Screw your standing desk. How about squatting? - <AUTHOR> http://bitehype.com/screw-your-standing-desk-how-about-squatting/ <comment><USER2> After wading through the article's obnoxious style, we see it provides no tangible arguments against standing, nor _for_ squatting. In fact, the only argument against standing is that it's uncomfortable, and then the rest of the article is spent explaining how to make squatting less uncomfortable. Squatting for more than 5 minutes would probably make my knees explode.

<comment><USER3> Mostly because you don't squat properly and/or aren't used to squatting...

In China, until recently, all toilets were basically squatting toilets, yet octogenarians had no issue squatting to use them... how old are you that you can't do for 5 minutes what an 80 year old can do several times a day?

<comment><USER4> Same goes for sitting toilets though.

And we still don't have any arguments supporting either position. I do squat for a few minutes every day to facilitate my squat lifting workout but don't see an inherent benefit. I suppose one can argue that it has been a natural movement for so long that our bodies may be genetically designed for it.

<comment><USER5> Look at young children, and see how effortlessly they can sit for _ages_ in squat positions while playing. After I started fixing my squat for lifting, I've noticed I now often naturally squat down instead of awkwardly contorting myself when playing with my son for example.

My mobility is still poor compared to what it was when I was a child, but at 38 I'm now finally more flexible again than I was at 25, maybe more so than at 20, and it's great to not feel constrained by weird movement patterns.

<comment><USER6> they have very short limbs making this very easy

<comment><USER5> Their limbs are proportionally the same, and their muscles equivalently smaller and weaker. It's no harder for an adult with proper mobility.

<comment><USER6> it completely depends on the proportions

long-limbed people have more difficulty with this, while shorter-limbed people don't have difficulty with this after a little stretching

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you have a bad back or are interested in posture, there is a wonderful book (ignore the generic title) called "8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back", written by a woman who observed that people in non-Westernized cultures have very little back problems and that they exhibit natural choices in posture that we lost in the West due to various trends and furniture designs. Its a really fascinating read and explores a lot of these types of differences in posture and the positive effects on health.

Edit: I did just take another spin through it and she doesn't mention squatting at all, kind of surprising that wasn't covered considering how universal it is

<comment><USER8> Do they have less back problems or just less reporting of back problems?

Culture is a complex thing, so is health. The intersection of them I wouldn't trust in the hands of laymen or self-proclaimed experts.

<comment><USER7> Apparently its almost unheard of in some cultures to have any sort of back problems, even after decades of physical labor etc. The premise of the book is that the reason for this is that these people are using their spines and posture in a more natural fashion, which leverages the structure of the spine better, but we don't do it in the West as the result of a kind of cultural revolt against victorian era posture norms that took place in the 1920's

<comment><USER9> > Apparently

It's not readily apparent to those of us asking for proof...

<comment><USER10> It's so obnoxious how people like you expect members contributing to the discussion to have perfect proof on hand or go digging. If that were the true standard, these discussions would be much thinner.

It's fine to ask, just don't be an asshole when a person doesn't have it; look it up yourself.

<comment><USER9> I have no problem with people expressing their opinions without backing them up with facts. I do it all the time.

I was objecting to the use of the word 'apparently' as it is, in fact, not apparent to many people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dumbest idea ever. The hyper-fit guy sitting in the gym isn't looking too bad, though having the knees rotated that far out for any length of time isn't going to work out well. (Yes, knees-out squatting and knees-in squatting are very different things.) The woman in the second picture has the same problem, plus hyper-extending her arms and bending her wrists too far back. The third woman . . . oh, I don't even know where to start with that one. None of them are doing their vision any favors being that far from the screen, either. There's a reason they only picture twenty-somethings.

I love squatting. I have ever since I was a child, and people have often commented on my tendency to squat when others would stand or sit. I also use a standing desk. Nonetheless, there's just _no way whatsoever_ that squatting while using a computer seems like a good idea.

<comment><USER12> How about while reading? Or thinking? It's not like "using a computer" is a monolithic activity. Electric desk frames allow you to change position throughout the day. The latest one I got (3 segment legs from geek desk) can go so low I can sit lotus in front of it.

<comment><USER11> Yes, _changing_ positions is really the key. That's why I have an Ergotron sit/stand mount for my monitor, and I use it in both modes. I also tend to pace a lot when I don't need to be looking at the monitor. (One of the nice things about working at home is that nobody complains about that.) I'm sure squatting is fine and even good exercise once in a while, but this article is presenting it as a primary position for extended periods and that's just crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For me, the key is not keeping in one position for the whole day. That's why I chose to go with an arrangement that allows me to either sit or stand. I find myself using the standing option for about 4 hours a day. I'll use it less (sometimes not at all) if I happen to be more active during working hours. You can see details of my build here:

[http://planiverse.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/building-a-sit- st...](http://planiverse.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/building-a-sit-stand-desk- for-less-than-200/)

I think adding squatting to my set of postures should just be a matter of getting a rigid chair and squatting on that.

Finally, if you do sit, I recommend getting a seat pad designed for wheelchairs. People who can't walk must do a LOT of sitting, so wheelchair seats must be comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER14> Arguing standing vs sitting (vs squatting) is missing the point. It's not an either or proposition. Holding any one position for a long time is bad. A good desk should be quick and easy to move from sitting height to standing height, and you switch between them regularly.

<comment><USER15> I was thinking this. Ironically, this fits with the original vision for cubicles, as I heard it. You could arrange multiple "desks" if you will, so that you could switch between them easily. I don't believe I have seen this done, though.

Nor do I have any references. Apologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't most of our fellow primates spend most of their time squatting? Maybe they're on to something?

[http://i.imgur.com/leDTqgl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/leDTqgl.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/3f8c0PK.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/3f8c0PK.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/DBXxFvo.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/DBXxFvo.jpg)

<comment><USER17> If I stay in a squat position within a couple of minutes my legs become really tensed up and it feels as if my I'm cutting my blood flow; squatting for even 5 minutes is not feasible for me, let alone 8 hours, and I don't believe it to be a matter of training. I think we are a long way from our fellow primates.

<comment><USER5> You may not believe it is a matter of training, but your experience is fairly normal for someone who lacks the required flexibility from years of not squatting much.. As long as your form is good, squatting more will quickly rectify that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. I've been a desk squatter for years--I've never wanted a dedicated stand desk, but I've been able to configure my set-up to allow good posture while squatting. It certainly provides a nice break from sitting.

<comment><USER19> I'm curious on how your desk would be arranged for squatting. This is the first I've even heard of desk squatting so I am struggling with how it would be set up.

<comment><USER18> Well, the setup is pretty normal. I'm in a "normal" cubicle, using a standard keyboard, and a couple of 21" monitors that have been raised a few inches. When I squat, my arms are raised higher than there are when I am seated, but they are still at an angle that is reasonable to maintain for 15-20 minutes at a time. The monitor height is actually better when I'm squatting.

I will note that in 15 years in the industry, I've not had any major ergonomic issues (some of that I attribute to rock climbing), so I'm certainly not suggesting this particular setup for everyone.

<comment><USER19> Ok that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to assume you're squatting in a chair as well. That or you have a ridiculously long torso. 15-20 minutes seems kind of a short amount of time compared to standing though.

I think you should stress that latter part more actually. Being healthy isn't just what a person can do in one area but in all areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >what's with the racism, yo?

That's not racism, it's a valid observation.

<comment><USER21> Thats not a serious, it's a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd love to be able to do this but I can't keep my centre of gravity over my feet if I put my feet flat on the floor (no matter how widely I spread my knees), so I just end up toppling over backwards. If I do it with my back against a wall, my knees start to hurt after about 30 seconds. I just don't think my body is designed to squat like that. Or do the lotus position, for that matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try to do the challenge (mentioned in the article) and go down as far as you comfortably can. You're probably lacking range in the hips or the ankles and this will fix itself with time. Basically because you weren't in this position for a long time, your body doesn't "allow" you this position, because it thinks you might hurt yourself while doing it. But once you get used to the position, you'll ease into it with time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let's think about why we gave up this position for going to the toilet, even though it allowed for better hygiene and simpler toilet designs. Is it because we "lost" this position at some point, or perhaps it wasn't that comfortable after all (for the bowels, for example)?

