Einstein: Curiosity trumps intellect - <AUTHOR> http://foundread.com/2008/02/20/einstein-says-check-your-intellect-at-the-door/

<comment><USER3> A good friend of mine is infinitely curious. Whenever he comes around he always finds something that he doesn't quite know how works, or that is broken in an unexpected way. And he never stops before he has learnt how it works, or fixed it.

Since he now has roughly 38 years of experience (his age...) in finding out how things work and how to fix them he is almost unimaginably good at it.

For this reason he is the greatest hacker I have ever come across.

So yes: Imagination and curiosity are more important than intellect.

<comment><USER4> But maybe imagination and curiosity requires intellect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course, this is coming from one of the most intelligent people to walk the Earth, someone who never had to deal first-hand with a lack of smarts. On a similar note, I just heard that attractive women with rich, good-looking, intelligent, humorous husbands all agree that the only thing important in a man is a sense of humor. As luck would have it, we all have a bit of that and a bit of creativity. I'm inspired.

<comment><USER6> he wasn't really insanely intelligent. what set him apart was his creativity and persistence. famous are his thought experiments and the ten-year gap between his special and general relativities

there are many people who are very intelligent, far more so than Einstein was, but aren't inclined to originality

<comment><USER7> As much as I want to agree with you, I have to challenge you on this -- what makes you say this?

I have a physics Ph.D. friend who is quite brilliant himself, and when I asked him about Einstein he said something like Einstein had a particularly good, intuitive grasp of physics principles in a way most people weren't capable of. Actually I don't remember if this was Feynman or Einstein; I was asking him about the two, and basically he said that each of these people had some uncanny ability.

Daniel Tamment <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet> isn't insanely intelligent but due to a different brain structure, has a supernormal memory, which makes him appear abnormally intelligent and creative. When he talks about shapes of numbers you can say he is particularly creative, but I find it impossible to dispute that this comes as a result of a brain anomaly he was born with.

<comment><USER8> Both Feynman and Einstein had a terrific physical intuition, but Feynman had more of an appearance of one since he was quite a showman, whereas for Einstein it was essentially his core asset.

Feynman also had incredible facility with calculation: he was one of the first Putnam fellows. He left the exam early!

<comment><USER7> As much as I admire Feynman, the stories about his magician qualities are, honestly, so far beyond most people and end up being more entertaining than inspiring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Enthusiasm will get you very far. I've seen young, euthusiastic people without much knowledge or intelligence exceed the ability of old cynics.

<comment><USER3> yeah - those who change the world are those that do not know that it is impossible.

<comment><USER10> Rather, those who know what is impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a theory: You can learn to be smart.

Granted some people are gifted with intellect just as others are naturally handicapped and there exists an entire range in between, but I suggest that those with normally functioning brains who actively strive to increase their knowledge and understanding will discover that they are getting smarter.

The post goes along with this theory, in a way, by stating that curiosity - <USER2> active attempt to understand things - is above natural intelligence.

This is just a theory I came up with when comparing certain friends who haven't made the greatest choices in life or gotten the best grades in school (not a good intelligence indicator, by the way). I'm interested in hearing what others think about this.

</comment><comment><USER12> He also said "Imagination is more important than knowledge" which is also deeply cosmically true, especially for startups.

</comment><comment><USER13> If we could foster that sort of thing in American schools, it would scarcely matter whether India and China better prepared their students for engineering (referencing another article that was on the front page the same time as this one)

</comment><comment><USER14> Curious like a cat?

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1098316453585764384></comment>


Jazz Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JazzProgrammer <comment><USER2> This page seems to be a discussion of the applicability of music analogies to programming. It was not a useful or insightful read, but it might be if someone were to organize their thoughts on the topic.</comment>


Men who spy on women through their webcams - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet-the-men-who-spy-on-women-through-their-webcams/ <comment><USER2> _In June 2012, the FBI arrested Michael "xVisceral" Hogue at his home in Tucson, Arizona and charged him with selling "malware that allows cybercriminals to take over and control, remotely, the operations of an infected computer."_

First of all, I don't condone this behavior, and _using_ such software for "ratting" should obviously be illegal, but is it really illegal to sell this type of software (or any malware)?

It seems incredibly dangerous to make software illegal based on it's potential illegal uses.

I recall a controversy about a "hacking tools" law in Germany a few years ago, but never in the US. What law would this fall under, if any?

<comment><USER3> If you sell software with features that could only reasonably used for illegal activitities, such as sending you the creditcard number someone is entering, then: a resounding YES! Also if you advertise features for illegal use, even if they could be used for legal things.

<comment><USER4> ACME kitchen knives: great for chopping onions and murder sprees.

Yes that is tongue-in-cheek but there is an equivalence here in that the consumer decides how the product will be used. I do agree that advertising use for illegal activity should be quashed (does that impinge on free-speech?).

<comment><USER5> > does that impinge on free-speech?

It could be argued that free speech necessarily has limitations. Depending on where you are in the world, this involves hate speech and incitation to violence.

I would readily agree that distributing (especially SELLING) tools with the expressly stated purpose of criminal use should be punishable. That being said, the same tools are likely useful for legitimate purposes. Heck, I could see an argument for Back Orifice being useful in that one would really like to be assured that their network's egress filtering would raise flags when BO traffic is on the wire. This brings up another important point--these tools are always useful for people who are writing protection and mitigation against the tools' methods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel like its 1998 and everyone has discovered Back Orifice again.

<comment><USER7> I honestly thought this was another one of those "Let's post a 10 year old article to reminisce" posts...

To be honest, i'm semi-impressed this is still a thing. I assumed it had died in the late 90s.

It's also scary of course, that these people seem to have antivirus running and it hasn't stopped it. Seems like a pretty trivial thing to detect?

<comment><USER8> Antivirus is much less effective than most people believe. The problem is that the AV is "entrenched" and the malware is "mobile"

Malware authors can simply tweak or repack their code until the AV engines don't detect it anymore.

Getting around behavioral detection is harder, but possible. If malware is privileged it becomes an arms race of who can hook lowest and who can disable who.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, I don't bother with AV software for myself anymore the performance penalty and nagging isn't worth it.

I tend to notice a correlation between people who have problems with malware/spyware/crapware and people who have AV software installed and it's the opposite of what you might expect. Perhaps people who install it get a false sense of security?

AV software tends to be either ineffective in that it doesn't detect a lot of actual malware or it is constantly generating a lot of false positives which people just learn to ignore "Tracking cookie detected! Your life is in danger!".

<comment><USER10> I think this is a necessity to justify AV to the masses. They have to find lots of "threats" to a) keep your average user scared into renewing every year and b) impress the owner that the application is so thorough. Look at this! it found all these cookies that could harm me! This software rocks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Amanda todd", in canada died because of these ratters.

They are rotten people who do this to innocent girls,they bullied her to death. This same(dark,whatever )service will be used to make these girls slaves for pornography on cam....it must stop,

its being used by human traffickers, who will threaten her and than make her real computer slave.

This needs to stop, we are better human race than this.

<comment><USER12> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd>

<comment><USER13> That just ruined my day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I alone in feeling uncomfortable at the article's consistent use of "slaves"? This is very different from slavery, and if it's the perpetrators' term then it seems like buying into their worldview.

<comment><USER15> The master/slave terminology has a history in technological circles, typically being used to describe situations where one device is used to control another device. It actually predates computers; you can find examples in mechanical and hydraulic machinery going much further back.

As far as that context goes, the term is accurate for what RATs do: the hacker's "master" device can be used to control what the "slave" machines do. I assume that this is the context in which these people are using those terms. But it is, admittedly, somewhat jarring for people unfamiliar with that context.

<comment><USER16> It's true that it has history in technological circles, but the politically correct wording appears to now be "primary" and "secondary". Interestingly, in 2003:

"Los Angeles officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms "master" and "slave" on computer equipment, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive." [1].

[1] <http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/>

<comment><USER17> I honestly couldn't doubleminusagree with the political correctness movement any doubleplusmore.

<comment><USER18> "That's treating people with respect gone mad!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> People that do this are evil.

<comment><USER20> As the article suggests, the people who do this are probably 14 year old boys.

<comment><USER21> By the age of 14 you are supposed to have a developed enough sense of morality to understand that this is very bad. I don't think this is an acceptable excuse.

<comment><USER3> Who are these mythical 14 year old boys that are supposed to have developed 'enough' of a sense of morality? To paraphrase The Virgin Suicides: obviously Dr., you never were a 14 year old boy.

<comment><USER22> 14 is older than the age of criminal responsibility in many countries.

<comment><USER23> That has nothing to do with anything. Do you think countries are consulting scientists before making these kinds of decisions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These poor guys where born in the wrong countries, here they are poor slobs forced to illegally install shifty software to watch their 'slaves'. Had they been born in China, Egypt, or any of the number of countries with strict internet monitoring they could now be employed by the state monitoring dissidents. There is still hope for them, if they do good in college the NSA may still hire them.

<comment><USER25> Really? And why would the NSA be interested in the services of simple scammers? These are not hackers, crackers or anyone with sophisticated skills. They're just scamming people into installing what is essentially a pimped-out VNC server. I bet there even aren't any exploits involved in getting access to the features that they use, just standard APIs.

