HyperNormalisation (2016) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://thoughtmaybe.com/hypernormalisation/ <comment><USER2> The closing arguments of this documentary, where the author brings the timeframe to _the present_ , that talk about the reinforcement of content across groups in social networks, are incredibly poignant and relevant to the 'fake news' effect that currently sits at the forefront of the media's attention.

It's scary how, as social networks' power gains more influence and accuracy, the lens through which we view content on the web will be narrowed and focussed. So much so, that coupled with the above 'fake news', is responsible for members of the public 'only seeing what they would want to see' \- and not questioning the credibility of the source material.

We, as technologists, must work hard to strive towards an objective web. I think that fake news is just the beginning of a _veil of blurriness_ that will flow over internet content.

It therefore strikes me as surprising that Facebook has started a 'flagging' system for fake content[0] — when it relies on the above positive feedback loops of users with shared interests.

[0] - [http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38827101/how- facebook-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38827101/how-facebook-is- starting-to-tackle-fake-news-in-your-news-feed)

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why everyone is going around talking about 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' and these other stupid terms. They're called _lies_ and _misinformation_ and _propaganda_. Call them what they are.

<comment><USER2> I agree, and I can't imagine how much Chomsky is cringing about it right now[0]. But the sad truth is that psychological phenomena only become identifiable by the general public once they've entered our lexicon under catchy names, i.e. 'fake news'.

I recently help but couldn't feel confused why 'fake news' is a new concept to people; why is everyone going on about it when (as you say) we've been subject to propaganda for as long as we can remember?

I think it largely comes down to social media and how (as other commenters have pointed out) its utterly widespread use only now warrants the spread of misinformation as 'propaganda' — because it reaches so many people these days. The Internet™ was — to a layman — seen as ubiquitous with truth and objectivity... and now that it suddenly (well, duh) transpires that our social network feeds are chock-full of misleading content from untrustworthy sources — everyone's going nuts about it.

[0] - [http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/noam-chomsky-you-cant- educat...](http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/noam-chomsky-you-cant-educate- yourself-by-looking-things-up-online_partner/)

\--Edit, added Chomsky source, as _proof-of-cringe_

<comment><USER4> > I recently help but couldn't feel confused why 'fake news' is a new concept > to people; why is everyone going on about it when (as you say) we've been > subject to propaganda for as long as we can remember?

See "Yellow Journalism" for the late 1890s as an example. This country has literally been dealing with "fake news" since the invention of the printing press.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is about the most depressing 2+ hours of docu I've watched in the last few years, but simply because this is all stuff we kinda knew already but in a disjointed way presented in one hit..

It contains many thoughts/things that I (and I suspect 'we') have had about where we are, and how we got here, but seeing them altogether in one condensed form was quite hard to take in. It's rather hard to hear our story in this form.. I'll give it another watch soon.

For all the feelings of helplessness it inspires, I highly rate it and would suggest it to anyone. It's on iPlayer (for the brits here) for the next 200 days or something...

I really hope we are not running out of people like Adam Curtis, I'm not really sure of anyone else producing content like this which is so accessible -- would love to hear any suggestions on more content like this besides chomsky and dan carlin's podcast which are my other two favourite opinion content i put beside this in my virtual bookshelf :}

tl;dr -- watch it, but be forewarned you can't 'unwatch' it and, at least for me, it can be a bit much to deal with in one go.

<comment><USER6> I found it one part hopelessness and one part empowerment. The dream of the internet isn't gone yet and we're still the early pioneers and settlers. We have a lot of work to do but the field of power is wide open to us, if we choose to take it.

Fantastic documentary. Curtis is a genius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great interview with Adam Curtis (HyperNormalisation's creator) on _Chapo Trap House_ (a leftist comedy podcast which has been my primary source of sanity since November 8th):

[https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-65-no- future...](https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-65-no-future-feat- adam-curtis-121216)

<comment><USER8> I wonder how many gray wolves there are on HN.

<comment><USER9> This thing of turning fan bases into named tribes weirds me out. Yet another sign most people just want a club to belong to, and actual principles don't matter.

<comment><USER10> For what it's worth, Chapo's use of "Gray Wolves" is dripping with irony, and was coined with conscious and deliberate awareness of exactly what you're accusing it of.

The "real" Gray Wolves are the paramilitary youth wing of a Turkish ethnic- nationalist party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hypernormalization isn't really Adam Curtis's best work. It felt really rushed and not as well argued.

On the other hand "Century of Self", "The Trap", and "All Watched Over By The Machines Of Loving Grace" are much better and should be required watching in the data and socio-economics communities.

All three cover the the same idea about how simplification of complex societal behavior for modeling purposes has been confused for an actual explaination of behavior, and how this confusion has forced people to behave as if the simplification is reality. He specifically deals with at times the idea of a rational market with perfect information which runs counter to behavior economics studies.

To make my own comical example, recall the story of the farmer that writes to the physics department and gets back a study that presumes a spherical cow. Instead of dismissing it, the farmer then goes about building stalls for spherical cows, because that's what the study says. Then cattle breeders start breeding cows to maximize their spherical properties.

</comment><comment><USER12> Adam Curtis has a history of making these films. Worth also checking out his 2002 film 'the century of the self'.

Wikipedia on Adam Curtis: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis)

The century of the self on youtube: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s)

Other films of his are also on archive.org

<comment><USER13> More films available from OP's website: [https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam- curtis/](https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/)

<comment><USER5> I had no idea these were freely available. Thanks and then doublethanks to whoever is behind thoughtmaybe.com...

<comment><USER14> You can see the videos on thoughtmaybe are BBC watermarked. AFAIK, the BBC never released them outside the UK, although this is mainly due to copyright and the special provisions the BBC has inside the UK that enables them to produce such high quality material. So while they may be "freely" available, I doubt it's legal. I'm not sure how much the BBC cares about enforcement.

<comment><USER15> adam curtis has implied (in the chapo interview linked in this discussion, i think) that he encourages the bbc to/has an agreement with them to avoid taking down uploads of his films

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who finds these Adam Curtis "documentaries" pretty manipulative? They seem to reassure and reinforce everybody in their view on the world. I recently watched Steve Bannons "documentary" "Generation Zero" which works pretty similarly. The difference seems to be that it's meant to reassure the other side of the political spectrum.

When you disagree with such movies it's probably easier not to get sucked in too much into the narrative style, so you can separate manipulation and stated facts easier.

<comment><USER17> Do you find opinionated essays by persuasive writers to be "manipulative"? I view Adam Curtis documentaries as "intellectual essays in film/narrative form".

There is another kind of documentary, e.g. the Ken Burns style, that seems to take no position, similar to a piece of journalism. This is simply a different style of documentary.

You should check out Werner Herzog's "Lo and Behold", which may be at the center point of these two styles. In that film, Herzog is clearly stating a point of view, but the visual structure -- its scenes, setup, cinematography, and structure -- borrows from the journalistic style. If you put these three styles on a spectrum, perhaps then you will find the style itself isn't worth debating, just as George Orwell vs Jorge Luis Borges may have been writers of very different styles, but very (nonetheless) interesting content.

<comment><USER16> > Do you find opinionated essays by persuasive writers to be "manipulative"

To be honest: Yes. I kind of avoid columns for that reason. I get very little out of that kind of stuff. The same goes for those lengthy "long read" opinion pieces that have come into fashion. They're basically just very long columns.

<comment><USER17> Well, that is certainly a valid personal taste!

But, I think the term "manipulative" suggests Curtis is somehow being "dishonest" in his filmmaking. I find that instead he's trying to craft an intellectual argument which may lead you to rethink things. In this film, the suggestion is that eroding at the nature of truth can lead to many in society feeling numb to current events, because they cannot trust what is "real" and what is "theater". The result might be fatalism/apathy. This is an interesting thought and, in my view, very relevant to our world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really enjoyed this documentary when I saw it, and also ended up watching Bitter Lake and (half of) Century of the Self. The concepts were quite bold and the seemed nearly-self-evident. But then I asked myself, "so why am I just only now hearing about all this?" as a heuristic of the measure of the sufficient strength of supporting evidence.

