My feeling is those effects cannot be overcome once in effect, so we have to roll back to prevent the effects in the first place.

Sounds politically unlikely, but stranger things have happened in American politics.

</comment><comment><USER24> ugh, so fucking creepy, but it's perfectly in line with SV double speak</comment>


Microsoft patent may block Google Maps in Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-patent-may-block-google-maps-in-germany-7000012326/

<comment><USER2> A highlight:

 _> Nikon, which uses Android in its Coolpix cameras, was the latest manufacturer to agree to Microsoft's licence, which is said to give it up to $15 per Android device._

$15 per device (at least 1% of retail price of a decent smart electronic device) for one map-related patent? I wonder if any patents on FAT are paid for alongside this one.

My guess is, MSFT aims at making the free Android seem more expensive than mobile Windows via patent licensing.</comment>


Show HN: Pyscreencapture – Capture Windows by Name and Title via Terminal on OS X - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thismachinechills/pyscreencapture

<comment><AUTHOR> Made this so I could quickly capture a demo screenshot when pushing updates to my applications. To do that, you need to get the Window ID from Quartz to capture a specific window.

Hope this makes some dev's life a bit easier by doing that automatically for you.</comment>


Desperate times call for desperate measures - jack-r-abbit http://blog.theoldreader.com/post/56798895350/desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why they don't want to charge for it. It will slow down signups and give them funding to scale up. They could also use invite-style signups like LiveJournal did back in the day.

I didn't sign up for the old reader because having to pay for it was at the top of my requirements, on the basis that people are more likely to keep things going if you're paying for them. Not always true I know, but it does hold some weight.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _on the basis that people are more likely to keep things going if you 're > paying for them._

That could also make people feel obligated to keep things running when they really don't want to. Imagine the feeling of still needing to shut down a service people have paid for because it was still not making enough money to be worth it. Now you have paid customers you have an actual obligation to. I can imagine that would be very stressful.

<comment><USER3> > shut down a service people have paid for because it was still not making > enough money to be worth it.

but why would it not be worth the money paid for? you can't just charge some token market rate, hoping for scale to profit - you _ought_ to charge the amount it costs plus profit to run it, and so even if you had 1 user, it would be profitable.

Now, whether this is something the owners want to maintain is a different question vs can't charge enough to be worth it.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _so even if you had 1 user, it would be profitable._

That isn't really the case, though. There is a minimum amount of infrastructure you need. One paying customer is not going to cover that. And a project that pays for itself with a little profit is still not always worth it if you are killing yourself to maintain it, have another job, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I kicked the tires after the Google Reader announcement, but it was always apparent that the team wasn't able to keep up with the rush of new users. I think the best outcome here would be a sale to a more dedicated party, but regardless of that, I can see why they would want to take this route.

They're working on a free service for love. They deserve to do that on their own terms.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the drama revolving around phpVirtualBox from a while back:

[http://ahmetalpbalkan.com/blog/a-cry-for- help/](http://ahmetalpbalkan.com/blog/a-cry-for-help/)

Software and technoloy should be a joy and a light, not a curse.

 _For those who would like to start the usual "VC, funding, mentor" or "charge for the damn thing" mantras — please, spare it. We're not in the Valley where it might be super-easy, and, after all, not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. We just love making a good RSS reader._

I hate this false belief that "good RSS reader" and "RSS reader that you have to pay for" are somehow diametrically opposed to one another.

Best of luck to the team. I hope everything works out.

</comment><comment><USER6> For me, Google shutting down Reader was a huge wake-up call that I should be paying for the things that I depend on as much as I did GReader.

I signed up & paid for both pinboard and newsblur within a week of the announcement, and purposely avoided theoldreader and others that didn't have any sort of sustainable business model (although there were/are plenty of other solid projects out there).

Glad I didn't have to learn that lesson twice.

</comment><comment><USER7> Welp. I guess I'm in no place to complain, but I will anyway.

My college friends and I were very active users of The Actual Old Reader. We shared a lot of content internally and commented profusely. When Google made the switch to force everyone onto Google+, our sharing didn't continue but we still used GReader.

When Google pulled the plug on Reader and we all needed a new place to go, we discussed a lot internally on which we would all collectively used. We settled on the Old Reader because of its sharing / commenting features (if there are others with these features, let me know!). This was just a few weeks ago.

So we didn't pay money, but we paid a lot in time and commitment. This is frustrating.

<comment><USER8> The blog post states " _we value our community very much_ ". On this basis, I think you have every right to complain, and should do so directly.

<comment><USER9> I believe it also states, in more words, "but not enough to continue offering them our time and service, sorry!" so I don't believe complaining would do anything. I'm sure they are already aware people will be upset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like theoldreader because it was a zero-overhead switch from Google Reader (and I liked things about Google Reader that were changed in other alternatives that I briefly looked at).

However, I switched to bazqux.com a few weeks ago. It has all the same Reader features I love, but also shows comments, which is a great feature addition. Oh, and it feels lightning fast. They charge $9/year and will probably never get overloaded since they have the worst site name ever (from a marketing standpoint).

<comment><USER11> Of all the alternatives I've tried today after The Old Reader's announcement (I've tried about 5 others, and quickly deleted my account from most of them) - this certainly feels like the best reader for me.

It's fast, blazing fast compared to the alternatives. The UI isn't perfect, but the speed certainly makes up for it.

<comment><USER12> Thanks! BazQux looks awesome.

Discovering how to skip all those comments was a bit difficult though, and it's hard to see whether the current item is marked as read or not but other than that, I love it so far. Off to discovering how can I edit my profile...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Looks like I need to start looking for a replacement for my replacement to Reader. :(

<comment><USER13> I moved onto the digg reader (digg.com/reader) before TOR crashed when they were just really really sluggish. The digg reader is close to as fast as Google Reader was.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Not having a demo (or a feature list... or even a screenshot) is very frustrating. It wastes my time and their time to have me signup only to find I don't like it 2 minutes later. Mind posting a screenshot?

<comment><USER13> [http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/06/27/diggreader_wide-6...](http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/06/27/diggreader_wide-69f1d78d19447f7e6a13cf25cc2f7326a94bab2a-s6-c30.jpeg)

[http://cdn.as7.org/11_DiggReaderHome.jpg](http://cdn.as7.org/11_DiggReaderHome.jpg)

I pulled a few screen caps from bing for expediency's sake. The UI is very spartan, lots of whitespace, minimal chrome (UI busy-ness is what drove me away from Newsblur), and it's fast. One complaint is the large amount of whitespace when reading the story but it's tolerable. They aren't monetizing yet, unless they are it's via data aggregating (highly likely I guess) but there are no ads. I'd like to hear what the long term plans are.

Another user pointed to bazqux.com which has a similarly clean UI but with the added bonus of pulling in comments which would be a nice time saver. And the are upfront about charging for the product which makes me feel a little better about long term prospects. I'll probably put it through the paces speed wise and see if I want to migrate one last time.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Thanks. I signed up. It has some UI issues but I can live with that. Reader wasn't perfect in the UI either. I think I like Digg Reader better than TOR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was my favourite Reader replacement. I suppose losing it serves me right for not donating earlier!

<comment> jack-r-abbit Same here. I liked it (even if a little flawed) but never donated. I think this gives me the motivation to self host something that I know won't go away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of the comments there made me despair and never want to build anything, ever. So much entitlement from people who have no idea what someone else's situation is.