All in all, I doubt the NSA (or any TLA) would hire them.

<comment><USER26> If the DHS gets into cybersecurity, that's about the level of the people they hire for airport security...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Could anyone comment about this issue in mobile devices? On Desktop one can get suspicious when the LED of the Webcam blinks but on Mobile Phones, the camera is a completely silent watcher. And it is shocking to imagine how we carry around our mobile devices everywhere compared to desktops and laptops.

<comment><USER28> Ooh, and mobile phones have less security-concious users and often no AV software. Seems like a major oversight.

On that note, Japanese law requires cameraphones sold there to always make a loud shutter sound upon taking a picture, to prevent voyeurism etc. This is why the Nintendo 3DS handheld console's shutter sound can't be silenced.

<comment><USER29> Same goes for the camera on the Sprint GS3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention Netbus, which was out before BackOrifice.

</comment><comment><USER31> Breaking news: people do immoral shit on the internet. Luckily you can read all about it on arstechnica, including lots of voyeuristic photos you can look at "for research".

<comment><USER32> Breaking news: people do immoral shit. Regardless of where or when.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hopefully in the future when all users can install trusted root certificates and only run software that is signed by a descendent we won't have this bullshit.

<comment><USER34> That sounds like a good way to kill innovation: make it impossible to distribute (and possibly develop) software without consent of a CA.

<comment><USER35> There is a middle ground. OS X default configuration only allows software to run if it is signed by a developer, unless you right-click on the application and select "open" through the contextual menu, in which case you are presented with the option to override it.

I like this, and I am a software developer.

(Windows has something like this too. I don't remember the details.)

<comment><USER33> I hate OS X's implementation. They need to allow third-party CA's.

I don't want to choose between what Apple allows developers to do and "fuck it let it run free and do whatever it likes". Nor do I want the global choice in System Preferences to be between developers that paid $100 to Apple this year and Wild West.

<comment><USER36> What would prevent malware authors from just signing with their own CA?

<comment><USER33> Users shouldn't install self-signed root certs unless they trust that root with access to all of their computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The users at hackforums are terribly incompetent. These kids all run their command and control center on their local computer. The RAT has one (or several) free dns name(s) embedded and the user keeps updating those with his home ip to receive connections from them.

How hard would it be to launch an investigation into this ip address once you find it out? Would filing John Doe lawsuit allow you to do discovery on those ip addresses? Does _'an ip address is not a person'_ prevent you from further investigating who the actual person was?

<comment><USER38> Not hard at all. Almost certainly. You should be able to get a warrent and these kids will crack when start talking about juvie at that point an ip address isn't a person doesn't really matter because a confession is (mostly) admissible in court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The root of the problem here is that 1. A lot (most) people do not have any security enabled on their PCs (logged in as admin at all times) 2. Majority of software installs require admin privileges by default.

Of course, the guilty party here is the software developers that are unwilling to do anything about the status quo. Also the vendors, Microsofts, Apples and Redhats.

These days it is getting even more common and acceptable to install binary packages on a system as root and often in unattended manner (OS and package "updates", pray-and-run RPM installs, etc).

More so, there used to be some hope in this area by Apple, where you would just copy an app to install, w/o being an admin. Now even Apple is moving to store apps where every install seems to want an admin.

Linux and Windows people have been always lost in that regard: MSI and RPM/whatnot have always been unquestioned standard (Linux people, however, have a choice to not install software as root and build it locally when necessary).

Until this (admin installs) changes, we are going to have to deal with malware. Fixing this would not solve all the issues, but would help a lot.

In the meantime, enjoy your PC owned by some teenagers overseas.

<comment><USER40> > Until this (admin installs) changes, we are going to have to deal with > malware. Fixing this would not solve all the issues, but would help a lot.

This is a hopelessly misguided argument. Could you maybe explain your reasoning a bit?

The argument _for_ requiring admin rights to install is that the binaries are not user infectable. Now whether or not this leads to other problems is a different matter, but I don't see how making binaries user writeable on a box which receives automatic updates is going to make everything more secure...

<comment><USER39> The reasoning is simple: if no random third parties ever get full control of your machine, than most likely the OS is going to stay intact (with the exception of possible local privilege escalation exploits).

If the OS is intact, the job of checking whether a user environment is compromised is easy and actually doable (as opposed to the case of trying to find malware on a compromised OS).

If, in addition, a user account has limited privileges (which it should of course), then even when compromised the chances of malware being able to do a lot are a lot less. For instance, turning off a webcam light being a root is probably easy, otherwise probably not. Setting up a server, listening for incoming connections and punching a hole in local firewall as root is available, but as a regular user is not.

Stop giving admin rights to your computer to random people (install software as an admin) and live much happier. As an additional benefit, there's never a situation 'I installed this and now computer is messed up, because Joe-the-dev ran "rm -f " with a wrong path as a parameter'.

<comment><USER40> I don't agree at all: I think that apps should be installed as admin and auto- updated. I don't follow any of your arguments that installing things as non- admin are more secure.

<comment><USER39> It's more secure because you don't have to delegate admin access to random people to install the software. Any of these "RAT kits", I guarantee you, requires admin access to the system at one point or another, be it during the install, by explicitly asking for admin password, or implicitly by using the fact that most users are logged in as admin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I remember a few years ago the Privacy Commissioner of Canada was going all out on Google for capturing data from open wifi connections, which Google promptly deleted. It was a huge story for the Privacy Office, and to me it felt like the story was being exploited to boost the profile of the Office-- they made it sound like a much bigger deal than it actually was. Now, here is an issue that I think is a much bigger problem, and has been going on for a long time with very little word from the Privacy Commissioner.

Why hasn't the Commissioner gone after Microsoft in the same way they went after Google? This is caused by a fundamental flaw in Microsoft's products, and I don't think having to purchase and install security software should be the solution. Fix the software itself.

</comment><comment><USER42> Good article. I always check my iMac and MacBook LEDs. Can never be too careful. Sometimes I wonder if the Internet is all Travis Bickles doing pull- ups and yelling at their monitor in the dark. There are some desperate and lonely people out there. <http://cnp-keythai.com/speaker-mesh>

</comment><comment><USER43> I am sure alot of those infected pcs still run XP, so one could argue that these type of things go away as the more secure operating systems spread.

Then again, if people continue to execute some shady stuff found on the internet, the OS doesnt really matter all that much.

<comment><USER44> Windows 7 may be more secure than XP but that doesn't make it immune to this type of infection. The "OS" column in this screen shot[1] from the article has a number of "Windows 7" victims.

[1] [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/bs1x.j...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/bs1x.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> What's wrong with those bastards ?

</comment><comment><USER46> * People who spy on people through their webcams

The article itself had several images of male humans.

</comment><comment><USER47> Man, some people are weird.

</comment><comment><USER48> why are all the screenshots of Windows machines?

<comment><USER49> Aren't most of the screenshots of what you are seeing the script kiddies computer point of view?

There were only ~3 screenshots that show the victims OS GUI. OSX usage is what, 8%? .92 _.92_.92 = 78% chance? I hope you're not taking the article as evidence that you are 'safe' on your choice of OS.

The first time I ever felt that my privacy was violated on a computer I was a using NeXT slab.

<comment><USER50> I'm not that familiar with NeXT, what are you referring to? SGI's Indycam was the first time I was exposed to hardware that had privacy designed in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Which is why I _hate_ laptops on which you cannot physically block the webcam. Laptops used to have a little slider that could cover the webcam but nowadays they don't anymore!?

I love my MacBook and MacBook Pro but... I'm putting a little piece of paper on the webcam "just in case".

Oh and the difference between nowadays and BO in the 90's is that nowadays virtually _everybody_ who has a laptop has a webcam. That's quite a big difference.

<comment><USER52> The green light next to the webcam will come on when the camera is in use on MacBooks. It is programmed to come on at the hardware layer so unless somebody has physical access to your MacBook then it will always come on.

<comment><USER53> It's true the light will come on, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to get away with surreptitious monitoring. Remember the controversy in 2010 in the Lower Merion School District?

* [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/school-district-hal...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/school-district-halts-webcam-surveillance/)

* <http://www.pcworld.com/article/190101/article.html></comment></comment></comment>


Vigil, the eternal morally vigilant programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/munificent/vigil <comment><AUTHOR> > This is where Vigil sets itself apart from weaker languages that lack the > courage of their convictions. When a Vigil program is executed, Vigil itself > will monitor all oaths (implorations and swears) that have been made. If an > oath is broken, the offending function (the caller in the case of implore > and the callee in the case of swear) will be duly punished.

> How?

> Simple: it will be deleted from your source code.

> The only way to ensure your program meets its requirements is to absolutely > forbid code that fails to do so. With Vigil, this shall be done for you > automatically. After enough runs, Vigil promises that all remaining code > meets its oaths.</comment>


How Can I Turn Small Talk Into a Conversation? - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5913355/how-can-i-turn-small-talk-into-a-conversation <comment><USER2> Having a genuine interest in the other party makes all the difference. (Lack sincerity going in and you'll sound like a polished politician at best.) When you really care about the person you're meeting, your external focus leaves you no room to worry what they think of you -- an all too common distraction -- and leads to a self-reinforcing confidence that aids the exchange more than any pre-scripted techniques can.

