Update to L.A.'s stay-at-home orders - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/coronavirus-beaches-reopen-los-angeles-county-move-toward-new-normal <comment><USER3> [https://archive.md/j8vY9](https://archive.md/j8vY9)

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess I will be the "Did you read the article?" guy because most of the people in the comments here are really overreacting to what was said in the article. This isn't a plan to maintain a full lockdown for the next 3 months. It was simply a comment that the stay-at-home orders are unlikely to be completely gone in three months. It is talking about the return to semi-normal life. It isn't saying all non-essential businesses need to be closed for the next 3 months. LA County has already moved to start opening up and this article says they will continue on that path.

<comment><USER5> I just don't buy it. If they were aiming to return to semi-normal life, they'd announce we're transitioning away from "stay at home". It seems very much like they're aiming to open up the bare minimum amount required to avoid riots or economic collapse, and people will continue to be ordered to stay at home.

<comment><USER6> What is the difference between your take and the parent take? All I see is you assuming a negative - but not fully described - motive of _preferring_ to keep people at home even if there wasn't a virus out there?

> "Our hope is that by using the data, we'd be able to slowly lift > restrictions over the next three months,"

vs

>aiming to open up the bare minimum amount required to avoid riots or economic collapse

why do you believe the root goal is "keep people at home" vs "respond to a disease?"

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's a versus. I acknowledge that "keep people at home forever" is a disease response measure, not some evil plan they cooked up for no reason. But the fact that they have a reason does not make it an acceptable measure.

It's especially frustrating because I've _repeatedly_ seen people argue that it's a strawman, that nobody's really planning to stay at home forever. Even in this comments section, about an article where LA county says "yeah we're staying at home for the next 3 months at least", people insist they didn't mean it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is no way that people will keep complying for such a long time. I am all for mask wearing and work from home as much as possible but a lockdown for such a long time is crazy. What's the goal? Flattening the curve or no deaths at all? We will probably see in a few months where things are going but from the stats I have seen so far the connection between lockdowns and lower death rates is not that strong. By now I would have thought that all hell would break loose in Florida but it doesn't seem to be happening.

<comment><USER8> How are you so sure people will stop complying? Is the risk of opening everything up just to shut it down again really worth it?

I think people are smarter and more accepting of the status quo than those who are making the most noise. As for those who are overburdened by the lockdown (i.e. lost jobs), its on the governments to provide the safety net until we have everything under control.

<comment><USER9> > How are you so sure people will stop complying? Is the risk of opening > everything up just to shut it down again really worth it?

I live in California and I can tell you that people are already extremely over this shit. Go out and about and hardly anyone is wearing masks, hardly anyone is social distancing. Some people are trying ... but you are only as strong as your weakest link. It's tough to keep up stringent personal standards when everyone around you has said fuck it and given up.

So I completely 110% agree with the parent commenter that people have already been demonstrating they don't want to comply. I mean, it's human nature. No one wants to be told what to do.

The hospital boat off the shore is completely empty (it treated a total of 77 patients). Most of our hospitals are significantly below capacity. We've all been sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for the apocalypse and nothing is happening. Just crickets. Unavailable unemployment funds, closed businesses, lost jobs.

The one thing everyone is learning from this is that the government will not help you. It doesn't matter how liberal or conservative your state is, or whether you believe most in federal or state governments ... everyone is doing a shitty job in one way or another.

So if the government is not going to do fuck-all for me, why should I do fuck- all for the government?

<comment><USER10> > The hospital boat off the shore is completely empty. Most of our hospitals > are significantly below capacity.

I think a lot of people don't realize this. My wife's friend is a nurse shift supervisor at our local hospital. The hospital is practically empty because there are no elective surgeries. They've been laying off nurses over the past month. She had her hours reduced. She's expecting to be laid off soon too.

If the whole point of this is to buy time for hospitals, doing so to the point where they have to start laying off staff members is a pretty dumb way to do it.

<comment><USER11> And so many elective surgeries are out-patient meaning there was no reason to pre-emptively suspend. If the capacity overwhelm that never happened had actually happened, we could have suspend surgeries then. And frankly it should be on a case-by-case basis. Some surgeries are more important than an extra hospital bed-day.

I have a large labral tear in my shoulder, an impaction fracture on my humerus, there's a bone bruise with bone marrow leaking out, my glenohumeral ligament is stripped from the glenoid rim, I have a new area of full-thickness articular cartilage loss...

...And because CA suspended ALL elective surgeries statewide for a month, my surgeon has a month backlog before he can get to me. Until then I cannot perform any of the activities that keep me healthy and sane. Also my arm is at risk of dislocating in my sleep until I get surgery

Suspending elective surgeries was the dumbest possible decision we could have made yet our leaders won't ever admit that they fucked up and completely botched their covid response.

<comment><USER12> I hear what you're saying, but my understanding is that PPE shortages were behind the decision to suspend other medical activities.

Failure to maintain an adequate stockpile of PPE is probably what made the lockdowns necessary, more than anything else. If everyone in the US could have been given masks and instructed to keep their distance from other people, that would probably have been enough to allow us to lock down only the most vulnerable. At least we could have begun with that approach, and moved on to heavier measures only if/when they proved necessary.

<comment><USER13> Some of that was/is pure speculation, they had data to say X number of people would need to be hospitalized, so they need Y number of PPE

Y was more than they had to they panicked

When X was found to be a massive over estimation they still doubled down and said "well in 2 week we will be over run"

2 weeks came, and it was "well in 2 weeks we will be over run"

2 weeks later and "well in 2 weeks...."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm genuinely concerned about rioting.

Many of my childhood friends (living in LA) have already been incredibly angry at measures before this came out, and many other protests have already been seen.

It seems strange to me to not try to do a partial reopening of businesses that can guarantee social distancing guidelines -- and yet they're reopening recreational activities, including the beach. This feels back-asswards, and I really hope it works out well, but I think they need to think this through really carefully.

<comment><USER15> Did you read the article? Because your concerns are addressed. The beaches are planned to reopen soon, and there are procedures in place for partial reopening of some businesses.

<comment><USER16> The fact you have to ask this question is the answer, of course the OP did not read the article.

<comment><USER17> True, but the article title could have reflected the contents much better.

<comment><USER18> Yeah definitely click baity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would like to get an official explanation for two things: 1) What is the goal(s) of the "stay-at-home" order? 2) How well it is achieved compared to other counties/countries with different policies?

<comment><USER20> 1\. To flatten the infection curve, in order to keep healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed like those in northern Italy.

2\. Thus far, it's worked to keep hospitals functioning. We're doing worse than most other countries ([https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid- visualization/](https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/)).

<comment><USER21> >> 1\. To flatten the infection curve, in order to keep healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed like those in northern Italy.

Very few regions have had anything close to overwhelmed hospitals. More regions have had to lay off hospital staff than have been overwhelmed. Some like UW medicine now face a $500 million budget shortfall due to the ban on elective procedures.

Social distancing measures may have an effect on r_t as low as 0.1 per analysis by Nate Silver. Others show a negative or no correlation between government lockdowns and reduction of r_t.

It is fair to question if these lockdowns - as instituted - have done anything.

<comment><USER20> > More regions have had to lay off hospital staff than have been overwhelmed.

That's a bit of a red herring. Hospitals aren't laying off ER and ICU staff. They're furloughing in areas like dermatology, plastic surgery, and the like - parts of the hospital that see largely elective procedures.

<comment><USER22> > furloughing in areas like dermatology, plastic surgery, and the like

Stop. This is incredibly misleading.

Elective just means that you can choose the time to do the surgery. It doesn't mean they are optional for health.

Elective surgeries include inguinal hernia surgery, cataract surgery, mastectomy for breast cancer, kidney transplant, and hip surgery.

Most surgeries are elective.

Don't minimize this as a bunch of delayed facelifts.

<comment><USER20> I'd be happy to wager there are substantially more dermatology visits in your average hospital than there are kidney transplants.

There's a range of severity in "elective" procedures, certainly. There are a _lot_ of procedures folks will willingly postpone right now, and it's not surprising that hospitals are furloughing staff that service them.

It is disingenuous to suggest that furloughs in these elective areas demonstrate an excess of capacity in the ER/ICU.

<comment><USER23> Dermatology is real medicine with real consequences. Even Jerry Seinfeld found out the hard way: [https://youtu.be/EmzM0bz3PWc](https://youtu.be/EmzM0bz3PWc)

<comment><USER20> Certainly, but you'll likely find it has a higher proportion of elective procedures that can be held off than, say, the NICU.

Which will mean that department's staff - docs, nurses, receptionists, billers, cleaners, etc. - will be more likely to be on the furlough lists than the ER or ICU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Compliance is already way down; as someone who has to drive across LA a few times a week (from one isolated situation to another) it has gone from "Night of the Comet" ghost town to "not quite the normal traffic jams but sure a lot of cars out there".

Someone else said he fears riots; I think that's unlikely. Much like when a substitute teacher is there, it will just be more and more people slowly pushing the rules until it's like there are no rules.