It's easy if you're in the US (or the UK) to just throw up a PayPal integration, set up a Ltd company, and start taking payments into a business bank account.

It's not going to be trivial everywhere in the world. Rules for minimum capital and paperwork can vary from 'trivial' to 'traumatic'. Lots of countries have problems getting payment providers, even PayPal - here's an article from earlier in the year about how they're gearing up for their Russian launch sometime this year: [http://www.ewdn.com/2013/05/23/paypal- receives-license-from-...](http://www.ewdn.com/2013/05/23/paypal-receives- license-from-russian-central-bank-plans-official-launch-later-in-2013/)

If this was my pet side project, in the UK, yeah I'd take a couple of days to set up a Ltd company and do a PayPal or Stripe or GoCardless integration, but not everyone has it as easy as we do.

These guys have gone above and beyond for a service that they can't easily turn into a business, so now it's pretty much just heartache and woe, and that's just sad.

<comment> jack-r-abbit For sure. There is no need to go all ragey on them. The system crashed, they got it back up, they got totally overwhelmed and are now taking actions best for their lives. No fault there. Best of luck to them. I've already moved on. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Please give kouio a try! [https://kouio.com](https://kouio.com)

We were avid users of Google Reader, and have strived to remain faithful to its functionality in building kouio, like the Old Reader did. We've also understood that in order for a service like this to operate, it needs to be paid for. Kouio is free at the moment as we want to finish off a few more features before we start charging, but we're probably about a month away from switching to paid accounts.

Some early users noted some performance issues, but those have since been resolved. Please give it another try :-)

<comment><USER17> Will one of the new features be search?

I've just imported my OPML file from the Old Reader into Kouio and it looks great! At first glance, you've done a great job with the interface - <AUTHOR> could be my new RSS reader. However, I really, really need to be able to search.

<comment><USER16> Yep, the API powering the UI actually supports it already, we just need to expose it in the UI. We're madly blasting through missing features, so stay tuned :-)

<comment><USER17> Good to hear! One quick question - how do I reorder feed folders in the left panel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is unfortunate.

FWIW, InoReader is a great old-style, no-frills, non-"intelligent" RSS reader. [https://www.inoreader.com](https://www.inoreader.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> I picked the old reader because it was a no-fuss google reader replacement. Feedly is bloated and was slow to boot. I also didn't want to pay to read my feeds.

I'm now switching to Digg Reader, which is equally simple, and has an android app coming soon (the iOS app is already out).

</comment><comment><USER20> Never felt comfortable with this service from day one.

By now, I have tested many and have stuck around long with InoReader. However, I must confess that nobody is doing this better than Feedly team under the circumstances. So I give up looking anywhere else for now.

</comment><comment><USER21> While I wouldn't push on them the suggestion that they open-source it, they could try to sell copies, perhaps?

I'm surprised the idea of selling a self-hosted version of their platform hasn't come up (like Fever or something else).

</comment><comment><USER22> Gave The Old Reader a try but it failed to even properly import my Google Reader feeds -- it stopped at the letter 'H'. Also, did not note any feature it did better than Feedly or any of the other competitors.

Feedly is OK, in some ways a notch up from the stagnant Google Reader, but lack of search is so frustrating and disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER3> i expected the influx of traffic to cause some (free) services to fail, and so to hedge my bets, i signed up for several that i found as acceptable Google Reader replacements. Hurray for insurance policy!</comment>


The arrival of the long-heralded friction-free economy - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/10/22/the-21st-century-corporation-new-business-models/ <comment><USER2> Got ruined for me by the (AFAIK) incorrect Tesla story at the start - pedantic, but the cars did not "burst into flames". From what I read about those situations, the cars functioned significantly after the impact, advising their passengers to get out because it would _soon_ light on fire.

Does it go on to say much of worth?

<comment><USER3> It seems to be something along the lines of "woohoo, we can push updates to cars now".

Apparently, "friction-free" means "what AAA gaming has been for half a decade".

<comment><USER4> I wonder if software industry depends too heavy on ability to deploy updates. Some time ago I watched Discovery's documentary about Maersk Triple-E. Engines got produced on other side of globe and couldn't really be tested until ship left the drydock. I guess that replacing the engine required as least disassembling 10% of ship. So engineers responsible for unit had only one attempt and had to made it right.</comment></comment></comment>


Automatic Image Colorization with Simultaneous Classification - <AUTHOR> http://hi.cs.waseda.ac.jp/~iizuka/projects/colorization/en/ <comment><USER2> For context, a different colorization model with about the same results: [http://richzhang.github.io/colorization/](http://richzhang.github.io/colorization/)

Another model previously posted on HN, with (IMO) worse results than these two models: [http://tinyclouds.org/colorize/](http://tinyclouds.org/colorize/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is amazing to me. My major was Digital Imaging Technology in 2005 and I remember doing this by hand in photoshop wondering if one day there would be a button for it.

<comment><USER4> Same with vectorizing rough pencil sketches: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583368)

I remember doing web animation back in 2000, and having to ink each penciled frame by hand, vectorizing the inked drawing and then coloring it in Flash. Now you can train a CNN to vector pencil drawings. Probably train a CNN to color everything too!

While I can see a lot of animation tasks being eliminated, I would like to imagine that they would hold onto some artists to spend some of that saved time embellishing and strengthening the quality of the final work.

But most of the heavy lifting will now be done with the press of a button. It's like Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Magical times.

<comment><USER5> As with most deep learning papers, though, the results aren't independently reproducible. The dataset is private, the source is closed, and it hasn't been turned into a product. The magic inking button is still a ways off yet.

<comment><USER6> Is this source and data set not open? Is this not the source:

[https://github.com/satoshiiizuka/siggraph2016_colorization](https://github.com/satoshiiizuka/siggraph2016_colorization)

And is this not the dataset:

[http://places.csail.mit.edu](http://places.csail.mit.edu)

I'm really asking, because I've downloaded the project and skimmed the paper, but haven't had time to vet these assumptions. On the face of it, it seems everything is provided, but you've vetted it further and learned that isn't true?

<comment><USER5> I'm talking about the auto-inker project that BunnyRubenstein linked, not the auto-colorization project from the parent submission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tried with some historical photos and my own BW images. It's missing the global image prior for most of the images except vegetation, it has a hard time even with people. For local features I've seen similar problems, my guess is that they trained it on a not large enough dataset, the spectacular samples are from over-training. While the idea looks promising the current implementation is far from general.

</comment><comment><USER8> A small sampling of how this preforms on some B&W images I had laying around (all my family)....

My Grandfather & Brothers: [http://adam.gs/v/IMG_0090.jpg](http://adam.gs/v/IMG_0090.jpg) [http://adam.gs/v/IMG_0090.color.jpg](http://adam.gs/v/IMG_0090.color.jpg)

My Grandfather, My mother and my Aunt [http://adam.gs/v/IMG_4629.jpg](http://adam.gs/v/IMG_4629.jpg) [http://adam.gs/v/IMG_4629.color.jpg](http://adam.gs/v/IMG_4629.color.jpg)

My grandfather and my grandmother: [http://adam.gs/v/IMG_6868.jpg](http://adam.gs/v/IMG_6868.jpg) [http://adam.gs/v/IMG_6868.color.jpg](http://adam.gs/v/IMG_6868.color.jpg)

From my perspective, these are decent results considering what they have to work with, I think it did a very good job.

