A Fear of Lawsuits Really Does Seem to Result in Extra Medical Tests - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/upshot/malpractice-lawsuits-medical-costs.html <comment><USER2> > Any law that limits the cases where patients can sue, or the amount of money > they can collect, is likely to lower medical use in the hospital by less > than the 5 percent they measured in their study.

The telling thing about laws to address malpractice liability is that they typically are focused on capping large verdicts. But such laws are illogical: generally, large verdicts will be awarded where a doctor screwed up and caused the most damage. Cases with large verdicts are the most meritorious ones, and the ones where limiting liability is least likely to eliminate over-testing that does not contribute to quality of care.

If states actually wanted to address the costs of defensive medicine, they would do something like create affirmative defenses for doctors who adhered to certain established testing protocols.

<comment><USER3> Showing you adhered to protocol _is_ a valid defense. The problem is twofold:

(1) Your insurer will usually prefer to settle rather than go to court, it's cheaper, so fuck your defense.

(2) You still take the reputational and emotional hit of being sued.

People discussing this rarely seem to get that docs are far more emotional about this than the money at risk merits. There are many things in play beyond "I don't want to lose a lawsuit." We really do get very upset about malpractice suits, for many reasons beyond our premiums going up.

<comment><USER4> > _People discussing this rarely seem to get that docs are far more emotional > about this than the money at risk merits._

There's also the risk of losing right to practice medicine - that is, being banned from providing the very service you spent the best part of your life specializing in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Extra tests... the cost of diagnostics is a tiny fraction of the cost of doctor time, and most patients just go to the doctor to get the test. The doctor is an irellevant gatekeeper 90% of the time. How about we start talking about 'extra' doctor visits because patients don't have access to tests. There are some diagnostics where this gatekeeping is literally causing a public health crisis. 'Extra tests' are only an issue because of the untreated disease they reveal, which costs insurers money to treat. This 'concern' is all part of their lobby.

<comment><USER6> That is very accurate... I had an injury that I knew required specific surgery, but when I called the surgeon's office to make an appointment I was told that they only accepted referrals from family doctors, that is, I had to pay to visit a family doctor first.

This applies nowadays to most specialists as well.

<comment><USER7> I don't really consider this a problem.

Specialists are packed to the gills already and very expensive. Specialists don't want to spend time with patients who don't actually need specialized care and insurance doesn't want to pay specialists without first qualifying the issue.

<comment><USER6> I agree; however the first thing he did was to order a CT scan to confirm the diagnosis and get the exact location. So the family doctor visit was thus duplicative.

<comment><USER8> I hope the specialist didn't get a kickback from the imaging company

<comment><USER9> The US healthcare system is a raging river of money, and you can bet that every doctor, lab, hospital and other medical service has their buckets dipped into it. The entire system seems to be set up to squeeze as many billable office visits out of you as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So make tests cheaper - sounds like an opportunity that gets a win for everyone without political miracles.

(I don't know the market I am talking about at all, but) Maybe they could incentivize cheap tests by capping the cost per test that can be administered without some large red tape process. The market will provide tests under that cap where possible, so they can be administered more frequently & frictionessly. Patients are thoroughly tested, Doctors cover their butts, and test supply companies get to keep selling lots of tests.

<comment><USER11> EXACTLY! I wrote about this here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17620197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17620197)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wait until the NY Times finds out that c-sections have greatly increased because of high-dollar awards like the one that made John Edwards (yes the politician) a millionaire...

<comment><USER12> My wife is a doula and apparently the injury and mortality rates for mother and child are much higher than through natural childbirth.

But because of their insurance coverage, if a mother or baby dies during natural childbirth the doctor is at greater risk for malpractice. So, they will rush mother's into C-section at any excuse (it saves them hours of work too not having to sit through a long labor).

Unfortunately, money and efficiency have taken priority over natural processes.

<comment><USER2> > My wife is a doula and apparently the injury and mortality rates for mother > and child are much higher than through natural childbirth.

That is of course true, because C sections are primarily used in high-risk pregnancies and in emergencies. But what you actually care about is the counter-factual: if a given set of deliveries were "natural" rather than a C section, would mortality go up or down? It's hard to develop studies to answer that counter-factual. But there is good evidence that C-section rates are negatively correlated with mortality ( _i.e._ they lower deaths) up to about 20% of deliveries, and have no positive or negative effect beyond that: [http://www.skepticalob.com/2017/10/more-wailing-and- gnashing...](http://www.skepticalob.com/2017/10/more-wailing-and-gnashing-of- teeth-over-the-c-section-rate.html).

Indeed, there is new evidence that "natural" births are in the long term bad for mothers, dramatically increasing the risk of things like incontinence later in life: [http://www.skepticalob.com/2018/03/what-if-c-sections-are- be...](http://www.skepticalob.com/2018/03/what-if-c-sections-are-better-and- safer-than-vaginal-birth.html). As a practical matter, these negative effects will impact far more women than differences (if any) in morality rates.

<comment><USER13> A nit: is it really true that C sections are primarily for high-risk pregnancies? C sections are at an all-time high. Both my kids were delivered by C section after attempts to induce labor, but those inductions were based simply on calendar due dates assigned early in the pregnancy. People schedule C sections in advance.

More importantly: anyone who has had a C section before is likely to deliver all future children via C section; it's not a requirement, but a normal birth after C section is a special arrangement.

Finally: C section itself is a traumatic surgery with long-lasting health effects for the mother. It's routine, but still a big deal.

<comment><USER14> > A nit: is it really true that C sections are primarily for high-risk > pregnancies?

C-sections are _very disproportionately_ used for those, though perhaps not primarily; in relation to the risk statistics upthread, is the same basic impact. You cant just compare adverse outcome rates for C-section and vaginal birth without taking into account factors associated with adverse outcomes which also make C-section a more likely event.

<comment><USER13> I don't think this is unknowable; just a couple minutes of Googling turned up a bunch of studies. Consumer Reports posted an analysis from journal articles indicating that maternal mortality from C sections is strongly correlated with specific hospitals; since the predicates for an emergency C section generally _aren 't_ correlated, that strongly suggests it's the procedure and not the circumstances that are to blame. The major causes of mortality due to C section include sepsis and anaesthesia errors (this happened to my wife during the birth of our first kid), which are also intrinsic to the surgery and not to the circumstances of the pregnancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Aren't a lot of these costs baked into all services due to malpractice insurance itself? If these doctors could be sued by some of their patients (the families), they still need to cover the cost of that insurance.

Beyond that, once defensive medicine is the status quo, why would they make a choice to not order their usual defensive panels? They aren't paying for them themselves.

<comment><USER16> True, but here's a point the NYT missed: caps on malpractice claims don't have to change how doctors practice medicine to reduce costs. By capping liability, they should make malpractice insurance cheaper and thus reduce the cost of providing care.

<comment><USER14> Caps on malpractice claims exist in numerous jurisdictions, and studies have shown them to have no discernable effect on either total healthcare costs or even specifically on malpractice insurance costs.

<comment><USER17> I am sorry but you are just completely wrong. Exactly the opposite of what you said is true:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5701901/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5701901/)

"In summary, there exists considerable evidence that medical malpractice reform measures reduce medical malpractice awards and also the losses incurred by medical malpractice insurance companies."

<comment><USER18> Reduced Awards =! Reduced Premiums or Costs

Texas seems to have set caps so low that it has reduced premiums for doctors. But "making malpractice cheaper" isn't much of a policy goal.