It dawned upon me that some of the techniques of desire- manufacturing/advertising that used psychological techniques, as mentioned in _Century of the Self_ , were also used to compel the viewer about the curated historical web of causality. And I really think that Hanlon's razor supplants to much of the powers that be mentioned movie.

I almost feel like this movie really displays the _enouement_ of neoliberalism: nothing ever changes in this world any more (thus we're near "the end of history"), we're stuck in a massive deadlocked monetary system that has only "unrealistic" alternatives, "humanitarian interventions" in conflicts are necessary crusades and we cede that they _may_ have the same power dynamics of imperial invasions but since they are done in the name of freedom and democracy they are to be absolved for their ambitions, and so on. I think that in that regard, the documentary falls short of exploring things that are subversive to hegemony.

I was unsatisfied with the idea of watching a powerful documentary about hypernormalisation without searching for a critical explanation of the hypernormalisation of the documentary maker, too. Here's one such: That said, I did genuinely enjoy the movie and appreciate that it inspired me to reflect on modern history.

To counterbalance Curtis' fairly conservative view of modernity, this talk by the late Mark Fisher is really good: the slow cancellation of the future [1]

[0] [http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/adam- curtiss-e...](http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/adam-curtiss- essential-counterhistories)

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

<comment><USER19> I agree. Curtis gets the facts right for the most part, and the movie is very interesting for historical learning, but the connections he draws and the cause-and-effect relationships he posits are very tenuous. It's one of those "take what you like and leave the rest" type of documentaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If anyone wants to hear more from the creator, he was on an episode of Chapo Trap House and they interviewed him about this film:

[https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-65-no- future...](https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-65-no-future-feat- adam-curtis-121216)

<comment><USER8> He stumbles onto something quite interesting at the end of the interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_R98EBO7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_R98EBO7s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> From history - KGB propagandist Yuri Bezmenov talks about normalisation in context of subversion - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g) (1983, LA)

<comment><USER22> There are so many parallels to what Yuri is talking about here, to plausible explanations behind the actions of and sentiment that elected Trump's administration, and some of the views of some of Trump's seemingly strange bedfellows such as Milo Yiannopoulos. If Trump was eloquent, this might be what he sounds like.

Yuri, in 1983, says that it takes 15-20 years to subvert a society. An undertone to his whole argument implied that the West was already at least partially subverted, and in motion even then.

<comment><USER23> It's interesting how people immediately assume only the Republicans/right/whatever are the deluded ones.

Note that these aren't tremendous sources, I'm only providing some historical facts because the narrative has been completely lost.

Bill Clinton built a wall, and kept out immigrants. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZXbG5gvoC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZXbG5gvoC0)

Bill Clinton fought against welfare and the nanny state: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/the- wor...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/the-worst-thing- bill-clinton-has-done/376797/)

Bill Clinton bombed countries on a hair trigger and created enemies overseas: [http://www.ornery.org/essays/2001-01-26-1.html](http://www.ornery.org/essays/2001-01-26-1.html)

The fatal flaw in Curtis' documentary, and in most people who view it, is they think only Republicans suffer from hypernormalization. BOTH parties are guilty, and yes it's going to keep getting worse even if we have a D beside the president's name. Go back and watch The West Wing and see how long it takes until they're justifying the murder of innocent people in the middle east.

<comment><USER15> I don't really think that Hypernormalisation is as partisan as you suggest - in fact, listen to the Chapo Trap House interview people are linking to here. He is extremely critical of the Democrats/centrists that trade as "the left" and goes to lengths to explain how culpable they are for the current dumpster fire we're experiencing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From my experience as a programmer and a musician I find it odd that Curtis advocates the need for a big vision to bring about real change. In other words, he urges people to do top down planning.

My impression is that working bottom-up is more suited for solving complex problems with many unknowns. Sure, many undertakings, like the Arab Spring, failed. And this is hardly surprising because a lot of success depends on happy accidents which you can't expect to happen. But bottom up "miracles" like modern computer technology or new musical genres do happen. Otoh, from the top of my head, I don't remember a single complex problem with many unknowns that was (successfully) solved with top-down planning.

Ironically, LSD (which apparently inspired Curtis a lot) is another classic example for this. It failed miserably at what it was intended to do but turned out to be a happy accident for other purposes.

<comment><USER25> Not sure how much it is top down planning, and how much it is someone that can stake out some point on the proverbial horizon and hold the rest of the group on course towards it, all while they are doing their individual tasks etc.

Think of it like the Kennedy speech about going to the moon with in a certain date. That sets the point on the horizon to steer towards by declaring a vision. Then it is up to the larger group to figure out just how to get there while faced with various obstacles etc en-route.

A good captain declares the course, but trust his crew to get them there without him micromanaging every detail.

<comment><USER24> That's a reasonable objection. I still think that whether or not positive change happens is regardless of whether or not there is a vision highly dependent on happy accidents (including change in external circumstances).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Speaking of fake news, the video repeats the claim from the time of the Iran- Iraq war that Iran sent 95,000 schoolchildren to walk over minefields and detonate mines with their bodies.

Given that Iranians are human beings and therefore, evil Islamists or not, must have similar emotions towards their offspring as other human beings, I find that claim about as believable as the stories of German soldiers eating babies in WWI [1] which is to say, not at all.

Unfortunately after hearing that I find it very hard to believe anything else in that video.

_______________

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda#World_War_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda#World_War_I)

</comment><comment><USER27> It's timely this should come up as I've been on a bit of an Adam Curtis binge lately, having recently watched half of HyperNormalisation and then the entirety of the 'The Power Of Nightmares' series. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of his work.

One question I have for those that have seen his stuff - a recurring criticism I see of Curtis' work is that he states his opinions as if they are historical facts and heavily editorialises, leaving out important chunks of history because they don't support the view he's trying to push.

Are these accurate criticisms? I don't want to feel like I'm learning about history when in actuality I'm being fed something that's inaccurate (thanks 'King of Kong' for ruining my trust in documentaries, but I digress!). For example after watching 'The Power Of Nightmares' I feel like I know much more about what was going on in the world of geopolitics in the 80s and 90s, but I'd hate to think that I've just picked up a series of falsehoods (doubt this is the case though).

<comment><USER28> I treat Adam Curtis (or any other documentary maker) as a source of ideas for further research, but with a heavy pinch of salt.

His work is designed to ping the same sense of delight in being party to a secret that motivates conspiracy theorists.

<comment><USER15> His films often make me feel as if i'm listening to the Feeding of the 5000 [1] for the first time again

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKAHU5-pS_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKAHU5-pS_A)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, I got to the point where Blackrock builds a giant supercomputer called Aladdin that can predict the future and, well, now I understand exactly what kind of video I've been watching.

So that's an hour and twenty minutes of my time on this lonely Earth wasted watching the modern equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or the Illuminati trilogy but, like, for serious. I should have watched BSG reruns instead.

</comment><comment><USER29> till last year i was thinking of getting a visa and trying my luck in the valley. now it seems (having learned more about america) that a significant part of the population thinks science is a liberal hoax, thinks the government and media is constantly lying, carries assault rifles and believes shit like pizzagate is not only plausible but true.

<comment><USER30> America is much more diverse than other countries - the valley, New York, etc are very different than the deep south.

<comment><USER31> Even regions that seem homogeneous from the outside are highly varied, like the deep south. Travel the interstates and highways in Georgia, and you'll mostly find the same kinds of things and people who, at worst, silently judge you. Get off the interstate/highway, and every little town has its own unique structure, culture, lore, and tolerances for outsiders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "History may not repeat itself but it does rhyme..." Some guy, last century

Are there really no parallels for popular opinion straying significantly from established facts and resulting in irrational behaviour before natural correction...? Are the South Sea Bubble and the Cold War not two such such examples of this?

<comment><USER32> In considering our time more pivotal than any before, are we not guilty of the same sensationalism and irrational behaviour that this film observes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The Wikipedia page provides a pretty decent summary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation)

</comment><comment><USER34> Also downloadable from here: [https://archive.org/details/HyperNormalisation](https://archive.org/details/HyperNormalisation)

</comment><comment><USER35> I enjoyed watching this but it felt a bit disjointed in comparison to his other productions.. almost as though he had ton of clips left over from his other documentaries that he didn't want to go to waste. The style remains eminently watchable though and the parts on social media were real head in the hands, 'what have we built?' moments for me.