<comment><USER2> Really? Those are quite atrocious. Are you sure you ran it through their code in the right input format. It just looks like a sepia filter right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Impressive stuff, I especially like the style transfer that can be done by using the global features of one image and the local features of another (Fig. 7)

What I find somewhat annoying is that whilst they show some examples from their validation set, and a couple of examples of the model failures. They don't appear to show a _random_ selection of cases from their validation set.

<comment><USER7> Why not trying it out yourself? They provide the model to download and torch code to run it on any photo. [https://github.com/satoshiiizuka/siggraph2016_colorization](https://github.com/satoshiiizuka/siggraph2016_colorization)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised by how apt Lua is for these kind of algorithms. From the architecture diagram I expected to be hit by a large blob of code but found that most of things are taken care by the language/framework itself!

<comment><USER7> It's using a trained torch model, available as a separate down download. That's a large blob of code and data, around 670MB.

<comment><USER10> Saw that though couldn't download as it was timing out... I thought it's just weightages and values for the trained model. Wasn't sure it had code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone please put the file colornet.t7 on the torrent network or a high- volume service somewhere? I'm probably not the only having a hard time downloading that file.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would really like to see approaches like these applied to movie scenes. Especially how differences in single colorized frames depicting the same scene could be handled.

<comment><USER13> They (I believe, although it might be the other guys) have a video up on YouTube demonstrating it on a Vietnam movie trailer. It looks appalling: aside from the usual averaged colors and saturation, the coloring is highly unstable and changes from second to second.

<comment><USER12> Thank you for the hint!

Found a video [1] colorized with the approach by these guys with the unstable coloring.

There are some other videos [2][3] colorized using differing approaches, that don't seem to have as much color unstability though the color in general appears more off.

Could of course also just be a property of the underlying source.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__kcHbzSNC4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__kcHbzSNC4) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MJU8VK2PI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MJU8VK2PI4) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQSViqdd0tU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQSViqdd0tU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how companies doing this for money will be impacted. That's amazing what a time saver it will be.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure if the title would be too long, but I'll be honest and say that I thought this was about the news organization for a minute.

CNN = Convolutional Neural Networks in this context.

<comment><USER16> We changed the title from "Automatic Image Colorization of Greyscale Images Using CNN" to a substring of the article's title.</comment></comment>


Got A Theory, Build A "5-Ton" Prototype to Prove It - <AUTHOR> http://www.zurb.com/article/1013/got-a-theory-build-a-5-ton-prototype-to-p <comment><USER2> This is awesome, but luckily for the programmers and computer scientists here, one of the best parts of the creative aspect of the profession is the ease with which you can prototype your ideas -- no 5 ton statue required :)</comment>


Penna – Vintage Typewriter-Inspired Bluetooth Keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.elretron.com/penna <comment><USER3> This is literally a qwerkywriter with a different case. The key spacing is _exactly_ the same, as are the features aside from new square-ish keycaps.

Interesting that the domain name is elretron.com...someone with username "elretron" posted a youtube video to a review of the qwerkywriter on Jan 10, 2017 ( [https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=86879.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=86879.0) , [http://i.imgur.com/hecpAgx.png](http://i.imgur.com/hecpAgx.png))

Is the qwerkywriter creator behind this second upcoming kickstarter campaign, or is "elretron" just ripping off the entire thing and selling for cheaper with a cheaper case? Or is the original creator just hoping for another round of kickstarter funding and making no mention of qwerkywriter on their website (which has prominent spelling errors, as if it had been thrown together quickly)?

Either way, pretty shady

<comment><USER3> Well I remarked to them that it was remarkably similar to the qwertywriter and got this response:

"Hello.

We are different company. It is our prototype model. You can see our key layout on our Kickstarter Page. www.elretron.net

Regards, Elretron"

My Response: "I noticed that you posted a review to the qwerkywriter on geekhack in January ([https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=86879.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=86879.0)). Are you using qwerkywriters with a different case in your prototype videos and photos?"

No response yet. I expect that they have no product, and will manufacture a cheaper qwertywriter clone should their kickstarter go through (or just take your money, who knows!)

On the plus side, I like the squared-off keycaps, and the price is right for a knockoff version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I bought a similar Qwerkywriter after their successful Kickstarter in 2014: [https://www.qwerkywriter.com](https://www.qwerkywriter.com)

It makes a lot of noise, although obviously not as much as a typewriter would. It has an enormous amount of key travel, and the spacing between keys is huge compared to modern keyboards. The aluminum body makes it solid and heavy, although metal keycaps would have been nicer than plastic ones.

If you like enjoy typing on a typewriter, it's a related experience. If you have extensive mechanical typewriter experience and really want the full throw and noise, you probably want conversion kit instead: [https://www.usbtypewriter.com/#gs.9tDxQ0Q](https://www.usbtypewriter.com/#gs.9tDxQ0Q)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Red type switch with actuating force of 40 g (+/\- 20 g) specially designed for fast and quick typing."

The red switch is the one with linear force and no tactile feedback and is usually considered more appropriate for gaming[1], not "specially designed for fast and quick typing".

Wouldn't the brown switch be more appropriate? Blue and brown are the ones that actually have been designed for typing and provide tactile feedback. (The difference between them being that the brown doesn't have the audible click.)

[1] [http://deskthority.net/wiki/Cherry_MX_Red](http://deskthority.net/wiki/Cherry_MX_Red)

<comment><USER6> I agree that a brown switch would be better for a keyboard focused on typing. Reds do work, but it's surprisingly easy to trigger keys while resting your fingers on the keyboard.

However, browns and blues do have other differences in how they operate - <USER2> sound is due to a mechanical piece moving independently of the key itself, which means that the activation behavior is different from that of browns. Also, the deactivation point is higher (relative to the keyboard's baseplate) than the activation point on the keystroke. Not a big deal for most people, but it is noticeable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice, my favorite is still this one : [http://steampunkworkshop.com/keyboard- shtml/](http://steampunkworkshop.com/keyboard-shtml/)

It has the brass edges. I think the round key caps might be a bit difficult to get used to.

<comment><USER8> There's also Datamancer's version.[1]

As someone who restores old Teletype machines, I'm used to typing on _real_ mechanical keyboards, where pressing a key releases a clutch and a shaft makes one turn as the encoding takes place. You can't press a second key until the first has been processed, which takes about 200ms. You have to type at the machine's speed, or slower.

Probably the best computer keyboard - the original Xerox Alto.

Worst keyboard ever - the Enigma crypto machine. Huge key travel, more than half an inch. Huge key force, because you're advancing the code wheels, and the friction of the 26 contacts on each wheel is huge. That's why they didn't add more code wheels; beyond three, it's too hard to push the keys. Bigger machines used motor drive but were not portable.

[1] [https://datamancer.com/product/the-sojourner- keyboarddisplay...](https://datamancer.com/product/the-sojourner- keyboarddisplay-set/)

<comment><USER7> That is awesome looking. I imagine the effect is completely spoiled when you have some bright color wall paper on the screen :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks very nice, for sure. However, for all the typists or extensive writers and programmers, I recommend an ergonomic keyboard. The funny thing is that those look mostly terrible but when it comes to your health, better go for it. Like so often in life, choose between comfort and style.

<comment><USER10> Or, make any keyboard ergonomic by using the finger line "WSZ" rather than "WSX". "EDX" rather than "EDC".