<comment><USER25> This fits what I've been seeing. Road and sidewalk traffic is increasing, almost back up to normal levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> this will backfire on politicians.

the "better safe than sorry" line of reasoning is deeply flawed thinking. it's a way to absolve politicians of the hard job of finding the best answer, the best tradeoff. cutting off the extrema works in the confines of mathematical optimization, but in real, human systems, hitting an extreme in one dimension is never the right answer. the system is infinitely faceted and exponentially interrelated.

for the general population, rather than lockdown, it would have been easy to start back in early march with two simple rules:

1) physically distance, _or_ wear a mask when _inside_ public spaces (which implies no large gatherings), and

2) if you're sick or have co-morbidities, self-quarantine.

as time went on, you could then deal with the harder edge cases like schools (in socal, you could have "classrooms" out on playgrounds and fields under large tents if necessary).

instead politicians have painted themselves into a corner and can't find their way out.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is absolutely insane, if LA wants to see a return to the bad old days(think Rodney King/Watts riots/extreme levels of crime) keep up this nonsense. This will absolutely destroy the middle/lower class along with a huge chunk of the economy. This was not put up for a vote, and is being forced down people's throats. There is no timeline for large scale antibody testing, live testing is completely broken, expect to see a huge migration out of California.

<comment><USER20> > This was not put up for a vote

Very little is. That's why we elect executives at various levels of government. If you want direct democracy, you'll need somewhere like Switzerland, and even there, there's some concept of executive power in emergencies.

<comment><USER28> Incidentally, Switzerland is opening back up albeit with some basic restrictions.

[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/switzerland- relaxing-...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/switzerland-relaxing-its- coronavirus-lockdown-measures/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I see a lot of comments about "people will ignore this". I don't know if that's true or not, but here is some interesting data:

If you look at Opentable's data [0] about dining reservations, you can see a cliff on March 16th in all states across the country. March 16th is the day after the very first SIP order was given (in Santa Clara county).

So in other words, despite not being locked down, most people around the country were too afraid to go out.

[0] [https://www.opentable.com/state-of- industry](https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry)

<comment><USER18> ...isn't that because people expected things to re-open on that date? All of those businesses ceased operation. It's not because people didn't want to go out. They couldn't even if they wanted to.

I rescheduled a haircut to the 16th because I figured that's when they will start cutting hair again.

<comment><USER29> No, this was in March. No one was closed yet except Santa Clara county. The restaurants were open but their reservations dropped off a cliff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's interesting to compare responses:

UK police stopping people from sitting on Brighton beach:

[https://uk.news.yahoo.com/brighton-beach-police- checkpoint-l...](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/brighton-beach-police-checkpoint- lockdown-coronavirus-172845913.html)

LA saying you can go to the beach, but you're not allowed to sit down or take an umbrella:

[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/coronavi...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-12/coronavirus- beaches-reopen-los-angeles-county-move-toward-new-normal)

In Vancouver people are flocking to the beach, but mostly following social distancing, and BC's chief health officer is fine with that (she has said in the past that people should get outside, as the risk of catching the virus while walking past someone outside is infinitessimal):

[https://bc.ctvnews.ca/just-how-crowded-are-b-c-beaches- pictu...](https://bc.ctvnews.ca/just-how-crowded-are-b-c-beaches-pictures- highlight-how-perspectives-can-mislead-1.4935162)

I think BC's response is the only one that is based on science, logic and reason, whereas the UK, San Francisco and LA seem to be having a more extreme lockdown that isn't really based on any kind of logic and is just going to piss people off and negatively affect mental health.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is getting dumb and to mixed in with politics; it's a bad but not catastrophic illness and we have to have a bit of adjustment to further mitigate but these generic-stay-at-home orders are just dumb

<comment><USER32> > This is getting dumb and to mixed in with politics

In what world could a government shelter orders ever not be involved with politics? I see this comment day-in and day-out on HN and I just can't even begin to conceptualize a world wherein there's some sterile, politics-free zone.

<comment><USER33> There are plenty of places in the world where it isn't so politicised. America does tend to get its knickers in a twist over things the rest of the world barely takes any notice of.

<comment><USER32> > There are plenty of places in the world where it isn't so politicised

Is "politically polarized" what "politics" means to you?

<comment><USER33> No, well not in the sense that things have become so tribal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > "Our hope is that by using the data, we'd be able to slowly lift > restrictions over the next three months," she said. But without widely > available therapeutic testing for the coronavirus or rapid at-home versions > that would allow people to test themselves daily, it seems unlikely that > restrictions would be completely eased.

It sounds like they will lift most restrictions but some restrictions (e.g. bans on very large events) will still be in place.

</comment><comment><USER35> What's the rationale behind the criteria of LA ? "No death in the past 14 days" ? That's nuts. the rest of the criteria might be workable.

European countries have opened up with less than that, and it hasn't been a disaster so far.

This is also just dumb: Face coverings will be required when not in the water, and sunbathing won't be allowed.

<comment><USER36> Somebody else linked Goodhart's law in this thread, and I think that's pretty applicable. Using these measures as strict criteria rather than looking at the bigger picture that they paint seems like a huge mistake. All of LA can't open if just a single 95 year old person dies of COVID in the past two weeks?

<comment><USER37> You're complaining about a metric--"No death in the past 14 days"\--that doesn't exist and merely posed rhetorically.

The principle metric in California, as almost anywhere else, is access to widespread testing. Testing resources are only a fraction of what they need to be in order for the state to be able to even theoretically contain outbreaks under ideal circumstances. The Federal government _should_ have been all over this months ago, but it refuses to accept responsibility even though it's the only entity in the nation that can make it happen anytime soon.

Secondly, daily reported cases are continuing to rise in California. So to suggest the criteria is no new deaths is ridiculous. Rather, it appears they were originally hoping to wait for a cessation in the _increase_ in daily deaths, but that appears to not be in the cards given how shelter-in-place compliance will never be as good as it was a few weeks ago.

The dilemma here is either playing with people's livelihoods vs playing with their lives. These are two different things, as anyone who's lived in a war zone or famine would attest. I'm pretty sure I know which one most people would choose if they were faced with the stark choice, but they're rarely faced with that choice, or if they are they deny it and move on. That's basic human behavior and I don't expect that change, but it's important to understand the distinction when criticizing a public leader making population- wide choices.

FWIW, nearly 1/3 of Americans are 55+. It's amazing how quickly we turn to infighting. How ironic, yet entirely unsurprising, that most of the people we're so quickly willing to sacrifice are the ones who literally went to war-- WWII, Korea, and Vietnam--for the United States.

<comment><USER35> The criteria are stated in the presentation linked in the article

<comment><USER37> I stand corrected. Leaving my comment unedited so I suffer the embarrassment in perpetuity.

FWIW, the 14 day criteria is for moving from stage II to stage III (or quasi stage-III--it's a stage II "variance"). Stage III reopens places like gyms and movie theaters. But in stage II most places can open, including factories, so long as they maintain social distancing. Stage II appears to be where China, etc, are still at.

<comment><USER36> That's a good point on the criteria being for Stage III, in which case it seems more reasonable. I do still hope that when the decision comes to move to that stage, that they look at the full picture rather than relying just on the metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It'll be interesting to see how this goes in terms of compliance. You miss mother's day, ok, fine, call her and send her something. You miss memorial day, eh, I guess it's for a good cause. You can't have your annual 4th of July BBQ now your kinda annoyed. You can't do anything all summer and you can't send the kids away to summer camp either, well now you're pissed off. The fewer the local number of cases the harder it is to justify obeying the order in people's minds (especially if they see pics on FB and Instagram of their friends/relatives in other states out and about) and the more people are gonna just disregard the order.

<comment><USER39> Yeah. Nate Silver has tweeted a few times about disliking beach shutdowns -- a lot of evidence says outdoor transmission is pretty negligible, and you gotta weigh that against the "cost" to public opinion. People wanna go to the beach pretty bad right now.

At some point, people are gonna wanna stop paying the cost, and will simply stop complying with lockdown -- so you gotta ask, where do you trade a little extra risk in return for greater compliance to the rest of the rules?

<comment><USER40> The problem with opening up the beaches.. are the congregation of large groups of people at choke points such as crosswalk intersections and such places.

heres an update on Florida.. [https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os- ne-coronaviru...](https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne- coronavirus-tuesday-may-12-20200512-eb56lsaxanarrec5qync2fn4hy-story.html)

<comment><USER41> Bathrooms & restaurants. You can bring your own food or get takeout - <USER2> where are you going to relieve yourself?

How do you socially distance at a beach bathroom? Does everyone hit up the same fast-food bathrooms nearby - concentrating the risk?

<comment><USER25> Piss in the ocean? Fish do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, warned > Congress that states that push too quickly to ease orders could undo > progress that would trigger an outbreak.

Its not about strictly avoiding triggering an outbreak, its about the hospitals having capacity to deal with the inevitable outbreaks, _plural_!

We aren't going to tolerate Mayors, Governors and Public Health agencies picking business types one by one forever. This was always about slowing exposure, not preventing it. In Norcal we have been very tolerant and cooperative, but I'm watching Socal as a precursor.