Nationally,'tort reform' caps have had mixed results. "...better-designed studies show that damages caps reduce liability insurance premiums. The effects of damages caps on defensive medicine, physicians' location decisions, and the cost of health care to consumers are less clear." [0]

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690332/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690332/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought medical errors were the third leading cause of death in the U.S. with 10% of all deaths attributed to medical error.

With that error rate, is it fair to say that the extra tests are truly "unnecessary?"

<comment><USER20> That's a severe distortion of the reality. Most of those "errors" are not a healthy patient dies, but cases where the patient was dying, the only question being exactly when.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Link to the study: [http://www.nber.org/papers/w24846](http://www.nber.org/papers/w24846)

</comment><comment><USER22> Bone marrow biopsies suck. And on top of that I have to be thankful I don't have cancer while the bills keep coming.

</comment><comment><USER11> I see no issue with Extra Medical Tests. More data points do not hurt a diagnoisis if a proper scientific method is followed.

The primary issue here is the resulting cost.

As the article points out: "about 26 percent of every dollar spent."

You probably won't complain paying 26 cents for a $1 popsicle, but if the same popsicle cost you $100, you might be upset paying $26.

But is not the bigger question: Why is the popsicle $100 when it could have cost $1?

Here is a useful chart to show where the money goes: [https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main- qimg-d68aea3ca1e466f166752e...](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main- qimg-d68aea3ca1e466f166752e261b9e28d3)

Where do you think malpractice costs fit there?

I personally feel sad everytime malpractice fears enter the discussion of costs - its a tiny, ignorable portion right now of total expenses.

However, to a typical layperson, it sounds like a big deal to worry about but actually distracts the attention costs should be getting.

As a result, I have tried to cover it here: [https://www.quora.com/Why-does- one-believe-that-malpractice-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-does-one-believe- that-malpractice-insurance-is-the-primary-reason-for-US-health-care-being-so- expensive)

Real input from real practitioners in the industry in the real world.

Sure, Malpractice overhead exists but it's analogous to a drop in the ocean. There is severe waste elsewhere that need to be handled first.

It's a nosebleed in a patient hemorrhaging blood through a punctured artery.

The argument that ordering extra tests offer doctors "additional defense" in case of a lawsuit is absolute hogwash. If anything, the test results put the doctor at a further disadvanatge wrt defense because they had an additional datapoint they should have considered in their diagnoisis but did not.

The primary issue with Healthcare in the U.S. is cost - for those who have the money and the will to spend it, it's one of the best in the world. A lot of the rich visit the US for their Healthcare needs.

Healthcare in the U.S. is optimized for profit: [https://www.quora.com/What- makes-the-US-healthcare-system-so...](https://www.quora.com/What-makes-the-US- healthcare-system-so-expensive-Why-is-the-US-so-expensive-compared-to- Canada/answers/33451192)

This is very wrong as it encourages short term profit seeking behavior which is absolutely the opposite of what healthcare should be (eg: C Sections being preferred over natural but long childbirth)

A for-profit system does not help the doctor/provider either (although it gives an illusion of it) - in such a system, the patient's only recourse is to sue the doctor/provider for damages instead of both parties focusing on the root cause which brought the patient to the doctor/provider in the first place.

Extra Medical Tests might be suboptimal but the real pain points are the marginal costs of each test.

Tests in the U.S. are extremely expensive. There is no standardized pricing for any test in the U.S. unlike the rest of the world.

While the rest of the world has pretty much agreed, for example, that a blood group test might be no more than $10 (In India, it costs 20 cents upto 70 cents at current INR-USD exchange rates), in the U.S. depending on which lab you go to, your insurance coverage, your ability to pay and other factors, you might be billed anywhere from $0 - $2000.

That is completely insane.

Also, labs in the U.S are not setup to take requests from customers directly. There are kits you can order and all that

Everytime I try to send a blood sample to a lab on my own, the lab staff seem to be lost - they want my insurance information, my EHR information, my NPI ID and when I explain to them I am not a doctor they ask me to provide my physcian's who ordered the test. (my physcian didn't order the test - I did).

I have had a few labs bill me outrageous out of network fees because the lab tests were not ordered by an in network provider (because I ordered them and I am not a doctor) and the amount of calls and paperpushing I had to do to correct the billing has made me just give up and let a doctors office handle this.

I can read a lipid panel. I don't need to go to a doctor's office to drive in traffic, wait an hour or more just to draw my blood and have it sent to a lab and then have the doctor read the panel to me. I read spreadsheets every hour of the day. I know what mean median and mode is and the lab result often offer these values anyways as part of the report.

I just need the test report.

Now, if my HDLs are too high and I cannot figure out why, sure, I do need to discuss this with a professional.

The solution to this madness?

An "all payer rate set" system. EVERYONE pays the same for the same procedure. Who pays for the care, while important, comes later, not before.

<comment><USER23> "More data points do not hurt a diagnoisis if a proper scientific method is followed."

Excess tests result in a higher number of false positives. This is just math. And those false positives have consequences.

<comment><USER11> > Excess tests result in a higher number of false positives

True, but this is an engineering problem:

1\. Just because some tests have a higher number of false positives does not mean all tests have a higher number of false positives

2\. For those tests that do have a higher number of false positives, the well educated (and paid) professionals are aware and should have measures in place

Eg: Bloom filters are fantastic datastructures to test membership. However, they have false positives. We can control the probability of getting a false positive by controlling the size of the Bloom filter.

This is nothing new in engineering.

<comment><USER24> Medicine is not engineering.

> Just because some tests have a higher number of false positives does not > mean all tests have a higher number of false positives

No, but doing more tests leads to more false positives, which can lead to disastrous consequences. For example, someone could think they have aids through a false positive and lose their family, or choose to make an abortion, or start consuming preventive dangerous drugs, etc.

Not only that, you can bankrupt someone. It would surprise many how medicine is practiced differently based on available costs!

> For those tests that do have a higher number of false positives, the well > educated (and paid) professionals are aware and should have measures in > place

Yes, the measure is not to do them unless the symptoms and the DDX fit, along with other criteria.

I wonder what kind of doctor you've been to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there empirical evidence for "Defensive Medicine?"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19201500/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19201500/)

"The net effects of medical malpractice tort reform on health insurance losses: the Texas experience"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5701901/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5701901/)

</comment><comment><USER25> If a doctor is sued for malpractice, that means they made a mistake. If they are performing extra tests to avoid malpractice, that means they are performing extra tests to avoid making mistakes. That is a good thing.

<comment><USER26> There's an error in literally every sentence you just wrote.

1\. A person can be sued without being guilty in a criminal or civil sense.

2\. They are performing extra tests to cover their asses, not to avoid making mistakes.

3\. It is clearly not a good thing as shown by the authors of the study.

<comment><USER25> I'm a lawyer and have sued doctors for malpractice. Before bringing such a lawsuit, the lawyer hires an expert witness, another doctor, who testifies there is malpractice. Then, you are facing a deep-pocket insurance defense law firm. Med mal cases are costly and in some states, the damages are limited. No med mal lawyer worth their salt would bring a case unless there was clear malpractice.

Most med mal cases are failure to diagnose. That is, the doctor fails to find out what is wrong with you, and you are harmed as a result. If the doctor runs a battery of tests, however, they can properly diagnose the disease and not harm the patient. For a nominal fee, the doctor can save someone's life. This may be bad for the system as a whole, but it is good for the individual patient.