The right hand is angled and ergonomic by default, but for some reason the standard left-hand layout that everyone learns uses a terrible wrist and finger position. Angle both hands toward the middle of the keyboard and you're much better off.

<comment><USER9> I use both, an ergonomic (programmable) keyboard and an ergonomic, customized layout (German Neo2 [https://neo-layout.org/](https://neo-layout.org/)). The effect on my hands and arms was really perceptible, I do not want to change back.

<comment><USER11> This looks interesting. Is there an English version. Sorry if it's obvious, I'm tired after a long day on my feet.

<comment><USER12> For English, you probably want to check out Colemak. It does well on a very wide variety of measures of ergonomics (there is actually not a lot of agreement on what makes a layout good, so take with a grain of salt), while also not being too different from QWERTY, and keeping the XCV keys in the same place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If anyone's looking for just a good Bluetooth keyboard, I can strongly recommend Logitech K480 ([http://amzn.to/2mPBQws](http://amzn.to/2mPBQws)). It's basic and reasonably cheap with simple rounded buttons, but it's both portable and large enough to type comfortably, has device dock like the keyboard in the post, and as a bonus remembers three devices (communications and writing I might just do on the phone without bringing the laptop at all).

Honestly, laptop's built-in keyboard is probably the worst choice to type on with, it wears out fast and is terrible for posture. I often use K480 with my laptop just to have the screen at eye level and keyboard at elbow level, huge win ergonomics-wise.

</comment><comment><USER14> The product looks nice, the website less so, unfortunately. I had a bad feeling about it when I first loaded the page and saw a black screen with content slowly fading in; often a sign that content is being loaded by javascript and the resulting experience will be sub-par.

</comment><comment><USER15> Similarly, lofree: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lofree-typewriter- inspire...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lofree-typewriter-inspired- mechanical-keyboard-design-technology)

</comment><comment><USER16> Ugh, the OCD part of me can't over the fact that the Q key is upside down in the video. Otherwise, it's cool looking. It still doesn't help me get over it.

Edit: Now I think the S is wrong too.

</comment><comment><USER12> I always like the looks of these things, but the prices always turn out to be outrageous, for various reasons.

</comment><comment><USER17> They may want to fix the sites title "Elretron - PENNA Wireless bluethooth keybaord"

<comment><USER18> The irony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In case anyone wondered, "penna" is Swedish for "pen" (or "pencil", we're not picky).

No idea if the people behind the product are from the Nordics, sometimes using words from Swedish seems popular in general.

</comment><comment><USER20> wow this and a cheap tablet (or an ipad with skrivener) would make for a great alternative to Freewrite [https://getfreewrite.com/](https://getfreewrite.com/)

<comment><USER21> I was amazed this thing even existed - clicking on the link and I am presented with a 1960s style Telex machine with what appears to be a bakelite casing and 1981 keyboard. All for just £499.

Perhaps it is just me, but couldn't you use a normal laptop (even a cheap one!) and turn Wifi off if you don't want distractions?

Am I missing the market?

<comment><USER20> yes maybe a laptop with a distraction free desktop would be cheaper and just as good. the mechanical keys make a big difference tho.

<comment><USER21> Do the keys make a difference to the output that you produce? Or is it just that some people like the feel of full key travel as opposed to laptop keys?

I have got used to using laptop keys after using them for so long that my main keyboard at work is a laptop-sized one, even for a desktop machine (much to the chagrin of my colleagues). Stops them using it though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been looking a lot for a nice 84 keys mechanical keyboard, but it seems to be a not so popular layout. This looks exactly the layout I'm using on my cheap genius luxemate. But a little bit over the top :)

<comment><USER23> I'm in the market for a full size mech but I'm disgusted by what I'm finding.

Either all kinds of fancy nonsense like backlights, shitty fonts, shitty ergonomic shapes, shitty colors. Or. Insanely outrageous prices (and the accompanying hipster elitism).

An amazon basics non-mech costs under $15. A mech shouldn't cost more than $30, and yet you can't find one even at $70. (Mayby Amazon basics should offer one, I'll buy it right away).

<comment><USER7> The market is working against you. Since the market for mechanical keyboards is small, the number of mechanical switches that are sold less, so manufacturing overhead is spread over fewer switches and you end up paying more for them.

In the US at least you can still find the older IBM PC and IBM PC/AT keyboards at thrift shops and swap meets. They range in price from $1 to $100. And you'll want to find a way of adapting the interface to your computer (easy if its PS/2, a bit harder if its the old AT round connector).

I'm typing this on the Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro S, its a full size mechanical but it leaves off the number pad (which I don't use) but keeps the arrow keys and edit cluster (which I do). It is backlit but generally I just leave it on a low backlight. I've got a hack that blinks the F11 key when a meeting is coming up. Like you said it was $125 but I expect to use it for at least 5 years so $25/year isn't particularly bad given that non-mechanical keyboards last me 18 months if I'm lucky. My previous daily driver was a full sized Thinkpad mechanical from the 90's with a track pad in it. After 20 years it started missing keys, and its huge, and I started losing keystrokes.

<comment><USER23> I sat on your response for a while but it just occurred to me, as I responded to the other commenter, I'm perfectly fine with the price points of chinese knockoffs on ebay, alibaba, ali-express, etc.

But they put on too much fancy bells and whistles. Removing them doesn't cost them a dime (probably will save them on the cost per keyboard).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I haven't seen that many typos for a long time. Wonder if the website is written with that keyboard :D

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems like an early April Fool, but it would be hilarious if this is actually real.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why would anyone purchase that?</comment>


Owner of stolen laptop that sends spy photos from Iran regrets exposing users - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/12/owner-stolen-laptop-spy-iran

<comment><USER2> Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5537843></comment>


The End of the Internet Dream - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/the-end-of-the-internet-dream-ba060b17da61?curator=MediaREDEF

<comment><USER2> She's right and I sympathize a lot, but I don't see much in the way of addressing the reasons for these trends, just a lot of bellyaching about them and calls to "do something." You can't do that without understanding the underlying forces driving all this.

The reality, I think, is that the Internet has collided with reality, and the only way to address the concerns she and so many others have is to examine the point of collision carefully and try to find solutions that preserve the positive values of the hacker ethic.

I'll pick on a few things:

* Intellectual property

It's very simple. Nothing in the real world is free, and not everyone has a trust fund. People must get paid for their work or they can't eat, pay their rent, save for retirement, etc. IP provides one mechanism to (imperfectly) accomplish this. You can't take IP away without providing an alternative, and so far the Internet has failed to do so.

* Ease of use / UI / UX

I hate cars. I have to drive a car to work, but if it doesn't start instantly and run it puts me into a rage. Just work, damn it, and get me where I'm going, and then get out of the way. There are car people who love cars and love to tinker with cars, and that's fine, but that's not me, and the qualities that a tinkerer wants in a car are not the qualities I want.

Most people are not "computer people," and they feel the same way about computers. They want their laptop and their smart phone to just work instantly, quickly, and with minimum friction, and if they don't they are just _broken_.

UI/UX costs a lot. I'm engaged in a product effort right now, and getting the product working was maybe ~25% of the work. Getting a good UX under it is most of the remaining ~75%. UI/UX also involves a lot of the sort of work programmers find dull and annoying, and therefore developers really have to be paid to do it.