Great soundtrack again too.

</comment><comment><USER36> Watching this documentary was a really unsettling experience. The subversion of information has become so institutionalized, and common people are so accepting of it, that it is hard to even think about how we can escape it. My only logical conclusion is that things will continue to get worse as people get more and more distant from the truth. Perhaps a new dark ages.

</comment><comment><USER37> "No one has any vision for a better future" ( first minute of the film)

thanks for making the wrong premise explicit and not have us waste our time.</comment>


Steps to save webOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2011/08/twelve_steps_fo.html

<comment><USER2> I've published a Dropbox client for webOS written in Mojo, the previous webOS framework, and have started an Enyo rewrite for the Touchpad. I have an opinion from both a consumer side and the developer side.

1\. Somebody should wake up and take RIM's lunch, not Apple's. Build a thin candy bar webOS device with an excellent keyboard and a decently sized screen. Palm went all in on the Pre form factor instead of Pixi, which I maintain was their biggest mistake to date.

2\. Deliver on the webOS promise to developers. Mojo wasn't it. Surprisingly, Enyo is! My hat is off to the Enyo guys.

"Just use jQuery" is the new "just use RegEx." I loooove jQuery, but it doesn't really help you in managing a huge application. There is a reason why people use backbone.js, knockout.js, javascriptmvc, and the like, in addition to jQuery.

Enyo lets you assemble your apps from components. I'd be the first to say that my bs meter went live when I heard that. 99% of the time, "its modular" is an empty promise. However, for version one, Enyo is bang on. I'll be honest though, the thought "another fucking framework..." _has_ crossed my mind in frustration.

Yet, I am staring at my webOS mobile app running in Chrome right now -- inspector working and all -- and it's like staring into the future. _This_ is the way mobile apps are meant to be built. _This_ was the promise.

This brings me back to the article re: packaging. I package this enyo app in a second's time and it's up running the same code on the device or emulator, and it all feels native to the OS. As long as the code is the same, I don't care if you package it in a cup cake.

Enyo is actually a very good idea. All they have to do is give it an appropriate, free to use without restriction, license.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't TouchPad come with built-in DropBox integration? I haven't tried it, but at least DropBox was in the accounts list.

Agreed that Enyo is cool. Reminds me a lot about QML: [http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/qdeclarativeintroductio...](http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7-snapshot/qdeclarativeintroduction.html) ...especially with Qt Quick Components: [http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2010/09/10/building-the-future- rein...](http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2010/09/10/building-the-future- reintroducing-the-qt-quick-components/)

Actually, I wonder how hard it would be to either:

1\. Map Enyo to QML so that webOS apps could be run elsewhere

2\. Make QML run under Enyo, so webOS could have apps from other systems

<comment><USER2> I was actually thinking QML too when I started using Enyo. There is a huge difference though, QML is yet another language. "We should totally reinvent CSS and HTML!" If I had a nickel for every time that happened...

The difficulty of running QML on a webOS device, or Enyo apps on Android or iOS, is not technical. It's more about look and feel. One glance into Qt code (not QML, Qt proper) and you can see how painful it is to make a single app look native across platforms.

Here is where I think Enyo has potential. It should be possible to style Enyo for different platforms AND to easily include components that implement OS specific behaviors and paradigms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is webOS open source? Presumably not yet, or I would have seen it ported to more devices by now?

Its fans would be insane to pour effort into saving a platform which is controlled by some completely-disinterested corporate entity. Any platform with significant closed-source components requires caution and compromise, but signing on to webOS is like a death wish at this point unless you _own_ the thing.

 _Instead, make sure that enthusiastic users can spread your apps by themselves — directly from phone to phone without any centralised system._

I hear they invite kids to Defcon now. Maybe one of the third graders can give a talk about the problems with this idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Sell the division formerly known as Palm (including webOS) to Facebook

2\. Profit!

It would make a lot of sense for facebook to turn webos into the facebook mobile platform, making canvas apps first class citizens and tightly integrating facebook into the OS. The Palm acquisition would come with Palm's hardware engineers (HP hasn't fired them yet, right?), which would allow Faecbook to design their own hardware and outsource manufacturing to CM's.

Designing their own hardware would allow for a less powerful, less expensive device to have as good a user experience as the mid-range Android devices. Remember the PSP? It had a 200mhz MIPS cpu and 32mb of ram. The reason why it felt so powerful is that it was a known quantity to developers, so they could make assumptions that wouldn't be violated when a new device came out. That low price would allow the Facebook phone to play in the low end of the market, which is mostly currently populated by feature phones. And being able to run Facebook canvas apps natively would provide thousands of applications right out of the gate.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Ditch Enyo. No more messing around with your own frameworks and stuff. > Writing them is fun, but web developers don't want to learn yet another > framework. The framework wars are over, and jQuery is the winner.

jQuery is not a framework...

I agree generally but I don't think he takes it far enough. If Enyo is just a js framework like Cappuccino or Backbone.js then the first thing they have to do is open source Enyo. I should be able to run an Enyo app on iOS or Android or Fennec or whatever.

Next they need to drop their packaging mechanism and embrace Open Web Apps[1].

Next they need to allow non-Enyo js apps to be packaged and installed as "native" apps.

Doing these things would put WebOS on footing with other competitor "web oses", specifically ChromeOS and Boot to Gecko. Except that WebOS would have beaten them to the punch on having a mobile UI perfect for multitasking web apps.

[1]<https://apps.mozillalabs.com/>

<comment><USER7> You can already use jQuery, and you can package non-Enyo apps to submit and install as "native" already. A good number of both webOS 1.x, 2.x, and 3.x apps do this because of the familiarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not sure that the author has written an app with Enyo before coming up with a plan to save WebOS (Quick tutorial: [https://developer.palm.com/content/resources/develop/extende...](https://developer.palm.com/content/resources/develop/extended_enyo_tutorial.html))

The SDK for Enyo doesn't force you to do anything. To build an app with Enyo, you need: 1) A WebKit browser for testing 2) A copy of Enyo's CSS and JS on your file system No required text editors or anything else.

Also in the SDK is a virtual machine that runs WebOS for testing or if you use Palm services that aren't supported in just WebKit. There are some simple command-line tools to package and install an Enyo app on the emulator or a device, and some tools to open a shell on a WebOS device or emulator

</comment><comment><USER9> Most interesting bit in this article for me was the advice to woo web developers and not mobile app developers. Seems like a tactic that could win, assuming webOS lives on (unlikely). There are tons of web developers who didn't make the jump to mobile who would love the chance to experiment with mobile without completely throwing out the years of web knowledge they have earned.

<comment><USER7> This was the tactic all along in theory; the idea that web developers could immediately leverage their existing skills into the mobile space.

In reality, though, they never really focused on driving this point IMO, deferring to their own "webOS Meetups" and sending representatives to mobile conferences when they should have been sending their developer relations reps and evangelists to web development conferences such as An Event Apart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >The fates of Motorola and of Palm itself show that the days of US-centric mobile strategies are over.

One could argue that part of Nokia's demise was that they had no US market penetration. If they had, it would've given them enough time for MeeGo to be ready.

There was an article on TechCrunch about a year ago (I don't have the link) asking why European startups were having such a difficult time being successful in other countries. The argument by the writer is that Europe was too broken up; there were differing laws from country to country and that it took too long to become dominant. The US is an easy market to target because it has a large population that mostly speaks one language. Today it still controls 25% of the smartphone market. I would expect a country like China to become a leader (over Europe) as well for the same reasons.

WebOS could still become successful but only if it's open sourced. This may or may not be in HP's best interests though. It's quite possible that Samsung would choose it over Bada and HTC over Brew.

</comment><comment><USER11> > I've been thinking a lot about the future of webOS, and have decided it does > have one, maybe even a glorious one, provided the new owner or licensee > reaches out to web developers, as Palm should have done back in 2009.

I think the most likely new owner if HP sells will be Google, Microsoft, or Apple. They will be buying for the patents and will have no interest in doing anything with WebOS.