<comment><USER27> Fellow trial lawyer here, and ditto.

For context, a "simple" failure to diagnose case against a radiologist is going to cost me close to $20,000 out of pocket, and hundreds of hours of my time - not something I do on a whim.

A judges's admin assistant that I frequently deal with recently retired. Someone asked her what advice she had for attorneys. Her response - don't file med mal cases because they're losers, and I practice in one of the top 5 "judicial hell holes" in America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >> In the federal government and in states, there are frequent proposals to limit medical liability, but there have been no serious efforts to eliminate medical malpractice rights altogether.

Damb right. Take away a patient's right to hold doctors accountable and things go south very quickly, at least in a for-profit systems.

>>But American doctors often rail against the country's medical malpractice system, which they say forces them to order unnecessary tests and procedures to protect themselves if a patient sues them.

The patient can only sue if the patient has been harmed. They aren't performing the extra tests in case just wakes up and decides to sue them. They perform the extra tests so that they don't miss something that could harm the patient so badly that they sue.

Doctors also forget that, again only in the US system, patients often _must_ sue. A harm caused by malpractice isn't always covered by insurance. Patients need to find the money somewhere. Or if an insurance company does cover, the insurance company will then sue the malpracticing doctor (google "subrogation").

A few years ago several states had liability caps ready to become law (iirc $250k). Then a young woman lost both her breasts after a mixup in test results caused her doctor to recommend a double mastectomy. But at least she could still function relatively normally and the injury was not a financial burden. Imagine the costs associated with a 20yo confined to a wheelchair for the next 60+ years. Setting aside medical expenses, 250k buys you maybe four or five converted vans. While some cases are rightly suspect, many of the multi- million dollar settlements really do get spent on legitimate costs.

<comment><USER29> > Damb right. Take away a patient's right to hold doctors accountable and > things go south very quickly, at least in a for-profit systems. The study > cited in the article would seem to rebut that quite vigorously.

FTA: > They found that the possibility of a lawsuit increased the intensity of health care that patients received in the hospital by about 5 percent — and that those patients who got the extra care were no better off.

<comment><USER30> An side of this that most people aren't aware of is that insurance companies will refuse to pay for any medical test _they_ deem to be unnecessary. So, while a doctor may order additional tests to "CYA," it's pretty likely that the hospital won't be reimbursed for all of them and will just eat the cost of the tests. And, while a hospital may charge thousands for a test, the actual costs might only be in the hundreds. Depending on the hospital system, this can be a win-win because the tax write-off can be worth more than the actual test costs.

The healthcare system in the US is insane.

<comment><USER9> > So, while a doctor may order additional tests to "CYA," it's pretty likely > that the hospital won't be reimbursed for all of them and will just eat the > cost of the tests.

What? In the USA, it's the _customer_ who eats the cost of the test. 1. The doctor tells you to go do all these tests. 2. Neither the doctor, the testing lab, the hospital, or the insurance company knows which ones will be covered by insurance. 3. You do the tests. 4. Insurance company, months later, says "Surprise, sucker! We won't cover these tests so you have to pay $N,000!" 5. The lab and doctor says "You signed the paper agreeing to cover the costs. F-you Pay me."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Updating Our macOS Open Source Offering - <AUTHOR> https://blog.travis-ci.com/2017-09-22-macos-update <comment><USER2> I think the TLDR summary is that MacOS doesn't work very well in the datacenter. The hardware is not designed for rack mounting. The OS licensing is not friendly to running VMs. I wonder if this is going to bite Apple in the long run. Building datacenters that run Linux is so much easier and cheaper. Microsoft has been trying to up their game but Apple apparently has no interest or no clue. Maybe that's fine. They are awash in money from their iPhone hardware so why should they care.

Edit: photo of goofy setup here [https://www.macstadium.com/datacenters/](https://www.macstadium.com/datacenters/)

<comment><USER3> The OS licensing is friendly to running VMs as long as the underlying hardware is Mac hardware.

Building datacenters that run Linux is easier and cheaper, but Apple is a hardware company, they want to sell you hardware, so there's not much incentive for them to allow people to virtualize macOS on non-Mac hardware.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't call a limit to two VMs friendly. Plus Apple doesn't make suitable hardware for this.

<comment><USER3> Huh, I didn't realize they limited it to 2 VMs, but I just checked and you're right.

That said, since they don't make appropriate hardware for this, I'm not sure I'd want to tax a Mac mini with more than 2 VMs anyway ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shameless plug for open source C/C++ projects: if you add support for the build2[1] build system, we will CI[2] your project on Mac OS (as well as Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD with various versions of GCC, Clang, and VC) for free and without any limits.

For those curious about the setup, we have our own infrastructure that runs a custom in-memory Linux-based OS called Build OS[3] that performs build tasks in throw-away VMs (KVM). This is used for all targets, including Mac OS (though we have to run Mac OS builds on a bunch of Mac Mini's due to Apple's licensing restrictions).

[1] [https://build2.org](https://build2.org)

[2] [https://cppget.org/?builds](https://cppget.org/?builds)

[3] [https://git.build2.org/cgit/buildos/tree/](https://git.build2.org/cgit/buildos/tree/)

<comment><USER5> I build travis CI jobs on Mac OS because that's the easiest way to get a reasonably modern c++ compiler. I'm glad somebody realizes there's life beyond c++-03

<comment><USER6> Why can't you just run Clang on Linux? Surely its C++11 and later features aren't exclusive to macOS? Or are you talking about some other compiler?

<comment><USER7> Travis is still on Ubuntu 14.04, but that ships with clang 3.4 and gcc 4.8, both of which support C++11 just fine, so yeah, I'm confused why 'ksherlock needs macOS. clang 3.4 even supports C++14 (gcc needs version 5; also you might want gcc 5 for the C++11 ABI changes to std::string and std::list).

'ksherlock, if you really want a newer compiler, I'd use [http://apt.llvm.org/](http://apt.llvm.org/) . Specifically do something like

        sudo: required

        before_install:
            - curl https://apt.llvm.org/llvm-snapshot.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
            - echo "deb http://apt.llvm.org/trusty/ llvm-toolchain-trusty main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/llvm.list
            - sudo apt-get update
            - sudo apt-get install clang-6.0

which will get you the latest nightly build of the not-yet-released clang 6.

Alternatively I think you can do it like this without sudo: required:

        addons:
            apt:
                sources:
                    - llvm-toolchain-trusty-5.0
                packages:
                    - clang-5.0

but clang-6.0 isn't on their whitelist [https://github.com/travis-ci/apt- package-whitelist](https://github.com/travis-ci/apt-package-whitelist) . Maybe send in a PR!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple can't be unaware that this is a problem, right? They have to be one of the biggest users of such a solution for building and testing software on Macs and iOS devices. What do they do? And why aren't they (either themselves or in partnership with someone like IBM) offering a SaaS product for Mac/iOS developers to handle this sort of thing?

<comment><USER9> It is possible to run macOS on beefier hardware (if you ignore the license) and run more VMs per host (again, if you ignore the license). In Apple's case, they don't have license issues to worry about and thus can do their SaaS/CI stuff in VMs on as many of the beefiest servers that make sense to buy instead of having to fight with Mini's or racking Mac Pros. I expect that most likely they are currently doing that on beefy machines from a cloud hardware vendor like Quantas or Dell.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but Apple has to know that about their license, right? So why haven't they (either directly or with a cloud vendor) provided a SaaS product like this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there any service like Travis CI or CircleDI that lets you add your own slaves? Jenkins let's you turn a box into a slave by running a simple jar file.