As a result, paid, centralized, for-profit efforts have a huge intrinsic advantage in the UI/UX space. Consumer technology comes from big companies because big companies can pay people to torture themselves with the endless pain that's require to _polish_ a product and work all the edge case bugs out.

* Centralization

There are a few big driving forces behind centralization, but UI/UX plays into it quite a bit. Due to the difficulty and overhead of decentralized protocols, centralized silos make the sort of deep interaction and complex state management required to achieve a slick UI/UX a lot easier to build.

Piracy is also a big factor. Putting your software in a closed silo and selling it as a service means nobody can pirate it. If information "wants" to be free then it's in the best interest of anyone who makes a living off it to lock it up as tight as it can so it can't get out. What the pirates don't get is that by tossing IP out the window they've actually created a powerful incentive _not_ to share.

\--

What I'm saying is that these are _brutally hard real world problems_.

You can't break an existing system like IP without having an alternative that does the things IP is there to do. Doing that will just lead to a reactionary backlash and a return to the old system. Sometimes it leads to a reactionary _over-_ reaction and a doubling-down on the old system.

You can't fight centralization without understanding its causes. Doing that just means you're screaming into the wind. People will continue to engineer centralized silo systems not because they want it this way, but because you haven't offered them a good alternative.</comment>


NASA releases 56 previously patented technologies - <AUTHOR> http://futurism.com/jackpot-nasa-just-released-56-patented-technologies-public-domain/ <comment><AUTHOR> This should probably point to [http://technology.nasa.gov/latest/public_domain/1](http://technology.nasa.gov/latest/public_domain/1) instead of the futurism link - sorry.</comment>


Unsucking Your Team's Development Environment - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/talk/unsucking-your-teams-development-environment

<comment><USER2> It's so great to have the design notes posted with the slides. I'm in the middle of creating my second presentation for my current company, and I've gotten very positive feedback about the elements of "Slide Design for Developers" that have been incorporated. Will definitely continue to draw upon Zach Holman for inspiration.

Also very topical as I'm leading the charge for creating onboarding scripts. We won't get to a GitHub level of automation overnight, but you gotta start somewhere. His point on slide #64, that new hires can be productive on Day 1, is something we've felt acutely as of late when hiring talented generalists to work on more specialized problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> GitHub is an awesome product that I truly love, but more and more I'm finding myself awe'd by the company more than the product. The fact that they've been able to take some of their principals (no managers) and scale them up as they've grown very quickly is truly remarkable.

I suspect we'll be seeing a lot of other very interesting companies get started up as GH alumni eventually start to spin off...

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be great if you could open-source some of the non-GH-specific setup scripts.

<comment><USER5> Rumor is that it's in the works.

<comment><USER4> Great to hear, I look forward to it. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (this raises and expands on similar ideas to a blog post I wrote a while ago -- <http://blog.tapin.tv/take-time-to-develop-fast.html>)</comment>


Jason Santa Maria is leaving A List Apart - <AUTHOR> http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/de-aparting

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the project hinted at in his departure from TypeKit announcement (<http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/leaving-typekit>) has something to do with this as well :o)</comment>


Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching from Above - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/spies-in-the-skies <comment><USER2> For anyone who wants to see the live data for themselves, go to [http://www.adsbexchange.com/](http://www.adsbexchange.com/), click 'Global Radar View'. Then click 'Menu', 'Options', 'Filters', then enable the 'Interesting' filter.

It's a Sunday, so there's not too much activity. However there's currently an FBI Cessna circling west of Washington D.C. [0] There's also a plane gridding east of LA. [1] It's registered to Dynamic Aviation Group out of Virginia, a company that provides aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), among other things. [2]

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/8c0RQ9H.png](http://i.imgur.com/8c0RQ9H.png)

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/Yki2UTs.png](http://i.imgur.com/Yki2UTs.png)

[2]: [http://www.dynamicaviation.com/flight-solutions-and- services...](http://www.dynamicaviation.com/flight-solutions-and- services/intelligence-surveillance-and-reconnaissance/)

<comment><USER3> This assumes that surveillance aircraft have their ADS-B transponder on. It's not required until January 2020 ([https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/](https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/)).

<comment><USER4> Running without ADS-B around major airports would be unacceptable. I think drones are going to be required to have them before 2020 which makes me think that isn't quite right.

<comment><USER5> With ATC notified, the helicopter could revert to Mode-C [0] transponder mode, using an assigned transponder code and ATC would still track them safely. TCAS [1] would also still function safely when interrogated by secondary radar.

ADS-B reduces controller workload as they don't have to manually tag individual aircraft, especially in a high traffic area. ADS-B also works without secondary radar interrogation.

When there is a high speed chase near an airport, sometimes the tower controller will request the helicopter remain under a certain altitude or clear of a specific area.

Additionally, websites like FlightAware.com have limited direct ADS-B coverage and also display the FAA 5-minute delayed feed. I've never heard of a "criminal" in the US using an ADS-B receiver to evade police helicopters in real time.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_transponder_interroga...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_transponder_interrogation_modes#Mode_A_and_Mode_C)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_system)

<comment><USER6> I wonder if a $12 TV Tuner RTL-SDRs can listen in to secondary radar triggered TCAS responses? (I wonder how much trouble you'd get in for setting up a USDR or HackRFOne to transmit your own "secondary radar" signals to make the TCAS respond?)

<comment><USER5> TCAS "responses" are only sent during a Resolution Advisory.

Mode-C and Mode-S responses are sent when interrogated by secondary radar. ADS-B transponders with "Extended Squitter" transmit regularly while active, so no need to transmit your own interrogation pulses.

Its possible to monitor Secondary Radar pulses, and Mode C returns. It would require multiple geographically separated receivers to triangulate. I don't think FlightAware supports Mode C, only Mode S(MLAT) and ADS-B.

If you transmitted your own "secondary radar" pulses, the FAA and/or the FCC would probably launch a criminal investigation, with the FBI involved. Making your own "secondary radar" would be pointless and high risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> reminds me of a radiolab episode: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye- sky/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/)

here's the summary,

> In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross > McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega- > pixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all > day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto that spot and > then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could > scroll back in time and see - literally see - who planted it. After the war, > Ross McNutt retired from the airforce, and brought this technology back home > with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark from the podcast "Note to Self" > give us the low-down on Ross's unique brand of persistent surveillance, from > Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we > wonder whether we should.

<comment><USER8> Point of Origin (POO) analysis believe is the tech term.

<comment><USER9> WAMI is another. Wide Area Motion Imagery.

<comment><USER8> POO would likely be a subset of WAMI analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's my guess based on the following info:

\- The article points out that the planes are typically only seen M-F, which suggests that what they are doing is usually not time-sensitive.

\- They mention the planes have a very high quality camera on board.

\- From the flight patterns, you can see they repeatedly circle the same location, but not apparently for hours and hours at time.

When Apple first released their Maps product, it was revealed that they also flew planes at low altitude to capture super high quality pictures of cities at different angles. They would then process the data later and create 3D models. [1]

Satellites are too expensive to use for this sort of thing, are affected by cloud cover and non-optimal angles, and won't be higher quality than what you can capture from a plane.

So my guess is they are doing exactly what Apple was doing: capturing high quality images of various points of interest and then creating 3D models in case they need to use them later.

Another thing they are probably looking for (from the mention of the FLIR camera) is people growing drugs in their basement or perhaps where people congregate in a building.