<comment><USER12> I think it was an accident of history in Europe. Something to do with the architecture of castles and ships perhaps.

It is a shame that much of Asia is losing the squat toilet over time. I've found it to be very helpful on occasion. It dramatically reduces apparent constipation.

<comment><USER24> Quite a few people seem to squat on the western style toilets though.. at least that's what the signs forbidding it and the occasional footprints on the seat suggest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Except some of us are morphologically incapable of squatting the restful way: [http://themovementfix.com/the-best-kept-secret-why-people- ha...](http://themovementfix.com/the-best-kept-secret-why-people-have-to- squat-differently/)

<comment><USER19> I had thought most of the squatting talk on this was about more weightlifting type squatting and not just being able to rest in a squatting position.

Unless a deep squat = squatting restfully. Which is hard to argue that it's not due to lack of flexibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Arguably not a polite way to sit in an Indian office considering this:

[http://www.wikihow.com/Use-an-Indian-Bathroom](http://www.wikihow.com/Use-an- Indian-Bathroom)

<comment><USER27> Is that a fact? Arabs often have the same kind of toilet but I've never heard someone say that squatting in general is rude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Third-world squats

[http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1856085](http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1856085)

</comment><comment><USER29> Eastern Europeans have been always doing it already [http://slavsquat.com/](http://slavsquat.com/)

<comment><USER30> as a Pole it's so obvious for me I didn't realize it was a thing, and reading the article the 1st thing I thought is why they don't do it so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I personally do naturally sit like this, but I don't think it's good for circulation in the legs. I do worry about DVTs.

</comment><comment><USER32> Squatting itself is common in China. After a year in China, I got use to squat toilets although I still preferred toilets. But I found it odd when they would squat in the middle of the sidewalk or street and be so close to the ground. The Chinese swear by it though that it's healthy for your knees and back if you squat.

</comment><comment><USER17> Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KJ58rS6...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KJ58rS6WC- EJ:bitehype.com/screw-your-standing-desk-how-about- squatting/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment><comment><USER33> Interesting idea, but like all positions, staying in it too long can be a painful affair. A work station that supports moving to a good squatting height (along with standing and sitting) would seem like the ideal compromise.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't seem to balance as I squat with feet flat on the ground. This is hard. My kids (esp. baby) can do it just fine though. And I won't be outdone by a bunch of tiny humans!

<comment><USER35> It could be tendons that need stretching; but it could also be inherent anatomical differences. I have curved shins, which pushes everything from the knee up a few inches backward when I try to squat. It's physically impossible for me to do a heels-down squat without bending my back to lean forward between my knees.

<comment><USER36> If that's true, you probably need to spread your knees apart more, and bend at the hip joint more to achieve full squat depth. Rounding your back == bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I learned this technique when I was backpacking through Vietnam. I noticed that many of the people were squatting rather then sitting. Then while touring the Cu Chi tunnels outside of Ho Chi Minh City our guide explained why the tunnels/holes were so small. It's because the soldiers would sit in this squat position for hours. Once you start doing it often you can do it longer and longer. I usually sit like this while I am in between sets at the gym.

</comment><comment><USER38> Trying to take an unconditioned person and telling them to hold a deep squat like that for hours = injuries all over. They'll lack ankle flexibility and whatnot.

<comment><USER5> A person unused to squatting will often have problems holding a squat for 30 seconds, if able to get down into a squat in the first place. I very much doubt that injuries would be a problem simply because the position is nearly impossible to hold for prolonged periods until you've developed the flexibility needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Going out on a limb here - I think this is satire.

<comment><USER40> The facebook page has a bunch of people in on the satire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What about using a harness to support yourself upright, but without the stress on your legs. Or, one of Honda's Exoskeleton devices [http://www.gizmag.com/honda-leasing-walking-assist-device- ex...](http://www.gizmag.com/honda-leasing-walking-assist-device- exoskeleton/27681/).

</comment><comment><USER42> It's not about standing vs squatting, it's sitting down vs squatting (especially on the toilet) that's the big point.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's true, standing desks are so last year. But why take baby steps with the squat desk?

Keep your eyes open for my kickstarter yoga desk.

</comment><comment><USER6> my proportions don't let me do this, I have very long legs, I'm 6'4" and have a medium length torso and my extra height is in legs

with such extreme proportions it's not possible to do it comfortably since I need to squat inside my knees so I need to turn the knees outside to squat between them

this is probably not very healthy

<comment><USER36> Sure it is.

In powerlifting, when performing a barbell squat, you are supposed to spread your knees apart and squat down in between your legs. This is proper technique and reduces the stress on the knee joint, transferring the load to the glutes and hamstrings.

I don't see why it would be unhealthy for you to do it _without_ weight on your back.

<comment><USER6> I can't squat below parallel without getting pain in my hip joint and/or knees after a while. I am not built for low squatting, and especially not for going ass to grass. A lot of longer-limbed people can't hit full depth in a proper position.

<comment><USER36> I have long femurs as well and can't squat comfortably for very long periods of time either, it feels like it cuts off the blood flow in my knees, but I would argue that that is most likely due to years of adaptation to a life of sitting on chairs and sofas, rather than due to some hereditary physiological quality. The more I squat and the more I get used to squatting, the more comfortable it becomes. When I started powerlifting, I struggled to hit depth, but now I do go almost ATG on every rep without any discomfort in my joints.

I really don't think there's any bone preventing you from squatting to depth. I believe it's almost always an issue of the condition of your muscular and connective tissue.

<comment><USER6> here's an explanation:

[http://imgur.com/3ZjRtsk](http://imgur.com/3ZjRtsk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Baseball catchers spend a lot of time in a squatting position. I was always told that it really messes up their knees.

<comment><USER36> Because they squat with their weight on their toes and their heels off the ground.

</comment></comment><comment> josh-wrale Sciatic nerve tension, anyone? Maybe it's for the best. :-)

</comment><comment><USER45> This sounds like it would cause my kneecaps to explode.

</comment><comment><USER46> How about real exercise instead of an excuse for one ?

</comment><comment><USER47> If people begin squatting at their desks, I'm patenting under-knee deodorant.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think it's satire-esque. I think sitting like that is for people who dont really "work" \- or maybe I am mad because I invested in a 2k stand up desk only to be sent thousands of miles away on a job.

Plus I feel like sitting like that would fill the office with farts and stuff.

<comment><USER49> Squatting doesn't make you fart unless you have other serious problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Hipsters, please make this a trend. The only place I sit properly is at work, and I hate it. I have no interest in a standing desk. I would love to sit on my calves and heels all day at the office, just like I sit at home when working on something.

I don't care what kind of dubious health claims have to be made. Get it done!</comment>


How to avoid the assignment statement - loup-vaillant http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/tutorials/avoid-assignment

<comment><AUTHOR> A C programmer's reparsing:

"Initialize right away" --> "Make it hard to figure out what your variables are by mixing up code with their declarations."

"Construct new values" --> "Manually do what the first pass of the compiler already does. Except don't use the const keyword."

"Make functions, not procedures" --> "Don't check for errors. Don't even make it _possible_ to check for errors."

"Make your objects immutable" --> "Let's see how much time we can spend in malloc!"

"Use purely functional data structures" --> "Arrays and hash tables are often the optimally performant data structures... but you shouldn't use them."

"When you can't help it" --> "If all your other attempts to sabotage your code fail to provide the required performance degradation, you can always slow your program down by copying data around unnecessarily."

In all seriousness, just like the famous "GOTO considered harmful", the author's "assignment statement is harmful" is an assertion which is valid in some situations -- quite possibly most or all of the situations he personally has to deal with -- but most definitely not valid in all circumstances.

<comment><USER2> I agree with most of what you said, but:

"Initialize right away" --> "Make it hard to figure out what your variables are by mixing up code with their declarations."

No. Putting all declarations at the top of a function makes it hard to figure out. If you can use C99, you should keep declarations and initializations together and hopefully as close to where they are actually used as possible.

One thing I'd add about the article: naming a function "move" and then having it return the sum of two vectors is bizarre and worse than the original implementation. At least, move as part of the Point class _actually moved the point_.

<comment><AUTHOR> In a 50 line function with 5 variables, I find it much easier to look at 5 lines of variable declarations to figure out how I declared a variable than to scan through up to 50 lines of code.