It would be nice if CircleCI or Travis CI offered as that would mean not having to pay them for instances and instead turning AWS instances into CircleCI/Travis slaves at a lower per-instance cost. I'd still be happy to pay for their website and for their system managing the slaves.

<comment><USER11> Hosted service: [https://buildkite.com](https://buildkite.com)

Self hosted: Gitlab

<comment><USER12> To be clear, you can do this with hosted GitLab.com as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We use Travis for Mac & Linux builds of OSS projects (e.g., [https://www.telepresence.io](https://www.telepresence.io)). What's frustrating is that even the _paid_ service for Mac is just as bad. We're on the East Coast, so we can use Travis for Mac in the morning, but it's terrible by lunchtime.

Fun fact: before Travis had multi-stage builds, we were able to get multi- stage builds in Travis by using the fact that mac builds were ALWAYS slower than Linux. So we could have our Linux builds create artifacts that were then used by Mac builds ...</comment>


Face masks are breaking facial recognition algorithms, says new government study - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/28/21344751/facial-recognition-face-masks-accuracy-nist-study <comment><USER5> It's my understanding they don't work against all kinds of depth scanners and that there are some researchers/agencies who are using gait tracking which is promising and doesn't require facial recognition. I assume it might require mass surveillance and that gaits may be localized, but the general sense I have, is we shouldn't get complacent and every time we think we are safe, we are probably not being creative enough.

<comment><USER6> Time to give each other charlie horses to limp or start awkardly stumbling around in stilletos in public.

<comment><USER7> Put a pebble in your shoe.

<comment><USER6> Brilliant. Hundreds of millions of dollars of investment squashed by a pebble.

<comment><USER8> That 'hack' was made famous by Cory Doctorow's _Little Brother_ in 2008. It's a good book for summer reading BTW.

[https://www.amazon.com/Little-Brother-Cory- Doctorow/dp/07653...](https://www.amazon.com/Little-Brother-Cory- Doctorow/dp/0765323117)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Part of me wants to say "duh", but studies that show obvious results are still useful.

I had a similar thought when I saw the paper last week that showed masks that don't cover the nose are less effective than those that do. On the one hand, why did we need a study to show this. On the other hand, now we have a study confirming it.

<comment><USER10> These obvious studies aren't just for the yes/no answer. It also provides other data.

Like, if I actively wanted to evade facial recognition then I now know that a black mask is better than a blue mask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah considering I can't recognize people with a face mask on I'm not surprised.

<comment><USER12> We are just not there yet. For all the people that I can't recognize initially, I do recognize many. And if I can do it, some supercomputer probably can in the future, and the future is coming fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good. Facial recognition coupled with mass CCTV is going to force us to make _hard_ choices in respect to privacy, and I don't think any society on earth is truly prepared to deal with that yet.

<comment><USER14> Britain uses a lot of CCTV but I don't see them doing better on crime. Theoretically that should conclude the topic.

<comment><USER15> Do you base this based on numbers or gut feeling? I've always felt unnaturally safe in London despite it being a massive sprawl of people-filled chaos.

<comment><USER14> You should certainly feel safe in London, but you can also feel safe in Paris, Berlin or Amsterdam. That was the argument, your re-framing quite deceptive.

Numbers are difficult to compare since data collection mechanisms are subject to change, but here you go:

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

The need for CCTV is marketing and gut feeling from my perspective because the numbers say it didn't do much.

<comment><USER16> A few years back I read a statistic in the economist that said CCTV coverage in areas reduces crimes at night to the same degree as better lighting. Sure, there is an effect but it can easily be achieved with other methods as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How do the Chinese deal with this?

Presumably they've had this problem for a while.

<comment><USER18> I remember reading that the Chinese commonly used far more advanced algorithms that looked at not only face but height, posture and walk to identify even without the face, or with a partially obscured face.

<comment><USER19> Fill your shoes with small pebbles. Once in a while, you'll stomp on them and wince. I guess it will change your gait.

<comment><USER20> Then they just have to look for person with pebbles in their shoes.

<comment><USER21> that's when you start crab-walking

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And which particular Government department is in charge of stating the bleeding obvious today?

<comment><USER23> Covid - <USER4>

Police Surveillance - <USER4>

Big Tech - <USER4>

That's a damn attractive ad-article already, even without the quotes and fluff. Click-bait topic bingo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It sure breaks mine. I saw my cousin in a mask in a restaurant, she recognized me and I didn't know her until she spoke.

Maybe once we don't look at a person and think "Facemask!", once it becomes normal, we'll retrain to identify folks by eyes, head shape, body language etc. And quit relying on nose and mouth so much.

</comment><comment><USER25> So in the next couple of years, face recognition algorithms will be able to detect us only using the upper part of our face?

<comment><USER26> Only until large sunglasses get popular.

<comment><USER25> Then it will be features on your ears which can classify you

<comment><USER27> Then everyone tapes their ears up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There is a bigger impact on the biometrics industry. Face recognition (because of the masks) is the most obvious one, but there are also fingerprint scanning and voice recognition which took a hit. As a viable alternative, typing biometrics could be the safe & user-friendly way to go (recognising people by the way they type). You can see more on this topic on the TypingDNA blog: [https://blog.typingdna.com/covid-19-pandemic-challenges- the-...](https://blog.typingdna.com/covid-19-pandemic-challenges-the- biometrics-industry/)

<comment><USER29> Could you explain what's wrong with disinfecting the fingerprint scanner?

<comment><USER30> Fingerprint scanners are legacy tech. The cool kids now are using palm vein scanners - great CER and non-contact, you just hover your hand an inch above.

<comment><USER16> Read about those at least a decade ago but never seen them in practice. Are they really used much?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You mean to say that something that covers half or more of the thing being recognised makes the recognition worse? who'd have thought?

The real news is that the error rate for the top algorithms only dropped to 5%. I can't find these numbers in the original report on my phone: [https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2020/NIST.IR.8311.pdf](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2020/NIST.IR.8311.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> Out of interest has anyone tried setting up an alternative appearance in Apple's Face ID with a mask on yet? I only have my normal appearance set up and a mask is enough to stop that working - which is pretty unsurprising. I didn't realise you could have an alternative appearance set up, curious how well that'll work - can it accurately learn and then recognise with a mask on?

<comment><USER33> I use it. The system recognises me about 80% unmasked, and about 50% masked. Roughly.

<comment><USER34> The question that comes to my mind is, how much worse did you make your security by enrolling with a mask. Because if it recognizes you with a mask 50% of the time, how many non-yous with a mask would it recognize as you as well?

<comment><USER18> The other question I have is: does it recognize you at all with a different mask on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> And this is exactly why no facial recognition algorithm should be called "intelligent".

<comment><USER36> Can an intelligent human recognize faces without failure when the person wears a mask?

<comment><USER37> Which is a great point. It's like autonomous vehicles: it doesn't have to be perfect; being better than humans is enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> another reason to wear one ;)

</comment><comment><USER39> good, I would be curious what impact would have mask like this I ordered few days ago for fun :-)

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001276782076.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001276782076.html)

there are even better more expensive balaclavas, but not gonna spam it here with link

</comment><comment><USER40> Why do you need facial recognition, when cameras get good enough and just scan retinas?