They probably find this useful for among other things, having very up to date photography of a particular area, and also in case they need it for some operation like a raid.

[1] [http://www.applegazette.com/apple-inc/how-apple- creates-3d-f...](http://www.applegazette.com/apple-inc/how-apple- creates-3d-flyover-maps/)

<comment><USER11> Using FLIR for drug growing detection requires a warrant.

<comment><USER12> So they're using it for some other purpose. It's just a coincidence that all growers on the flight path have been busted via "anonymous tips".

<comment><USER13> I assume that the 'coincidence' you mention is just hypothetical, but that _would_ be a pretty interesting topic to research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I own a Cessna 182 that was originally owned by the Washington State Police. While they owned it they added an automotive-style muffler (planes don't normally have mufflers) to use it for stealth surveillance. They tore that all out before they sold the plane.

There's a pretty complete description of what they did in the Form 337 history: [http://mike.laiosa.org/N6594E/Airworthiness.pdf](http://mike.laiosa.org/N6594E/Airworthiness.pdf) \- see in particular pages 27 and 55.

<comment><USER15> Neat plane, 182. I must have ~1500 hours in that model. Simple, normally aspirated, non retractable gear, constant speed prop, really good IFR training plane. Good trip plane, loading and fuel wise. Never a concern getting it into and out of small tenor gravel strip airports.

Police surveillance, makes sense, relatively inexpensive to operate, but good loading for whatever gear they're carrying.

<comment><USER14> Yeah it's a great plane, hard to beat for any operation where you don't need more speed more altitude. I'll bet law enforcement can operate them for about 2X a regular squad car.

Unfortunately most of my family gets horribly air sick, so mine is for sale - I'm looking for something cheaper to operate and cheaper to buy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have to say, I'm really not against this. I used to read about privacy people getting pissed at all the CCTV surveillance in London, etc. And it concerned me.

But then I got into photography. And in that case, police were trying to trample on the rights of photographers. But the main idea is that photographers are allowed to photograph pretty much anywhere in public. And I agree with this. You can't make laws forbidding photographing a particular building, for example.

That got me thinking, if we can't forbid citizens from photographing in public, why should we forbid our government? In fact, when crimes happen, most of the time these days, video surveillance is a huge help.

If that data were made publicly accessible, would it be a problem that it was being recorded? What are the drawbacks of public surveillance?

<comment><USER17> >if we can't forbid citizens from photographing in public, why should we forbid our government?

I don't understand this comparison. The very fact that the surveillance is being done by the government changes the meaning of the action. Citizens don't have the power to do anything with the information they might gather through surveillance. Citizens don't have the ability to force all other citizens to pay them more money for funding surveillance programs of ever-increasing scope. Citizens have jobs which exist to serve a real need that exists in the economy, and so realistically wouldn't be doing anything of the same magnitude unless there was popular demand for it.

<comment><USER18> You're poisoning the well here. There's no evidence that the government is gathering surveillance for any nefarious purpose, or that they're doing it just for the fun of spending your (the taxpayer's) money.

In fact, your argument is somewhat ironic, as it is the same logic used by the police to prevent photographers from photographing in public, as descibed by the OP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They made their code and data, along with notes on the analysis, available: [http://buzzfeednews.github.io/2016-04-federal- surveillance-p...](http://buzzfeednews.github.io/2016-04-federal-surveillance- planes/analysis.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Map shows right over my house, the conspiracy theorist in me says 'they're watching me!'

<comment><USER21> If a circle is dead center around your house then you are probably not the focus. Check out the gifs lower down after the San Bernardino attacks. The locations they were investigating -- mosque, workplace, home of Farook -- are all offset from the center for the best combination of angle / proximity.

Edit: Also, check out Los Angeles (if that's not where you are from). They are swarming LA! I'd be weirded out if I was in LA and NOT near activity.

<comment><USER22> I lived in an old house, in a rural area, where the previous owner had painted some concrete bright green. I was surprised by the amount of air traffic I saw, being as deep into the sticks as I was, until I actually started watching the aircraft. They were using my property as a landmark to turn on for final approach to a municipal airport several miles away. But I can see how that pattern could cause someone to jump to the conclusion that they are the subject of an incredibly expensive revolving tail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That C208 they're using via a front company has cargo space in the luggage area for radio and camera equipment and it's much less obvious than putting a radome below the fuselage.

Here's a fun clip of the Iraqis using a 208 to launch a hellfire. [https://youtu.be/eSKsrILHxNM?t=57s](https://youtu.be/eSKsrILHxNM?t=57s)

</comment><comment><USER24> Why use front companies and hide their activities? They are domestic law enforcement and not intelligence; shouldn't what they do be mostly out in the open?

<comment><USER25> 1\. These are most likely not front companies but ISR contractors.

2\. FBI is both a law enforcement and intelligence organization.

<comment><USER26> 3\. Money to rent a plane comes out of a different part of the budget than a capital expenditure to buy and outfit their own plane. And so it's easier to justify to the boss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is any intel of appreciable worth actually being gathered, or is this just a colossal waste of money and a massive invasion of privacy? What are these planes really achieving that you don't get from, say, a police helicopter that is tailing a suspect?

</comment><comment><USER28> The main angle this article seems to take is that this surveillance is unfair because it may target Muslims. I see no problem with surveilling the mosque of two people who just committed a terrorist attack, in fact it would be risky not to do so.

<comment><USER18> The article also points out that FBI flights circled other muslim communities as well. However all of these attacks are perpetrated in the name of Islam (albeit bastardised Islam), so it seems reasonable for them to do this, even if politically incorrect. Also, we don't know if there were any suspects in those communities linked to the attackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> FBI secrecy makes it hard to challenge these tactics, because it's not clear what "these tactics" are, and whose information is actually being gathered.

The last aerial surveillance case I can recall is California v. Ciraolo, which was about surveillance with the naked eye. I hope that these flights wouldn't survive a legal challenge, but I _also_ believe that the FBI would be likely to launder anything gathered via parallel construction -- engineering a "normal" traffic stop, etc., based on gathered information.

As with the use of Stingrays, secrecy is used to thwart justice. I don't know how to stop it.

<comment><USER18> Is surveillance with the naked eye from the air illegal?

What objection do you have with the FBI tracking criminal suspects from the air?

Do you also object to the FBI staking out suspects from their cars?

(I'm not referring to Stingrays here, just surveillance from the air with cameras/eyeballs).

<comment><USER29> The point of California v. Ciraolo was that surveillence with the naked eye was lawful, and did not require a warrant.

"cameras/eyeballs"... you understand that those are two different things, right?

Large area digital data collection is not the same as observing an area with the naked eye.

Deployed networks of automated license plate readers are not the same as "the FBI staking out suspects from their cars".

<comment><USER18> >The point of California v. Ciraolo was that surveillence with the naked eye was lawful, and did not require a warrant.

I realise that, but you said "I hope that these flights wouldn't survive a legal challenge" so I inferred that you thought the judgement was incorrect.

>"cameras/eyeballs"... you understand that those are two different things, right?

I'm not sure if you're trolling here. The slash meant "or" in this case, which should be been patently obvious.

>Large area digital data collection is not the same as observing an area with the naked eye.

Of course, and it's not illegal AFAIK.

>Deployed networks of automated license plate readers are not the same as "the FBI staking out suspects from their cars".