<comment><USER3> Stop writing 50 line functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems to me like you should just be coding in a functional language. Coding in Scheme might be easier than turning C into Scheme.

<comment> loup-vaillant I agree. By the few code that I write[1] outside of my day job is not in C. Also, I didn't meant C, but any language with garbage collection. I used C syntax mainly to reach mainstream imperative programers.

[1]: <http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/projects/ussm/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A useful summary (eg. I found my experimental code from last year a lot easier to understand when it used functions rather than procedures) - though I couldn't help laughing when he started saying "mistakes", "correct" and "incorrect".

<comment> loup-vaillant Ah… Do you think I should change my wording? Because if it made you laugh, it could also discredit my point in the eyes of those who don't agree with me in the first place.

I'd like to correct that, if possible.

<comment><USER5> The wording comes across as dogmatic; yet the article _isn't_ actually dogmatic - it sincerely acknowledges cases where the functional approach isn't suitable (even including the really cool algorithm of quicksort - BTW you might mention games as another one where mutable state is convenient). Showing respect for alternatives (where due) makes an article seem objective, impartial, intellectual and truth-seeking (rather than pushing an agenda; or trying to sell something). It would probably be beneficial if the wording reflected your intent.

I did find it distracting, because (to be frank) people don't like to be told what they should be doing; laughter is a way to defuse the affront. Another approach is to appeal to those (few) people who are keen to learn about techniques that will help them. And I really think that that's what you were going for. Changing the wording would help achieve that aim, in my opinion.

So... yes.

btw: I really liked your explanation of linked lists being cheap to modify; and the article in general is very well done and communicates very effectively - I'd say it's of textbook standard.</comment></comment></comment>


WikiLeaks: Documents from OPCW investigation into alleged Syrian gas attack - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7793253/PETER- HITCH...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7793253/PETER-HITCHENS- reveals-evidence-watchdog-suppressed-report-casting-doubt-Assad-gas- attack.html)

It may be the Daily Mail, but it seems our other media outlets won't report it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tucker Carlson has actually featured some discussion of it on his show. Our press ought to be ashamed that _that_ is one of the few mainstream US outlets for this news.</comment></comment>


Real Security in Mac OS X Requires Apple-Signed Certificates - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/11/real-security-in-mac-os-x-requires.html <comment><USER3> I think Shipley has missed the point of OS X sandboxing.

He's right that sandboxes won't directly prevent malware. But that's not why users want sandboxes. Sandboxes mitigate accidental vulnerabilities. Virtually every security vulnerability you've ever heard about has been an accident.

Sandboxes aren't a new idea (the sandbox code didn't even originate at Apple). The idea goes back to the '70s; an obvious and more recent example is the Java applet sandbox, and a somewhat more successful instance is Daniel Bernstein's qmail security architecture (qmail has one of th best security track records of any major software package).

It's best to think of sandboxes not as a preventer of malice, but as one incremental form of forced developer competence: all developers are being asked to at least consider what privileges their applications need (most developers do not do this today), so that they can voluntarily renounce capabilities that will be turned against them when someone finds a heap overflow in their code later on. The technology and policy Apple is working with here will do a fine job of that.

Also, no matter what Bertrand Serlet said, sandboxes don't need to cover "as many instructions as are in the human brain". Because of its Mach / Unix underpinnings, sandboxes have a relatively simple user/kernel interface they actually need to deal with. There are just a few hundred system calls, many of them already privileged.

</comment><comment><USER4> The application sandbox should be considered like not storing credit card info on your system... you could do it but you open yourself to security problems. As a developer, you should opt into entitlements because it means that your application will be less likely to have a problem in the future.

This is also similar to dropping privileges in unix: if you need sudo to start up, you drop it as soon as possible so that a compromised binary doesn't lead to root access for the malware.

They are like fire doors. They don't prevent the fire, they just limit the damage. Anything that encourages developers to adopt the sandbox model is good, however I would say that requiring them everywhere is probably biting off more than they can chew. Furthermore - as Wil explained - being fast with the fire extinguisher is probably a better tactic than trying to monitor and disallow all things that may lead to fire.

<comment><USER5> >Furthermore - as Wil explained - being fast with the fire extinguisher is probably a better tactic than trying to monitor and disallow all things that may lead to fire.

I disagree here. In the case of humans, it doesn't cost much to put fire extinguishers at regular intervals and have people just use them in the case of a fire. If a first starts we'll notice it. On a computer, it won't "just notice". You would have to have some virus scanner scanning every action all the time. This is what makes Windows so much slower and I would really hate to see it come to Mac.

I wish the SELinux approach would become more popular.

<comment><USER6> Being fast with a fire extinguisher is no substitute for fire prevention :-)

The point about all security models is that you need multiple redundant systems not one silver bullet. My house is built to fire safety codes, the materials are tested and approved individually, we have fire alarms, fire extinguishers, a fire hydrant nearby and a fire department to use it, and we have fire insurance. Most houses are like this and houses still burn down.

Shipley's argument is that code signing is all you need. It's not quite the same as advocating fire extinguishers as the only line of defense against house fire, more like simply relying on your builder's credentials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have the greatest respect (nay, love) for Mr. Shipley (who can forget his live twitter coverage of the bachelor), but hasn't web certificate revocation proven to be pretty much un-workable in practice? How would this be different? Entitlements sound similar to code access security which Microsoft baked in to the CLR, but which remain largely un-used.

<comment><USER8> The problem with revoking certificates for websites is: how do you know when to check if a certificate is black-listed? You can't download a list of blacklisted certificates, because who would keep track of them all, and how huge would the database be? Some certificates include the URL of a 'revocation list' which allows the browser to check if that certificate has been revoked, but if the browser checks each certificate that it sees then suddenly Verisign's revocation list server becomes a single-point-of-failure for half the Internet, and that's no good either.

Signing certs for Mac software would be different because there is exactly one central signing authority (Apple), so batch-downloading a list of revoked certs is feasible - bundle them with your monthly security patch updates, for example.

<comment><USER9> What? Your first paragraph concludes that if everyone is checking Verisign's CRL they become the single point of failure for half the internet, yet you conclude the a better solution is to only check Apple's certs, making them the ONLY point of failure? I don't think you really understand how digital certificates work.

Downloading blacklists of certs is exactly what happens. They are called OCSPs and CRLs. The operating system is responsible for tracking these through a combination of caching and downloading new OCSPs/CRLs. The database does not grow too large, because CAs use certificate chains. The cert that is vouching for some website is not the cert in your trusted root store. Root store certs are kept under lock and key - these very rarely get compromised (this is what happened to DigiNotar and they are no longer in business - their certs were invalidated by everyone in the industry and they were filing bankruptcy less than a month later).

What does happen are leaf certs being compromised. When this occurs only that leaf and everything below it in the chain is revoked, so if you have enough certs in the chain you usually don't revoke many certs at a time. Generally speaking, the lower the cert in the chain the lower the trust level, which includes stuff like the cert not remaining valid for as long a period.

You can read about how Windows implements cert revocation here: [http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ee619754%28WS.10%...](http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ee619754%28WS.10%29.aspx)

I'd assume Apple does something very similar.

<comment><USER10> Just a nitpick, but OCSPs is not the plural of OCSP, and you don't 'download' it the way a CRL works. OCSP stands for 'Online' Certificate Status Protocol, and is a query/response protocol, that functions much like the DNS - you don't download the whole deal, you ask about the validity of a specific, single record, and get a 'yes'/'no' response.

OCSP is a privacy problem, as well as a bottleneck/performance problem for any large, non-organizational CA, such as Verisign and their compatriots. Every single SSL certificate must be checked at each handshake in order to make sure it hasn't be revoked in the past 'n' hours (there is some caching, which kind of defeats the purpose). This means that in practice, the CA's know who is visiting what sites, and that they must be online and active and responding in a timely fashion (like the DNS) before a browser will allow an HTTPS connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would argue that real security requires a deeper approach like QubesOS takes - <http://wiki.qubes-os.org/trac/wiki/SecurityGoals> . Constraining and inconveniencing users for the sake of false sense of security doesn't feel like something that needs to be attempted in 2012.