</comment><comment><USER41> My phone won't unlock when I'm out and about now

</comment><comment><USER42> ... and suddenly in US masks are a freedom right, and only a facist-communist would want to take them away from the good people.

</comment><comment><USER43> Remember remember the 6th of November.

<comment><USER44> Why?

<comment><USER45> It was the day they started to torture Guy Fawkes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's time to switch to gait recognition I suppose. Same cameras, different algorithms. Where cameras can be upgraded they can be upgraded to also capture some IR bands, in which you can see through (some) masks, clothing, and even some plastics. Algorithms could stay roughly the same in that case.</comment>


Should I invest in startup or in crypto currencies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Invest in index funds.

Investing in startups / cryptocurrencies is gambling, not investing.

<comment><USER3> so this company, Bitaccess, is working on a crypto index. its very much a work in progress towards an MVP but you can check it out at [https://faa.st](https://faa.st)

its a weighted index of the top 5 crytpo currencies by market cap. It's an interesting middle ground offering access to the speculative nature of crytpos without the massive risks of a single point of failure such as the core developing team (getting hit by a bus).

disclaimer, i work for bitaccess but on a different product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I put $100/week into the top 50 crypto coins, split evenly. I can afford to lose the money.

I wrote some code to run a few simple simulations against the past year (june 2016 - june 2017) of crypto coin values. If you had done this strategy during this time frame, you would have put in about $5,400, and it would be worth $56,000 at the end.

[https://github.com/johntitus/coinsimulator](https://github.com/johntitus/coinsimulator)

I ran the simulation using differing numbers of coins, and 50 seemed the sweet spot.

The majority of the returns came in the spring. The market has been down since then.

Obviously, the past does not dictate the future.

<comment><USER5> A big problem with this strategy is that presumably you're buying the coins after they've had a huge run-up and gone into the top 50. Since you aren't doing any type of research into the coins, they are quite likely to be just pump and dumps. Just something to consider, even if you can afford to lose the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Should I set fire to a pile of cash, or hurl it into the sea?

</comment><comment><USER7> For one, have larger part of your money in safer investments like index funds. Smaller part can be invested in riskier assets.

With both of them being long shots you have to invest in what you believe in. Not what a random stranger on internet tells you. This is simply because you have to feel comfortable where you are putting your money. You cannot have doubts if there is a temporary dip in value.

</comment><comment><USER8> Neither. Give it to me!

On a more serious note, you should probably invest it for retirement.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's wrong, there aren't any really deep holes where you live? Maybe a river? There's always the fire route if you really can't find a better way to dispose of your money.

</comment><comment><USER10> Invest in the people behind them.

<comment><USER11> This is accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Clearly your risk threshold is high. If investing in a startup have it be your own startup.....as they say at Y Combinator, find something people want and build that.

</comment><comment><USER13> Diversify.

Most assets non-risky.

Some risky (both startups and. crypto are risky investments).

Question is which involves more risk, startups or cryptocurrencies.

</comment><comment><USER14> How about a crypto currency startup?

<comment><USER3> whatever you do, don't do this.

It's a mildly sarcastic answer, but the truth is digital currency statups are kind of in a fucked state if you're anywhere near the US. If you get a token, you can liquidiate. if you go with a startup, at least you can invest in the people.

But as the former CEO of a digital currency startup that was the second largest brokerage in the US for a few years, you don't want any part of that. To many variables are out of your control, leading to too many opportunities for absolutely devastating black swan events.

<comment><USER14> Sorry. Yes, this was a very sarcastic comment. Much like many of the others with people saying why not burn your money or buy lottery tickets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Question of the year!

 _grabs popcorn_</comment>


Ask YC: Just launched my startup (an ad exchange network), what do you guys think? - <AUTHOR>

So I just launched one of my startups: AdExchanged ( http://adexchanged.com/ ). I'd love to get feedback from you guys!<p>The point of the ads is not to replace adsense, but to have people use us along with adsense. Would any of you guys use this? <comment><USER2> That's a very cool system, and yes, I would use it for certain things.

However, I would take a little more time to review the text on the pages. There were a number of phrases that struck me as... infelicitous. Most notably: "Each time somebody sees the ads on you site, a partner site will _be_ display your ad."

Those little blurbs are the first impression people get from the service, and the difference between sounding like "just some random site" and "a really cool, professional ad service" will make a difference in adoption rates. Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback! I didn't personally write any of the text, but me and my partner will look it over and fix any mistakes (and make it easier to understand).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The site sounds like whoever wrote the text is not a native english speaker. You _must_ get a native english speaker to rewrite these for you...

</comment><comment><USER4> The password box on the front screen is a plain-text box... change that to a password input box.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would recommend adding a demo of how the ad units look, mention if they are nofollowed links, and can you choose your ad partners or is this automatic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding a demo of how the ad unit looks was on the to-do list. I guess both of us just forgot about it before launching. We'll redo the front page with better wording and I'll add a demo of the ad unit in there.

In the future you will be able to choose the ads you want to display based on keywords and categories. Right now though, we wanted to make it as simple as possible (with the least amount of steps to get it set up) so it's automatic.</comment></comment>


Are nurses guilty of 'price gouging' for being paid $10k per week in NYC? - <AUTHOR> https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/are-nurses-guilty-of-price-gouging-for-being-paid-10000-per-week-in-nyc-which-is-500-above-normal/ <comment><USER2> These people are risking their fucking lives, and you're penny-pinching? Get real.

<comment><USER3> Truly. Betteridge's law of headlines seems to apply. And heck, let's shine a light on all the nonsense Wall Street gets up to? :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of what I have read indicates that out of area (travelling) nurses are being _offered_ extra compensation to work in a high risk zone. That is the no more gouging than a store having a high discount fire sale.

Plus the diagram category of "intellectual consistency" makes this read like click-bait.

</comment><comment><USER5> No would you go work with covid patients for 10k a week? Really the problem is the local nurses are underpaid and should seek higher pay

</comment><comment><USER6> Traveling nurses AKA "Flying nurses" have been a thing for decades. I had a good friend who first came to SV as one in 1983.</comment>


Casey Neistat Vlog is back - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@felixjosemon/how-casey-neistat-changed-my-perspective-a267a16fea38 <comment><USER2> Who is "Casey Neistat" and why should anyone give half a flip. Especially on HN.</comment>


Thunderstrike 2: Mac firmware worm details - <AUTHOR> https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike2_details

<comment><USER2> tl;dr: Xeno Kovah, Corey Kallenberg and I ported several previously disclosed vulnerabilities from Windows UEFI systems to Apple's EFI firmware. Using the 2014 Darth Venamis ("Dark Jedi") vulnerability we were able to unlock the motherboard boot flash, write our proof of concept to it, then scan the bus for PCIe Option ROMs and copy the worm to them as well. This allowed it to spread to other systems via shared Thunderbolt devices, possibly across air- gap security perimeters or via evil-maid attacks.

Like the original Thunderstrike vulnerability presented at CCC last year[0], firmware passwords and FileVault encryption don't prevent infection, reinstalling OSX won't remove it and it changes the RSA keys in the ROM so that Apple's firmware update routines can't remove it either. The only way to remove it is with a hardware in-system programming device connected to the SPI flash chip.

This is a transcript of our hour long presentation at DefCon 23 / Blackhat 2015 last week, which is why it is too long to read... Here is a shorter overview[1] and a demo video[2].