The article doesn't mention "automated license plate readers".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> the map clearly shows super high density of DHS operations around the midtown Manhattan at the end of Sep 2015, when UN GA took place and the Pope gave a speech.

<comment><USER31> I guess beause of the UN GA they had to do both massive security ops and massive targeted surveillance at the same time :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> These were some of the drones and surveillance flights over South Bay during the Super Bowl: [https://twitter.com/Johnie/status/696475657375625216](https://twitter.com/Johnie/status/696475657375625216)

</comment><comment><USER33> "I don't know that they have ever done surveillance of churches or synagogues when people of those traditions have committed acts of criminality."

Sounds like a crock if I ever heard one.

</comment><comment><USER8> Curious, anyone know why the FBI takes the weekends off?

<comment><USER34> Because like most entities their employees are on a five day schedule, and most of those employees want M-F so they can family on weekends. Guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I thought these weren't "watching" as much as they were using stingrays to slurp up cellular location and metadata.

<comment><USER18> They say that that happens, but it is rare:

[http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi- surveilla...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-surveillance- government-planes-cities)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The huge circle in Northern Virginia West of DC: is that George Mason University?

<comment><USER37> no.. that's a bit north/northwest of GMU

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any idea what is the altitude of these planes?

<comment><USER39> Typically 1500-6000 feet AGL, the kind of altitude one would want for that kind of collection of signals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What were they doing over Canandaigua?!

<comment><USER31> Drugs or terrorism seems like the most likely candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have to admit, [https://buzzfeednews.github.io/2016-04-federal- surveillance-...](https://buzzfeednews.github.io/2016-04-federal-surveillance- planes/analysis.html) is not something I would expect from Buzzfeed.

Huge surprise.

<comment> brown9-2 We are at the point now where if you are surprised by the serious journalism going on at Buzzfeed, it just means you have not been paying attention.

<comment><USER42> It's very easy not to pay attention, when Facebook provide the "don't show me anything from XYZ" button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Good on the FBI/DHS, I say.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

<comment><USER43> It doesn't have to be a conspiracy to dislike it. Also, they tend to keep these actions secret, which doesn't bode well for government transparency and government trust.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. Circling surveillance planes are unsettling no matter if it is routine or not. I believe they should have warrants for these and maybe they do, maybe they don't. There is not enough transparency to know (even just a report of the number of investigations and outstanding warrants in cities or districts would be enough).

<comment><USER44> Why would they need warrants for watching a person in a public place? You don't have an expectation of privacy in that situation.

<comment><USER45> There needs to be further refinement as to what actually constitutes "watching", e.g. with respect to duration, frequency, information monitored, etc. _US v. Jones_ held that installing a GPS device on a car constituted a trespass against one's "personal effects".

I think the similar argument here would be that a near constant observation of someone, even while in public, would amount to the same sort of search, even though one has a very low expectation of privacy while in public.

<comment><USER46> Jones was based on the classic idea that when the government does what would be a trespass if a private person did it, then a warrant is required. Observing someone in public is not a trespass, no matter how much you do it.

<comment><USER45> You are correct to say that you can't commit a trespass by observing someone in public. However, trespassing is not an exclusive test as to whether a search is permissible (though it was the applicable rubric for Jones). The Katz test still must be applied, above and beyond the trespassory test. The concurrences in the Jones opinion state "at the very least, "longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy."

Swap "GPS monitoring" for infrared, EMF, video, audio tracking, whatever those planes are doing, and I think we are at the same level of "impinge(ment) on expectations of privacy."

Is it your opinion that Alito and Sotomayor are barking up the wrong tree? Is this sort of extensive (i.e. multi-modal (visual, EMF, etc.)), and evidently prolonged, monitoring _not_ an impingement on typical expectation of privacy? Sure, this isn't a trespass, but if a private person was doing this to you, wouldn't you want to call the cops? (Oh, wait...)

<comment><USER46> My point is that _Jones_ doesn't really help you: the majority opinion focused on the trespass theory, and did not rely on the consequences of longer-term GPS monitoring.

In my opinion, the whole "expectation of privacy" thing is reading words into the 4th amendment that aren't there. If you look at the phrasing of the text, which focuses on "searches" and "seizures" of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" it's clear that the 4th amendment prohibits the government from doing what would be a common law trespass (to the person, to real property, or to chattels). It's based on property rights, not privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I really wish this weren't on Buzzfeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? They're putting out more and more quality material, and it could be argued that they're getting interesting topics in front of a broader audience.

<comment><USER48> The comments are saying that this is largely derivative of someone else's work.

<comment><USER19> It's not. I've been involved in this story since before anyone published anything. These Buzzfeed journalists have done some excellent, original work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Tell Someone's Age When All You Know Is Her Name – FiveThirtyEight - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-age-when-all-you-know-is-her-name/ <comment><USER2> Since that data is freely available it's too bad they didn't make an automated report system where users could enter a name. Still cool though.</comment>


Ask HN: Verify corporate email address as Gmail or Outlook? - <AUTHOR> For a corporate email address is there a way to check its email provider? <comment><USER2> You can resolve the MX record on the domain. For example at [https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx%3amxtoolbox.c...](https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx%3amxtoolbox.com&run=toolpage) \- you can see the mxtoolbox is directing the mail to aspmx.l.google.com which is basically google mail.</comment>


Smenu, a command-line advanced selection filter and a menu builder for terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/p-gen/smenu <comment><USER2> This is like dmenu but it stays in the terminal. I've needed something like this in the past before for some scripts. Neat.

<comment><USER3> I used dmenu as my main application launcher for a few years. I switched to Mac a few years ago and still miss dmenu and dwm (or just tiling window managers, in general). Could just be rose-tinted glasses, however.

Anyone who hasn't seen suckless.org (where dmenu comes from) should look through what's on there. It has some really small and often useful tools.

<comment><USER4> Spotlight is kind of like dmenu but it also searches for files and stuff.

I do agree on the tiling WM bit :(.

<comment><USER3> You can configure what Spotlight indexes. I turn off a lot of it so that it doesn't suddenly use a bunch of CPU indexing things that I don't care about.

System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been happily using vis-menu which is a fork of slmenu which is a terminal version of dmenu: [http://martanne.github.io/vis/man/vis- menu.1.html](http://martanne.github.io/vis/man/vis-menu.1.html)

vis-menu is distributed with vis: [https://github.com/martanne/vis](https://github.com/martanne/vis)

This project seems fine as well; though the examples seemed a bit complicated to me. I guess I'll need to rtfm.</comment>


IBM CEO Ginni Rometty Gets Past the Big Blues - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2014/09/18/ginni-rometty-ibm/

<comment><USER2> Ginni is very unlikely to turn around the company. She is a livelong IBMer. Just like Sam Palmisano before her. And both have been undoing the good work that Lou Gerstner did and continued the bad work he did.

IBM is a financial engineering company... now, if it could become a sales company again...

<comment><USER3> You hit on it. IBM has a legacy of great financial engineering and sales. This isn't all that bad, if they admit that they're a value company rather than a growth company, the best thing to do is provide sales and service while returning money to shareholders.

From the article:

Ginni's Rules 1\. Don't protect the past. 2\. Never be defined by your product. 3\. Always transform yourself.

#2 seems to lock them in as a Finance, Sales and Services company.