But to be fair - I think the hardware is only now starting to get fast and capable enough for doing security via virtualization. So up until now may be OS vendors did not really have the luxury of thinking along those lines but it doesn't hurt to start thinking now.

Apple could really leapfrog if they worked with the hardware vendors to make Mac OS X something like QubesOS but much more usable. On top of it if they had a saner programming language that makes it darn near impossible to make security goof ups, real security still has a chance!

<comment><USER3> It's probably not reasonably to compare a hugely popular general purpose operating system to a research prototype designed specifically to demonstrate an extreme form of application segregation.

Similar logic would allow the "we - implemented - the - kernel - in - a - <USER2> - safe - runtime - so - we - don't - even - need - to - switch - out - of - ring - zero" crowd to say Qubes was inadequate.

<comment><USER11> QubesOS _is_ Linux+Xen+Added Trickery on top. So calling that a research prototype may not be entirely correct. I have used QubesOS - besides hardware support and usability there are no real inadequacies as far as I could tell from a general purpose desktop OS standpoint - both of which can be fixed by Apple along with may be some more hardware integration.

[EDIT] Relevant Article (via /.) - [http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/110311-xen-simon- crosb...](http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/110311-xen-simon- crosby-252723.html?hpg1=bn)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sandboxing in the appstore is probably not intended to directly protect against malware, it is there to minimize the risk of programmer error. The application developer decides the restrictions it imposes on itself. And while the current entitlements system seems quite weak compared to the normal interface to the sandbox, I think that the number of entitlements that you can request will grow with time, and with user awareness. (The Scheme-derivative that is the configuration right now, is probably not fit for user consumption)

The OS X sandbox has been around for a long while (and trusted BSD has been around for even longer), it is of course not bug free, but it is in use in a few exposed applications (like Safari), and deploying it appstore-wide will only make it even better.

I, as a programmer, sleeps better at night knowing that my (and others) applications has safety nets that protect it from doing stupid stuff.

</comment><comment><USER13> _"Apple then has the power, if any app is found to be malware, to shut it down remotely, immediately"_

Actually I don't think this will work. They can "shut it down" in the sense that they can keep new installs from happening. But if the malware is already installed it controls the machine, so it can simply ignore the "kill switch" for itself.

<comment><USER14> Is there not some way that the certificate checks can run on app launch? Or even periodically

<comment><USER13> I don't know how mac "apps" work, but if we assume it can gain full control over the os, there's really only one thing they can do: "anchor" the checks in hardware.

The way it (supposedly) works is that you have a hardware chip that checks the bios, which checks the boot loader, which checks the os, which checks the apps etc.. The goal is that you'll have to modify the actual hardware chip in order to "crack" the os. Sounds great, but has a lot of challenges in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here is the real problem: <http://www.eros-os.org/papers/secnotsep.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know anything more about this:

"Bertrand Serlet once told me that Mac OS X now has roughly as many instructions as we believe the human brain does."

<comment><USER17> I don't know what a Bertrand Serlet is but the statement reads like bunk. The CommonSense-Ometer in my own brain says there's no comparison between the evolved complexity o the human brain and an operating system for the modern digital computer hardware.

<comment><USER18> I think the claim is bogus not because the brain has a much more complex instruction set, but because the phrase 'instruction set of the brain' does not make sense.

If one had to express the complexity of a neuron in the size of its 'instruction set', the best guess may be 'one': "act like a neuron until you break down".

The complexity of the brain most likely is not caused by complexity of the processing units, but of its parallelism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article by Wil Shipley is grounded in so much real world experience.

I too want to develop a Mac app that might not be covered by the existing entitlements and would be disappointed if I couldn't release it via the MAS.

Hopefully Apple will read this and consider his insights.</comment>


Introduction to Competitive Programming Contests - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs97si/ <comment><USER2> I participated in 3 programming contests in high school and 2 in college. I was never the person that came up with the great solution and I really felt like an inadequate programmer because these challenges used to make my brain hurt. Anyways, in college when they were putting together the team my professor approached me and asked if I would participate. When I told him I didn't feel like I was good enough at coding to be a part of something like that he shot that notion down, reflected on my personality and got me to sign up. Never contributed less code to a team in my life, but never learned more either. I took the role of lead motivator for the rest of the team and we ended up placing top 5.

Point is, if you never tried a programming contest, do it. You dont have to be a genius programmer to contribute to your team.

<comment><USER3> I've represented my university in the ACM-ICPC four times in a row and this year I coached. I consider myself average at competitive coding (i.e. if I had a team that consisted of my clones, we would not be good enough to make top 30 in a difficult region). I participate to learn (both algorithms and coding) and because I enjoy it. A side benefit is that I'm a quicker problem solver than when I started.

Every year I try to recruit students. The most common reply is along the lines of "I'm not good enough". To which I reply "You compete to learn, you'll get better!". Doesn't work though, the best strategy is to have an authority figure (e.g. professor) ask students to compete.

edit: This collection of resources I put together may be of interest to some. <https://github.com/BrockCSC/acm-icpc/wiki>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I took a similar course at the National University of Singapore called 'Competitive Programming'[1] taught by Dr Steven Halim. It probably has to be one of the most fun courses I took at uni. I didn't really learn much theory since most of the content is already covered in a standard algos course, which was one of the pre-req. But I think my programming and problem solving skills went up a notch. Our assignments were basically on solving problems from the UVA Online Judge[2]. We had two competitions for the mid-terms and finals. Each had an individual component and a team component that run on a custom grading server.

[1] <https://sites.google.com/site/stevenhalim/> [2] <http://uva.onlinejudge.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I would say if Jaehyun does not qualify, I cannot think of another one who does

</comment><comment><USER6> Just look at his CV[0]. It is just amazing what Park has accomplished with such young age.

[0]: <http://www.stanford.edu/~liszt90/>

</comment><comment><USER7> This bastard is skipping his master thesis, going straight to the phd. I thought only psychologists and doctors were allowed to do that :)

<\- some guy finishing his master thesis.

<comment> barry-cotter That's the standard way of doing things in the UK and the former British Empire. Go straight from doing a Bachelor's, with coursework to doing research. He probably did the Masters programme requirements while technically an undergrad. The other interpretation is that he's part of the Ph.D. programme but he's a Ph.D. student (still doing coursework) rather than a Ph.D. candidate (gotta finish up that research and write papers/a thesis.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's only C/C++/Java :(

I think I will solve them by myself for myself in Perl.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's some good stuff here too: <http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/392/>

</comment><comment><USER10> looks like the course lecturer was still an undergrad student at the time he lectured this course. I wonder if that is common at Stanford or whether he is a Doogie Howser style child prodigy.

<comment><USER11> This is not common, Jaehyun Park is just a genius.

<comment><USER12> Hes a musical prodigy as well !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it an online course? I can't find the way to enroll in.</comment>


Photocircle - Buy photos, help the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.photocircle.net On Photocircle you can buy high quality art prints from photographers or print your own photos. A part of the revenue goes into social projects in the region the photo was taken in. We want to give something back to the people and countries that make our photos unique!!! <comment><AUTHOR> vote for us, if you like our vision: <http://www.entrepreneurship.de/wettbewerb2012/photocircle/></comment>


Project Sunroof - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/get/sunroof <comment><USER2> It looks pretty much like what it looked like back in 2015?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150818043020/https://www.googl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150818043020/https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10073724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10073724)

</comment><comment><USER3> I monitor a solar panel installation using a Raspberry Pi that is connected to the inverter. That way I can check how much energy has been generated on every day/so far.

The company, which set-up the whole thing, also ran a couple of simulations beforehand and I am positively surprised that the installation actually produces more energy than predicted.

The whole project is live at [http://solarpi.tafkas.net](http://solarpi.tafkas.net)

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone here have a solar lease? I'm a homeowner and it seems appealing but the opinions on it seem really muddy.

<comment><USER5> I would rather do a rent to buy imho, leasing will probably ham string you into buying it after the lease is up.</comment></comment>


Startups: Silicon Valley vs. The Emerging World - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/26/startups-silicon-valley-vs-the-emerging-world/

<comment><USER2> Picture a bootstrapped company that earns 2000 USD each month when it starts and doubles revenues annually. While this is a successful startup by almost any definition, note that it takes over 5 years for this business to cross the half-million mark in sales.