HP could try to sell WebOS separate from the patent portfolio, but no sane entity would buy unless the sale included some kind of permanent license to any of the Palm patents that WebOS implements. Such a license would would lower the market value of the patent portfolio, so I don't see much chance of HP doing that.

If Google, Apple, or Microsoft fail to buy the Palm IP, then maybe there is a chance. Perhaps one of the non-Motorola Android phone makers might be interested in diversifying--they can't be too happy with Google buying Motorola's phone business. Samsung would be a good candidate.

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. The webOS app format needs to change away from the custom webOS framework (with its own directory layout etc.) to a single index.html (that can link to wherever and include any resources via HTML 5 app cache).

2\. First class support for IndexedDB and quota management, with performance on mobile at least an order of magnitude faster than desktop Chrome or Firefox. It may sound unthinkable but the Chrome and Firefox IDB implementations are at present rather buggy and slow.

3\. Excellent Javascript interfaces to device hardware.

4\. Bundler to enable any app targeting webOS device-specific apis to run natively on iPhone or Android.

5\. Sell the printer division, it's distracted HP from making a technical contribution for too long already.

<comment><USER2> Most of your points are already covered.

1\. You could do this from day one. You didn't have to include Mojo or any other device specific framework. index.html was enough (you would also need appinfo.json for metadata and packaging.) With Enyo, even if you use the framework, there is no longer a need for any specific directory structure.

2\. They have CouchDB (really not sure, it is a JSON object store though) running and accessible to all apps via a service bridge. This db is also backed up to the cloud for when user restores or changes devices.

3\. Same service bridge. Which is nothing more than an AJAX call to a specific url.

4\. They already run in Chrome with Enyo. With Enyo, I think this is actually possible.

5\. Or keep it as a huge source of revenue. Nobody but HP's marketing dept wants webOS on printers though, I'll give you that. Think John Deere acquiring Ferrari and putting their engines into lawn mowers, because "it's the logical thing to do."

I'll add 6.

6\. You can write your own Node.js services that are accessible via the same service bridge mechanism.

webOS is the mobile OS we should be cheering for to survive. It is slightly ahead of the curve and is about to be killed off. The news about Mozila WebAPI are an indicator.

<comment><USER6> If Enyo is open-sourced we can decouple the webos device APIs from the framework so you can plug-in the Mozilla WebAPIs or Phonegap APIs if so desired.

<comment><USER13> Enyo already has hooks to run on PhoneGap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if HP is trying to sell Palm/their mobile division or not, but they should. They've just pushed out all of their WebOS devices into the market (at a big loss), so now people are actually using their OS, which makes it much more valuable to a prospective buyer than it was a week ago. There was a huge frenzy over Touch Pads, sure it's only because it was cheap, but at least people are using it now. I don't think HP should continue making them, but it wouldn't be such a bad buy for another company.

</comment><comment><USER15> The organizational and cultural changes needed to implement this list of steps are enormous. _Massive_. I really don't see how they could every become reality while managed by a company like HP.

Changing software is _easy_. Changing a business is damn hard, doing it overnight straight out impossible.

I doubt the OP realises what he's asking.

<comment><USER16> From TFA:

> _I … have decided [webOS] does have [a future], maybe even a glorious one, > provided the ɴᴇᴡ ᴏᴡɴᴇʀ ᴏʀ ʟɪᴄᴇɴsᴇᴇ reaches out to web developers…_

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Won't work. In order for WebOS to avoid being the next AmigaDOS it needs to displace either iOS or Android. It's not a question of quality. It's a question of how much the market will tolerate another proprietary player.

<comment><USER18> What do you mean.. Workbench 4.0 is coming out any day now! ;) Seriously, reading the quirksmode article thoughts of AmigaDOS kept running through my mind...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I didn't know much about writing apps on webOS so I found this recent video on using JavaScript in Enyo and Node.js

<http://vimeo.com/25762560>

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't have much hope for webOS, even if it becomes open sourced it will end up as a toy OS without major financial backing and support.

</comment><comment><USER21> re 11) In my experience, Palm hands out WebOS devices like candy; I know very few people who have a WebOS device, in fact, who didn't get one free from Palm because they had expressed a vague interest in developing for the platform.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is much exactly what Blackberry has done with the Playbook, yet I'd prefer to have a native development kit available, ASAP.

<comment><USER7> On webOS, there's already the PDK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have to disagree with him about Enyo. Writing Enyo, and writing jQuery, I have to say writing Enyo is orders of magnitude more pleasant. Maybe they should also have jQuery in there, and several other libraries just to give developers familiar tools. But Enyo, beats jQuery no doubt when it comes to writing applications.

If HP would allow Enyo outside of webOS, I'm sure many many web developers would agree.

Also, I don't see what he means when he says don't force SDKs. I develop the exact same way he describes no problem.

And his suggestion to distribute using bluetooth... OK?

For #10, does Android even have a method of first accepting apps via bluetooth from non-Android phones and then opening the browser to those apps? By the way, Enyo apps run just fine in the Android browser, but he is eager to throw Enyo out anyway.

For #11, dude must not have noticed there is a firesale going on, not only the Touchpad, but also the phones.

He makes some good points, but it just seems to me that he didn't really think things through before writing that post.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure the people calling for "ditch Enyo" have any idea just how much fun it can be to use or how easy it is to build apps that easily change the appearance based on the size of the device it's on. Think fragments in Android, but with HTML/JS. It's quite neat.</comment>


Other Android Languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/07/28/Ruby-and-Python-on-Android <comment><USER2> I would like to use Objective-c so I can leverage most of the iPhone code and libraries I have. I know it's looked down upon but I have become productive in objective-c.

<comment><USER3> The problem is not Objective C but the classes that compose the iOS framework.

Perhaps the GNUStep people could help porting some (or you could help them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting twist to this, although technically not what he stated were the objectives, are tools like Phonegap and Titanium: you write HTML and JS that gets wrapped up in webkit and it works like a "real" Android (and iPhone) app. But as I said, nowhere near as low level as he wanted.

There is also a Ruby-based project but I can't remember its name.

<comment><USER5> The ruby based project would most likely be Rhomobile Rhodes.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's it. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hecl runs ok on Android, although he talks about Python and Ruby, so that excludes us. Oh well...

<comment><USER7> Yes the article is a bit blinkered especially when _Perl, Lua, BeanShell, JavaScript, Tcl, and shell_ are already available options on Android (along with Python & JRuby): <http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/>

<comment><USER8> He talks about this specifically.

"JRuby also appears in Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A), formerly the Android Scripting Environment, of which more later."

"But maybe we're barking up the wrong tree; both Python and Ruby are written in C and run well on Linux boxes, which is what Android devices are. In fact CPython has already been ported to Android as part of SL4A; I can't imagine that Ruby would be that much harder. Also, I'm confident that they'd start up quickly and run acceptably fast."

"SL4A · Whatever the right answer is, some of the work done in what we used to call the Android Scripting Environment will surely go into it. They're not trying to solve the same problem I am; they want to empower people to knock off little scripts right there on the phone; which is interesting, but I want to write big substantial Android apps using the nice tools on my computer with effortless built-in access to all those nice Android APIs. ¶

But they've cracked some very nontrivial porting nuts and figured out one instructive way to expose Android's APIs to whatever programming language comes along."

<comment><USER7> Yes thats why I put Python & JRuby in brackets. But there was no mention about any of the other languages already working on Android as part of the SL4A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder why Google chose Java in the first place, instead of a Python runtime...

<comment><USER10> Wasn't Android developed by another company that was then later acquired by Google?

[http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2005/tc200...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2005/tc20050817_0949_tc024.htm)

At the time, most mobile phone dev was done in Java (and probably still is today). It seems natural to want to leverage those developers for the new OS rather than have them learn a whole new skillset.

<comment><USER9> duh. you're right; I forgot about that.

impressive then that in such a short period of time, Infinite Loop got so many people to develop in an "obscure" language/SDK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to use Javascript to code for Android.

<comment><USER12> You can already do this using Rhino, but it isn't a huge win without idiomatic library wrappers that make the Android Java APIs a little less Java-ish.