</comment><comment><USER43> It was cool when the same director of public health decided to shut down restaurants selling groceries because they lacked grocery store licenses.

</comment><comment><USER44> I miss a precise goal what this extended lockdown should achieve. Is it adequate medical support or stopping the virus and the deaths? The latter seems highly unlikely given the metric of 14 days without deaths. What if there are still a lot of cases in July, lockdown indefinitely?

</comment><comment><USER45> > Los Angeles County's stay-at-home orders will "with all certainty" be > extended for the next three months, county Public Health Director Barbara > Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.

Oddly, the article never links to the order nor gives a summary. Here it is:

[http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/lac/1070029_COVID-19_Safer...](http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/lac/1070029_COVID-19_SaferAtHome_HealthOfficerOrder_20200319_Signed.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER46> Not in LA county but another urban center and I'm personally beginning to mentally prepare for a virtual holiday season and just hoping I'm wrong. :/

</comment><comment><USER47> It seems like most commenters haven't read the article.

The opening described in this article happening this week is more extensive than all of the UK and Italy have at the moment.

The quotes read to me as officials are opening things up but leaving enough wiggle room in comments about the future that they can point back to if a big flare up requires them to slow down or rollback.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is a big deal, especially given the apparent polarization on this issue. I would love to (1) See the statistics being used by the government, with clear goals when stay-at-home orders can be lifted. (2) How does the govt. plan to enforce this? People in LA weren't following it very well as it is.

</comment><comment><USER49> I hoped America will bring some sanity in this panicked world. I'm not sure this will happen anymore.

What next?

</comment><comment><USER50> As time goes on Sweden's approach to the virus is looking better and better.

<comment><USER51> So far, they have double the fatality rate of LA county.

<comment><USER52> This is totally fair, however the reason everyone in the US were told to stay home was to flatten the curve to not overwhelm hospitals, and to buy time. That has been done. Hospitals are no where near capacity and new case counts are falling week over week. We have a lot of testing now, a lot of ventilators, a lot more PPE. We are better prepared now. Now the new thing seems to be for stay at home orders to exist so that we have no cases at all. That's not realistic. Politicians need to wake up to the reality that this can't go on. Even if our best case scenario is to avoid all the death we can...it's just not feasible. Not economically, morally, etc. The only real choice is a mixed policy that just have strict guidelines for businesses serving customers. It's the only way.

<comment><USER53> > The only real choice is a mixed policy that just have strict guidelines for > businesses serving customers.

How is this different from what the article proposes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate to deliver triumphant "told you so" messages, but I hope that all the people who say "nobody wants to lock down forever" are starting to understand they've been misled.

<comment> the-pigeon I was 100% behind the initial lockdowns. We had next to no testing and we were seeing disturbing surges. We needed to lockdown to get a handle on what was going on.

But now we know what's going on and we don't seem to have a goal to deal with it. Some are going after 0 deaths. Some are going after don't overwhelm hospitals. And some don't destroy the economy.

I think we are at a point that every government restriction needs to have a very clear goal attached to it.

<comment><USER54> Welcome to group 3 ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23160511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23160511)). There are dozens of us!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is a weird article. The headline is derived from a random board meeting and not even an official statement. It seems like the plan is to open up slowly

</comment><comment><USER56> This feels like quite the extension, especially given how other countries are extending lockdowns by several weeks at a time

</comment><comment><USER41> What are the odds that a similar extension happens in the Bay Area? Any rumblings from the local health departments?

</comment><comment><USER57> Compliance is about to take a nosedive

</comment><comment><USER58> No where in the article are any mention of the methods or statistics used by PUBLIC officials to make this decision. No mention about California's or LA County's current infections (68,000) and or deaths (3,000).

Relative to the stats, this is a tyrannical power grab by the public officials of a state with the population of more than 40,000,000.

</comment><comment><USER59> Meanwhile, parents and kids alike are starting to feel their blood boil...

</comment><comment><USER60> Actually how are the county level officials got into office? City and state officials are elected. What's the process to install a county officials in CA?

<comment><USER61> Pretty much everyone in charge is elected

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> This isn't policy based on data or reason. Just some summary thoughts

Cost of lockdowns:

a) lack of preventative care ; lack of trips to hospital when would otherwise ; missed vaccines

b) mental health issues ; suicides

c) child and spousal abuse

d) vitamin D deficiency from staying indoors extra hours, weakening immune system ; lack of regular pathogen exposure also weakening the immune system

e) metabolic issues from sitting extra hours each day

f) economy wise, destruction of businesses and livelihood, with new huge pile of national debt risking long term economic problems and inflation

Sweden:

Sweden has claimed they will reach herd immunity the month. The mortality per capita in Sweden is less than France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherland, Switzerland. 3k deaths total, that's less than the seasonal flu in Sweden, with average age being above the average age of life expectancy (same in US too).

CFR in US:

We know it's far lower than what's reported due to sampling of asymptomatic (and common sense - it started perhaps as early as October with any significant screening or testing only staring 3-4 months later), as well as because "died with Covid" is merged with "died from Covid" in official stats in US. If you need further proof look at places like Singapore where it's < .1% CFR despite 25k cases/ large volum of new cases per day.

Politics in the US:

Watching this unfold in recent weeks it's hard not to be cynical and conclude this is perhaps the only reason someone would extend these lockdowns for 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER63> Sounds like a terrible idea.

Doesn't closing SpaceX also have national security implications?

<comment><USER64> SpaceX isn't closed. All of the LA County defense contractors have exemptions for "essential" personnel, which for SpaceX seems to include their preschool workers as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Fuck man, are we gonna go through the panic buying again?

</comment><comment><USER66> It is terrifying to see the voracity with which these bureaucrats eat up and wield more and more power.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is insanity. California is weeks away from bankruptcy. Newsom is banking on a federal bailout that isn't coming.

[https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/05/10/california- ju...](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2020/05/10/california-just- revealed-a-543-billion-deficit--signaling-deep-cuts-ahead)

<comment><USER58> Newsom is playing a win/win. Close it down and go deeper in the red and force the federal government to pay out.

1) Federal govt pays, he wins 2) Federal govt doesn't pay, he blames the chaos on the federal govt. He wins

This guy needs to be removed from office for gambling with peoples lives

<comment><USER67> I don't think Newsom wins on your second scenario. He might think he could win, but he would be mistaken.

<comment><USER58> I hope your right. Lots of people waking up to the lies we've been told

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> This is a reasonable and necessary response because testing still hasn't ramped up yet. The lockdown's purpose is not only to flatten the curve but to get to a point where trace and test is a viable strategy. It is unfortunate that the US is still only at around half the absolute minimum of daily tests (300k vs 500k) so we still have a long way to go before reopening is actually viable. If authorities wanted to open earlier, they should have increased the testing capacity. Unfortunately, that was not done. It doesn't even matter why at this point and that is a debate for another time and place. The fact of the matter is, we don't have enough testing to reopen in the US. I'm glad at least one county sees that.

<comment><USER69> Testing has indeed "ramped up" in Los Angeles. Last time I checked there were 39 locations in Los Angeles where you could get a free test, no symptoms necessary. That count does not include going to your doctor or to a private lab. Would love to see the models behind 300k-500k test count and what that achieves. The goal is unclear in Los Angeles.

<comment><USER68> Are they are testing everyone with symptoms and tracing/quarantining all their contacts? Because if not, you need around 300 million tests a day.

<comment><USER69> If your goal is complete eradication?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Securing Bitcoin Core with Blockstack - <AUTHOR> https://lightco.in/2016/08/18/securing-bitcoin-core/ <comment><AUTHOR> There is an on-going discussion on r/bitcoin re this post where some Bitcoin Core developers are commenting on the post. Worth checking out: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4yhhe1/securing_bi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4yhhe1/securing_bitcoin_core_releases_with_blockstack_a)

</comment><comment><USER2> Regarding this particular attack, isn't it addressed by reproducible builds?

If the bitcoin software binaries are being replaced by nefarious actors, the hashes would conflict by those generated by source compilation. Is there a reason this doesn't work?

<comment> TD-Linux No, that works fine, and Bitcoin Core uses reproducible builds signed by many different people. The post seems to be attempting to address the chain of trust of the PGP keys instead, but whether it succeeds at doing so is questionable. Certainly if a "blockstack id" can only be owned by one person, it's worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems to not solve the problem for a variety of reasons, probably most trivially if Bitcoin is compromised you can't use Bitcoin to check if Bitcoin is compromised, so you need other software to validate the chain.

<comment><USER4> The assumption is there are nodes already running from previous releases.</comment></comment>


You're the only one seeing this page - <AUTHOR> http://alexiscreuzot.com/#!/scribble/6

<comment><USER2> No, tons of people saw that page. I'm the only one who saw that particular permutation of that graph.