So why don't the founders take money and use it to accelerate growth? Realistically, in most places that aren't Silicon Valley, this sort of business will have trouble raising any meaningful amount on halfway decent terms until years 3-4, at which point any sane founder will be loath to give up equity in exchange for cash.

<comment><USER3> Your example company would eventually be awesome to own. It's annual revenue after y years would be r(y) = 12 * 2000 * 2^y. After 10 years, the annual revenue would $24,576,000. After 20, $25,165,824,000. After 30 years, $25,769,803,776,000.

<comment><USER4> After 30 years of growth, your company is the size of several countries, GDP- wise.

Assuming zero inflation in our monetary supply and thus zero price inflation, this is undoubtedly an unrealistic assumption.

<comment><USER2> Sure growth has to slow eventually, but it isn't unrealistic for a successful company to grow 100 percent per year for five years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The use of "reality distortion field" is out of place here. It used to highlight a difference in culture, but I see no "distortion field" here. It is also applied something that has no standard. How old is a company before its no longer considered a startup? Reality? What is reality in a startup anywhere in the world?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if some of these barriers could be dropped fairly easily. For example, a few startups could get together and open source their legal boilerplate.</comment>


1B robocalls net $225M FCC fine that will likely never be collected - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/1-billion-robocalls-nets-225m-fcc-fine-that-will-likely-never-be-collected/ <comment><AUTHOR> The crux is here: "In fact, it was last year that The Wall Street Journal did the math and found that we had collected no more than $6,790 on hundreds of millions in fines. Why? Well, one reason is that the FCC looks to the Department of Justice to collect on the agency's fines against robocallers. We need them to help. So when they don't get involved—as here—that's not a good sign."</comment>


To Change Publishing, Make Publishers Obsolete - <AUTHOR> http://www.novelr.com/2010/04/20/to-change-publishing-make-publishers-obsolete

<comment><USER2> Shirky: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."

Great quote.</comment>


Conway's Game of Life on Dec PDP-7, Type 340 Display, & Am Radio ByteBeat Music - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB78NXH77s4 <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a photo of John Conway playing Life on a PDP-1:

[https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys- images/Guardian/Pix/pict...](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys- images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/7/22/1437585075275/0874b6b2-7ace-4752-b81d-dbf5282946cd-2060x1236.jpeg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=d1905baf3c55b861f567992eb2af6b76)

>Conway playing Game of Life, which he invented in 1970. Photograph: Kelvin Brodie/the Sun

From this article:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john- horton-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton- conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world)

>John Horton Conway: the world's most charismatic mathematician

>John Horton Conway is a cross between Archimedes, Mick Jagger and Salvador Dalí. For many years, he worried that his obsession with playing silly games was ruining his career – until he realised that it could lead to extraordinary discoveries

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Listening to a PDP-7 with an AM radio isn't exactly ByteBeat (since you're technically only allowed one line of code), but it sure sounds a lot like it:

Meet Bytebeat: A Brand New Electronic Music Genre

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkzakx/meet-bytebeat-a- br...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkzakx/meet-bytebeat-a-brand-new- electronic-music-genre)

>Become a slave to the algorhythm.

>Heard about the latest computer music genre sweeping the internet? It's called "bytebeat" and if this comes as news to you, don't despair, the thing's only about five months old, so you're still ahead of the curve. Bytebeat is algorithmic music created from one line of code and was discovered/invented while Finnish low-tech artist and programmer Ville-Matias Heikkila (aka Viznut) and his friends were experimenting with the computer programming language C code and creating one line formulas that could produce an audio output (see below).

Bytebeat: Music from very short programs - the 3rd iteration

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCRPUv8V22o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCRPUv8V22o)

Bytebeat - Music from math formulas

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25aVWtNcAm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25aVWtNcAm0)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Munching Squares and Spirograph with an AM radio is also quite pleasing:

DEC PDP-7 w/ Type 340 display running Munching Squares and Spirograph

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4oRHv- Svwc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4oRHv-Svwc)

>Two display hacks run on PDP-7 serial number 129 with the Type 340 XY display option. The 340 has a P7 phosphor has a slow decay which gives Munching Squares an eerie afterglow. Both programs read the left switches to modify patterns. A small AM radio was used to pick up RFI from the Type 347 controller. For the MIT AI lab hackers the Munching Squares "music" was referred to as Munching Tunes.

Here is the 340 Vector Graphics Display Programming Manual:

[http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340...](http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340_Display_Programming_Manual.pdf)

The amazing retro-hacker Lars Brinkhoff has been working on emulating the 340 and its beautiful P7 phosphor with GLSL shaders for the simh PDP-7 emulator:

[https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/crt- simulation](https://github.com/larsbrinkhoff/crt-simulation)

[https://hackaday.io/project/168401-type-340-remake](https://hackaday.io/project/168401-type-340-remake)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >Here is an implementation of John Conway's Game of Life on an 18 bit DEC PDP-7 with a DEC Type 340 X/Y point display. Patterns are stored on and can be called from our new JK09 PDP-7 storage device which is what we use for UNIX V0. We have set a few starter patterns including Bill Gosper's Glider Gun.

>The sounds you hear are from the Type 347 display controller. They were received using a Yaesu FT1XD radio in AM mode.

>The world supports 1296 points (36 x 36). We are attempting to increase this to 72 x 72 or 5184 points.</comment>


Tribal knowledge is not your friend - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You forgot the URL. Try submitting again.</comment>


Show HN: MovieMate - find your favorite Actors together - <AUTHOR> http://moviemate.co/

<comment><USER2> cool</comment>


CSS Tables Gallery - <AUTHOR> http://icant.co.uk/csstablegallery/tables/99.php

<comment><USER2> Interesting read. Thanks for sharing. This is the first time i see something similar online ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really? I get:

icant.co.uk has address 0.0.0.0

<comment><USER3> seems to work now.</comment></comment>


Today's college students have tuned out the world, and it's partly our fault - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=9WdWMfPrdR9HJDmcJcW5pMkf4bvmpvgp

<comment><USER2> These facts and issues simply don't matter to most people. There is an academic-minded "sect" that might consider this blasphemous, but Kabul, the current Secretary of Defense, even the year of WWII, none of these issues come to bear on the daily lives of college students.

Older generations love to talk about how politically/globally minded they were and how they fought against the Vietnam War, but the fervence of their objection was only proportional to what they stood to loose through the draft.

I see a lot of opinion that generation xyz is stuck to their blackberries/iphones/facebook/myspace/etc. and that not only are they ignorant, but that this is some kind of historically unprecented phenomenom. But I just don't buy it -- they're in college (or high school), by and large their parents are supporting them -- maybe when the time comes for them to support themselves some of these issues will become relevant (at least tax raises and cuts), and many of these kids will "get smart."

There will always be those who are diligent and alert -- as long as being so conveys some kind of quantifiable advantage. I don't mean to say that public education isn't important, only that as a society we're no worse off than we were 25 or 50 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Times change and men decay"

Since the Greeks, the older generation has always decried the younger generation as weak, ill-informed, and just not up to snuff by the standards of "back in the day."

The truth is, most of my classmates are incredibly informed about current events. They can tell you not only where Kabul is, but also name all of the provinces of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

I think the majority of people have always been a little bit ignorant with regard to foreign policy. And the mean may be especially low today. But this is offset by the upper segment of the population that is better informed than their equivalent at any time in history.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a college student, I can't help but feel that he's exaggerating the issue. I refuse to believe that most of my classmates couldn't answer 90% of those questions. The only question I couldn't answer myself was who is the current SoD, and I was at least informed enough to ask myself who took Rumsfeld's place when he resigned. It makes me wonder whether the problem is with my generation as a whole or with his particular sample of it.

<comment><USER5> Maybe its not that he's exaggerating the issue completely, but college students (myself included) are used to being connected to a source of information somehow; a quick google search - phone call to someone at the worst - and we can get any bit of information we could want (slight exaggeration here but the point remains). As a result, we don't place as much importance on rote memorization of daily events and occurrences.

While I can personally answer the questions, I do see the viewpoint from the people around me who look at the questions he was asking - "Who else is a democracy?" "Who's the SoD?" etc - and go "Thats on Google/Wiki, why bother memorizing it when I can look it up just as quickly?" And honestly? It's comforting in a way to know that I'm not going to have to remember random bits of information if it doesn't interest me.