<comment><USER13> And, hopefully, a little less c-ish at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've gotten scala to work on the simulator and on a nexus one. It was an enormously painful process, with many sets of contradictory and outdated walkthroughs on the net and clearly very little people actually getting this to work.</comment>


The Heretic - <AUTHOR> http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?nopager=1 <comment><USER2> Note to mods: if you're going to killfile climateprogress, you really ought to killfile this rag.</comment>


A FaaS for Converting Your Google Forms into an API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/akaamitgupta/honeypie <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks, I have been working on a service which converts Google Forms into API so that we can grab all validation errors easily in JSON format.

Let me know if you guys find it useful and interesting.</comment>


How I Cracked a Keylogger and Ended Up in Someone's Inbox - <AUTHOR> https://www.trustwave.com/Resources/SpiderLabs-Blog/How-I-Cracked-a-Keylogger-and-Ended-Up-in-Someone-s-Inbox/ <comment><USER2> Website that we were running was under DDOS couple of years ago, what we did is we took ips of servers that made ddos. Then we scanned the ports, found vulnerability in the application that was running on it then get into the server using this vulnerability. We checked open connections and found one used for command and control server (irc server) then we listened to irc channel. DDOSers were talking private things on that channel... Then we entered their channel and disabled all their bots using their own software that we got source from link pasted on their channel. Then we confronted them, period of silence after they have read what we wrote was priceless. They never ddosed us again.

<comment><USER3> I've had a very similar experience – I'm surprised I'm not the only one who did that.

I'd have expected the DDoSers to have better security

<comment><USER4> Botnets have notoriously bad security. Many of the people running them have no technical knowledge and/or are using "cracked" versions of paid botnet software that are backdoored or intentionally left unsecured. A lot of the software is heavily modified or even left incomplete by the person that leaked it, leading to vulnerabilities open to anybody with some technical competence and the time to poke around a little.

<comment><USER5> Unrelated to this discussion, I must compliment you on your chosen handle. I used a variation of that back in the day during Half-Life and early Counter- Strike. Zero and everything hehe. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks to domaintools.com - I also found that the guy (firstname.lastname@example.com) used to own domain: bdmtsteel.com

I also find similarities between above domain and these: transitoin-asia.com seabunker.net

See this: [http://imgur.com/tsxqwiQ](http://imgur.com/tsxqwiQ)

If someone wants to do more research - would be fun to dig deeper.

<comment><USER7> Good research. Can I ask what you used to make that graphic?

<comment><USER8> I'd also like to know the answer to this question! :)

<comment><USER6> Sure, I used Maltego (commercial version + commercial domaintools access): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltego](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltego) (although Maltego also has a free version).

I love domaintools as it allows to find anything by anything. Like domains (current and historical) by email, or even by fragment of registrant information, such as by phone number or by zip code.

<comment><USER9> For those without domaintools commercial accounts... [http://viewdns.info/reversewhois/?q=seemaexports3%40gmail.co...](http://viewdns.info/reversewhois/?q=seemaexports3%40gmail.com)

<comment><USER10> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is the header sticky for anyone else? It seems to take up ~30% of my screen (Windows 7, Chrome Stable) [0].

[0] [http://puu.sh/pNYUH/d42d8395fc.jpg](http://puu.sh/pNYUH/d42d8395fc.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Same on Chrome & Safari on Mac, but didn't notice it while reading, only when I read your comment :)

<comment><USER13> Same here, just noticed upon rechecking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've done this a few times for fun, simply search YouTube for a "game code generator" or something like that, take your pick, download their magic "tool" from the link in the video description and get disassembling with ILSpy [1]. A ton of these "account stealers" are written in VB.NET and seem to be generated from a template. Remember to stay safe and use a sandbox or virtual machine when dealing with malicious code.

[1] [http://ilspy.net/](http://ilspy.net/)

<comment><USER15> Anyone knows a better decompiler for .net other than ilspy? It's a hit or miss for me with ilspy, would like to try something better even if it's paid.

<comment><USER16> Try dotPeek: [https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/](https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aha I love those little messages at the end telling users to update their software to the latest version. It's a cry to the void.

<comment><USER18> On one hand, the average user will never update his software unless you literally force them to.

On the other hand, your free upgrade to Windows 10 is ready. Would you like to install it right now or later tonight?

<comment><USER17> Damn it, even Linux wants me to get windows 10 now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's a great little story, interesting to read how these sorts of scams are carried out, but I also found the code analysis and decompilation tale fun!

<comment><USER20> I agree, it's amazing how stupid criminals can be, even online. It's scary to think what someone as smart as these security researchers could do if they went black hat...

<comment><USER21> I'm thinking that's who's working on stuff like Stuxnet, Flame, etc. I wonder what color hat we would consider Government-sponsored malware to be?

<comment><USER22> National colours

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just hope someday the general public realize what a poor job Microsoft has done regarding security on Windows operating systems and embrace other (and more promising) alternatives

<comment><USER24> broadly speaking, how would you design things? All I can think of doing is putting explicit permission grants on everything, requiring everyone to click a million times as was done with the first version of Vista's UAC, IIRC, which is no solution IMO.

<comment><USER25> ever heard of code signing ? Maybe MSFT could use some of its 23 BILLION dollars of yearly profit to test some of the programs and conditionally approve them if they pass muster, also based on the historical reputation of the signer (like ebay feedback). Then if they contain sleeper code or other exploits, the keys are pulled, updates are pushed to ALL users of the program that revokes the key, thereby preventing mass exploits

Come on, you're talking about the biggest and one of the oldest technological conglomerates on earth. They could fix the ecosystem if they wanted. But since they dont care about users, they'll wait till google does it for them and then sue over IP rights

<comment><USER26> Sure, because it is not like anyone would accuse them of abusive business practices and of trying to kill open source if they made it impossible to run software not signed by them... /s

Even if you assume they would add a UEFI "enable developer mode" setting, this would get them so much bad press (and, also, it would actually make developing and distributing software on Windows a lot harder for smaller and open-source developers, and deploying custom software harder for enterprise costumers).

<comment><USER25> One of the things I love to criticize MS for is their "user account control" : _gee, looks like you 're actually trying to....USE.... your computer for something. You know, actually ...USING...your computer might damage it. Since making a secure platform isn't profitable, we'll just make the screen darker, cause you know, darkness kills the spyware_.

See, the signing system doesn't have to be mandated. It could pop up a UAC- like screen but with an actually useful message: this code is _known_ to have malware, we recommend you dont run it. If you absolutely want to, press OK at your own risk.

Another message could say it's completely unsigned, so devs could still write and distribute their own code. But make it _free_ to submit to the "app store" and get reviewed by MS. That would work wonders to improve security across their whole ecosystem, and not force anything down the users' throats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > It also attempts to steal password manager credentials and Windows keys.

Ugh I hate reading this. I keep everything in my password manager. If I lose that I'm hosed. I wish more sites supported 2FA.

<comment><USER28> or had no authentication at all, just authorization. imagine having only a openid password to memorize... one can dream right

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't that just consolidate the attackable footprint? What if openid, or your openid account, got hacked?

<comment><USER28> Eh same is for email. Anyone with acces to that can trigger a password recovery exchange on most sites or pass an id verification check on the stricter ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Scary that a vulnerability that old is still worth exploiting.

<comment><USER31> In spam runs a success factor of one in thousand still can pay off. I'm afraid their results are better as that.

<comment><USER32> It doesn't have to be the case that it actually paid off. All we know is the spammer thought it would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> a few questions I'm wondering about, if anyone can help:

\- how do those PW stealers work? are they similar to the Steam one, where it'd delete existing creds and then sniff newly entered ones?

\- can this thing detect certain apps like FileZilla and then say "user entered <FTP site creds>" and send individual fields, and is that what is meant by supporting say FTP and FileZilla?

\- what does PHP support mean? maybe looks for common stuff like php.ini, various other conf files like FPM, and tries to find DB/cache connection creds?

there's one other thing I'm wondering about, which is the light/easily crackable encryption of the keylogger's internals, and I vaguely remember reading about Google's encryption on the new recaptcha and people talking about all this stuff like complicated encryption routines baked into the client side JS that I really didn't understand except at a handwavy level, and wonder if that's the kind of thing some, say, intelligence/espionage outfit could use.

very interesting/engaging (fun) article, all in all, for me. and I appreciated the understatement of the (well-deserved) plug at the end.