<comment><USER4> Yea, they should have done this from beginning instead of hiring Sam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me that a big risk in IBM's strategy is losing the technological foundation on which most of its current revenues are based and/or not communicating a strategy for that technological base to its customers.

The importance of "big data"/cognitive computing cannot be overstated but it needs hardware on which to run. The neuromorphic computing research is interesting but for the time being the real advances in the field are being made with more conventional hardware and I'm not convinced we yet have a good enough understanding of this field to create an effective new hardware architecture for it.

As for cloud computing it certainly has advantages for many types of customers but I think many of the large businesses that represent the lion's share of IBM's customer base will be wanting to maintain their own computing infrastructure for the foreseeable future. They simply will not be willing to trust 3rd parties with their sensitive data, especially in light of the lack of legal protections in the US for data that is in the hands of 3rd parties.

So where does this leave IBM's current (or prospective) customers ? x86 is gone. If IBM's strategy is to push POWER as the way forward, that would be great, but are they really doing that or are they going to let POWER wither ? Will customers need to put Lenovo hardware in their data center to manage their POWER systems ? Some customers probably won't be willing to do that (in the US, at least, for other countries trusting Chinese vs. US companies may look like comparable risks).

I suspect that a major selling point for IBM's software and services has been its ability to provide the full range of hardware needed to run a data center, from servers to SAN storage. If their transition plans involve giving up this advantage then I think this transition will be a very rocky and risky one that will result in many of their customers looking elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> IBM has been divesting from hardware for quite some time. I think that they have really learned from the "IBM compatible" commoditizing that occurred three decades ago. A similar trend has taken over the data center.

Yes, IBM's customer's need hardware. However, I think that the profit margins simply aren't that lucrative anymore, and IBM is right to be focusing on the high-margin software market.

There will always be some customers that want/need non-commodity big iron, but such use-cases are becoming more and more rare. It wouldn't surprise me if IBM sees its hardware offerings as little more than accessories they can offer to support their software offerings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think she's doing a good job in some respects. Such as Watson -- it's good strategy to invest in areas that will see future growth.

But at the same time, what's paying the bills is their consulting & services business. And there they're laying-off high-skilled workers (because they're expensive) in favor of fresh-outs and newbies (because they're cheap). That's _not_ a good strategy. You can't starve the cash cow for too long. The result is that their sales people are making promises the technology people can't keep.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if they plan to change the mood of IBMers, it's dismal and it looks like in a death spiral.

<comment><USER2> the moral of the IBMers does NOT contribute to the $20 EPS so therefore is irrelevant. Firing people... ooohhh sorry RA-ing them does.

You know you are stuffed when execs talk with euphemisms like Resource Action. They are no longer proud of what they are doing, they hide behind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone please explain why IBM raised their long term debt by almost $8bn in last one year , while keeping their revenues and gross profits almost static ? I am assuming that the interest rate for that $8B is pegged at near zero rate -- what happens when the rate goes up by one percent ?

<comment><USER2> the money was raised to buy back shares. That is actually a better investment (saves on dividents, and you don't have to bring back any cash to the US). But yes... what if interest rates rises... either buy back less shares (or sell them again), but that is not really an option with the EPS target.

Maybe some IBM exec can answer this for us

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are a lot of comments that betray the facade, and show the old IBM. Comments on keeping busy and reinventing careers shows a tremendous internal focus.

"Our internal metric is we look to sign one to two new customers a week," he says. "That keeps us going, keeps us busy."

"It [Watson] will reinvent careers and reinvent industries," says Rometty. "It is the third era of technology."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The newly launched IBM Cloud PaaS offering mentioned in the article: [https://bluemix.net/](https://bluemix.net/).

<comment><USER2> bluemix looks actually quite good... but I wonder if it is enough (ie. can it make up for the billions lost in hardware sales) and how long before these things get commoditized? And we all know how good IBM is at that!!!</comment></comment>


Move Loot shuts down, sells customer list to Handy - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/29/move-loot-a-yc-backed-furniture-resale-marketplace-shuts-down-sells-customer-list-to-handy/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> High acquisition cost, low margin businesses are really hard. This is why it'll take another decade to dethrone craigslist.

All these businesses are great ideas with great solutions, the problem comes down to an unsustainable acquisition model.

<comment><USER3> Or in other words a bad idea. An idea is not a good idea if your LCV is less than your CAC. Please when you see a gap in the market investigate why there is a gap. It is possible that you are a genius that can see things that no one else can, but also consider that you are walking into a death trap.

<comment><USER4> LCV = Lifetime Customer Value?

CAC = Customer Acquisition Cost?

<comment><USER3> Yes :) These are the two key numbers you need to know to know if your business is on the track to success or failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How the heck did they blow through that much cash so quickly?? I wonder what the going rate is for such a list? I don't see much if any overlap between the two.

A post-mortem would be interesting. I'm guessing lack of discipline on the large raise. Since you don't have any direct competition, provie it out in 1 or 2 cities before expanding. Keep operations lean. Stay hungry.

<comment><USER6> They expanded to several cities to satisfy investors, and they were renting space to store furniture, which ended up being far more expensive than they expected. But yeah, burning through 19M in about 14 months is nuts. They were really betting it all on growing big enough to sell investors on a series B, which clearly didn't work out.

<comment><USER7> This will def be a bigger story. You know all that could've been done with that much money? We should be concerned with irresponsible investors as well, not doing their due diligence on the company's performance to avoid such a catastrophe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Over the past two years we've been focused on growth, operational excellence, and customer satisfaction with a primary focus on profitability," AptDeco's co-founder Kalam Dennis told TechCrunch. "We have spoken with Move Loot regarding their interest in an acquisition. Ultimately we're only interested in opportunities that align with the previously mentioned strategic goals."

Ouch. Add it to the list of on-demand services that don't scale very well.

</comment><comment><USER9> I used it 2 years ago, in its early days. The selection was great and I was able to buy some great pieces at very good prices including free delivery. But after a while it was just large numbers of office furniture or ikea pieces.

Anyway, I'll probably keep what I've bought for many years. Thanks again for subsidizing me, VCs!

</comment><comment><USER10> $19mm in funding since February '15 on a 20some person company. That is an awful lot of customer acquisition cost.

</comment><comment><USER11> Too bad. This seemed like a great idea with a big opportunity. I used it a couple of times and I loved it. It was so much easier to get rid of furniture (and make some $$) than using Craigslist or carrying furniture to a local store.

</comment><comment><USER12> Boy I could've used such a service a couple months from now. But it definitely didn't sound scalable. And apparently they expanded to the peninsula but I've never heard about them...not on HN, not on YikYak, etc...I know Palo Alto isn't the center of the universe...but it kind of is for these service startups (I'm thinking of all the food delivery startups in particular).

<comment><USER13> if you live in sf they were all around. at least their hauling trucks were. i'm guessing maybe very few people in palo alto have a need to sell their couches?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sad news. I had a really good experience with Move Loot. It seemed too good to be true - unique and cheap furniture, delivered in the exact window I requested, already perfectly assembled. It sounds like they couldn't make it work and things declined :(</comment>


Software / Operator Errors Cause Fatal Doses of Cancer Treatment Radiation - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html?pagewanted=1&hp

<comment><USER2> The graphic sidebar to this article

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/22/us/Radiation.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/22/us/Radiation.html)

is not to be missed. It's a very clear explanation of the technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, this is not a "New Way to Do Harm."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25></comment>