<comment><USER3> ...those who deplore the "treasures" destroyed by this frenzy neglect two notable facts. One: the Library is so enormous that any reduction of human origin is infinitesimal. The other: every copy is unique, irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles: works which differ only in a letter or a comma

[http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.htm...](http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought this was going to be a post about anonymity and internet privacy. It's pretty fair to say that the combination of content, scripts and headers for almost _any_ page you see on the internet has been uniquely crafted for you and your browser. Sure, there are some super static sites out there, but the vast majority of pages that normal people view every day are instrumented to the hilt with little nuggets of personalized tracking cookies, personalized JavaScript beacons and everything else that helps marketers and traffic analysts happy.

The OP page is far from unique in its uniqueness.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. It's not really where I wanted to go with this article though but it's an interesting perspective to think about !

Also I see a lot of people saying that they expected something else from the title. I want to say that this was exactly my intention, as I'm getting kind of fed up of having 90% of HN frontpage occupied by NSA stories (I mean it's a big deal, but that doesn't mean we can read anything else, does it?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not very profound, really. Sure; no one else will see the exact permutation I saw, but what does it matter? The graph had no meaning attached to it; the values were 'random'. If there was a datapoint with information meaningful and pertinent to my own life on this page, then I'd be blown away. But instead I have a squiggly graph.

</comment><comment><USER6> I couldn't help but notice the highlighting of the website is weird. If you start highlighting somewhere on the text then everything except the paragraph you clicked on will be dimmed, and there is a slight background difference on the actual highlighted text.

Gimmicks like this put me off websites straight away.

<comment><USER7> I actually thought that was really clever, I often highlight the current section of what I'm reading to help me keep track of my progress, and this certainly helps do that.

Seems like this guy's site is designed more like a portfolio and less like a blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, you're exactly right on all points.

I'm still not sure of what I want to do with this website, but for now it's part portfolio, part blog, part experimentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What if we take the birthday "paradox" into account ?

Unfortunately Wolfram Alpha refuses to calculate the result for very big N.

Also: I'm the only one seeing this Hacker News page because it says "kaoD" at the top-right, and I'm the only one who knows my password (or at least I hope so).

</comment><comment><USER9> Since Math.random() is seeded using the current time, I'm pretty sure there will be many collisions.

</comment><comment><USER10> These bait titles get on my nerves.

</comment><comment><USER11> A fancier version of: [http://www.famkruithof.net/uuid/uuidgen](http://www.famkruithof.net/uuid/uuidgen) I suppose

<comment><USER12> Or Steve Gibson's password generator:

[https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm](https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You're the only one to vote on this comment at the exact time at which you do.

</comment><comment><USER13> link bait.

</comment><comment><USER14> tl;dr... multiplication</comment>


From Javascript To Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/ujihisa/from-javascript-to-haskell <comment><USER2> It would be better if it compared JavaScript 1.8.2 to Haskell instead of plain ES3 + some library. Some JavaScript examples like the following would have been nice:

#15: function f(a, b) a + b;

#16: function f(a){ function g(b){...} return g(a); };

#17: function fib(n) (n == 1 || n == 2) ? 1 : fib(n-2) + fib(n-1);

#18: (function(a) a + 1)(3)

#22: [i + 1 for each(i in [1, 2, 3])]

#23: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5][0] [1, 2, 3, 4, 5][3]

#24: function range(begin, end){ for (let i = begin; i < end + 1; ++i){ yield i; } }; [i for each(i in range(1, 10))];

#27: function f(a) function(b) function(c) a + b + c; f(3)(5)(7);

etc...</comment>


Modern C++ framework for cloud development - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/romange/gaia <comment><AUTHOR> Includes a highly performant RPC engine. Implements a MapReduce framework for single-node, multicore applications. The MR framework works natively with Google Cloud. It's a first open sourced framework that I know of that combines Boost.Fibers and Boost.ASIO in a robust manner.</comment>


The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.sethcall.com/blog/2010/09/30/facebook-api-does-not-care/ <comment><USER3> FB seems to have a two tiered developer program. There are the peons, the guys forced to toil away trying to figure out how to make the stuff work by doing exactly what is described in the blog. And then there are the anointed: the big companies or YC-related startups that enjoy special access to FB employees to get the answers they need.

For now it doesn't seem to really be harming FB. They enjoy extreme growth and developers are pulled to their platform because of their enormous gravity. Over time, however, it is really not sustainable. If they want to be a platform they should start acting like a platform and that means making sure their APIs are documented properly and developers have a way to seek out information they need. Microsoft, whether you like them or not, does a great job of this.

<comment><USER4> You're overstating this quite a bit. I work for a startup that was an early launch partner for Pages back in mid 2007, and have built and maintained our Facebook application from that time. We have numerous contacts inside Facebook, and they _can_ be of help occasionally, but they can just as easily turn around and screw us. They stole hundreds of extremely popular pages from us that we built up over years, and they did it basically on the same freakin day that our CEO was having high level meetings on unrelated partnership deals with Facebook brass.

The reason is very closely tied to Facebook's engineering success: there is no top-down control over anything. All the engineers are encouraged to break things and to keep the pace of progress rapid. For developers on their API this is a nightmare scenario. However your claim that this is not sustainable may just be wishful thinking. Facebook craps all over its developers, but it's not clear at all that that price is too high to pay for the continued agility that Facebook exhibits. It's hard to argue with that kind of market dominance. Plus, Facebook is so nimble that if API stability _does_ become a problem they can easily switch gears and focus on it.

In other words, I wouldn't hold your breath for any change at Facebook.

<comment><USER5> API stability _is_ a problem.

An engineering culture that breaks APIs is _bullshit_. Taking 48+ hours to fix show-stopper platform errors is _bullshit_. Their 'innovative approach' is not working and the proof is in the pudding. They have not reached 500 million users solely on the success of this engineering approach, and I would vehemently argue they have reached 500 million users _in spite_ of it.

The price will become too high to pay, if the future they envision involves third party developers at all. 500 million users is a hell of a lot of momentum, but it won't carry them as far as they want to go.

<comment><USER4> Of course it's a problem. It's a terribly onerous problem for developers. But the thing is that they don't have any problem getting developers to deal with it because there's really no alternative. And businesses hiring web developers are demanding Facebook integration as much as ever. Sure, if they fixed the problems then developers might be more enthusiastic, but you haven't shown that that will improve Facebook's bottom line. They have no shortage of apps, users, or growth, so the onus is on you to support your argument.

Saying that you think they have reached 500 million users inspite of their engineering approach is _far_ from a common-sense argument. It's clear that Facebook ran technical circles around MySpace. And it's clear that they have launched new features at a breakneck pace throughout their history that have fueled growth at every turn.

I personally will avoid working with Facebook as much as I can, but will that hurt them? Not in the current business climate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is so, so correct. I've been doing Facebook stuff for a few years now, and this rant is just the tip of the iceberg.

Other favorites:

* They accidentally flipped the switch to a new authentication mechanism overnight to a beta with no documentation. It took them over 48 hours to realize and fix this mistake.

* At one point I was asking for JSON and intermittently getting back XML instead. Apparently JSON parsers can't parse XML. Who knew?

<comment><USER7> I have to agree. Just about every bit of this article is correct, it's part why I hate developing for Facebook so, so much. For an API whose stated goal was to power the social fabric of the interwebs, Facebook is doing a terrible job of letting those of us who create the interwebs work with it. The only response I've gotten from FB engineers was either "Sorry." or "I don't know what your talking about," both in person at F8 or via IRC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've just been playing with the Facebook API for a toy project (submitted here: <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1743486>), and utterly agree - <USER2> documentation is not even barely adequate.

The other irritating thing is when you eventually discover that there's a bug, the best response you see is "Hi, sorry this is a known issue" with no resolution date or even rough idea of whether it'll be fixed in the next year or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't count how many ways Facebook wrongs developers.

I had three more sections planned out, but said the heck with it, they've already taken so much of my time.

You are totally right, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm more of a season fb dev, since I only play with the API from time to time, yet I've managed to suffer with their docs every time I try to do something.

Recently I've found another problem - public user data being visible to users, such as birthday, hometown and current location is not available through te Graph API as well as REST old one. Of course they're documented as available <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user> and accessible by visitors, but not by API. I've found this case in lots of posts on the forums and bugtrack, f.ex. <http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=8376> marks this bug as fixed, yet there's a new one <http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=12090> with the same case.

While I need it mostly for side projects, I pity the ones whose FB app is core for their business, f.ex. this comment:

 _Do we have a fix for this solution? In spite of so many people facing the problem why is this issue not addressed till now?

Can someone answer these questions? Our application is totally based on the way Facebook gives the location info and most of the time we get the location info as NULL._

</comment><comment><USER10> If they can't provide the support we need with their limited resources (someone mentioned on Reddit they had only 6 people on their platform team), they should at least let us pay $250/yr for a "premium developer" account, and have that enable us access to a developer helpline or something.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Carl Sjogreen, who leads the platform PM team, commented that good changes are coming:

[http://www.sethcall.com/blog/2010/09/30/facebook-api-does- no...](http://www.sethcall.com/blog/2010/09/30/facebook-api-does-not- care/#comment-82465562)

I am really quite pleased he took the time to address the post. Let's hope he can succeed.

<comment><USER11> I'm really rooting for the guy, but it's hard to be optimistic after they let the API be so awful for so long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just about the only thing you can use at all is the javascript api. And only because you can use firebug to throw a million things at the wall and see what sticks.