<comment><USER21> > can this thing detect certain apps like FileZilla and then say "user entered > <FTP site creds>" and send individual fields, and is that what is meant by > supporting say FTP and FileZilla?

Could well be. I haven't messed with Win32 in a while, but I'm pretty sure that you can sniff the contents of other applications' windows and dialogs. With a little work, you should be able to take a common app and work out how to detect it's login windows, find the username and password and other relevant fields, and pull out the contents.

I know if I was writing a hostile keylogger, I'd go to a lot of trouble to know exactly what was entered where, instead of having to see a long stream of keyboard input and figure out what the usernames and passwords are, and what services they go with.

<comment><USER33> Winspy++ offered the ability to look at the content of password fields in native applications IIRC. It's been a few years since I've done anything on Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm surprised the .net executable wasn't obfuscated (as they usually are)

</comment><comment><USER35> Using Volafile to host the keylogger executable seems like a pretty bad choice considering that this website will delete your files after only 2 days. Or maybe this shouldn't surprise me so much considering the "skills" of the attacker.

<comment><USER36> They probably expect to upload a new build every few days, anyway. Note the login credentials hard-coded into the executable.

Presumably, people who take more than 48 hours to open their email were deemed an edge case not worth worrying about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> where did ).exe came from? I thought you need to use VBscript of some sort to download a file from command line.

</comment><comment><USER38> 10/10 brilliant. If only i was smart enough to do this...

</comment><comment><USER38> Actually, this is interesting.

</comment><comment><USER39> Fantastic write up! Good work.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice writeup.</comment>


Show HN: Network Dynamics Open Dataset – 2.5M Graphs and 38000 Networks (1TB) - <AUTHOR> https://dynamics.cs.washington.edu <comment><AUTHOR> We analyzed 38,000 Networks, 2.5 Million Graphs -- 1 TB of compressed data -- constructed form Reddit, Microsoft Academic, Chess Games (FICS), Bitcoin, and WikiTree to investigate how trends change over time, to understand how networks evolve, and to understand how certain users gain and lose power over time. We did our best to make our research as open and accessible as possible.

If you want more details about our study, you can:

\- Watch our short video ([https://youtu.be/zZNZ03ULASk](https://youtu.be/zZNZ03ULASk))

\- Read our paper ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06690](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06690))

\- Play with the D3 based interface to see how different Reddit/Research Field communities change over time ([https://dynamics.cs.washington.edu](https://dynamics.cs.washington.edu))

\- Download the data ([https://dynamics.cs.washington.edu/data.html](https://dynamics.cs.washington.edu/data.html))

\- Read our code tutorials ([https://dynamics.cs.washington.edu/code.html](https://dynamics.cs.washington.edu/code.html))

The data can be really helpful to people that are looking for massive networks/temporal network datasets. For most networks, the data also include the time each two users interacted. As part of this study, we also released about 38,000 time-series that can be used to understand how trends change.

If you have any questions about this study, please feel free to contact me</comment>


Star Wars ANSI - <AUTHOR>

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl <comment><USER2> oldie but a goodie. watch the intro, i guess they have extras for IPv6 users (not one here, but could be fun!)</comment>


GitHub Enterprise 11.10.260 Release - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1120-github-enterprise-11-10-260-release

<comment><USER2> The pricing gap is still huge between hosted and enterprise. For 25 seats, it's $600/yr hosted and $10,000/yr enterprise. Hopefully Atlassian will drive them to fix that.

<comment><USER3> My understanding has always been that Github never wanted to make the Enterprise product. They would prefer everyone use their hosted services.

But there was just too much demand for GitHub Enterprise, so they made it and are charging an arm and a leg because they can.

<comment><USER4> Working in an environment where hosted solutions simply aren't an option, I am grateful GH:E is around.

The actual cost per year ends up being fairly negligible when we factor in the nearly 100% removal of administration overhead that our previous VC options required.</comment></comment></comment>


MIT Expert Highlights 'Divergent Condition' Caused by 737 Max Engine Placement - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2019/04/02/mit-expert-highlights-divergent-condition-caused-by-737-max-engine-placement/#697103940aab <comment><USER2> I agree that there should be three AoA sensors, as Airbus already has, if you're going to connect the AoA sensors to a control surface.

But Hansman's comment seems (very surprisingly) inaccurate, because my understanding is that the MAX is not actually aerodynamically unstable: the lift from the nacelles results in a non-monotonic backpressure on the yoke as AoA increases, and that violates airworthiness regulations on yoke handling. But the plane isn't going to fly itself into a stall. The pilot has to do that by pulling back on the yoke at high AoA (and with less backpressure than a 737 pilot would expect).

That's not an unstable plane, in the sense that the B-2 bomber is unstable. It's just a plane that handles differently to pilots who originally trained on different but related planes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So this aircraft is more prone to stall and crash compared to other aircrafts after this update?</comment>


Dragon de-orbit burn in progress ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-mobile

<comment><USER2> Follow the Dragon's position: <http://www.n2yo.com/?s=38348>

<comment><AUTHOR> Not surprising, but that's not showing the descent. That altitude isn't decreasing. Interesting nonetheless - thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Splashdown at 10:42 CT, 15:42 UTC.

Dragon is in the water.

Two minutes early ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> NASA intercept plane claims to have initial infrared signs of Dragon.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Chutes spotted in the water by the recovery vessels.

(pause)

And now (5 mins later) video of Dragon in the water.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Drogue chutes deployed ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Main chutes deployed ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Parachutes detached.</comment>


Orion flight test rescheduled for tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#.VIAwicl5V8F

<comment><USER4> New T-zero time 7:17 EST

UPDATE ( 7:14 ) - Ground wind violation, Launch delayed.

UPDATE ( 7:46 ) - New T-ZERO time 7:55

UPDATE ( 7:53 ) - Launch on hold. Another wind violation.

UPDATE ( 8:15 ) - New T-ZERO time 8:26

UPDATE ( 8:23 ) - Launch on hold again.

UPDATE ( 8:28 ) - Left and center booster anomalies ( Valves sensors, showing not closed ). Quote from official NASA blog : "A fill and drain valve on the rocket did not function correctly. Standing by as rocket and spacecraft are safed."

<comment><USER5> Now 14:44Z (9:44 EST).

Sounds like they're disabling a bunch of automated safeguards (like the wind speed monitoring) to get this thing up.

<comment><USER5> And it's scrubbed. Back to work, everyone!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It'd be really great if NASA found some particularly charismatic engineer to act as a colour commentator and talk about the technology at play. The silence while we wait for a new launch time is peaceful but a bit dull...

<comment><USER7> They could have Scott Manley do that. He does a great job with KSP, he'd do even better with real life stuff, I think. He knows what he's talking about, doesn't sutter or go "umm", and he sounds pretty hot.

<comment><USER8> "Hullo Its Scott Manley here!"

<comment><USER9> "Fly safe!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I opened this up this morning to show my daughter at breakfast, thinking, hey, getting kids interested in this stuff is good.

Dead silence. Nothing. Not a word of commentary. To a kid, that conveys boring. I could hear some white noise and after a while some faint public address system speech way off in the background. So disappointing.

NASA, do you still have an educational component to your mission? It would be really great if these big launches were explained a bit on the live video feed. If there's nothing going on to explain, there should be a ton of material waiting from NASA history to fill the air time.

<comment><AUTHOR> At least in the hours up to the launch, it was actually really good. There was a ton of content describing the intended launch, its goals, requirements, planning that went into it, etc. There was also a segment with Elmo (from Sesame Street) talking with an astronaut and an engineer (iirc) that I saw, and apparently another similar special "guest". They probably just didn't have as much planned for the period after the launch was aborted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> NasaTV looks like its struggling with load. Use [http://www.livestream.com/spaceflightnow](http://www.livestream.com/spaceflightnow) for a better stream.

<comment><USER6> It boggles my mind that a 12 year old playing DOTA can reliably stream to an audience but NASA can't figure it out.

EDIT: Seems they've swapped their stream for the ustream one, guess they can.

<comment><USER12> The number of viewers might be a bit different.