Is it depressing? In a way. But its the modern world for millions of people and it's not about to change anytime soon. Instead of giving an irate tirade on the issue, maybe it would be better for them to talk to the students and try to look at things from our point of view (grew up with technology and basically always connected) instead of the one they have/want us to have (technology is an aid to help us, not a crutch to rely on)

<comment><USER6> "It's comforting in a way to know that I'm not going to have to remember random bits of information if it doesn't interest me."

The very specific example in the article was the fact that not one single student knew that their government was abducting random people around the world and disappearing them into holes in which anything could be done to them, and there was no legal process for anyone to challenge the practice in any way.

Does that qualify as a random bit of information?

<comment><USER5> Don't take "random" to mean "unnecessary"

Any bit of information that I'm not specifically interested in finding is random as far as I'm concerned. That doesn't mean its not important in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What kind of class was this? I'm a junior in high school, and I've known the meaning of rendition since 6th grade. I and 90% of my classmates know the answer to all those questions. For college students to be unable to answer these kinds of questions...well they live in a hole. Theres no other explaination. What school is this? Case Western Reserve University? What kinds of people attend this school?

All this article has revealed to me is that the quality of students at that particular University is quite low. I mean sure, perhaps my standards are high coming from a suburban area where the population is 20% Asian (high education standards). But seriously. 11/18 kids can't tell you Kabul is in Afghanistan, where we've been fighting a war for over a half decade?

</comment><comment><USER8> Where I live (Montreal, Canada) we get CNN and I can understand why college kids don't watch the news. It's complete bullsh __news. Lou Dobbs is ridiculous in so many way...

Agreed that they could read the news on the net (because who gets the newspaper delivered to their rez?) but personally I feel like reading serious stuff on a screen is dry and very hard to do (much rather like paper).

Just my 2 cents.

p.s. Also, I haven't completely RTFA but generalizing is never good.

p.p.s. It's not because their top of their class they should be more aware of the news, that's BS.

<comment><USER9> > generalizing is never good.

Remember, _every_ rule has exceptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My professors griped exactly the same way about us. And when I became a professor, I griped the same way. In any country you choose, the professors are griping about how ignorant the students are. It's not just "stupid Americans."

But it gets better: professors of X cannot believe how silly professors of Y are on subject X (how would this prof do on an applied technology quiz? A biology quiz? More to the point how would he have done when he was 20?). etc. etc.

But man, when I read that some of the students think 1975 is a plausible year for the A-bomb, I feel old...!

</comment><comment><USER11> So true:

 _Those who tune in to television "news" are subjected to a barrage of opinions from talking heads like CNN's demagogic Lou Dobbs and MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his dizzying "No Spin Zone." In today's journalistic world, opinion trumps fact (the former being cheaper to produce)_

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Part of the problem of keeping up with current events is understanding who to believe. In an age when anyone can broadcast anything, we end up with almost nothing.

Perhaps high schools and colleges should be a little less concerned with transmitting data and concentrate more on how to think, where to get data, and how to evaluate that data.

OTOH, maybe this is just another opportunity for those of us who would rather build something than spend time watching American Idol, facebooking, and partying. (Spending time on hacker news is OK.)

<comment><USER12> Here's the thing: keeping up with current events is wrong. Don't try to keep up.

The right way to understand things is slowly. This is why I don't watch the TV news, I don't read mainstream news web sites.

I have two major sources of news: Le Monde (which I have daily) and The Economist (which is a weekly). Of those two I get the most information from The Economist because once a week I can read considered opinion and news not Breaking News which is irrelevant.

I also don't follow Twitter and I have a very limited set of RSS feeds. The only social news site I read is this one.

<comment><USER13> Salon.com is pretty good too. If you subscribe they send you an email every morning with a link to one article and a short description. They might only publish three or four articles worth reading per week, but the quality of those articles is far better than anything you'll find in any newspaper. There are also almost never any factual errors, unlike the NYT. And also, unlike the NYT, it isn't full of blatant propaganda. (Ever notice how the Times always describes the warrantless wiretapping with the epithet "that begin after sept. 11th," even though their own reporting shows that claim to be false. [1])

[1] [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/14/32927/2778/622/47636...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/14/32927/2778/622/476369)

<comment><USER14> I let my subscription to Salon.com lapse around 2002 when it was no longer possible to ignore the fact that they were happy to be a blatant mouthpiece for the left. It just wasn't worth the work to sort out the good pieces from the leftist nonsense. (Also note: I'm not any more a fan of right-wing nonsense.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe it's just his students that are like this, and not all young people.

Considering how mediocre and ignorant most journos are, is it that surprising to consider that the same may apply to journalism students? When I say mediocre journalists, I don't have Hunter Thompson or Helen Thomas in mind, but the people that invariably make you cringe when you read their newspaper article on a subject you're familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER16> It was a very well written article. Wisdom is something that eludes the masses. I can't begin to comment on it seeing that I lack a lot of it myself. Even though knowledge is more and more accessible, the wisdom to use it will not be within the granting power of Man. [taken from various philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and probably many more have glimpsed this trait of human nature]

</comment><comment><USER13> What about the 60% of twenty-somethings that don't get a college degree? Is their participation in the democracy not mandatory?

</comment><comment><USER17> i think the major overtone is that life is getting easier and easier

</comment><comment><USER18> want to understand the world? study economic history. follow the money and you find the motivations.

start in the late 1600's with proto-capitalism and follow the trail of money.

</comment><comment> craig-faber OK. But how do we build a better news service?

</comment><comment><USER19> I was lucky enough to have a history professor in high school who taught in such a way that opened our eyes to more than one way of seeing any historic event. He listed sources for us to read from around the world. There was also a lot of optional reading, this source is more difficult than this other source. If you're not interested, stick with Miller, if you want more depth, read Blum, etc. I took from that class a new interest in history as well as current events. Of course, this was in the 1980s before the media became so readily available via the net. It's almost at a saturation point. You can get information so easily, why even bother getting it in the first place? I can always do it later, and so on. This might be a common attitude among todays students. I have a 12 year old nephew who is heavily shielded from the outside world by his parents. His father won't let him read Harry Potter because someone dies in the book. It's sickening. When I was 12 I was reading Stephen King and loving every minute of it. Shielding your kids from the world isn't necessary at age 12.

</comment><comment><USER20> Case Western University is where the brightest kids in the nation are attending, now that is a piece of news I haven't heard about.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ok, while I did know the answers to all of his questions (just left college), my reaction was such that I just thought: "Another person who is lamenting about the education system, in regards to current affairs, big deal"

I closed it after the second paragraph. I wonder if he also gathers statistics on telia tequila as well as the civil war...

<comment><USER22> how do you know that you knew the answers to all his questions if you closed the article after the second paragraph?

<comment><USER21> Ok, So I read about half way through the article, second idea, and I didn't re-count the paragraphs to type this up.

Here is the thing for me: Blaming it on anything other than the individual and their parents seems like a cop-out.</comment></comment></comment>


How do debuggers keep track of the threads in your program? - <AUTHOR> http://timetobleed.com/how-do-debuggers-keep-track-of-the-threads-in-your-program/

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't really mention this, but it's all very linux specific. On OpenBSD, for instance, it's mostly the same except entirely different.

<comment><USER3> search the page for linux and check the tags at the bottom. says linux a few times bro.

<comment><USER2> the word linux appears once in the article. in a comment in a code block. bro.</comment></comment></comment>


April Fools Roundup so far - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/01/april-fools-youtube-flails-amazon-cloud-computing-in-a-blimp-3d-chrome-browsing-google-master-ai/

<comment><USER2> Nice. Now that there is a list, we don't need to vote these all up to the front page. In fact, let's not vote any of them up to the front page. 'k?

<comment><USER3> I thought CADIE was nice, in fact I'd preferred that on the front page over this, but I agree with you.

Also, as QWANTZ points out today, they should all it disappointment Wednesday - TopGear on Hulu is sadly not real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm ashamed to say that I paused for a while when Bug Me Not asked me to register.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm sort of surprised there hasn't been that many attacks in human history on April 1st. Noone would believe it, until it was too late.

      "Sir we are under attack!"

       "Real funny, Johnson"

       "I'm serious!"