...and for the love of god don't use facebook for user auth. The API will mysteriously go down without warning for hours at a time.

This is one of the reasons I left my last job. Facebook was crucial to the business strategy, but it's miserable to work with.

At least twitter's api is easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm utterly astonished that there is no way of getting a full list of fans of my own page. FQL? No. Graph API? No. REST API? No. Screen scraping? No! If you have more than 10000 fans, then not even the web displays them (page 100 = page 101 = page 102...)

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a humble request for all of you developers who are building facebook apps. Please create an open source project (or a forum with all the tricks you are discovering) so that everyone doesn't have to reinvent the wheel. Basically, please collaborate your efforts to create a more reliable unofficial API documentation for FB.

Ryan Waggoner wrote a similar post like this a few days back (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1731427>), so this is clearly bugging a lot of people. Please collaborate your efforts if possible.

<comment><USER15> For starters, more people could support the Facebook Developer proposal at StackExchange.

[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7285/facebook- deve...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/7285/facebook-developers)

Personally, I think the StackOverflow engine would be a great way to build up a crowdsourced wiki of FBAPI knowledge.

<comment><USER16> The problem is, with every iteration of API changes that FB makes, existing entries in such a forum would go obsolete. This could just increase confusion.

<comment><USER14> Yes, but if enough people are using this wiki/forum, then it will remain updated as users experience breakages due to API changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The poor documentation is an inconvenience, but the real problem is how often the functionality of the API changes (ie: breaks) without anyone at Facebook noticing (or perhaps just not caring).

I remember constant problems with authentication and sharing APIs. How do you not have tests for those?

Facebook is still way too cowboy.

</comment><comment><USER18> There was definitely a cultural problem at facebook in terms of how they were treating the developer community. The copious unanswered critical issues in the forums among other things sent a very clear message that FB has other priorities.

Judging by the comments left by newly hired FB staff on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1731427> and on this post, maybe that attitude is finally turning around. But I personally really feel burned by my experience working with the facebook platform. Their deficiencies cost me a lot of money, and caused a lot of stress due to blame and doubt applied upon my team by skeptical clients. When it comes to Facebook, I'm going to have trust issues for a _long_ time...

</comment><comment><USER19> A co-worker who had to work with the Facebook API in a previous job had this to say about it. _Working with the Facebook API is like poking yourself in the eye with a fork, repeatedly._ It is interesting to see the problems he described confirmed and explained in more detail.

</comment><comment><USER20> On the contrary. I think Facebook cares very much about developers. They do not want to give developers enough tools to create enduring products, because this would kill their walled garden, in a variety of ways.

The biggest way is they don't want to make it easy for you to get your data out of Facebook. Any robust, well-documented API would have to enable that.

In some ways this is even a good thing. A small number of compromised accounts can give access to most of the data on Facebook.

<comment><USER21> Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.

<comment><USER20> I really don't believe that Facebook's developers are incompetent. And it's quite easy to neglect work when there's a business case for leaving that work undone.

<comment><USER21> I suspect that as with any large enough organisation there is a spectrum of competence across their workers, raging from high to low. I obviously have no proof that there isn't some big conspiracy afoot, but given the choice to bet on conspiracy or incompetence as the primary factor for the issues we're seeing, I know what I'd put my money on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/ <comment><USER2> This is not a secret and is a well known fact of deep learning.

It's also a misnomer to think that we don't know how they work. We know exactly how they work. What is difficult and arguably will become more difficult as we go along, is investigating the exact parameter pathway that resulted in a specific output of a DNN.

Ok, well that's actually way easier than understanding how a person came to their decision/conclusion because we can actually evaluate the string of inputs and the training history of a net. If you ask someone how they made a decision, it will be mostly FUD because we don't understand granularly how humans reason.

Looking at outputs and moving the baseline as they improve on a tangible, quantifiable task is really the only way to do this in the long run IMO.

I think people want a decision tree visualization that includes biases from previous datasets etc... and I doubt if that is tractable as we inch closer to general AI.

I'd go further to say, that even if we did have that, it would still be intractable to evaluate. We'd need an AI to verify AI explanations - so at some point you just have to trust it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps the solution in this case is to put the AI in sort of a sandbox, where it has control up to a point. But there are independent anti-collision systems in place with override power.</comment>


There's a Russian Air Force "doomsday plane" circling over Sochi - <AUTHOR> http://theaviationist.com/2014/02/07/tu-214sr-sochi/ <comment><USER2> Linked explanation of a "doomsday plane" for those not in the know - [http://theaviationist.com/2012/12/16/mayan- apocalypse/](http://theaviationist.com/2012/12/16/mayan-apocalypse/)</comment>


Announcing Providence: a spam filter for XMPP - <AUTHOR> https://journal.valeriansaliou.name/announcing-providence-a-spam-filter-for-xmpp/ <comment><USER2> Its great to see people still advocating for XMPP, particularly federated XMPP</comment>


Obama's Portable Zone of Secrecy (Some Assembly Required) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/us/politics/obamas-portable-zone-of-secrecy-some-assembly-required.html

<comment><USER2> Doesn't Google use the same thing?

</comment><comment><USER3> Secrets for him but not for us.</comment>


How Did the FAA Allow the Boeing 737 Max to Fly? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-did-the-faa-allow-the-boeing-737-max-to-fly <comment><USER2> > ...the F.A.A. outsourced key elements of the certification process to Boeing > itself, and that Boeing's safety analysis of the new plane contained some > serious flaws, including several relating to the mcas.

This _sounds_ insane. Is there a reasonable explanation?

<comment><USER3> It's not necessarily terrible. Boeing obviously has a strong financial interest in safety. The _Fight Club_ theory of managing an acceptable number of fatal mistakes really doesn't hold for the airline industry, because their failures are large and public, because people are inherently afraid of air travel, and because the investigation of plane losses tend to produce far more definitive results than car crashes.

This investigation seems to be turning against Boeing. They will survive, but it almost definitely will cost them far more than whatever they saved by cutting corners. There will also be changes to the certification process, and non-US authorities will take a hard look. Any new incident would become an existential risk for Boeing.

It's important to remember that a company like Boeing isn't a single person. People working on the certification process would usually have incentives that differ from the company as a whole: they do not individually reap the benefits of cutting corners, but bear the brunt of any mistakes, including moral responsibility, possible criminal charges, and an end to their careers.

Such schemes are employed in many industries. Usually, corporate structures and cultures prevent the sort of top-down pressure that people imagine being at play here. Threatening your safety engineers (fire marshals, data protection officers, etc) with job loss for doing their job would result in whistleblowers and lawsuits. It will be interesting to see _how_ exactly this failed at Boeing.

<comment><USER4> Clearly, Boeing didn't have enough interest. The idea that self preservation should be enough to make companies "do the right thing" ignores the fact that if they cut corners, people die. If the CEO could be held criminally liable, that might work, but in this case the only downside for Boeing will likely be share price drops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Should the FDA not approve drug studies funded by pharmaceutical companies? If that were the case, the world would be a far worse place. Of course there are drugs that gain approval that shouldn't, some of which get pulled. I am a patient currently on three psychiatric medications daily, with a history of four major depressions one of which resulted in a nearly successful suicide attempt when I was 29. I am also a 70-year-old retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist with 38 years of experience in academic and private settings. During that time, I published over 100 scientific research papers, many of which reported on the first human trials of experimental drugs later approved for general use in anesthesiology. As such, I had to get approval from our institutional review boards before beginning the studies, which when completed and written up were then anonymously reviewed by three experts before being published in major journals in my field. Even with such rigorous filtering, some fraudulent papers appear, sometimes on a major scale resulting in retractions of hundreds of publications, headlines, and resignation and firing of scientists (though criminal charges are very rare). Patients get harmed and even die as a result of these falsifications. But the balance is still much to the positive side. In the end, we assume that the great majority of people have a moral compass that points toward honesty. Otherwise, our society collapses.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing your personal experiences, especially your history of depression. It's not something that most people are willing to speak about because of the social stigmas associated.

The cynic in me thinks that society needs to reward honesty and/or disincentivize dishonesty instead of relying on personal ethics for most matters though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being open about my history is WAY easier — and far less likely to bring negative repercussions — now that I'm 70 and retired. My 35-year-old daughter and 67-year old brother wish I'd shut up about it, but I believe that the more open I am, the more good it will do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A single sensor for an automated system that can control the flaps?

No redundancy on a system that can control flight. A system that is supposed to help avoid a stall scenario.

That alone is a crazy oversight, let alone differences between safety analysis and actual capabilities.

This stinks of truly awful management - the rules of the sky were written in boood. Ignoring them has shown serious consequences, because we already knew not to do this.

<comment><USER7> >A system that is supposed to help avoid a stall scenario.

This article doesn't get the point right. From this article it sounds like some optional "helper" system for pilots to avoid stall. Another article got it right, the plane itself is unstable because of big engines if the MCAS is not there to stabilize it. So its not some optional system, that the pilots would switch off when manually controlling the plane, its there for the plane to fly at all.