<comment><USER6> Admittedly looking at the figures on ustream it's a lot more popular than I thought it'd be, but still less than the higher end of what you see on Twitch, and they don't get to plan when a stream goes viral.

<comment><USER13> Twitch has had massive growing pains, it's taken them a very long time to get to a point where they are smooth under load.

For a long time the LCS broadcasts were always very stuttery on twitch, so much so that streams were also set up on Youtube and Azubu to help.

About 6months - 1yr ago twitch suddenly got a lot better in this regard but I certainly wouldn't expect NASA to do a better job than a site dedicated to streaming. (The 12yr old playing the game is a red herring, they're just streaming to twitch.)

Twitch previously were Justin.tv but switched to gaming as clearly it was a fast growing niche, otherwise their old platform would have been suitable for factual content like this.

<comment><USER6> > The 12yr old playing the game is a red herring, they're just streaming to > twitch

That was basically what I was getting at though - if the 12 year old can stream off their home broadband to twitch reliably for free, why is NASA bothering with their own, worse streaming solution?

But to their credit NASA responded very quickly, took their own streaming off and embedded ustream instead, so I guess I don't really have anything to whinge about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Currently the launch is on hold for a couple of reasons:

1\. There is (was?) a boat in the exclusion zone

2\. The second stage propellant needs more conditioning

The hold was going to end in 2 minutes, they're going to cycle the clock to at least T-9mins when they've decided exactly when T0 is.

EDIT: as of 12:07 GMT we're at T-10mins.

<comment><USER15> I don't get why they don't launch if there is a boat. If there is someone with a death wish, that is his problem. Second time in a few months they have to scrub for a boat. Idiots should pay a lot of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Scrub for today; trying again in 24h.

<comment><USER17> Fair enough, with the hardware cost, would be a mistake to launch without all systems in check.

<comment><USER18> True, but if they spent less time going from ready states to standby states and back again (aka recycling the clock) i bet they could have launched.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome – the announcer just noted that there's a UAV which will be used to capture the final descent splashdown of the Orion capsule. That should make for interesting video. The UAV—Ikhana—looks to be a modified Predator:

[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/aircraft/Ikhana/index....](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/aircraft/Ikhana/index.html)

<comment><USER20> That's amazing. SpaceX should get one of those too, I understand the restriction for manned flights when rockets or capsules are coming back down, but it was sure frustrating to miss the water 'landing' of that last Falcon-9 due to the chase plane staying so far from the scene.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIlu7szab5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIlu7szab5I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Launch update: it's 12.45pm GMT. Time to launch in 10 min, 7.55am EST.

Update 2: at 7.53am EST, a new launch time being established due to wind anomalies.

<comment><USER22> New launch time: 08:26

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You can also follow the NASA Twitter Feed: [https://twitter.com/NASA](https://twitter.com/NASA)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The coverage is switching between live launch coverage and other NASA stuff right now. Launch window opens at 7:05am EST.

<comment><USER24> Some bright soul seems to have sailed their boat into the launch area - <USER2> like it is going to be delayed :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google Earth link of launch site

[https://www.google.de/maps/place/Cape+Canaveral+Air+Force+St...](https://email@example.com,-80.582914,1000m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x88e0bbabe31ee4cf:0xd3a552dd90e0258b?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER25> I've never watched/listened to a live launch before. I'm finding it really interesting, terms like "race position", the alarm going off and the list of checks etc.

I'm really excited for this! Let's hope the wind dies down.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've always wanted to know about the steady emission of what looks like steam/smoke(?) from the upper body (not nozzle) of the rockets in the pre- launch stage. Anybody knows more about that?

<comment><USER27> It's liquid oxygen venting.

Oxygen can be kept in a liquid state by either keeping the temperature extremely low or keeping it under high pressure. Since reinforcing the tanks to handle incredibly high pressures would require too much weight, the tanks are instead constantly being topped up with cryogenic fuel until the moment of launch.

As for the venting: the fuel starts heating up and evaporating as soon as it's pumped into the tanks causing the pressure within the tanks to rise. Since the tanks aren't rated for high pressure, they have to vent the excess oxygen to keep within safety margins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> NASA just showed the world that listening to data and showing restraint is far more important than grabbing a good headline. Kudos to them for doing the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER29> I haven't really been following this - was this a previously announced and planned launch, before the news about Mars yesterday?

<comment><USER30> Yes, it's been planned for a couple of years.

<comment><USER29> Thanks. To the outside observer it seemed like the two were connected.

<comment><USER30> It's kind of like, NASA taking advantage of the Orion test flight press to get their Mars plan out there.

<comment><USER31> well, considering that Orion is intended for beyond LEO missions including Mars...

<comment><USER30> Orion is pretty unsuited for a mission as long as a Mars trip. So I doubt the spacecraft used for that would have anything to do with what they are currently calling Orion.

<comment><USER31> be my guest [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29) . Search for "Mars".

Of course, it wouldn't be the "long-term deep space habitat" module - <USER3> would be a specialized module.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> ... This is just the crew module?

... propulsion is the interesting part of interplanetary travel. What is the propulsion tech for this?

<comment><USER33> This test flight is launching on a Delta IV Heavy, which is a pretty well proven launch system (first time NASA's used it, though, AFAIK).

Ultimately, Orion's supposed to be launched on NASA's new Space Launch System [1], but it's not ready yet. I believe the first scheduled test flight for Orion and SLS together is supposed to be sometime in 2017.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> New T-ZERO just set at 14:44 UTC (and that's the last possible attempt for today)

<comment><USER34> And... bummer they've just scrubbed the launch for today :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anybody understood why the countdown was aborted with only 3 minutes left?

<comment><USER14> Wind. Again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Engine bearing temperature trending the wrong way.

</comment><comment><USER22> Everything is GO right now... Winds, too, finally.

<comment><USER22> ...and aborted. :(

<comment><USER36> Just on hold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Poop. Scrubbed for today.</comment>


Ask HN: Will there be an edition of Startup School Summer 2020? - <AUTHOR> Will there be an edition of Startup School Summer 2020? Will it be open to thousands of founders as in the last summer or it is planned for a smaller group? <comment><USER2> They said they would start doing it twice a year and since it's done remotely the pandemic won't stop them. I don't see why they wouldn't run it this summer. I think it will be open from now on.</comment>


Play Framework: async I/O without the thread pool and callback hell - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.linkedin.com/play/play-framework-async-io-without-thread-pool-and-callback-hell

<comment><USER2> Haskell supports the same via the async package: [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/async-22.214.171.124/docs/Contro...](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/async-184.108.40.206/docs/Control- Concurrent-Async.html)</comment>


I collected the best quotes from Paul Graham's essays - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kaipakartik.com/2011/05/best-of-paul-graham.html

<comment><USER2> For the NoScript crowd: [http://www.webdevout.net/test?0B&raw](http://www.webdevout.net/test?0B&raw)

</comment><comment><USER3> It needs space between paragraphs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. I had spaces but for some reason they don't show up on the blog. Let me try again. What do you think of the actual content?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did ISP's with dial-up servers work? - <AUTHOR> Ok I actually used to work for an ISP back in 2000 that did dial-up but never got to work on that end of the business.<p>How did it work? Did they have to have huge pools of modems for every person dialing in? I am totally clueless to this and found little info on this on the web. Have been thinking about this a lot lately and would really like to know. <comment><USER2> Smaller scale ISPs did have shelves of external modems attached to remote access servers [1] which were often FreeBSD boxes. I don't know if they used regular POTS lines or channel banks [2]. Specialized RAS routers with multichannel soft modems [3] (e.g. from Ascend [4]) came out later.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Access_Service](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Access_Service) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_bank](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_bank) [3] [http://m.eetasia.com/ARTICLES/1999JUN/1999JUN29_BD_NTEK_TAC2...](http://m.eetasia.com/ARTICLES/1999JUN/1999JUN29_BD_NTEK_TAC2.PDF?SOURCES=DOWNLOAD) [4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascend_Communications](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascend_Communications)

</comment><comment><USER3> I work for an ISP in the UK and we actually still have some of the old dial up internet kit running in our exchange, 99% of customers are now on xDSL based services, however a few are still belligerent and don't want to move into the modern age, the equipment doesn't really cost anything to keep running so it's in effect free money for the business (other than power).