       "Yeah, yeah...let me just call up the president on my imaginary phone"

       "Look at the radar, sir"

       "I'm calling...I'm calling...yeah sir? we are under attack by Canadians, unicorns and mermaids...its a bloodbath!"

<comment><USER6> The military do not take kindly with jokes. They tend to return with gunfire. So most likely, people would not take it as a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think they've missed "Internet Explorer 8.1 leaked": [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/breaking- internet...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/breaking-internet- explorer-81-eagle-eyes-leaked/) Though technically that would be March 31st fools…

</comment><comment><USER8> I like Blizzard's jokes the most:

<http://www.starcraft2.com/features/terran/terratron.xml>

<http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/archivist.xml>

</comment><comment><USER9> GCC removed from FreeBSD in preparation for Clang import: [http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=625464+0+curren...](http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=625464+0+current/svn- src-all)

</comment><comment><USER10> For tech and non-tech:

<http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/> <http://twitter.com/AprFoolsDay>

</comment><comment><USER11> Reddit is actually quite funny. Check also subreddits (science, wtf, nsfw, pics, worldnews).

And there are Easter eggs when you use AdBlock :).</comment>


Lamport's Hash Chains for Server Authentication - <AUTHOR> https://www.josephkirwin.com/2016/09/12/server-authentication-with-lamports-scheme/ <comment><USER2> This should probably replace TLS.</comment>


Startups threatened by iOS 14's new features - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/10/all-the-startups-threatened-by-ios-14s-new-features/ <comment><USER2> Instead of thinking of this as "sherlocking" or "threatening", it should be viewed as an opportunity for startups to step out of the comfort zone and offer genuine innovation, which will further benefit the consumer. Having basic features integrated in the OS is essential, and will happen more and more, especially with so many horror stories of seemingly innocent apps brokering user information for cash. Startups need to step up their game in privacy as well as technological and product innovation. Good luck.

<comment><USER3> I've always thought that if your business can be made redundant simply by another product implementing a new feature, then you have a really obvious business risk and should make decisions accordingly.

<comment><USER4> The counter-argument is that Apple's implementations aren't "playing fairly", because iOS's restrictions mean Apple can give its own features special integration into the OS that third-parties don't have access to. Of course, some degree of this is inevitable with any platform. So there isn't a clear line where it becomes anti-competitive.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that's a valid counter-argument at all. The same line of reasoning applies to any service. There's plenty of products that are essentially 3rd party implementations of features in other services. If you're going to make a product like that, you absolutely must know that your entire value prop can be wiped out if the 3rd party ever happens to get around to implementing that feature themselves. Apple does plenty of stuff that could be argued as anti-competitive, but I don't think "implementing my product as a feature" is one of them.

It is perhaps a good reason to think twice before making an iOS app though. But as a consumer I prefer it to the opposite approach, which I'd consider a company like Atlassian to have. If you ask Atlassian when they're going to implement a rather basic and highly demanded feature, the answer tends to be "never, buy it on the market place".

<comment><USER4> > If you're going to make a product like that

It's... it's basically all products. Virtually any product on iOS would function and perform and integrate better if implemented by Apple. It's just a question of at what point it gets popular enough that they want to bother doing so.

> The same line of reasoning applies to any service

iOS is a special case because of how locked-down it is. Not only can't third- parties do things like draw over other parts of the UI or add items to system UIs, they can't even (truly) run in the background.

Of course, on Android, apps can do all of these things and that's part of why it's a security nightmare. Which is why as I said, there's no clear answer to the problem. But it is a problem.

<comment><USER3> > It's... it's basically all products

I looked through every app I have installed on my iPhone and I only found a couple that would fall into that category. I have a shopping list app which Apple could theoretically implement as a feature if it wanted to (but not fully, as this particular shopping list app allows me to share lists with android users), and Authy.

The rest of the apps I have installed are just interfaces for 3rd party services. Apple doesn't have the power to subvert the value of those services any more than any other service provider does (Apple has a maps app, I still use google maps).

I guess Apple could also make a Sudoku app if it really wanted to, but I'd consider that pretty unlikely.

I think there's a strong argument for saying something like Spotify vs Apple Music is anti-competitive, but for rather different reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been having these thoughts recently that app stores were just proving grounds for the corporations.

<comment><USER6> Everything that isn't held by patents is a proving ground for everyone else who has time and resources, including other corporations, startups and individuals.

It's why you need a moat, or you don't really have anything stable for the long term.

Just because you had first idea & implementation that worked in the market doesn't mean you have the best implementation (of the features that actually matter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Still a good strategy to be the first to implement. Collect the profit as much as you can, then move on.

</comment><comment><USER8> If your great startup/business/whatever is threatened by new features added into a new iteration of an OS then it was not great to begin with. And I don't have pity for mediocrity.

<comment><USER9> Watson[1] was a great product, in no way did anybody consider it mediocre. Apple pretty much cloned it when they introduced Sherlock.

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

<comment><USER10> And yet Alfred[1] remains enormously popular and is a clear step-up from Sherlock.

[1] [https://www.alfredapp.com/](https://www.alfredapp.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mobile startups that don't have a substantial value add outside just what they do on the phone are just prototyping new features for the FAANG companies.

<comment><USER12> Your not wrong, but it's also a bit depressing that we live in a world where giant companies can just wait until they see something becoming successful enough and then use their essentially unlimited resources to copy it and put the original creator out of business.

<comment><USER13> Tech was exciting for a time, but human history is full of gatekeepers demanding their rents and only allowing others in their turf if they aren't too threatening.

We've been living through the good parts. It is only going to get more "normal".

<comment><USER14> Think different.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for this comment. It saddens me whenever I hear normality is the gold standard, because what is normal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It will be interesting to see how AirTags is designed. I love my Tile that I got as a gift this last Christmas, but the app experience is terrible. I have been kicking around the idea of reversing the Bluetooth protocol so I can write my own that gets out of my way and stops trying to sell me stuff. I suspect that Apple will obviate that desire if AirTags don't end up coming with a three-digit price tag.

<comment><USER17> I'm doing this, but for pets. [https://ppn.gethuan.com/](https://ppn.gethuan.com/).

There's no need to reverse engineer anything - it's using standard BLE and iBeacon, and you can buy ready-made tags and program them however you like from Alibaba suppliers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> unrelated to article but why on earth does this site completely demolish my ability to go back to HN on safari, obnoxious

<comment><USER19> Got curious so opened the link, waited to load, and pushed back. It worked without issue This is with Firefox on Android, and the uBlock add-on.

I tried again, this time with uBlock disabled. It took like 30 full seconds to load, but still the back action worked fine... so it must be an issue specific to Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [https://archive.is/3jx7e](https://archive.is/3jx7e)

</comment><comment><USER21> What technology does tile use? Bluetooth? How will airtags work?

<comment><USER22> Bluetooth. I think AirTags will most likely use some combination of bluetooth and the new U1 chip included in the iPhone 11 Pro which should hopefully give it more granularity than a plain old bluetooth tracker would.

<comment><USER23> The ultra-wideband U1 chip is going to be the main push behind AirTags. As I understand it, with 3+ devices close to each other, you can pinpoint the exact location of any of the other devices, so I imagine there will be an app for finding your AirTags in AR by moving your phone's camera around.

<comment><USER22> I really hope this is the case. The biggest issue I always have with the trackers is the granularity just doesn't seem to be fine enough.

Mind you I have never tried Tile, so they may be better in that regard, but there is only so much you can do off a single bluetooth signal

<comment><USER24> I've tried Tile, it'll tell you if it's within 15-20 feet and then has an audible noise. Kinda OK, but not great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Happy Sherlocking!

<comment><USER26> There should be a Mac Mausoleum as an equivalent to the Google Graveyard- except the programs in there weren't created by Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well it's not like Apple doesn't do this transversally across its hardware products and software apps or cloud services.

</comment><comment><USER28> We don't give a damn. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Won't someone please think of the, uh, smartphone wallpaper startups‽

This article seems like clickbait.

<comment><USER30> Agreed. I couldn't identify even one "startup" actually threatened by these changes in the article.