0: [https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike_31c3](https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike_31c3)

1: [https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike_2](https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike_2)

2: [https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike2_demo](https://trmm.net/Thunderstrike2_demo)

<comment><USER3> > then scan the bus for PCIe Option ROMs and copy the worm to them as well. > This allowed it to spread to other systems via shared Thunderbolt devices

Is a thunderbolt display considered to be an "option ROM"? Meaning it would be possible to have a rogue monitor spreading a firmware infection?

<comment><USER4> Yep. It's got a chip covered by b57.c in it.

<comment><USER5> I see that the chip has a Write-Protect PIN on it. Could it be held (high or low) in order to prevent the attack from becoming persistent?

<comment><USER4> Potentially, yes. However, if you want to have the ability to write firmware, etc, you're going to want some way of toggling that pin, leaving us right back where we started.

<comment><USER6> You connect that pin to a small switch in a not-so-easily-accessible place and tell the user to connect it whenever firmware updating is required. Something as simple as pushing a paperclip into a hole would be sufficient.

Firmware updates should _not_ be "transparent", "seamless", "one click", or whatever other terms are used today to describe silent or little-noticed changes. They are modifying a very important part of the system, and the user has to be aware of that.

<comment><USER7> For better or worse, that's definitely not the "Apple Way".

<comment><USER6> Apple did do that before though: [http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1283](http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1283)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Off topic, but highly recommended: Trammell Hudson's other projects[0]. The most famous of which is Magic Lantern, an alternative firmware for Canon DSLRs which makes them infinitely more useful for movie making (and a little more useful for stills); but other projects are also worth looking at.

[0] [https://trmm.net/](https://trmm.net/)

</comment><comment><USER9> For me, this the single most insightful / unsettling quote from the article:

      > Thunderstrike 2 doesn't make use of any new zero-day
      > vulnerabilities -- these are all older vulnerabilities
      > that had been previously disclosed and fixed on other
      > platforms.

The 'other platform' bit is a tad ambiguous, or simply overly generous, if you consider (U)EFI to be the platform.

<comment><USER10> It sounds like unsigned Option ROMs are an even bigger problem. If anything, UEFI provides an effective defense via Secure Boot. Sadly, Apple doesn't currently implement this feature -- at a minimum, they'd need to upgrade from EFI 1.10 to UEFI 2.3 to even be able to consider it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why do exploits tend to have such ridiculously good names recently?

<comment><USER12> The media loves good names so they can spread their fearmongering.

<comment><USER13> Firmware worm? Can we call this "Wormware"?

<comment><USER14> I saw the name "FirmWorm" used for this vuln.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apparently having a programmable operating system that allows reading/writing to RAM and system devices and that is rarely updated running under your own operating system allows easy exploitation, who would have guessed?

System integrators shouldn't be trusted to write software. If you've ever installed software from your various BIOS manufacturers you surely know that

</comment><comment><USER16> Collectively the computer industry has become much stupider over the decades.

Back in the 1970s, when 9-track mag tape was popular, there was a saying: "no ring, no write". There was a physical plastic ring that needed to be inserted into the tape reel hub before the tape could be written to.

When 8" and 5" floppy disks were popular, you needed to place a physical piece of tape onto the side of the media, to cover a cutout. Without that, you couldn't write to the floppy.

Then 3.5" floppies became more popular and you had a mechanical tab you needed to move to enable/disable writing.

Same with early PCs. In order to update the BIOS you needed to physically move a jumper on a motherboard.

All the above was enforced by _hardware_. There was no magic SMM that could do whatever it wanted.

But all that was too expensive, or just not friendly enough for end users.

The bean counters and hipsters making the decisions nowadays have learned _nothing_ from computer history. We've regressed.

Now get off my lawn. And be quiet, it's time for my nap.

<comment><USER17> > The bean counters and hipsters making the decisions nowadays have learned > nothing from computer history.

As someone who's also used and remembered write-rings, etc., this is nonsense. The concern over threats back then was VASTLY lower than today, because the threat was in fact far lesser. Computers were vastly less interconnected and knowledge about exploit tactics was still nascent, and a fair bit harder to come by. Stuff was _massively_ exploitable because in the "good 'ol days" there were a lot fewer computer literate people to think about things like "attack surface", and fewer still who had motive to use such knowledge maliciously. I knew grad students back in the 80's who had written their own illicit versions of "su" to make their lives easier. I.e. local privilege escalation tools. An undergrad banned (and transformed into an overnight pariah amongst his peers) for hacking CS dept servers. All kinds of devices hacked by the curious via some hardware port intended for maintenance or just left behind on the PCB. Those things happened, but the collective impact of much of that is less than one major exploit pattern today (Flash 0-day, legacy consumer routers, take your pick).

No, the root problem vs "yesterday" is just that our computers are cheaper and far more interconnected than ever before. Things like the option-ROM-as-vector being an economically practical technology. Our collective level of ability to ship secure systems is probably far better than it ever has been, but that's almost nothing in the face of an exponential explosion in the pervasiveness of computing. We still ship an incredible amount of insecure software and hardware systems, just because we make so damn much of it. Why design a complex fixed _mechanism_ or _circuit_ for something when you can solve the problem 1000x better with a CPU or DSP? That's great, but "oops, we forgot the security again." Or we didn't, but an exploit was _still_ found and updating is otherwise infeasible.

It seems that ability to ship secure tech needs to be nearly pervasive, enough for a sort of technological herd-immunity (or herd-defense-in-depth), if you will. At this point, I suppose we're looking forward the day when all our little computers are muttering to themselves like trees in a forest chemically signaling about attacking pests.</comment></comment>


Your Own Private Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/15/darknet-hewlett-packard-technology-security-darknet.html <comment><USER2> I'm just not seeing this taking off outside of a select few who have privacy concerns but don't posses enough understanding to use something like Tor.

Maybe the problem is more nuanced than I think it is, but I just don't see what problem this is solving. If you are worried about your data being online, either don't post it, or post it behind a secure login. If you are worried about privacy in terms of search histories and the like, use Tor.</comment>


A pilot who stole a secret Soviet fighter jet - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160905-the-pilot-who-stole-a-secret-soviet-fighter-jet <comment><USER2> One big difference between Soviet technology and American - the former was designed to be cheap, rugged and to survive a nuclear war.

Unlike similar American jets, you can find Mig-25's in private hands today being maintained and flying.

It is one of the only private experiences where you can break Mach 2 and get close to 90,000' feet[0].

I love the Mig-25 - like the AK-47 there is something very admirable in a plane that is designed to both perform so well but to also be so easy to maintain and with such longevity.

[0] [http://www.rusadventures.com/tour6.shtml](http://www.rusadventures.com/tour6.shtml)

[1] "edge of space" flight - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCVMuxx7YKY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCVMuxx7YKY)

<comment><USER3> Soviet jets and technology wasn't really meant to survive a nuclear war. That would have increased complexity and cost. Everything was really designed more around being disposable.

<comment><USER4> I've also heard the argument that steel was in some ways better, because when the enemy is bombing your factories, you can almost always get steel somewhere. Titanium composites, like those used on the Americans planes, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hard to believe the Soviets were using vacuum tubes instead of transistors _In hindsight, the MiG 25, which the West had been so worried about, turned out to be a 'paper tiger'. Its massive radar was years behind US models because instead of transistors it used antiquated vacuum tubes (a technology that did, however, make it impervious to electromagnetic pulses from nuclear blasts). The huge engines required so much fuel that the MiG was surprisingly short- ranged. It could take-off quickly, and fly in a straight line very fast to fire missiles or take pictures._

<comment><USER6> The factoid about resistance to EMP gets repeated endlessly online and in print, but it doesn't really make sense, and I doubt it's true. EMP damages electrical connections which are:

a) long. b) thin. c) far from a ground plane.