<comment><USER6> Apologies if I wasn't clear enough.

> So its not some optional system, that the pilots would switch off when > manually controlling the plane, its there for the plane to fly at all.

And that fact makes it utterly damning that there is absolutely no redundancy. A single sensor?

It's a critical component. No redundancy on a system that can control flight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Per HN guidelines, I don't usually comment on why I flag, but I flagged this: It's little more than a recapitulation of the Seattle _Times_ story which was posted and discussed here extensively already.

The 737 Max saga is certainly right in the HN wheelhouse, but it's becoming difficult to pull signal from noise when so many articles with so little new information are rocketing to the front page daily.

</comment><comment><USER9> The New Yorker article is a rehash of the Seattle Times article, which is excellent investigative reporting.

<comment><USER10> The Seattle Times article is available here[0]

[0]: [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/faile...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system- implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sounds a lot like regulatory capture [1]. It's becoming more and more clear that the institutions that were / are(?) great at ensuring the safety of the public have been undermined by special interest.

For a really striking example of regulatory capture, look no further than the FCC.

One way to make sure that regulatory capture does not happen, is to ensure that money is not part of lobbying. But that's another discussion.

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

<comment><USER12> We could actually try to compensate competent people monterarily enough so they want to work for the government.

In that case they won't be swayed so easily by special interests.

There are people willing to work for the good guys for half the money, but not for order of magnitude less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Biggest losers with such incidents is the credibility of US government, government agencies, and institutions. Other countries used to rubber stamp approvals once a US institution had certified something. The nepotism, politicization, and corruption in such institutions is eroding the credibility and creating barriers and preferential treatment US companies and products used to receive worldwide.

FAA, FTC, US Treasury, US military all have lost credibility in recent years.

<comment><USER14> Is it possible to empirically measure such credibility?

<comment><USER15> Sure. The easiest and most direct approach would be a questionnaire along the lines of "an FAA certification improves my confidence in the product (1: strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree)". Then just get every group you care about to regularly answer the survey.

You can also measure indirect effects, like how many agencies rubber stamp standards and certifications by the agency in question.

The interesting question isn't if it's measurable but if somebody measured it and is sharing the data

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > \- Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was > designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to > avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of > moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial > safety analysis document.

> \- Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot > responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly > pushing the airplane's nose downward.

This likely would not have been included in the simulator, right? So, even if pilots had be given more training, it would not have done much good. The system would still be acting different to the training.

<comment><USER17> Interesting... Are the commercial flight simulators using an actual physics / aerodynamic model with all the components -- or just empirical data and lookup tables / expectations? I suppose in the latter case, behavior is more likely to deviate from reality?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_(simulator)#Flight_mod...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_\(simulator\)#Flight_model)

<comment><USER18> i think in this case there is no '737 MAX' simulator, as the existing 737 simulators were considered identical for flight training.

back to your question, most full fidelity flight simulations use actual models that are validated against flight test data. and in most cases, they run the same software code as is used in the actual air vehicle.

which brings us back to the question..is a 737 MAX the same as other 737's? No.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder why there is no big red button that puts everything on full-manual immediately.

<comment><USER20> Same here.

But, I'm not sure if the concept of "full manual" is anymore relevant with modern passenger jets. Are they even flyable without any computer intervention or too unstable / have too complex flying charasteristics?

<comment><USER21> Commercial airliners are stable when flying. The advantage of an unstable aircraft is high maneuverability which you don't need in a commercial airliner. Also in full fly by wire aircraft there is a "red button" that will drop the flight controls into a fail safe mode. This mode usually has much simpler control law, and disables other functionality like auto land/auto pilot/tail strike prevention.

In a non-fly by wire air craft though like the 737 max, a full manual mode is basically when you have auto pilot disengaged. There might be a mode you can enable to disable other functions like tail strike prevention/MCAS but I a haven't ever heard of it.

<comment><USER22> [0] explains that fuel efficiency considerations prompted Boeing to push the altered 737's larger new engines well forward compared to prior iterations, causing the airplane to pitch nose up in some maneuvers in unstable fashion. The MCAS system was introduced to compensate, and is the component that failed in both crashes.

[0] [https://hackaday.com/2019/03/14/mcas-and-the-737-when- small-...](https://hackaday.com/2019/03/14/mcas-and-the-737-when-small- changes-have-huge-consequences/)

<comment><USER21> Basically all planes have flight profiles where they are stable and unstable. Just because a plane is unstable in certain conditions, does not make it an unstable plane. A stable plane is a plane that is aerodynamically stable for most of its flight profile.

The 737 MAX is just not stable in every condition that the old 737 NG was. And it probably goes the other way, there are most likely flight conditions where the 737 MAX is stable but the 737 NG is not.

The difference is that pilots had been trained and have flown the old one for many years and trained to avoid the unstable conditions for the old 737.

*Flight conditions meaning: air speed, AOA, bank angle, total thrust, altitude.

<comment><USER23> > The difference is that pilots had been trained and have flown the old one > for many years and trained to avoid the unstable conditions for the old 737.

I don't think that's the case. MCAS was added to satisfy a requirement in the airworthiness certifications that requires positive control forces to increase AoA. The lift generated by the engine nacelles caused this to not be the case at high AoA.

None of what has been revealed so far indicates that the pilots had issues related to the symptom, rather they had issues with MCAS. In a way the cure has been worse than the disease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a software engineer having to deal with OPS teams that are reluctant to push new software updates to production because according to them, well, most of the time developers introduce new bugs in new releases, so they rather stick with what they have.

Anyway, I would not want to be the software engineer in charge of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 new update. Imagine what will happen if there is another accident after the software update? Do you think the proposed software solution is enough?</comment>


Human Web – Data Collection Without Privacy Side-Effects - <AUTHOR> https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-in-a-socially-responsible-manner.html <comment><USER2> I'm wary of companies that insist so much on collecting user data, especially when it's done at such a granular level. I keep wondering what did Mozilla have to gain from associating themselves with Cliqz.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz#Integration_with_Firefox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz#Integration_with_Firefox)

<comment><USER3> Hi – thanks for the feedback. I'm Marc (disclaimer, I work at Cliqz). The goal of the collaboration was to jointly build a better, more private search engine. Don't forget that every major browser today sends every keystroke of the Omnibar to either Google or Bing. No privacy mechanism in place (and don't even get me started on all the tracker madness). We wanted to jointly replace that. Cliqz is building a new search from ground up with privacy by design. In the end the collaboration didn't work out (for many reasons, lack of privacy was not one of them though). Firefox changed back to Google as search provider. Coming back to your point: There are many services that can't be built without data. Search is one of them, without data you will have a very bad search engine, impossible to compete. We explain this in detail here: [https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection- evil.htm...](https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection-evil.html) . We took maximum scrutiny, and this article about Human Web is exactly there to explain how we collect data that is needed, without the side effect of collecting personal data. We are so transparent about this, because we want the scrutiny. Our business does not depend on collecting personal data or actually any data. But our product needs a lot of data. Denying anyone to collect data – even if they are as open, transparent, and without any interest in personal information – just means you support those that are the incumbents and have no interest in privacy.

<comment><USER2> Is there a detailed writeup on the Human Web proxy network, specifically on the data transmission? It would be interesting to see how does it prevent Cliqz and proxy server operators from learning the user's IP address. Was Tor evaluated as an alternative for data transmission?

<comment><USER4> (disclaimer: I work at Cliqz) Not yet, but I'm literally working on it (or rather taking a break from working on it).

Short answer: The proxy will see your IP but does not share that information with us. To prevent the proxy from reading your content, we need to end-to-end the communication (and prevent statistical attacks based on the size of the encrypted data and so on).

Regarding Tor: Yes, we experimented with sending through Tor. The main issue is that our code needs to run in a WebExtension, which is a restricted environment. You can only use WebSocket communication but no real TCP sockets. The next blog post in the series has more information and has a link to the code of our experimental Tor client (the native Tor client compiled with WebAssembly to be used in a WebExtension).

I hope the post will address your open questions. If not, you can ask tomorrow about the details of HPN.

<comment><USER4> [https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network- hpn...](https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn.html)

There is also a new thread about it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704850)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the 3rd post from the advent.

day 1: Why the world needs more search engines [https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-01/the-world-needs- cliqz-t...](https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-01/the-world-needs-cliqz-the- world-needs-more-search-engines.html)

day 2: Is data collection evil [https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data- collection-evil...](https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection- evil.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Asking HN: point another company describing why and how it does data collection at this extent.

</comment><comment><USER2> There is an even better solution: do not collect _any_ data, especially when your customers are paying for your product.

If your business model involves subsidizing product prices with the prospect of tracking users and collecting personal data, consider releasing a version of your product that cost more, but does not engage in any data harvesting.

<comment><USER7> For a given product requirement, you have a set of potential reifications which include their data impact. There's not a zero or one dichotomy as you suggest. You can cut requirements, but all the ones that remain will have varying reliance upon data collection. The goal should be to minimize that impact to its least possible surface area while still delivering the same user value. It's especially toxic to pre-emptively collect data for unknown, or conjectured later requirements. YAGNI applies.