<comment><USER3> But what if you don't have much interest in the other party? Most people are not interesting to me.

<comment><USER4> I used to feel that way. But, after some contemplation, I realized how conceited that is. People are so multidimensional and have such varying experiences that it is arrogant to think that there is nothing interesting about someone you have just met. They may not be good at communicating and they may seem to be boring or shallow. But, they almost certainly have knowledge and experiences that are foreign to you. The trick is finding what they are. If someone can't find anything interesting about another human being, it probably says more about their lack of wonder than about the target's "interestingness" (although sometimes communication is the problem too). I really like watching Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe to see him converse with the people he is working with. If you were small talking with these people in the dentist office they might seem boring. But, Rowe is able to bring out their interestingness.

<comment><USER5> Same here, although I didn't contemplate the change. It just sort of happened somewhere in my late 20s. Late bloomer I guess? Always _thought_ I was smart and understood people. But, now realize I missed plenty by not really getting it and finding what was interesting about others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just dive right in with "So, how about those crazy Republicans!" If they're a Republican, they'll be offended and go away. If they're not, they'll talk my ear off.

The key is to offend people early so as not to waste time getting to know someone you'll hate.

</advice dog>

<comment><USER7> I live in Europe, here we have more left wing fanatics and fewer right wing fanatics.

That said, some of the True believers (politics, religion, programming languages, etc) are the nicest people. As long as you can handle non- rationality.

(Also, being Swedish originally, I'd rather die than offend someone in person; the internet is different.)

Edit: How about an ASCII face for "advice dog" comments? What I commented on could have been said by lots of cool people I know (they might not know me, though :-) ).

<comment><USER8> How about down voting "advice dog" and other _meme_ comments lest HN be overrun by memes?

<comment><USER9> Your comment reminded of me of a hypothesis I once read about Fermi's paradox, that it may not be _physical_ infection that extraterrestrials would worry about catching from humans, but _memetic_ infection.

Same principle here.

<comment><USER10> You just described the climax of the movie Independence Day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "When you share that little piece of your story you'll get one of two responses: a question about how it was or a disinterested, "Oh cool."

In regards to this, speaking to the underlying subject (sports, as per the article's kayaking example) and expanding from there can open more doors than simply mentioning a particular sport which few people do. So, expand kayaking to sports or what is so great about kayaking (ie, "it's great to get out of the office."), therefore the other person can have more things to talk with you about than just kayaking.

This goes back to something, of all things, I overheard on Dr. Phil when the show came on the air. The topic was about getting to the heart of a problem and the "hack" he spoke of went like this,

So, you're middle-aged and thinking of getting a red sports car. Ask yourself why you really want it. The answer might be, "because I want to feel young." Well then, what you want is not the sports car but the underlying feeling it can give you. Now, start over and ask yourself why you want to feel young.

Rinse, repeat until you find out what you really are after and I'll bet there are many more avenues to your destination than just getting a sports car.

<comment><USER10> That's called the Five Whys in business school, root cause analysis in engineering, and life with a two year old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just start by saying something outrageous and politically incorrect. I also go in with the mindset that nothing really matters in the long run. life is absurd, so just be absurd

<comment><USER13> The most important conversation of my life (as it led directly to my eventual marriage) started out with a total stranger (girl) walking up to me (guy) and saying

       I see you have awesome stuff in your pants.

Referring, of course, to the multiple sets of poi equipment I had stuffed into my pockets. This started a conversation with the instigator and another girl next to me. Once the instigator left (after about 30 seconds), my continuing happiness was ensured by the exceptionally suave line

       So... do you wanna keep talking or what?

So, ridiculousness is proven to work in real-life situations. :) You may just end up making somebody else's life.

<comment><USER10> Poi?

<comment><USER13> An originally-Maori artform involving spinning weights on strings, which has in recent years vastly expanded beyond its New Zealand origins to cross-breed with club spinning, staff spinning, glowsticking and various other performance arts. See <http://www.playpoi.com> or <http://www.homeofpoi.com/> .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think a simple rule is to get the other person to do all the talking by asking them questions. Because most people tend to naturally talk about themselves you may have to force yourself in the opposite direction. If you're fairly conscious about keeping the other person talking, then you're less likely to go off on a boring rant about yourself.

<comment><USER15> The best conversations I've had tend to have very few questions, and more comments going back and forth. Almost all conversations start with questions but the goal should be to reach a point where you aren't asking any questions at all.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely, I suppose I meant that you should try to be aware and get the other person talking. In order to do that you need to find out what that person is interested in. Drilling them with questions isn't really the right approach, rather just steering the conversation in a direction that the other person seems to like.

The very best conversation is going to be when you both happen to be interested in the same topic, in which case there's not much effort or social skill involved. That's easy.

The difficult part is when you're at a situation like the OP mentioned with a lot of "small talk" going on and you are struggling to talk with people, feeling awkward, etc. Perhaps you want to have a friendly conversation with your grandma who is not into computers. Perhaps you're trying to network at a corporate event or you're just trying to chat up a girl/guy, etc. People who are very social are masters of making other people feel that they are interesting. They are usually very skilled at getting _you_ talking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To turn small talk into a conversation, switch from objective facts to subjective opinions.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, smalltalk is object oriented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Do people really do this?

I kind of wish I had known this before I went to YC's Work At a Startup event.

<comment><USER18> Load up on gimmicks before talking to people? No doubt some do. But it sounds awfully stilted, and I think you're better off without it.

<comment><USER17> Sounds like a potential job for future Google Glass projects: [http://www.counselheal.com/articles/1883/20120526/people- smi...](http://www.counselheal.com/articles/1883/20120526/people-smile-when- frustrated-researchers-develop-computer.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Probably, the most important people skill that needs to be learned in this age

</comment><comment><USER20> Become the facilitator of the conversation, like an interviewer. Listen and ask questions. This works because most people enjoy talking about themselves or their interests.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well Smalltalk might not be the best language for a Conversation implementation. You might try a more modern interpreter like Ruby or Python if you want a more universally understandable connection.

<comment><USER22> I clicked the link thinking it would be a REPL for Smalltalk :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ask questions.

</comment><comment><USER24> The article has it spot on but it can be simplified into two very important ideas:

1\. Keep asking questions until you hit a nerve and find something you have in common with the person. It also works the opposite way. You can find a point of disagreement and talk about that. Nothing heavy, something as simple as "What? You hate country music? I love it! Why don't you like it?" can turn into a full on friendly conversation just the same as "Oh you work with Save the Whales too? How did you like that last event they had?" can.

2\. Get a life. If you're a one-dimensional person who's all about one single thing you can't relate to anyone even if they have that one thing in common. I can talk to someone about web development for a long time but eventually talking about the same thing is tiresome. The more life experiences you have the more you can talk about and the easier it is to find things in or not in common with someone else.

The rest on that list are just variations on that theme. If you get a life and ask a lot of questions even the most introverted person can easily turn small talk into large talk (made up term).

</comment><comment><USER25> Wait, this wasn't about a programming language?

<comment><USER26> It's a domain-specific language mostly[1] geared towards communicating with other humans. Incredibly expressive if you can master it, but the grammar is _insane_.

[1]: There have been some misguided attempts to appropriate for other purposes, but these are largely ignored in the linked article. cf. <http://cukes.info/></comment></comment>


Effective continuous deployment with TeamCity and Octopus Deploy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tomasjansson.com/effective-continuous-deployment-with-teamcity-and-octopus-deploy

<comment><AUTHOR> The motivation behind the post is that a lot of proects in the .NET-world are still deploying things manually. That's a big don't in my world and there are great tools out there as TeamCity, Octopus Deploy and PowerShell to assist you.</comment>


Why Japan's rail workers point at things (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-japan-trains <comment><USER2> Hadn't read this in a while - this made me think of similar applications of the same idea. I remember when I was shooting IDPA competitions, I made myself physically touch the chamber every time I cleared a firearm to ensure there was no ammunition there. If you're tired or distracted, it's too easy to just do a quick visual glance and maybe miss something. Physically touching it forces you to slow down and pay attention.

Techniques along this pattern seem like a good idea for anything that people do that has serious consequences for any screwups. Fortunately, current dayjob has plenty of procedure for production deployments. I've tried to come up with similar things when working for smaller teams with less procedure. When you're distracted, panicked, or in a rush is the highest risk for screw-ups, and so the most important time to slow down, double-check everything and make sure you get it right.

<comment> seph-reed Walk out a door, slap all my pockets: keys, phone, wallet.

<comment><USER3> Me: CRAP WHERE IS MY PHONE?

Also me: Honey, hold this. < hands phone to wife > Continues to rummage through all pockets looking for my phone.

<comment><USER4> I've absolutely done the following:

Walk out of office door. Lock office door. Immediately panic that I've just locked my keys in the office. Unlock door. Search a surprisingly long time for said keys. Sigh disappointely when I realize what just happened.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but have you ever taken a final test, finish it early, go to the front desk, return to proof read it, place the paper in your back pack and just walk out, without submitting your test?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since reading about this on here I have added a version of this to my pre- flight checks (glider). I point and say everything in the cockpit and then do the checks using the traditional mnemonic with the hope that everything will be in the correct state. It turns out to be easier as I am only doing one thing at a time rather than having to remember the mnemonic at the same time as setting stuff. I am not sure I actually need the mnemonic any more.