The technical side is basically a few Cisco AS5300 that terminate 2 to 4 E1's from the IMS based ISDN network, your effectively just dialling a number from your modem that is load balanced over these E1's. At the other side of the Cisco is your internet service, fairly simple and works well for what it is.

There can be other things in the mix like AAA (Radius) to authenticate the users, but as your charging for the call within the POTS network that's not always required, assuming that the internet and line provider as the same as in our case.

<comment><AUTHOR> ah very interesting. thank you. I was assuming that everything would be completely different over there, and that a "POTS" would be completely different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Early ISPs (before the mid 90's) had individual modems. I worked at one and we had stacks and stacks of modems - 100's of them - each with their own phone line, power brick, and serial cable.

By the late 90's, we had moved to digital modems using PRI lines. This provided the equivalent of 24 modems over a single T1 line.

<comment><USER5> > I worked at one and we had stacks and stacks of modems - 100's of them - > each with their own phone line, power brick, and serial cable.

Now that's something I'd love to see picture of!

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately I don't have any, but it was truly a sight to behold. There were power strips chained 2 or 3 levels deep just to get enough spots to plug in all the bricks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The phone company operates trunking lines, which multiplexes some large number of phone lines over a single physical medium. T1 for example is a common standard to deliver 24 voice lines over a single physical medium. Historically, you'd have equipment at both ends. One at at central office and one near a group of subscribers, like a street full of homes.

Basically the dial up server just had hardware that directly terminated the trunking line into it. The modem part might be done in software, might be done in hardware, or a little bit of both. By doing this it is practical to have a single machine serving 100s or even 1000s of customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow thank you - that makes sense because I never remebr seeing huge banks of servers. there were definitely a few but I never remember seeing any kind of "rows of modems" or anything.

So you are saying (more or less) 1 T1 for every 24 lines or 24 customers?

<comment><USER4> Each T1 gave you 24 lines. Generally, early ISPs were heavily over-subscribed, meaning there were _many_ more customers than available phone lines. You might call in and get a busy signal!

<comment><USER6> I remember getting up early on Saturday mornings so I could get connected the to the local FreeNet before all the lines were busied.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes! I remember hanging up and reconnecting like 5x if I 'didn't get a good line' :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There were definitely racks of modems at small scale ISPs in the 90's.

Once line speeds hit 56k and required more sophisticated equipment at the exchange/ISP, a lot of small ISPs got squeezed out because of the investment required, and sold their phone number and customer base.

A lot of consolidation started happening at that point, from what I remember.</comment>


Amazon's Jeff Bezos Relaunches Blue Origin Space Program - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/11/18/amazons-jeff-bezos-relaunches-blue-origin-website-for-private-spaceflight/ <comment><USER2> This is so awesome. More space programs please! Anything to lower the cost and make the possibility of mass space flight more true...</comment>


The Origin and History of Apache Arrow - <AUTHOR> https://www.dremio.com/origin-history-of-apache-arrow/ <comment><USER2> This blog post is the first mention I'd seen of Gandiva:

[https://github.com/dremio/gandiva](https://github.com/dremio/gandiva)

As I began reading about that, I thought it sounded a lot like Weld, so I was happy to see it listed in the prior art:

[https://www.weld.rs](https://www.weld.rs)

These projects present a compiler IR that can be emitted by an analytics framework.

For example, Spark and pandas currently run functions directly to perform filters and aggregations. These can be fast for simple user cases, but complex user code might result in a lot of branching and temporary values. So instead, the libraries could emit a mid-level IR that is then JITed via LLVM. That's exactly what Weld is for and it looks like Gandiva is similar (on top of Arrow data).

I've seen a lot of interest in LLVM-based array programming lately, including TensorFlow XLA and Intel's nGraph. So I'm glad to see these techniques applied to tabular data as well.

<comment><USER3> More on the Gandiva Initiative here: [https://www.dremio.com/announcing- gandiva-initiative-for-apa...](https://www.dremio.com/announcing-gandiva- initiative-for-apache-arrow/)

</comment></comment><comment> nevi-me This has been a great and informative write-up. I learnt of Arrow when Wes and Hadley announced Feather. I think Arrow was still 0.4.0

At the end of 2016, we had a project at work where we were trying to migrate a credit modeling architecture away from SAS to something different.

There were enterprise "SAP HANA" hammer+nail in the room (I'm biased because I think HANA is rubbish vaporware), and directors who thought "open source is immature and unstable".

They gave me the lead on the project, and I started out with a naive Pandas port, where I hit the data size issue. I got more resources and we made an R attempt, similar perf. We made a PySpark impl, serde and high latency were the problem. Wrote another version in Scala; better but similar.

Given the nature of the business, we canned the project. I learnt a lot though.

Data serialisation is a pain. When we started using Feather, we were able to speed up some of our implementations by bigly magnitudes. At the time, Parquet interop was sketchier, but much better than CSV. I tried taking advantage of Spark and R by building a bridging service where I could run the fast parts of each service, dump data to Feather files, and have the next service pick up processing. R hasn't had a good prod/serve API story, so I didn't get good results. I used gRPC for Python and Scala, and tried some REST thing as a proxy for R. What I could have benefited from was an IPC.

Throughout Arrow releases, and the various integrations over the past year and a bit, a lot of what we struggled with was solved.

The recent improvements (as I'm keenly interested in Arrow for computing) make me excited.

I'm starting a project where I'll be building web-based viz and reporting. I'm planning on using Arrow, undecided on whether to use JVM or Rust on the back end given that JDBC to Arrow will be a thing in the next release, or Diesel.rs to Arrow from DataFusion.

Nonetheless, exciting future for data engineers on the horizon!

</comment><comment><USER4> I hit a roadblock with trying to read Stata files into Pandas a few months ago. I discovered that not all versions of Stata file formats are supported by Pandas in Python. R has much better support for Stata files.

With the help of Feather, which was written over Arrow, I was able to read Stata files into R, write the dataframe out to Feather and read the Feather file into a Pandas dataframe with no manipulation.

Without Feather I would have had to resort to using CSVs as intermediate files which would have meant additional pre-processing in R and post-processing in Pandas. Feather and Arrow saved me a bunch of time on this.

I'm looking forward to using Arrow more broadly but, even with just Feather, Wes and Hadley have vastly simplified the effort of interfacing between R and Python/Pandas. I'm also very excited to see what else comes out of their partnership at Ursa Labs: [https://ursalabs.org](https://ursalabs.org)

</comment><comment><USER5> I misread the title and thought this was going to be about Native-American archers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was wondering what is a columnar data store and found this on Wikipedia:

> by storing data in columns rather than rows, the database can more precisely > access the data it needs to answer a query rather than scanning and > discarding unwanted data in rows. Query performance is increased for certain > workloads.

This seems true only in very specific circumstances. And why can't a database figure out the best way to store data, rather than let the user make the decision upfront (which they may later regret when requirements change)?

<comment><USER7> Columnar data stores tend to be used in applications where performance is the primary concern. Abstractions tend to be leaky, but especially so when it comes to performance.

This is maybe comparable to the way high-performance applications are still usually written in C instead of higher-level languages. You'd think that at this point we could write compilers smart enough to generate more performant code than something written by a human hand, but in practice that often doesn't turn out to be true. Not yet anyway. And even when this is possible, due to their inevitably complexity, those abstractions tend to misbehave in unexpected ways, with unpredictable performance hiccups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know when we can expect a 1.0 release that I can use in prod? I have a perfect project for it and have tried it out but am reluctant to implement fully until its nailed down to a LTS version.

<comment><USER9> Should be stable now for 99%.

<comment><USER8> Thanks that's helpful. I'm excited about this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> very interesting as an outsider to see the high-stakes engineering like this unfold, and notice the pull of lowly scripting language python for serious architecture CS teams.</comment>


Adobe AIR Makes Its Way to Linux  - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_air_linux.php <comment><USER2> Something tells me it won't be bundled with Ubuntu, due to licensing problems? It is so nice that at least Java can now easily be installed from the Multiverse. How long until Flash will be Open Source, too?</comment>