<comment><USER8> We could not agree more. We tried our best to make a case why the data or privacy dichotomy is a false one, especially in the context of building a search engine - one that is competitive and independent. Our rules are: no personally identifiable information (even minimize probabilistic attacks), minimize data collected to the bare minimum. This is what we use ourselves and what we want our families to use. We care.

It does come with challenges though.

1\. It requires a change of mindset by the developers

2\. Processing and mining data implies that code be deployed and run on the client-side.

3\. The data collected might not be suitable to satisfy other use cases. Because data collected has been aggregated by users, it might not be reusable.

4\. Aggregating past data might not be possible as the data to be aggregated may no longer be available on the client.

However, these drawbacks are a very small price to pay in return for the peace of mind of knowing that the data being collected cannot be transformed into sessions with uncontrollable privacy side-effects.

Disclaimer: I work at Cliqz (some of the comment comes from the article itself).

<comment><USER8> There was a reply to the parent comment (mine), that appears to be removed, but that we believe it still deserves to be addressed.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

REMOVED COMMENT:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Is data collected by Cliqz Browser and your search engine used in any way to provide the MyOffrz marketing service? [https://myoffrz.com/en/](https://myoffrz.com/en/)

Edit: according to the privacy policy the browser and the data collected through it is indeed used to deliver targeted ads.

[https://cliqz.com/en/privacy-browser](https://cliqz.com/en/privacy-browser)

This is the problem, we do not need any more ad companies that care about our privacy. We need browser vendors that are in the primary business of creating browsers, and possibly charging for advanced features.

We need search engines that do not collect our entire browsing history and how we interact with sites on the pretense that its needed to deliver better search results, while their business model actually revolves around using the same data to deliver targeted ads.

Cliqz could very well collect data and use it only to make search better, and release paid search products for businesses and customers, but they chose to make their users the products.

I had doubts about why people were so upset about your company, but now I see it. Cliqz is esentially capitalizing on the growing privacy movement to market itself, uses subpar technical solutions to ensure data privacy (routing sensitive data through FoxyProxy), and in the end delivers the same old service: our data is harvested, and we are delivered targeted ads.

\-----

REPLY:

\-----

You're cherry-picking and putting things out of context:

> "the data collected is used to deliver targeted ads"

That's not said like this anywhere [e.g. in the linked privacy policy], because it would be false. We do targeted ads, but the targeting is done on the >>client<<, which is the only place that has your history information. It's not possible to do targeting outside the browser itself, because, unlike the rest, we do not have this information.

> you collect browser history

Also incorrect. We collect URLs, but on isolation, we never have the full history. In the article we discussed at length why this is dangerous, of course, we would not do the same.

> Uses subpar technical solutions to ensure data privacy (routing sensitive > data through FoxyProxy)

There is a nice short reply here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21696963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21696963), but just in case please have a look at the paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07927](https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.07927).

> Cliqz could very well collect data and use it only to make search better, > and release paid search products for businesses and customers, but they > chose to make their users the products.

Everything we do is privacy preserving, the business model is no exception. We've been experimenting with paid products too (see: [https://https://www.lumenbrowser.com/en/](https://https://www.lumenbrowser.com/en/)) - but it seems to me that if you had found that, you'd say "Yeah, but you want me to give credentials" \- and suggest we live on donations instead. We need to be skeptical, and we thank you for that, but also be constructive and reasonable. Preventing anyone to improve the web, only helps companies that do not care about privacy.

> Cliqz is esentially capitalizing on the growing privacy movement to market > itself.

We do not do it for marketing. We started building products with privacy in mind since 2014, back when privacy was even more niche than it is today. (from Day 2: Is data collection evil? [0]

We understand that people whenever the see data collection they assume it's for the worse, and whenever they see ads, double on that. In a way, we are victims of the wrong-doings of people that has come before us. But we are trying to build good products maintaining the privacy of the people. If you don't trust, you can verify, we are transparent on what we send and in how we do it. I you still don't like us, well we cannot please everybody, but please do not accuse us of doing things that we are actively fighting against, unlike many, we do not claim that the world is wrong, we are trying to change it.

[0] [https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection- evil.htm...](https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection-evil.html)</comment>


Verifying Wikileaks DKIM-Signatures - <AUTHOR> http://solsticlipse.com/2016/10/21/Verifying-Wikileaks-DKIM-Signatures.html <comment><USER2> I didn't realize the signatures were leaked as well. Surprised nobody has looked at this yet, if we have cryptographic proof that certain emails are genuine, that shoots down a big counter-argument of "what if some emails are planted".

<comment><USER3> > if we have cryptographic proof that certain emails are genuine, that shoots > down a big counter-argument of "what if some emails are planted".

Huh, no? I don't see how that follows logically.

If we have cryptographic proof that _all_ email are genuine, then yes.

Right now we already know that some (most?) email are genuine. The question is whether or not the attacker, who was obviously motivated by political purposes, also inserted some fakes in the lot. (Although to me that seems highly unlikely)

<comment><USER2> Good point, but we know specifically which emails are genuine, and which may or may not be. Any particular email that isn't signed is questionable, but we can say for any given email whether or not it might be a fake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There has been no evidence yet that the emails were doctored. What there has been, as one journalist put it, was efforts to conflate "wikileaks emails" with "unsourced shit I saw on Twitter".

<comment><USER5> No evidence that they were doctored, but there are still plenty of complete fakes that were tweeted out by others, which were taken serious by way too many people including FOX news.

[http://www.snopes.com/hillary-calls-voters-bucket-of- losers/](http://www.snopes.com/hillary-calls-voters-bucket-of-losers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool research!

Is there any proof-of-existence archive of DKIM keys or DNS record changes in general? Seems like a perfect use case for blockchain[1]. If the DKIM keys were rolled over or replaced since they were originally sent out, there wouldn't be anything to compare them against. Having a record that can show proof-of-existence (at a min point in time) would cover that.

[1]: _Ha! I knew there would eventually be a legit use case!_

<comment><USER7> This just requires the inability-to-rewind property of the blockchain, doesn't require there to be one centralized log of events and doesn't require protections against flooding with data (if we verify that the DNS records are correct at the point of inserting). This makes a certificate-transparency-like solution just as good and much less complicated (one can arguably call that blockchain, but usually people mean by that things that can support a currency).

<comment><USER8> Well, we've been making validated structures where a checksum (essentially a pre-cryptographic hash) of the last data-block is included in the next since the sixties. (And I suspect much further back in an accounting context.)

The difference these days is a protection, via proof-of-work, against just creating a new, valid, chain by editing the old one.

That proof of work, to be translatable into a dollar value, requires a market for the proofs and that's the currency part. (Without that you don't know the true market value of the energy required for the PoW.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the major problem of this election is deciding on what the truth is but since everything can be rewritten, links broken, and data lost there is too much noise to get a clear signal. We need a trust/identity protocol that allows us to take history in account I wrote a draft of a whitepaper on a possible way to implement this with blockchains and cross-signing [https://hashd.in/hashd-in-draft0/](https://hashd.in/hashd-in-draft0/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember having issues verifying emails with attachments last time I've used dkimverify.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any insight into what breaks verification is useful. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some quick numbers for those interested:

Excel sheet has 11104 rows 2423 verified - 22% 8681 not verified - 78%

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes, the interesting thing would be if any emails with controversial content can be verified. I don't think there were any real bombshells in the wikileaks emails, but still...

<comment><USER13> "I don't think there were any real bombshells in the wikileaks emails, but still..."

Yes, there are quite a few bombshells. There are now tags of twitter about specific e-mails. If you are a Bernie Sanders fan, then the level of betrayal and cheating is astounding.

Never mind the e-mails that shows the staged violence at Trump rallies. If this was a Republican candidate, it would be criminal charge time with the Project Veritas videos as exhibit 2.

<comment><USER14> Project Veritas has been found to be deceptive and when officials actually have inspected the claims in their previous videos they found that "sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

<comment><USER13> Project Veritas has waited a couple of days each time and released the whole video with no cuts. That little quote is the refrain spoken to dismiss the video, but doesn't take into account that they do release the whole run unlike major news channels as we found out with the creative editing Katie Couric did recently.

<comment><USER14> I wasn't aware of that. I'll have to look at the whole videos later

<comment><USER13> The basic tactic is release the clip, watch for the "its edited, that's not what I said" response, then release the full video with even worse stuff in it. I really think in this day and age, its a really good template for anyone doing investigative reporting. Plus, it works fine with click advertising since it creates two waves per video.

<comment><USER15> Well, with you putting it that way, I can't say too much against the tactic. :) It's actually quite similar to what I wanted to convince courts to allow as a default in the event that they don't already. That is to let me withhold a smoking gun on a case where they might get low charges or punishment due to technicalities. Let them argue their case with lies to the court. Then, show the smoking gun with a follow-up of perjury to keep them from dodging a significant punishment.

How feasible does that sound? I know people do it to themselves accidentally but not sure if judges would allow the tactic intentionally by a non- prosecutor.