<comment><USER7> I have a pair of cheap mechanics gloves with my flight gear and I put them on when start my preflight. I touch everything I am supposed to check. The gloves make it so I'm not worried about touching something oily / greasy / etc.

When doing my run up or cruise checklists (where I'm not hands on controls for critical flight phases) I point / touch each gauge / instrument I am checking (in steam gauges this makes more sense).

My CFIs have made fun of me but I don't care. I had one that asked if I wanted a borescope too but it doesn't stop me from being as safe as I want to be.

<comment><USER8> I'm both surprised and really not that your CFIs make fun of pointing and calling, then again I've encountered CFIs who don't know things AOPA Air Safety has been hammering on for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Previous discussions:

959 points: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14011793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14011793)

272 points: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18952193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18952193)

<comment><USER10> The tomato sauce/umbrella rant is worth visiting the first one just on its own.

<comment><USER11> Ha. Somewhat relevant, I've discovered that an umbrella is a nice, nonconfrontational way to keep jackass bicyclists at a safe distance. It doesn't need to be open, just moving around with some energy, kind of like a walking stick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've stumbled over the same thing in this video of a "veteran pilot" flying a WW2 aircraft. Notice how he's pointing at the various dials and gears from time to time. I think the first time this might be because he's explaining to the viewer what's going on, but even after that when the motor is running or in the air he's doing a left-to-right sweep through the cockpit from time to time, pointing at things:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1F_UJaaP1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1F_UJaaP1A)

I don't know how common this is in aviation, but I had to think immediately of the Japanese railway workers.

PS: the same thing can be seen in this (admittedly silly and slightly outdated) aircraft carrier operation video:

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

<comment><USER13> Doing this is generally called a "flow":

* [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12707/](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12707/)

One popular one is "GUMPS":

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

<comment><USER6> I think GUMPS is more of a mnemonic device used as a sort of mental checklist in an attempt to be able to remember more things reliably without the use of a written checklist. Different than pointing and calling which associates an action with the thing to be checked.

<comment><USER14> For computer folks, a mnemonic is like a hard disk b-tree.

It's a way to manage a large database by extracting a small collection of pointers into small fast memory, which is then expanded as needed by accessing slower remote memory

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Love this way to "hack" how the human mind tends to optimize itself, much like how you can draw things upside down (the object, not yourself) to bypass the way the mind "knows" how things are supposed to look, instead how they actually look.

Try that - take a picture of a face from a magazine, draw it on a paper. It may come out distorted, since your mind exaggerates things that are more important to you (eyes, mouth more so than the forehead). Then turn the magazine upside down and draw it again. It often comes out much more similar to the original this time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I do this to fight my OCD of checking repeatedly that I locked the doors.

To an extent it helps.

As a side note I noticed that after I stopped drinking coffee entirely my memory improved, but at the same time my OCD returned to heights I haven't seen since the first time I tried this beverage.

I wonder how this works?

<comment><USER16> One of the most common treatments for ADHD is essentially just amphetamines. Not a doctor, but it seems like CNS stimulants generally have this affect on some people with attention disorders.

<comment><USER17> I self-medicate ADD with nicotine and it does help. It's fairly addictive though, so, I wouldn't exactly recommend it.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, stopping is the problem for me. I can deal with the cravings for more... but damn if I don't get pissed off, cranky and depressed without it. It was way easier to quit Adderall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I took my kids to Disneyworld in Florida a few years back, and was impressed to notice the lifeguards pointing into the all corners of the swimming pools as they walked around and did their checks.

<comment><USER20> I was a lifeguard there in the late 90s. They taught it to us back then as well. But for politeness, you have to do the Disney two-finger point. I was taught that pointing with an index finger might be misconstrued as pointing at a person and come off as rude or offensive.

<comment><USER21> Two fingers or the knife hand.

It wasn't policy, but when I lifeguarded, I'd point out all of my checks as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> NYC also does this, for the same reason:

[https://youtu.be/i9jIsxQNz0M](https://youtu.be/i9jIsxQNz0M)

<comment><USER23> > New York City's MTA subway system, whose conductors have used a modified > point-only system since 1996 after then Chief Transportation Officer > Nathaniel Ford was fascinated by the point-and-call system during a business > trip to Japan. In the MTA's case, conductors point to a fixed black-and- > white "zebra board" to confirm a stopped train is correctly located along > the platform.

<comment><USER24> It does seem crazy that New York still has two man operation. A machine is also capable of confirming correct alignment to some marker, and won't get distracted or confused. I assume it's a union thing?

If you are going to spend millions of dollars (yes really) paying for an extra person on every train, clearly having them fixed in a place where they can point at a board so as to not automate an easy problem is a poor use compared to them roaming the train. Of course New York's trains still also don't have open gangways, so it wouldn't be easy to do that either. But a guard who actually strolls up and down the train helping passengers might actually make a useful difference compared to replacing a trivial mechanical sensor with a well-paid human.

<comment><USER11> You really need an attentive person to keep people from being dragged--there is no substitute. (And in some curved stations, the driver can't even see to the rear end of the train.)

In principle, everything could be enclosed, like an elevator, but in practice most stations would be all but impossible to retrofit.

<comment><USER25> Then why does it work just fine with one conductor in most other metro systems?

> And in some curved stations, the driver can't even see to the rear end of > the train.

Mirrors and CCTV are a thing. At the Berlin metro, the platform has a big mirror or a CCTV screen array next to where the train cockpit stops. Other metros' stations have wireless CCTV systems that show up inside the cockpit while the train is stopped.

<comment><USER11> Note that NYC trains have just one conductor, AFAIK. The second person is the driver.

For dragging, it's not just where the train stops. You have to be able to see the entire side of the train as it leaves the station (e.g., for 100 meters, at least).

Video might be possible, but it'd need to be attached to the train, because that's where the dragging happens. Realistically, though, NY doesn't have the money for this conversion. And more importantly, the driver needs to attend forward, not be carefully watching the dragging video.

<comment><USER25> > Note that NYC trains have just one conductor, AFAIK. The second person is > the driver.

Sorry, that was lost in translation. By "conductor", I meant "driver". All the metro trains that I know have only one personnel on board, the driver.

Also, what do you mean by "dragging"? People or clothes getting stuck in a door? It seems to be very important, but I've never heard of this being a large problem in practice.

<comment><USER11> Dragging as in clothes, backpack, or an arm caught in a door, or someone falling in the crevice between the train and platform, or trying to "surf" the train, etc.

Not sure, but I think incidents happen with some regularity in NY. If you haven't seen it, it might be hard to visualize just how out-of-date and decrepit some of this infrastructure is. I never saw anyone injured, but I did see a couple of close calls that still make me shudder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have adopted this a couple of years ago after stumbling upon a video about this.

I work as a web architect. Whenever I am involved in a large production deployment, I don't just go through the checklists. I verbally call out each configuration/setting pointing my finger at the specific line on the screen.

Although, I don't call out as loud as the Japanese train staff are seen doing. It helped me with being more conscious and not oversee things or skip items in the checklist.

</comment><comment><USER27> I started doing this anytime I have to do maintenance on systems. I point and call the name of the system and say "test" or "production" and other descriptive words like "web server" or "dmz" or whatever. We're working on not requiring manual processes for routine deployments (We've automated some), but until then, every extra bit of safety we can add is well worth feeling weird for talking to your computer.

<comment><USER25> From one of my actual bash functions: [https://github.com/majewsky/devenv/blob/5ceaf51d0e9ba4c66d8c...](https://github.com/majewsky/devenv/blob/5ceaf51d0e9ba4c66d8c591004c6978d8a0e77cf/toplevel/profile#L315)

Slightly shortened:

      if [ "${IS_PROD}" = 1 -a "${COMMAND}" = upgrade -a "${I_KNOW_THIS_IS_PROD:-}" != yes ]; then
        echo "Not upgrading a productive region without I_KNOW_THIS_IS_PROD=yes." >&2
        return 1
      fi

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Same thing goes for rally drivers (or regular driving or bike riding): you drive to where you look at. If you want to stay on the road, look at the road.

<comment><USER29> That's the exact opposite. Professional drivers just look where they are trying to go (visualize their line or however you want to describe it) and the muscle memory follows.

The whole purpose of checklists, point and call, etc, etc, is to explicitly not use muscle memory and break that shortcut in the brain so that when something is wrong that one time in a thousand you actually notice.

<comment><USER18> I've found that when you are cornering on a motorcycle, you look to where you want to go, and the bike follows. If you try to think too much about where to place the motorcycle in the lane as you go, you end up looking at the edges of the lane. Inevitably the bike follows to the edge of the lane, which is not where you wanted to go, and can put you in a bad situation.

I can't explain why it works, but if I look down the road and around the corner as far as I can, the bike will follow the proper path. I don't even feel like I'm giving the steering any inputs. It's very strange.