In more detail: the induced current depends directly on the length of the conductor; a thin is more easily overheated and damaged than a thick one; and conductors running near ground planes make poor antennas for picking up pulses.

Now, all three of these factors describe vacuum tubes more than solid-state electronics. Vacuum tubes have to have very thin heated cathode wires, and the dimensions of vacuum tubes result in a substantial distance to the ground plane and in long conductors. Compared with solid-state electronics, which, especially in modern design, can practically live on or between ground planes, this makes for a lot of sensitivity to EMP and external interference.

One sanity check is to consider electromagnetic noise emitted by the device. Any device which is emitting substantial RF noise from its internal components is also going to be vulnerable to external EMP or interference, since antennas work both ways - anything which is good at emitting will also be good at receiving. Now, vacuum tube devices emit more RF noise than modern solid state devices, and generally need more shielding.

The components in the MiG-25 radar had more to do with what was available to the Soviet designers in the 1950s. The radar of the MiG-25 came from the Tu-128 interceptor which first flew in 1961, which means that the radar was designed in the mid-1950s at the latest. Wouldn't surprise me if the US radar of the same vintage also used vacuum tubes.

<comment><USER7> The difference is that tubes saturate differently and they won't die due to high instantaneous voltages.

<comment><USER6> Like I said - people say this all the time, but a lot of vacuum tube equipment did die in EMP testing (in the USSR in 1964), and I don't see why vacuum tubes should be less vulnerable than solid state electronics to either short or long pulses (nuclear EMP contains both). A glass vacuum tube will pick up orders of magnitude more interference than a small transistor sitting inside its grounded metal can (and it's weight-prohibitive to build a metal shield around all your vacuum tubes), and the high voltage induced can damage either the vacuum tube itself, or something else inside the device. Unfortunately, very little has been published on this (although we do know that militaries test their modern solid-state devices with EMP, and they generally pass), and any online search produces a deluge of statements to the effect of "vacuum tubes are impervious to EMP" without anything to back that up. If there was ever a direct test of vacuum tubes vs. solid state, that would be very interesting to find.

<comment><USER8> Transistors of the 1950s and 1960s were particularly vulnerable to high voltages. Modern transistors and ICs have some resistance to high voltage discharges such as static electricity, but back in those days, you could easily destroy entire circuits with your hand. Early transistors were made with materials and processes we would consider sub-standard today, which is particularly significant because they were almost exclusively using bipolars instead of MOSFETs (which are much more durable), and the manufacturers of the 60s could not and did not add protection diodes. ESD control was one reason why certain American companies got so far ahead of the Soviets (and the less- adaptable competition such as Phillips, whose workforce refused to adopt ESD control practices).

<comment><USER6> True, and electrostatic discharge from your finger is no joke - it can be tens of kilovolts and carries significant, if not huge, energy. However, a discharge like that going right into a very small device, and the actual die of the transistor is tiny, is very different from interference/EMP damaging said device, where the small size actually offers protection. After all, a completed transistorized device from the 1950s is not vulnerable to static discharge - otherwise, you couldn't pick it up. With everything connected to ground where it should be, it is quite robust.

<comment><USER8> Modern ICs are much more durable and resistant to ESD than devices from those days; you can run an electronics manufacturing facility (not a semiconductor fab) without much ESD protection these days, whereas that would've been a pipe-dream in the 60s. They are sending consumer and commercial-grade semiconductors into space on satellites with service lives over 12 months these days; back in the 1960s, all satellites required rad-hard components (and had very short service lives). Semiconductors are much better these days, due to improvements in materials, processes, testing, and inspection equipment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _The Soviets had not built the 'super-fighter' the Pentagon had feared, says > Smithsonian aviation curator Roger Connor, but an inflexible aircraft built > to do a very particular job._

There is no mention what MiG-25 was designed for. Its task was to intercept nuclear bombers flying over Soviet Union and it did this task pretty well.

Because it used steel it was cheap and easy to service. At that time soviets had lot of experience with titanium (space, submarines), but expensive plane similar to SR-71 would not cover entire Soviet Union.

<comment><USER10> I think a good lesson to learn is that primitive doesn't mean archaic. Most Soviet designs favored being cheap, hardy, and easy to maintain over using the latest or rare technology. The best example is of course the AK-47, but the same philosophy is seen throughout all of their designs. Their planes are all designed to use poorly maintained or damaged airfields, or even just dirt strips.

<comment><USER11> "Most Soviet designs favored being cheap, hardy, and easy to maintain"

I think it was Max Hastings who pointed out in the context of WW2 that there isn't much point in having tanks that are six times better than your enemies if they have ten times as many tanks as you do!

<comment><USER10> Their battle strategy (slow the enemy down for as long as possible) and weapons were informed by their experience in WW2. At the beginning of Barbarossa the USSR had many wacky, complex vehicles and arms that were prone to breaking down, if they even worked at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another very interesting aircraft is the experimental Su-47, with only one ever being built. Its forward-swept wing design make it a treat for the eye.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-47](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-47)

<comment> at-fates-hands I saw in the article they mentioned new prototypes in the near future. You think they'll have something to unveil in the next few years?

<comment><USER12> The accepted and very informed answer to to a similar question on StackOverflow concludes that it is unlikely.

[http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2360/what-are- th...](http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2360/what-are-the- advantages-of-a-forward-swept-wing-over-a-rearward-swept-wing)

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward- swept_wing#Return_of_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward- swept_wing#Return_of_the_fast_jet)

They do look incredibly cool though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love that the Japanese sent it back to Russia with a bill for shipping and the damage to the airfield.

<comment><USER14> Just Japanese things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a second I thought this was the story behind the 1977 book and 1982 film Firefox which were about the MiG-31. Might have been inspired though.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_\(novel\))

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_\(film\))

</comment><comment><USER16> "You must think in Russian"

<comment><USER17> [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083943/)

<comment><USER18> haha, yes, I was thinking the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting interview with Viktor Belenko, not terribly deep but worthy of your time: [http://www.videofact.com/english/defectors2_4en.html](http://www.videofact.com/english/defectors2_4en.html)

<comment><USER20> Ah, thank you, I was really more interested in what happened to Belenko than the jet itself.</comment></comment>


Peloton accidentally built a fitness cult: a business is more complicated - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2019/10/peloton-is-spinning-faster-than-ever.html <comment><USER2> This doesn't talk much at all about their business. I've heard through people in the industry their paid retention is extremely high. It's not like $2,000 exercise equipment has not existed before. I'm sure everyone knows someone with a bowflex, norditrack or even some of the upper price range equipment from a Walmart or Costco.