<comment><USER31> The big one is Tile. The company so afraid of a product that is only a rumor at this point they testified to Congress about how evil Apple is.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps Tile should step up their game then or add more value.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Chemists' War - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/science/chemical-weapons-world-war-1-armistice.html <comment><USER2> Great article - I'm fascinated by pollution for some reason.

I recently spent time living near Los Alamos, NM. The physicists and nuclear chemists surely outdid WW1 in their legacy of environmental devastation. Check out Acid Canyon, a popular recreation area in the middle of Los Alamos. If I recall, they opened this place to the public for recreation in 1962, then a few years later barrels containing plutonium waste surfaced after a heavy rain. Then they opened it again.

[http://projects.wsj.com/waste-lands/site/4-acid-pueblo- canyo...](http://projects.wsj.com/waste-lands/site/4-acid-pueblo-canyon/)

[http://www.nuclearactive.org/docs/doublestandard.html](http://www.nuclearactive.org/docs/doublestandard.html)

[http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/los- alamos-...](http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/los-alamos-will- never-be-clean/article_a3cc7ce1-8af0-5113-8f38-5d4aa673fd7a.html)

I guess at some point they stopped dumping untreated liquid plutonium waste there. That was a good move. The wastewater facility for the entire Natl Lab for decades that processed all of the toxic chemical, metal and nuclear waste discharged the water untreated until the 60s. There are dozens of uninventoried dump sites and things like full closets in basements with uranium that nobody has looked at in a couple decades. Oh, and people who work there suggested to me that all the public info made available is falsified for one reason or another.

DP Rd and TA-21, site of first plutonium machining facility, and the wastewater 'treatment' (meaning untreated discharge) facility, is another interesting one. They're currently environmentally remediating the area for homes.

<comment><USER3> We have Rocky Flats here in Denver. We have built giant neighborhoods in the shadow of that facility with a similar reckless history of nuclear and industrial waste related to nuclear weapons production.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, there are many such nuclear sites, particularly in the West.

The main dump for Los Alamos, TA-54, which has been in service 35-45 years, is 900 feet above the aquifer that serves Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and 2 miles from the Rio Grande. One of the dozens of disposal areas it contains includes a dump, MDA-C (it is it Area G?) that consists of 4 200 foot shafts, putting their large inventory of toxic and highly nuclear waste only 700 feet above NM's drinking water table.

[https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/06/f23/RS1738_A...](https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/06/f23/RS1738_Attachment%20N.pdf)

Figure 8 shows at lower right the four negative pressure tents covering the shafts, which were visible from my backyard in White Rock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chemical weapons, beyond their psychological effect, were not a game changer for either side in WW1. Effective countermeasures were developed rather quickly and, in any case, a breakthrough effected by poison gas could not be easily exploited.

Although not mentioned in the article, the main contribution of chemists to WW1 was almost certainly the Haber-Bosch process [1]. It allowed Germany to produce ammo and explosives even while cut off from Chilean saltpeter [2] and also sustained its agriculture in the absence of fertilizer imports. Without the Haber-Bosch process Germany could have afforded only a very short war [3]. It's still immensely important today as it produces over half of the nutrient received by the world's crops [4].

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

[2] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin- america-31090757](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31090757)

[3] [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/02/03/118...](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/02/03/118255924.pdf)

[4] [http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil- article-w...](http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-article- worldagriculture.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Yup. In WWI the defender had railroads and telegraphs to let them contain a breakthrough but the attacker couldn't make use of either on the attack. By WWII we had trucks and radios, making breakthroughs much more meaningful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For an interesting take on this, I'd recommend reading _The Alchemy of Air_.

It's not specifically about either of the world wars. It's about the work that led to the discovery of the Haber-Bosch process that makes it possible to produce ammonia by extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere.

This was a hugely valuable discovery - and the companies that formed as a result ended up having a significant impact on both wars.

The book talks about how the German chemical industry formed, how the discovery of the Haber-Bosch process affected the industry, how Fritz Haber helped lead Germany's chemical weapons development during WW1, and how the major chemical companies were eventually merged to form IG Farben, which was responsible for some pretty horrible things during WW2.

<comment> saiya-jin > how the major chemical companies were eventually merged to form IG Farben

... and how it seamlessly became Bayer after the war, with same folks running it. Acquired by Monsanto this year, what else to say

<comment><USER7> Bayer aquired Monsanto, not the other way round. But yeah, these two companies truely are a fit made... well not heaven but maybe the hotter counter part of it.

<comment><USER8> Please don't knock Bayer.

Those are the chaps, after all, that developed (and trademarked) Heroin.

As a cough medicine for children.

(I really hope that this doesn't need a <sarcasm> tag)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow I had no idea that chemical weapons were tested in the suburbs of DC, wild.

I'm kind of surprised that the article didn't talk about the zone rouge in France. If you haven't heard of it it's worth checking out. Basically it's whole regions of France that were contaminated by munitions and chemicals in WW1. The area is uninhabitable and some regions are devoid of life. It should be a memorial to the folly of men and the devastation of war. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge)

<comment><USER10> > _Wow I had no idea that chemical weapons were tested in the suburbs of DC, > wild._

Wait until you learn that biological weapons studies were done on people of San Francisco, without them knowing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea- Spray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray)

<comment><USER11> What is worse is the time bomb of chemical and even conventional weapons dumped into the oceans of the world. this of course only includes those we know about

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying- weapo...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapons- world-war-II-threaten-waters-worldwide-180961046/)

<comment><USER10> I was talking just about that the other day with my wife, and remarked that oceans are large - they can probably eat that exposure without much consequence. But the Allies also dumped those weapons into _Baltic Sea_ , where it now poses a danger to the ecosystem (and consequently, the economy of my country and our neighbours).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice read, in the UK there's an island off the coast of Scotland called Gruinard Isle which was contaminated with Anthrax for the best part of 40 years, until it was cleaned up in the 80s.

Still wouldn't fancy walking around it.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Are you 100% American?

US government bonds, the kryptonite of any foreign spy!</comment>


Plutus Pub-Sub: A Way to Communicate Using Cardano and Plutus Smart Contracts - <AUTHOR> http://www.dssti.com/articles/plutus-unlift <comment><USER2> cool</comment>


SUSE Studio Launch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cornelius-schumacher.de/2009/07/suse-studio-launch.html

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if this can be used to create SUSE based appliance images for Amazon EC2 (i.e. something along the lines of rPath's rBuilder online[1])?

1- <http://www.rpath.org/web/>

<comment><USER3> I think you can. I used it a while ago when it was in private beta. You can even create a Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) appliance, which you otherwise have to buy.</comment></comment>


My only prediction for 2010 and it ain't pretty - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisitr.com/54746/my-only-prediction-for-2010-and-it-aint-pretty/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr forthcoming ACTA copyright treaty is a Bad Thing, times 10 - though I'm not sure why he keeps talking about 'gutting existing copyright laws' rather than drastically reinforcing them - I assume he refers to the fair use provision which may be a victim of the secret negotiations. I largely agree. But...

 _It will no longer be a medium of the people but instead it will be the new money machine of the entertainment industry and any voices against them will suddenly find themselves silenced and bereft of any legal recourse._

Wait, what? Those who speak up against the abuse copyright ( _qua_ privilege) will be censored? I doubt that. You'll still be able to publish your work under a creative commons license if you see fit to do so, and you could, you know, produce more original content. I'm not convinced that creativity will grind to a halt if we don't have easy access to existing content.

I'm not supportive of ACTA or the secrecy which surrounds its development, indeed I am quite disappointed with the current administration's lack of transparency in this area. On the other hand I don't see that just projecting random and inchoate fears onto the legal fog surrounding it leaves us any better informed or empowered.

</comment><comment><USER3> ACTA is just more evidence of the excessive control that corporations/new world order want to exert over individual communication. I've written 16 published books and I have never lost a moments sleep from worrying about being ripped off by piracy. There is a little concept called 'the public good' that to me means that people who create content want both to make a little money and to help people.

BTW, there are worse problems in the world than ACTA, but ACTA is pretty bad.</comment>


Can FireEye up the cyber security ante through Microsoft partnership? - <AUTHOR> http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/610583/can-fireeye-change-cyber-security-stakes-through-microsoft-partnership/ <comment><USER2> Basically, Microsoft shares Windows 10 telemetry data to other companies, despite assurances that this _never_ will happen.</comment>