They kept teaching this over and over in our safety class, but in the safety class, you aren't riding fast enough to notice. (mostly in a parking lot). When you are riding very slowly, the motorcycle tends to act more like a bicycle. But above like 20mph, the steering behavior changes. This I also don't really understand.

It's kind of the exact opposite of pointing, speaking and being deliberate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Along with the scientific method, I am convinced that much of the modern world is made available because of checklists.

</comment><comment><USER31> Some time ago we've visited the San Diego's USS Midway aircraft carrier (now museum).

There was an old air-force gentleman, explaining various bits, I don't remember everything, but this one:

So basically, he was asked why air pilots were asked to raise their hands (visibly) before taking off. And the explanation was, that this is to make sure that they are not fiddling with the plane, such that whoever works on the ropes (up front the plane), is safe, and can prepare the plane for taking off. Apparently, there were lots of hotshots, and you can't trust them :)

(Probably my memory is not serving me alright in all details, but it was something along the lines, if anyone can provide more detailed material - it'll be great! I would like to share it with my father too - an ex air military officer)

<comment><USER32> In a similar vein, when an F18 is launched from a carrier deck the pilot holds a handle rather than the joystick. This is because the flight computer manages the flight controls immediately after the catapult launch, and if the pilot was hands-on they would consciously or unconsciously provide conflicting inputs.

Stack overflow link with more info: [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/44714/what- happ...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/44714/what-happens- during-a-carrier-take-off)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This obviously works really well, but it sounds dehumanizing. I was wondering, is it right to dehumanize for the sake of running things smoothly? Or should it be the case that workers' humanity should be respected, and therefore sacrifice this world-class efficiency? You may think the latter is obviously right, but consider that the transportation system plays a part in powering the activity of civilization, so it's pretty important to have running well, to say the least.

The above is based off of it actually being dehumanizing. Maybe it isn't, and if you think so I want to hear why, but when I imagine seeing it and doing it, it feels very robotic. Imagine doing it for hours every day of every week, and having those around you expect to keep it up..

<comment><USER34> Why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?

I legitimately don't see how it's more dehumanizing than say, speech guidelines at retail or standards for how to use a tool in construction.

I pointed and called in a data center as we went through the checklist — because I wanted to do my job correctly, and used the best available technique to do so. That's what being a professional others can depend on is: doing the silly technique so your work is correct.

I find embracing that much more liberating than being inefficient just so others might not judge my conduct from a position of ignorance. _That_ strikes me as demeaning.

<comment><USER33> > Why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?

Robots can safely and efficiently perform their job. And do it way better than humans in some areas. Being a cog in a well-oiled machine that works efficiently sounds almost like a perfect example of dehumanization.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I interpret your general stance as: "Doing your job well has merit and value, so it shouldn't be viewed as dehumanizing." As a counterpoint, I bring up robots again: they do their job well, and that has merit and value. However, they have no humanity whatsoever. So what justifies your stance?

<comment><USER34> Just because a robot can do the same job doesn't make an activity dehumanizing - you seem to merely be justifying a negative view.

You're also ignoring that the point of pointing and calling is precisely to keep you from responding robotically if something deviates and to maintain your attention on active control/correction. It's when you don't point and call that you respond robotically. Your comment about "cog" gets to what I was calling demeaning: most of the jobs people refer to that way require intelligence and active response that machines can't really master — they're being done poorly if you're just being a "cog in a machine".

Robots are okay, but they're not really useful for certain jobs (yet) because they're either not smart enough, not flexible enough, or too costly to respond intelligently to deviations from the norm. Pointing and calling amplifies that human capacity.

Using motion and language to amplify our natural faculties for best effect at a social purpose sounds pretty human to me.

I'm curious, what activity do you view as not dehumanizing?

<comment><USER33> >Just because a robot can do the same job doesn't make an activity dehumanizing - you seem to merely be justifying a negative view.

Well, you asked "why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?" as if it somehow the fact that those two qualities are meritorious precludes that characterization. That's why I brought up robots, because they are a clear counter example to your implicit claim. Also, to be fair, I did ask if I was wrong to assume that was indeed your claim...

>You're also ignoring that the point of pointing and calling is precisely to keep you from responding robotically...

Actually, here you're conflating robotically with habitually or instinctively or carelessly. Consider that robots can respond to deviations as edge cases, in a manner analogous to conditional statements; such a response would have to be robotic, wouldn't it? Robots can very obviously handle deviations if they're programmed to, so that was a bad example.

> Using motion and language to amplify our natural faculties for best effect > at a social purpose sounds pretty human to me.

I agree the creative use of this is human, but what I'm asserting is that this can be done to a dehumanizing end. Humanity created robots.

> I'm curious, what activity do you view as not dehumanizing?

Inherently human activities such as creating knowledge of other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most of us probably do it without realizing.

Wallet _Tap_ Keys _Tap_ Phone _Tap_

</comment><comment><USER35> This shows up in a few other places as well;

Casino card dealers do all sorts of meaningful gestures

Lifeguards do formal sign language things to each other

Amusement park ride operators

Astronauts and pilots do almost everything out loud in call-and-response

<comment><USER36> Casino card dealers also do some of those movements (hands spreading palms up or calling out to a pit boss that they're changing cash for chips) for the security team - to show that they're not trying to steal money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I (and other climbers) do this as well when setting up. Calling out rope is correctly set in harness, has 5 points of loop, belayer has locked carabiner and set in their harness and called out ready to climb. It seems silly on the 500th time, but if someone rushes up and someone is not set could be a very dangerous situation

</comment><comment><USER38> They also use this technique in Japan in stores - confirming the amount of money received, pointing to the money, to the cash register etc. I think it serves the same purpose, though it probably feels less awkward as it's directed towards another person (though people don't usually respond to the assistant talking).

</comment><comment><USER39> A triumph of well-administered A/B testing combined with creative innovation in seeking out procedures to test

</comment><comment><USER40> Does pointing-and-calling focus the mind onto the task by the same mechanism as pair programming should focus it onto the bigger picture?

So far, I've always regarded pair programming as a fad for people who can only think in conversation. But maybe there is a plausible mechanism behind it.

<comment><USER23> Simply keeping a log also helps. (See also lab notes.) The habit of writing down what you want to do, and summarizing what you have actually done is an enormously powerful one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Coincidently, I just heard about this exact thing when listening to the audiobook Atomic Habits today.

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER42> This is cool.

I went to Japan regularly for twenty years, and always saw this, but never thought about it.

Thanks for that!

</comment><comment><USER43> Seems like a good system for commercial aviation when combined with checklists.</comment>


Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bjezp/massive_privacy_fail_quiptxtcom_is_a_site_that/ <comment><USER2> Two things in this story that are not new, but still amazing to me.

1) A significant portion of people love taking pictures of themselves naked. This portion seems to be growing.

2) Another significant potion of people love publishing and making fun of people for whatever reason they can find. These people will dig through your trash, hack your servers, socially-engineer your passwords, etc. The more they can publicly debase you the happier they are. This portion of the population is also growing.

Yes, I understand the technical angle to this story is whacked security. I'm just amazed at the comments over on reddit (I don't visit reddit very often) From reddit I surfed over to a couple of other links (drama-a-pedia or something?) and the festival of public debasement continues. Somebody even mentioned hacking some girl's senior picture and uploading her naked pics. Man that has to make you feel really special to do something like that.

<comment><USER3> People don't change. Everybody is a pervert or a sadist or something. Everybody does something weird when they think nobody is looking. The _population_ is growing, and so there is certainly more going on at any one time, but I doubt the portion is really growing.

<comment><USER4> The issue isn't that people enjoy weird things, it's that people do things that hurt others, and don't feel guilty about it.

<comment><USER5> I think it's more like "people like treating other people outside their reach as objects without regards to consequences and when there are bad consequences they feel a bit guilty about it but it's too late anyway."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems they had no security at all (just a random 5 character hash)..

Reddit users are seemingly busy sharing nsfw pictures and linking them to facebook accounts, will probably result in a couple of suicides when all is said and done :(

<comment><USER7> Do not confuse Reddit and 4chan.

<comment><USER8> Well... sometimes the only difference seems to be that you cannot attach pictures to your comments. (still - depends on the subreddit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting how quickly the wolves jump on an easy target. Some of the comments on reddit and elsewhere I've read are talking about making throw-away Facebook accounts to confront/embarrass people with their private pictures. I've already seen a few names posted. I'm willing to cut people some slack for looking at the pictures (a harmless crime, human nature) but doing the leg work to connect anonymous pictures to a real identity to simply embarrass them is taking it way too far.

<comment><USER10> This is the typical 4chan M.O.

I like reddit so I'm a little saddened to see this behavior there but this is another reminder that the internet isn't as segregated as we think it is. Reddit is no gated community. Its best and worst feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The founder of the company responded on the Reddit thread: [http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bjezp/massive_privacy_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bjezp/massive_privacy_fail_quiptxtcom_is_a_site_that/c0n3f48)

The application is described in the iTunes store: [http://itunes.apple.com/app/quip-free-photo- texting/id291358...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/quip-free-photo- texting/id291358190?mt=8#)

<comment><USER12> Interestingly this flaw was reported in 2009 on Digg. <http://digg.com/security/Quip_TXT_for_iPhone_FAIL_WIN_NSFW> I am not sure if QuitTxt tried fixing it that time.