Being "Fit" and Healthy is always a moving target with most people and the work to result feedback loop is probably one that most people wouldn't have the discipline to follow through on. If you could stick a $ value on the feeling of being in a community, maybe a Peloton or Soulcycle membership is worth it.</comment>


Nginx auto configuration and service discovery for Mesos/Marathon - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/martensson/nixy <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. A year ago or so I wrote a similar service called moxy (a reverse proxy for Mesos/Marathon entirely in Go) but due to the demand of more advanced features that already existed in nginx I rewrote the whole thing and now its an configuration tool using templates instead. We are using this internally on an average sized production environment, and its been working great so far. Its partly inspired by Bamboo that is a similar tool that configures haproxy, but we preferred nginx for a list of reasons. Feel free to use, fork, improve, etc!</comment>


For Online Daters, Women Peak at 18 While Men Peak at 50, Study Finds. - <AUTHOR> https://bigthink.com/stephen-johnson/study-women-peak-at-18-on-dating-apps-men-peak-at-50 <comment><USER2> Some people never learn how self-selection into your convenience sample affects results.

Also, here is the NY Times article on which this click-bait is based: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/style/dating-apps- online-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/style/dating-apps-online-men- women-age.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Changed the title. Don't know how to replace the link. Thanks for pointing out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Link to the full paper (at _Science Advances_ no less): [http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/4/8/eaap9815...](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/4/8/eaap9815.full.pdf)

Fascinating stuff, and there is so much more to the paper than what the title suggests. Some highlights:

"The most popular individual in our four cities, a 30-year-old woman living in New York, received 1504 messages during the period of observation, equivalent to one message every 30 min, day and night, for the entire month."

"The average woman's desirability drops from the time she is 18 until she is 60. For men, desirability peaks around 50 and then declines. In keeping with previous work, there is also a clear and consistent dependence on ethnicity, with Asian women and white men being the most desirable potential mates by our measures [...]"

"Desirability is associated with education most strongly for men, for whom more education is always more desirable. For women, an undergraduate degree is most desirable; postgraduate education is associated with decreased desirability among women."

"[...] A majority of both sexes tend to contact partners who are more desirable than themselves on average and hardly any users contact partners who are significantly less desirable. The curves are remarkably consistent across all four cities, with men and women on average sending messages to potential partners who are 26 and 23% further up the rankings than themselves, respectively."

"Both men and women tend to write substantially longer messages to more desirable partners, up to twice as long in some cases. The effect is larger for messages sent by women than by men, although there are exceptions. Among the groups we study, for instance, it is men in Seattle who have the most pronounced increase in message length. Of the cities studied, Seattle presents the most unfavorable dating climate for men, with as many as two men for every woman in some segments of the user population."

"[...] we see an interesting difference between women and men: the women show an increase in their use of positive words when communicating with more desirable partners, while the men show a decrease. The effect size is modest but is consistent across all four cities and statistically significant. [...] in all four cities, men experience slightly lower reply rates when they write more positively worded messages. Although our analysis can not reveal the underlying process that gives rise to these behaviors (for example, reinforcement learning), this result may offer a hint about why men tend to write somewhat less positive messages to more desirable partners."</comment>


Google and China: Flowers for a funeral - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15267915

<comment><USER2> People in China are quite aware of the fact that the "thought police" are out there, and poke fun at it all the time. They also know they are a developing country. I hypothesize that the government gets away with this only because it's still developing, and not enough people care about political stuff like this... yet.

<comment><USER3> You're right, people in China are aware of this - and they bring it up all the time... but God help you if _you_ (as a foreigner) do.

It's a common mentality with the Chinese (speaking as one myself)... only you are allowed to criticize your kind, any outside criticism is presumptuous and arrogant. This attitude pisses me off, since it prevents us from learning from everyone else on this rock.

<comment><USER4> > only you are allowed to criticize your kind, any outside criticism is > presumptuous and arrogant. This attitude pisses me off, since it prevents us > from learning from everyone else on this rock.

Well it's generally true, one important factor is the Chinese way of thinking & culture is very different from the western. Chinese has their own definition of good and evil. It's easy to understand western beliefs, but it's damn _hard_ to practice them.

Currently there's a trend on the Internet, that it's patriotism to damage foreign companies, no matter what kind of dirty method you use. For patriotism, any kind of line can be crossed.

Another example is Chinese people _actively reject_ the idea of universal values no matter what content they are. I remember not long time ago a Party official speaks to media , calls 'human right' an American thing, even though it's ridiculous and laughed at after this made public, but it largely reflects part of Chinese subconscious mind. There's no extend of human rights in Chinese history & culture, or rarely advocated.

In my theory, this is a language barrier. Universal Values, human rights, democracy are all looks clumsy foreign concepts, it's not native at all, it looks like you are running a GTK app on Windows. It functions but it looks _odd_.

To pass these ideas and stuff to China, I think direct porting (aka, translating and interpreting) is very ineffective, it has to be rewritten from the source code level, and use native Chinese APIs :)

<comment><USER2> However on issues like Tibet, pretty much all my Chinese friends, whether they grew up there or in the US, backed the government.

I think despite everything they're still quite patriotic. Probably due to a lack of understanding that an illegitimate government is an entity seperate from the Chinese people. They almost back the government as if it's a duty tof being Chinese.

<comment><USER4> > Probably due to a lack of understanding that an illegitimate government is > an entity seperate from the Chinese people. They almost back the government > as if it's a duty tof being Chinese.

Yes, most people back the government because they think it's a duty of being Chinese, even without any second thinking.

However, I don't quit agree with the 'separate entity' part. My theory is the Chinese government is not a singularity of Communism or stuff, it's organic instance of a class derived from Chinese culture. I assume even if aliens kill _all_ Party members in a instance and establish a new government, years later the government will do no better than the current one. There are really some fucked shit in Chinese official-civil relationships. I can't explain it completely but there's definitely a serious problem there. The government can not be saved with democracy or whatever, it can only be cured by the Chinese people itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It kind of caught me off guard hearing Techcrunch quoted in the Economist. Kind of like having your mother buying Twilight stickers.</comment>


Ask HN: what do you think of the name Squiry? - <AUTHOR>

I have been looking for a brandanle domain to launch a service for quite sometime. I picked squiry cause it's short and brandanble, in my opinion.<p>Would love to hear your take. Also what are some factors you base your decision on when choosing a name? <comment><USER2> Names are hard to choose, but you shouldn't spend too much time on it at the expense of developing your idea.

It's common now to try to make an english-like brand name, but there's an implicit false assumption that everyone will be able to work out a pun-like significance, but that doesn't work in countries where english is not a first language.

Of course that depends on who your target audience is going to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> For what it's worth, I'm not sure how to pronounce "squiry". I would have guessed "skwer-e", but that sounds unlike most English words I know. Reading this page, maybe "squire-e"? "s-queer-e" (as in s-query)?

It's not even that I couldn't choose between two ways to read it, but that I couldn't come up with one good way to read it.

To me that seems like bad sign.

</comment><comment><USER4> Often you can have name relate in some direct or indirect what to what the service does, or something unique about it.

If you are playing off '(In)quiry', FYI my first impression was pronouncing more like 'Squirrel', "SQUIR-Y" rather than "S-QUIR-Y".

<comment><USER5> I agree with this. I saw squiry, but my mind instantly converted it to squirrely. My 2 cents.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. The idea was to go more like (In)quiry

</comment><comment><USER6> It's fine.

</comment><comment><USER7> something like "s" "query".</comment>


Announcing TypeScript 2.5 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/08/31/announcing-typescript-2-5/ <comment><USER2> Light but appreciated release. My team will love the refactoring features.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trying to figure out if this lands the support for BroadcastChannel which I believe was recently merged to the dom definitions, but I'm on mobile and github is hard to navigate, any helpful individual who could have a looksie?

<comment><USER3> In case anyone else is wondering, it looks like it made the release :)</comment></comment>