<comment><USER16> As far as I know, only the prosecution has an obligation to provide exculpatory evidence. That said, if you wait to half way through your murder trial to produce the video of the one armed man stuffing the body in your trunk, that probably sets you up for interfering with a police investigation, or aiding and abetting, etc.

<comment><USER15> (Sighs) That's a good point. They mighy try to score an extra conviction on their record in same trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> DKIM only signs headers. This is bunk. Move along.

<comment><USER18> You're wrong. As you can see on page 31 of RFC6376, the signature clearly covers a hash of the message body:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6376#page-31](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6376#page-31)

It's possible to hash only a prefix of the body by specifying the 'l' parameter in the DKIM header field, but this is unusual and the email used as example in this blog post does not use the 'l' parameter.</comment></comment>


The Oldschool PC Font Pack - <AUTHOR> https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/ <comment><USER2> My problem with these fontpacks is that they fail to emulate the blur of the electron gun that created visible gaps between the round pixels (which smeared into ovals). Only the most expensive IBM 8514/A (or later NEC 6FG) monitors looked that sharp, but most of us were using inexpensive monochrome (amber or green) displays in the 80's.

<comment><USER3> [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cathode/id499233976?mt=12](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cathode/id499233976?mt=12)

<comment><USER2> Now that's good!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given that our monitors have outrageous resolutions today, I miss pixel- perfect fonts with good size. I'm getting older and the eyes are not getting any better.

<comment><USER5> But normal fonts are easier to read.

Introducing pixel "jaggies" on angled and curved lines makes letterforms harder to distinguish, not easier.

Why do you think pixellated fonts would be better on your eyes?

Perhaps you just need bolder fonts, if it's an eyesight issue?

<comment><USER6> It's pretty well known that anti-aliasing (and macOS' font rendering) add blur to fonts. A lot of bitmap fonts are "pixel perfect", i.e. there's no blur.

I have great eyesight, because I wear contacts, and I prefer to disable anti- aliasing when I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have loved this since it came out and use the PxPlus VGA9 font for day to day programming and console use. I have a very strong association between that font and what the computer is "really" doing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Also check out Fontraption (a VGA Text Mode Font Editor for DOS) and Flexi IBM VGA Font (a Scalable Take on Text Mode).

[https://int10h.org/blog/2019/05/fontraption-vga-text-mode- fo...](https://int10h.org/blog/2019/05/fontraption-vga-text-mode-font-editor/)

[https://int10h.org/blog/2018/05/flexi-ibm-vga-scalable- truet...](https://int10h.org/blog/2018/05/flexi-ibm-vga-scalable-truetype- font/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Previous comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430)

<comment><USER10> And here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098262)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am kind of disturbed by the fact that the samples use "A quick brown fox..." instead of "The quick brown fox...".

<comment><USER9> The famous pangram is actually "A quick brown fox" in its earliest recorded appearance (1885): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog#History)

(Shorter pangrams exist, including some "perfect" ones which require punctuation to make sense. "Mr Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm really impressed with that pixel art. Anybody know the process for making something like that?

<comment><USER13> Back in the day I used TheDraw for fine editing. It was a DOS program.

(It's been over 20 years since I last used it, so I don't know where to start other than saying you'll probably need to use DOSBOX to run it.

I also used a graphical program for starting with long ANSIs that basically used the half-character blocks to start with basic pixels, but I don't remember the name. (Basically, the characters that turn 80x25 text into 80x50 pixels.)

<comment><USER14> There were some cool gif2ansi progs as well at the time. I had forgotten about TheDraw. Back in the days when modem communications were so slow that you could actually read the characters coming across the screen as they were received. It was like watching a really fast typist. Now entire hi resolution videos stream. Watching my dad download his first gif was revolutionary. An actual picture transmitted! I sound like my grandpa now. Ugg.

<comment><USER15> Right? At 300 baud you could _almost_ read the text as it appeared. Buying a 9600 baud modem after a year or two at 2400 felt amazing, like, "wow, whole lines of text appear before I even start reading!"

Then, with the jump to 14.4k it was like, "wow, a whole PAGE of text practically just pops up!" One whole... screenful of bytes. Wow.

Then you'd start an XMODEM transfer of a single image file and go make dinner.

<comment><USER14> ...and then zmodem came out and saved us all with resumable downloads, because 50% of the time you lost connection due to crappy phone lines/noise and would have to start over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm using the IBM PxPlus font at [https://mmontag.github.io/chip-player- js/browse](https://mmontag.github.io/chip-player-js/browse). It works great :)

<comment><USER17> excellent site. sooo many memories.</comment></comment>


Principles of Microservices (slides) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/spnewman/principles-of-microservices-velocity

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this thanks to [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=crashoverdrive](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=crashoverdrive) via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9654556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9654556)</comment>


Carver Mead's Natural Inspiration - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/infotech/13755/?a=f

<comment><AUTHOR> A PDF copy of the interview that was on Tech Review: <http://www.lloydwatts.com/carver_MIT_2004.pdf>

A longer 1996 interview with Mead can be found at Caltech's oral archives: <http://oralhistories.library.caltech.edu/133/></comment>


No, 68% of Americans Do Not Think a Vaccine Is Needed Before Returning to Normal - <AUTHOR> https://arcdigital.media/no-68-of-americans-do-not-think-a-vaccine-is-needed-before-returning-to-normal-life-b0762e1223dc <comment><USER2> But surely, it doesn't matter what most people think, only what the experienced professionals do?

<comment><USER3> In theory people are the ones with power in a democracy</comment></comment>


Should You Join a Startup? The Answer Is Increasingly Yes - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/09/05/should-you-join-a-startup-the-answer-is-increasingly-yes

<comment><USER2> While I like the article, a couple of things stood out for me.

 _"…the investors are likely to want to pull you to another rocketing startup."_

I think this is only true if you actually get to interact with the investors and information is shared. If not, there's no reason the investors know you apart from anyone else.

 _"Oh, and you might also get rich while at it by being one of the early employees with options to show for it. But consider that only as an extra gravy on top."_

This has been discussed a lot recently and folks should also read the related HN threads. IMHO startups should not really be saying this kind of stuff. It's a little disingenuous. Previous HN thread <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2958766>

</comment><comment><USER3> _"There's really a myriad of reasons, but the unintuitive answer to the ' which one is more secure job' question is increasingly the startup."_

It's just plain wrong to be saying things like this - working at a startup is fun, exciting & you learn a ton - but don't encourage people to ignore the risks they take.

If you join an early startup there is always a risk - I had a friend who signed on as a 5th employee, found an apartment in California (he was from the east coast) and made a down payment on it - after which they told him the company was going to shut down and cancelled his offer without so much as covering his down payment.

There are very real risks that you take on joining an early stage company (which is where you learn the most) - so please, don't ignore the risks. Don't bet everything on success - start ups fail, and fail often. Make sure you can afford to lose, if the risk you take doesn't pan out.

 _"The investors are likely to want to pull you to another rocketing startup."_

Don't blindly bet on the investors pulling you into another startup - if it happens, you're a lucky individual, but more often than not, you'll be on your own.

EDIT: typos

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. Startups are bets. You may win or you may lose.

I think the point is that the upside is huge, although unlikely. While failure, the more likely path, still means you learn a lot and make a lot of great contacts that can help you with the next venture.

IMHO, as long as you don't bet too big (if you lose your job for a month you lose your house), the risk is well worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Based on my HNducation, I'd say this one is a bit too pollyannaish (as in, "even if we fail, it'll be grrrreat!").</comment>


Apply HN: Grid – let the AI choose your date - <AUTHOR> A Grid is an infinite matrix of people.
Users connect their social profiles and the Grid will analyze activities and co-relate them with people who have similar activities.
Everyone in adjacent grid are people with similar activities on social networks and you can choose and ping them for a date or whatever. You cannot ping a person outside 8 x 8 of your grid. But you can ask recommendation or suggestions to reach that grid by sending an interest.
From inside Its an engine to compare two people activities across different social networks to figure out how common they are.
It may give suggestions to improve your social skills to reach a particular grid.
(Just an idea.) <comment><USER2> Dating? Don't men and women tend to do different things? Won't men get paired with a small subset of woman who like doing manly things, and women with a small subset of men who likes doing womenly things?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that is a good point.

So the idea here is not to match "Everything". Choose your field of interest (Movies, Hobbies, Sports, Politics, Art, Travel, etc etc). Here I assume that people don't talk about only Football (for instance) when they are on a date with someone. However I agree that people may not (now that I think of it) talk about everything in public, but it is not impossible to co-relate persona based on past history of interactions.

If We allow only 64 male and 64 female at first they all have no choice but to see all others ( even there the profiles are nearer to you, if they are a good match )

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > You cannot ping a person outside 8 x 8 of your grid

There are probably more than 64 people in the whole world I'm compatible with. Is this cycled? Can you explain more, maybe I misunderstand.

<comment><AUTHOR> At this moment depending on all of your social activity (location, tweets, fb updates, comments, photos etc), there are 63 (last one is you!)similar minded people. Of course you don't want to date all of them :-)</comment></comment>