<comment><USER13> From the comment thread on Reddit it seems like the only thing they did, was to ban the ip address. Clever :)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bjezp/massive_privacy_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bjezp/massive_privacy_fail_quiptxtcom_is_a_site_that/c0n3i8o)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lesson:

If you launch something like QuipTxt, make it obvious to people that their images are public, so that the idiots who harbour the impression that stuff uploaded on a public URL on a free website don't come running at you with pitchforks.

Additional benefit: more network effects.

I don't really see the difference between this service and Twitpic (hard to tell since the site is down, though).

<comment><USER15>
         If you launch something like QuipTxt, make it obvious to
         people that their images are public

Google Picasa stores images as public URLs without any such warning. Because with random URL's, you effectively have passworded each image. Even more secure than if they were all locked into a nice MySQL database, because then they would all be behind only a single password.

I think you don't have to freak out users with too much information. The images are effectively password controlled.

The problem here is that the passwords were too short (and sent in plain text via SMS).

<comment><USER16> if you only need to guess something address to see it, it is public

<comment><USER15> I disagree.

A password is not a magic spell. It's a set of letters and numbers that, if guessed correctly, will give me access to something you wanted kept private.

An obfuscated URL is a set of letters and numbers that, if guessed correctly, will give me access to something you wanted kept private.

Because one uses a MySQL database, and the other uses a file system, is irrelevant. They are functionally identical when directory listing is disabled, as it can be for Amazon S3.

<comment><USER17> Locks on houses aren't infallible either, but establish intent: "you should not be here". Very short hashes don't do that quite so much.

<comment><USER18> I'd be interested in knowing what the length a hash needs to be to communicate "you should not attempt to circumvent this and post the nude pictures behind it", and also how secure a lock needs to be to communicate "you should not attempt to jimmy this with a credit card and post the nudie pictures behind it."

<comment><USER17> Well, to tell the truth, if there's a 'lock', it's pretty obvious you shouldn't be doing it. If there's just a hash, it strikes me as simply a bad idea in the first place, no matter how long it is. Someone can just do 'copy image url' and have it work, with no challenge from the application. A shorter hash is especially bad because it makes them easy to guess at. I'm not saying it's "right" to copy images protected only with a hash, but it's like leaving an expensive bicycle unlocked on a college campus in the US - it's simply not very prudent. Of course in this case the users probably weren't aware of the problem, and the people who made the application are at fault.

Edit: like daleharvey says, the point is really that the hash simply happens to be difficult to find, whereas a proper application will challenge everyone who attempts to access the resource. For instance, say Alice looks at Bob's picture, and does "copy image url", and sends it to Carol. Carol has no way of knowing whether it's supposed to be private or not, since Alice didn't communicate that information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I did a similar service (pktpix) about two years ago, but I used MD5 hashes. Easily guessable URLs were the _first_ thing I thought about.

I figured since these messages were being passed around via txt, forwarded e-mails, etc., there was no real benefit in shortening them.

</comment><comment><USER20> A thought experiment for the large minds here: how long a string _would_ be sufficient? I wonder if any string is long enough if you don't also implement some sort of access control lockdown to prevent people poking your system endlessly, but what do you think?

<comment><USER21> Security and privacy shouldn't be based on hiding a plaintext string. What about the ISPs, browser history, and other leakage.

S3 hosting of private images was a terrible idea. It doesn't provide any kind of protection.

<comment><USER22> > S3 ... doesn't provide any kind of protection.

S3 offers privacy protections with the ability to require an expiring token in the URL. The theory is the web site should authenticate a user, and only generate a valid token for that user (for a fuzzy definition of "that" user) that works only for a limited time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So what happens to QuipTxt now?

<comment><USER23> If the past is any indication, they fix the hole and everybody forgets about it. Then Quiptxt grows to hundreds of millions of users, just like that other site that used only 4 random digits: <http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-photos-warning/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is why you shouldn't sent or say over the internet anything that you wouldn't show your mother and why you should try to keep your private life separate from your internet live. If I was a user I would never again use this service. This wasn't even a security flaw it was plain incompetence as some redditors mentioned.

<comment><USER12> > If I was a user I would never again use this service.

It would also include other services by the same management to the list :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It seems like we should be careful here - depending on the age of those involved (which we cannot determine for sure) these photos might legally be child pornography.

</comment><comment><USER26> We should celebrate Quiptxt day every year so that people will remember that they have to be careful when they put private and sensitive stuff online.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ahh, the cloud. Such a great idea.

<comment><USER28> Less than six months ago, some internal (non-confidential, non-critical, but, none the less, internal) documents of a client of mine showed up on Google. The reason? They were public files in a folder on the webserver, and someone turned on Indexes in Apache. It is the exact same problem.

Not even the shadow of a cloud (pun intended) was involved.

<comment><USER15> I just had google index my ajax directory. I have a directory where I keep ajax files. The only link to them is through my javascript ajax calls.

I was pretty surprised that Google goes through your javascript, harvesting your ajax links.

<comment><USER29> Well, _you_ linked to them via JavaScript. The whole rest of the Internet might not have been that careful, though.

<comment><USER18> Pardon my SEO: Google uses both heuristics and partial execution of Javascript these days. Linking to things only through JS is not a good method to prevent Googlebot from stumbling upon them. I only mention this because a _lot_ of people I know think that apparently Google's colony of well-paid supergeniuses has not written anything since like 2004.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my side project ccontact.me - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on this side project for a few weeks in my spare time. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://ccontact.me](https://ccontact.me)</comment>


Why is health care so damn expensive? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/13/why-is-health-care-so-damn-expensive/ <comment><USER2>
      Despite all of that spending, the age-adjusted mortality rate for Americans has declined practically every year since 1980.

" _Despite_ "? Isn't a declining mortality rate a good thing?

</comment><comment><USER3> Lack of single-payer medical services system.

Many 'poorer' countries seem to be able to afford single-payer health services, but the US can't?

Cui bono. (Follow the Money)</comment>


What made thousands of birds fall from the sky? - <AUTHOR> http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/03/what-made-thousands-of-birds-fall-from-the-sky/?hpt=T2

<comment><USER2> Oh. My. God. The Apocalypse has begun!

</comment><comment><USER3> Gravity.</comment>


Ask HN: Better to use Javascript or CSS - <AUTHOR>

I have a lot of animations to fulfill on my website, right now I'm doing pure CSS for these animations. Is it better to use CSS or is it better to use Jquery? <comment><USER2> Hello there,

I would have to agree with symmet, you need both. This way if a user doesn't have a recent version of Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari or Opera you can have jQuery to fall back on.

-You can use browser detection to conditionally enable jQuery scripts on page load. You can use Javascript/jQuery or a server-side script to detect exactly which browser is loading the page.

-You can also check out <http://www.modernizr.com/>. It adds classes to the html element which allow you to target specific browser functionality in your stylesheet.

Let me know if you need any help with that,

Good luck!

Karl

<comment><USER3> I agree. Here's a Javascript snippet I saw recently that is a useful start for doing this (read the comments for some ideas of what you may or may not need to modify): [http://www.bradshawenterprises.com/blog/2011/a-jquery- functi...](http://www.bradshawenterprises.com/blog/2011/a-jquery-function-to- animate-using-css3-transitions-if-possible-with-the-animate-fallback/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My approach is to do everything in CSS animations for browsers that support it, and then fall back to jQuery animations for those that don't.

CSS animations can take advantage of hardware graphics acceleration and they render very nicely on mobile browsers.

So, my answer is: both.

</comment><comment><USER5> Both and several other javascript frameworks</comment>


Encryptica Foundation | Free One Month VISP Account Giveaway - <AUTHOR> TO: community@HN FROM: email@example.com SUBJECT: Free vISP one month account giveaway; Email email@example.com with subject line "REGISTER HN" and you will receive your credentials in the next 72 hours. We are offering a one month give away to HN users to test out our network and iron out any issues. <comment><AUTHOR> [Part II]

We use the 2nd Amendment (Cryptography is still classified as munitions by the State Department) to protect your 1st Amendment rights on the Internet. Yet we cannot protect you against alphabet soup agencies such as the NSA and the FSB. It's not that our hands are tied, it's that this isn't the 1990s anymore and cyberwarfare and cybercrime are a nation-state ping-pong game. They are above our threat model, they are one layer of abstraction above us legally speaking, and we do not have contingency plans against them. If anything, being an American non-profit NGO, they are required to protect us as we are an American legal entity. From our experience whatever data they are seeking (depending on importance), they will obtain one way or another. We are not statists either; we simply think a well-calibrated threat model is paramount to running a venture like ours. Last but not least, they themselves may be users of our service to conduct their job online discretely. Note that we are not here to fight the man on your behalf. If you use our service to send bomb threats to universities, we _will_ hunt you down.

What we do protect you against is "Snoopy". Snoopy could be your ISP DJ'ing your DNS requests. Snoopy could be your housemates snooping on the Wifi network or running a rogue AP attack. Snoopy could be your boss or employer blocking certain websites. Snoopy could be services that are georestricted to certain areas for no reason at all. We offer quasi-bulletproof anonymity and privacy on the Internet. Snoopy could be your university banning services like Spotify. Snoopy could be the rest of the world charging Australia 30%+ extra on all services / products because Australia is a continent. Snoopy could be your mobile service provider obstructing VoIP or Skype traffic on their data network. Snoopy could also be your TV provider not happy with your Netflix technicolored bits traversing their wires, and so must be throttled down. We are anti-DPI yet use DPI as well for the benefit of our users (QoS for instance).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr we are a vISP that created a quasi-anonymous Tor/OpenVPN chimera; we used to live in the dark net, now we're trying the clearnet interwebs; we're giving out free accounts to those interested. Fire an email to firstname.lastname@example.com with subject line "REGISTER REDDIT" and you will be credentialed in 72 hours max.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [Part I]

We are a vISP, originally from the Dark Net, opening up trial accounts on the Internet/ClearNet to test the waters.

We a non-profit NGO (social enterprise?) that is still in the process of acquiring 503(c) status in the United States.

We are testing out a new quasi-anonymous network design based on OpenVPN and Tor (more connection methods to our access points will follow in the future, such as IKEv2 and SSTP).

Technical Details: Initially one connects to the Tor network via the Tor Browser Bundle, once the connection to the Tor network is established, the user instructs the OpenVPN client to connect to our OpenVPN server (using our configuration file), which is sitting behind a .onion Hidden Service; the traffic is then forced to exit through one of our Tor Exit Nodes instead of a possibly malicious Tor Exit Nodes that tracks users or performs MITM on HTTP traffic or simply tcpdump.exe's your traffic for fun and profit. We provide DNS resolution through our service to avoid leaks and preserve privacy.

We do not know your IP address, you do not know our server's IP address, and nobody can prove that activity exiting through our Tor Exit nodes is our users' activities and not a user on the Tor network not belonging to our vISP (to rephrase: The Tor Exit Nodes are run by us to save the user the trouble of avoiding malicious Exit Nodes, to increase anonymity and privacy they are also shared with the rest of the Tor network; a Tor user may exit through our exit nodes even though they do are not one of our users). Please note that while connected to our network, you will also be able to resolve .onion addresses.

We don't keep logs, we are a decentralized and distributed team of netsec, cipherpunks, activists, journalists, privacy / security / encryption / anonymity / paranoid schizophrenic fanatics spread around the globe, nevertheless our "Foundation" is HQ in the USA as: a. We're not required to keep logs by law (and we are not able to) b. We're "protected" by some of the best LE agencies in the world. When you incorporate abroad, these same agencies are in your threat model. In our case, their threat while present, is diminished.

Once we obtain non-profit status by the IRS your monthly donations ($29.95 {note: you are under no obligation to sign up for a paid account after the free month account expires}) will be tax deductible. We are also thinking of starting the "Church of the Free Bits" with a mission statement of protecting users' rights' on the Internet, keeping bits colorless, encouraging anonymous free speech and freedom of expression on the Internet, and enhancing the user's Internet experience via the use of cryptography, encryption, mix- networks, True(tm) Net Neutrality and privacy enhancing technologies.

We used to not have a website, not even on the dark net (word of mouth), now we must apparently. We are sticking with the informal no website policy for now (or WordPress'ing it at some point). Don't judge us, front-end is not our domain nor focus. We are not very Social. We should have a blog soon however.

Don't confuse us with "VPN providers" or "Residential proxies". We are a Virtual ISP, and while we may use some similar technologies, we are in the RiseUp / Telecomix league, not your fly-by-night VPN/VPS provider. Don't confuse us with a solution you can roll yourself either; we have X users, as long as you stick to the Tor browser bundle rules you can remain anonymous. If you roll your own you're the only one originating from that IP address.

10% of our monthly profits go to EFF, ACLU, The Pirate Party. The rest is our salaries and reinvestment in the Foundation. We are audited once a year technically (certified to not be keeping logs), are legally insured, and welcome volunteers.

We are still at the MVP stage and our setup reflects it. Our SLA is far from 99.999%, try 85%-90%. That said we are experimental as f*ck and we break things often and break things fast, yet aspire to be digital Bodhisattvas who do no evil.

If you have any feedback or comments, drop us a line: email@example.com. We answer email (for now).

[Gentle Reminder: We're giving away free accounts: email email@example.com with subject line "REGISTER HN" and you will receive your credentials in the next 72 hours as well as the instructions. We are offering a one month give away to interested HN users to test out our network and iron out any remaining issues.]

PS. We provide perma-free accounts (aside from this offer) for .edu / .ac.uk / academia / military personnel stationed abroad / veterans, and Australians (no, really).

Ask away if you have any questions, though keep in mind our answers are polymorphic, we are still building our infrastructure, and our policies are still taking shape and form, according to user demand, local laws, and our own paranoia. Our service is not completely secure yet and may be hackable (it's an MVP before we move to big iron), we only ask for an email address at the moment for authentication purposes, your password is automatically generated, nothing more.</comment>


Detailed Analysis of Google Chrome EULA - <AUTHOR> http://www.intelligentdesign.com.au/blog/2009/04/05/why-you-shouldnt-use-google-chrome/

<comment><AUTHOR> Following the recent discussion on slashdot, an attempt to assess the Google EULA accompanying Chrome in more detail. In summary, it is probably intended to be benign but it actually opens up some fairly nasty options which you are agreeing that Google can take up at their leisure.

</comment><comment><USER2> Here is a response from Google : [http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/04/google- chromes-universal-...](http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-chromes- universal-terms.html)</comment>


Twitter Wins NFL Deal to Stream 2016 Thursday Night Football - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/05/473099436/twitter-wins-nfl-deal-to-stream-2016-thursday-night-football <comment><USER2> If Twitter forces you to login to view this free stream, I feel like this could be significant for their user growth. If they are able to keep these users engaged by getting them started with users to follow, I think this could be very successful for them.

The pricing is also very interesting. Rumors are around $10 million for all the games ([http://recode.net/2016/04/05/twitter-beats-amazon-verizon- fo...](http://recode.net/2016/04/05/twitter-beats-amazon-verizon-for-global- nfl-streaming-deal/)). The other bids were definitely higher, but I think this was a smart decision by the NFL. If Twitter can pull the live stream off with their strong live social capability, it would be great for both parties.

Disclaimer: The IF that twitter can pull of the live stream is a significant IF, not to be underestimated.

<comment><USER3> When determining who made this deal happen and at such a good price for Twitter, it's worth noting that Anthony Noto (Twitter's current CFO) used to be the CFO of the NFL -- I think he _might_ have had a bit of influence.

<comment><USER4> Probably has some inside knowledge on the NFL's own financials, too.

<comment><USER5> Or he blackmailed his old buds... just saying :D

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't surprise me, NFL corporate 'culture' being what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a huge deal for folks outside the US. Within the US, it's hard to imagine folks turning away from a television and onto a monitor/phone/tablet to watch football. Football feeds straight into the average American's robust average 4 hours of daily television viewing (1). Before you ask about cord- cutters, note that reliable numbers are relatively weak on that end (2).

The original Twitter NFL Highlights deal served a strategic purpose for the firm. This new deal looks like an advertising campaign to buy Twitter some much needed, new US mindshare.

(1) [http://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Adults-Spend-55-Hours- wi...](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/US-Adults-Spend-55-Hours-with-Video- Content-Each-Day/1012362) (2) [http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/4-one-in- seven-america...](http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/21/4-one-in-seven- americans-are-television-cord-cutters/)

<comment><USER8> > This is a huge deal for folks outside the US.

What makes you think you'll be able to stream this from an IP address outside of the US?

<comment><USER9> The NFL's past behavior has shown that they want to increase their market. Making football games available to everyone is one of the best ways to get international fans.

There are obstacles that prevent, say, a German or a Frenchman from actually getting into American football, just like there are obstacles that prevent an American from becoming a fan of the Bundesliga. Eliminating those obstacles would do wonders for increasing viewership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a little sad that Yahoo didn't win, having watched the Bills Jags game in London over the stream. It was really really high quality and well done. It was great to watch too.

I'm just happy to see the wheels start moving on sports to get them off of cable, though. Football looks like the one last reason a lot of people haven't become cable cutters

<comment><USER11> I'm not. When they picked up Community for season 6, they did such a bungling of release that most die-hard fans never even saw the 6th season (despite it being great). Yahoo's problem is that they throw too much at the wall and dont have enough bandwidth to follow through appropriately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Live sports moving online would be the final nail in the coffin of the cable television industry.

<comment><USER13> Streaming is a poor user experience compared to cable with a good DVR. In some ways it hits sports especially hard. Streaming is inherently rewind- unfriendly, that's something you want more often with sports. The whole smooth rewind/pause/fast-forward ability is a priority for me and would keep me on a Tivo forever. Even on a local bluray it's less convenient, with streaming it's a dealbreaker.

Also, streaming is inherently risky in the sense of random pauses, buffering, dynamic drops in resolution. For a live event, especially during a dramatic moment, that's not something I'd deal with. Twitter has no control over my network connection. I barely do.

<comment><USER14> Streaming TV is only getting better.

I only watch TV for basketball, and when the grey-market streaming service I was using for NBA games got shut down, I wanted to at least be able to see the nationally televised (ESPN and TNT) games without cable.

I tried Sling for a month and it had issues, but for the past few weeks I've been using Playstation Vue it has been practically flawless. I'm on a 25/3 Time Warner connection running at least half a dozen connected devices during peak usage times, and I haven't seen a hiccup or quality drop once. The NCAA championship game last night was without buffering and looked great on my 4K TV (not _in 4K_ , but the quality never changed to the point where I noticed any drop in clarity). It has some DVR functions depending on the program and channel as well.

<comment><USER15> Looking at the Playstation Vue plans right now and it doesn't look like these are any cheaper than regular cable TV $55/$45/$40 a month are the three tiers. Is there something I'm missing?

<comment><USER14> Pricing must be based on where you're located, because the lowest tier (all I need) is only $30 here. The biggest benefit for me is that when the NBA season's done I will just click a button and stop paying, then click another button and start again in October.

When I gave up on cable I had to take half a day off of work and drive an hour to the central office and say "no" a dozen times to their pleas to keep me on as a cable customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _sigh_ would be nice if it was somebody with a better-supported streaming experience like YouTube. I've already got a YouTube app on about 3 devices connected to my TV. I'm sure not going to watch on a computer. Maybe twitter will come up with an AppleTV app....

In 2015, CBS and NFL network "teamed up" to provide coverage of Thursday night football, which meant... the first half of the season was available over-the- air, and the second half was cable-only.

<comment><USER17> There's a Periscope AppleTV app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For anyone skeptical of this format, the comedian Norm Macdonald live tweets PGA golf - for hours at a time - to the joy of many.

[https://twitter.com/normmacdonald](https://twitter.com/normmacdonald)

<comment><USER19> Love Norm but not really relevant here. Twitter is going to have a live video stream of the game, not a feed of tweets. Different format.

</comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish This will give Twitter an potentially useful combination of data and streaming rights.

Imagine watching the game on twitter, and you see an amazing play happen. You would be able to tweet about the play right away, because there is a text box near the video. Tweeting reactions is nothing new, but twitter doesn't know where in the game viewers are when they write their reaction tweets. With this new setup twitter knows what play you are talking about, because it is watching you watch the game. It is easy to see where you are in the stream.

They could automate the process of creating a highlights reel, featuring the most re-tweeted tweets as commentary.

</comment><comment><USER20> So, we'll be watching it in six second chunks? Play by play 140 characters at a time?

I joke, but my point is actually that this feels very off brand for Twitter. Maybe for Periscope, but even there, it's about the first-person, crowd- sourced, "raw" and authentic perspective. It isn't about massively produced media circuses like pro-sports are.

Sure, I see the value others have highlighted – it'll prop up the user base, etc., but it definitely will also _fragment_ the user base as well.

<comment><USER21> It feels exactly "on brand" to me. Live events with massive audiences are Twitter's bread and butter (from a usage perspective, if not revenue).

And sure. It could fragment the userbase further. But why is that a negative development? And isn't that the nature of Twitter's userbase already?

Disclosure: I bought a few more shares this morning, after seeing the news.

<comment><USER22> They are also in the ads business and can sell across both platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has twitter ever streamed anything before? Are they gonna partner with some streaming provider to actually make it work?

<comment><USER24> There actually was a pretty neat use-case for live streaming via periscope last year. I'm a pretty big hockey fan (to the point where I follow beat writers of teams I don't consider myself a fan of). Last season there started to be a trend of writers using periscope to live-stream warmups and postgame interviews. It was neat to get that level of access, despite the video quality not being great. About a month after people started doing it, the league stepped in to say that live streams constituted "broadcast without consent" and most people stopped doing it.

<comment><USER25> > About a month after people started doing it, the league stepped in to say > that live streams constituted "broadcast without consent" and most people > stopped doing it.

Think this is a very overlooked part of the deal. I'd imagine NFL will not give explicit permission but look the other way if people post videos on Twitter. Very powerful for increasing interaction and introducing people who are new to the service (follow _____ for ____ games)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how much Anthony Noto (current Twitter CFO, former NFL CFO) was able to influence the decision. Smart hire for Twitter folks.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands _" Twitter also has a former NFL executive in its ranks: The company's chief financial officer previously held the same position at the league."_

Yeah, no conflict of interest there huh?

<comment><USER27> I'm not super well versed in legal issues, but can conflict of interest be a true concern in two privately-held companies? (I'm not challenging your sentiment as much as I am genuinely asking out of curiosity/lack of knowledge.)

<comment> at-fates-hands It's different from organization to organization. In this case, it would be easy to say the preferential treatment granted to a former employee (even though they had higher bids from other companies) _could be_ deemed a conflict of interest.

From the NFL's own Compliance Plan:

 _Generally speaking, a conflict of interest arises when an employee has a competing interest or loyalties that are, or could be, at odds with each other. These competing interests may occur as the result of engaging in outside or other personal activities, or due to personal relationships._

The personal relationships between the former NFL employee and the current employee in that same position could easily be seen as a conflict of interest.

You can read the rest of the PDF here: [http://www.thesportsesquires.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/...](http://www.thesportsesquires.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/NFLCompliancePlan.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I heard it explained that the reason that Twitter got the nod was because the NFL was concerned about losing young viewers because they were cable cutters.

If this logic is correct you can expect the NBA, NHL, MLB and NASCAR to cut deals with Twitter. This is a direction that I didn't expect Twitter to go.

<comment><USER29> If that is the case, then they would do better to be on Snapchat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow! I think this is actually pretty huge. Granted it puts a lot of pressure on Twitter to execute. I have a ton of questions to ask, so you can ignore the following, but I just wanted to put some of these questions out there.

Where in the current Twitter UI will users be able to access this? Are they going to all of a suddent develop AppleTV/Roku viewing apps? Is the stream using Periscope backend? Can it even handle that quality? Will there be a push for Periscope at all? If Twitter is paying for rights to show the games, where is the monetization? So it's just to acquire users? How will acquiring users to view games translate to users that will use Twitter? Will advertisers be streaming live tweets that are dynamically relative to what's going on?

</comment><comment><USER31> Amazon should use it's bank to get these kinds of deals for Twitch.tv.

They already have the platform, community, and infrastructure to do this kind of thing perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER32> There may be hope for Twitter yet. Sounds like a very smart move. Twitter- style commentary is a natural fit with sports games.

</comment><comment><USER33> Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the networks usually provide the commentary and coverage? Does this mean that Twitter will provide the sportscasters?

And does this mean that Twitter gets to sell advertising on the stream (commercial breaks, on-screen ads)? Twitter should be able to do some extremely targeted advertising...

</comment><comment><USER15> Why do I want to tweet while watching the game? How does taking your attention off the game by multitasking enhance the experience in any way? This seems like a desperate move to me on Twitter's part. Football is about drinking a few beers and watching the game with a couple of friends not hashtags.

<comment><USER34> Tweeting during live events is pretty much how my regular (don't work in tech) friends use Twitter. I would wager that many/most people use Twitter this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Sounds awesome ... Good luck moderating that stream though.</comment>


When to Make the First Offer in Negotiations - <AUTHOR> http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4302.html

<comment><USER2> It is not obvious to me than anchoring matters nearly as much in situations where the party being anchored _knows they are in a negotiation_.

(Couldn't you defeat it by, I don't know, pulling out a piece of paper and writing a number on it beforehand? Granted, that would be an improvement over the truly _atrocious_ negotiations I've seen and been party to... I mean, if you are hearing the first whisper of your market value during salary negotiations, something is seriously borked with your decisionmaking processes.)

<comment><USER3> _It is not obvious to me than anchoring matters nearly as much in situations where the party being anchored knows they are in a negotiation._

On the other hand, an anchor can backfire when the party being anchored doesn't know they're negotiating, too.

When Google offered me a job back in 2006, they named the first number -- and coming from an academic background and having no experience in industry, it didn't occur to me to try to negotiate. Instead, the low offer simply contributed to me rejecting the offer.

It's entirely possible that I would be working for Google if they had offered me what they thought I was worth. (I don't know what they thought I was worth, but in hindsight and with the benefit of talking to many Googlers in similar positions, I'm sure it would have been at least 25% and probably 50% higher.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a really good primer in basic negotiations, take a look at Fisher & Ury's _Getting to Yes_ ([http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement- With...](http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement- Without/dp/0140157352)).

It's a quick read but very useful, and these guys are respected in the field of negotiation.

<comment><USER5> _Bargaining For Advantage_ by G. Richard Shell (<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143036971/>) and _3D Negotiation_ by David Lax and James Sebenius (<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591397995/>) are even better than _Getting to Yes_ , IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do you think products have an MSRP? It's a number that has no bearing on the true value of a product.

<comment><USER7> Similarly, every nice restaurant will have a $60 steak entree on the menu to make the $29 chicken entree appear more affordable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the "Don't offer first" advice from before it was so easy to do research. Anecdotally, most of the people I know who are good at negotiating are comfortable offering first, and seem to do so more than half the time.</comment>