WannaCry – New Variants Detected - <AUTHOR> https://blog.comae.io/wannacry-new-variants-detected-b8908fefea7e <comment><USER2> Anyone know someone at the Tor Project? Based on a breakdown I read, it downloads the Tor client from [https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/6.5.1/tor- win32-0.2.9...](https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/6.5.1/tor- win32-0.2.9.10.zip)

It would be simple to rename this link (or perform a referer check or something else to stop automated downloads), at least temporarily.

Yes, the malware authors will release an update with the different URL (or another hosting site entirely, or embedded), but at least it would provide time for vulnerable users to install patches. Especially now that Microsoft has released a patch for XP.

(I'm basing this URL info on the breakdown found at [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/wannacry- wana...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/wannacry-wana- decryptor-wanacrypt0r-technical-nose-dive/))

<comment><USER3> I wondered that exact same thing on Friday; thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's special about WannaCry that has made this such a widespread thing? I presume there's has been plenty of malware for a while that can propagate itself around a network of unpatched old Windows machines and people have been trying to get users to clicks on emails to infect themselves for years.

So why now? What's so special now?

<comment><USER5> Basically, this is a successful old-fashioned computer worm, operating at a scale we've not seen for more than 10 years. On modern operating systems most attack surfaces that were easy to crack in the past have been locked down at least to the point where it is nearly impossible to find an exploit in a common protocol like this that doesn't require user interaction (hence the popularity of phishing). Apart from that we've just gotten lucky, really. Many of the most catastrophic bugs in recent years (Heartbleed, etc) were never successfully turned into exploits of this nature. Instead they were discovered and fixed quickly by researchers.

This worm targets older Windows versions that are installed (and use the exploited protocol) in a lot of critical infrastructure, and the worm was hoarded by the NSA all packaged up and ready to deploy (because it can propagate through SMB and therefore would be perfect for a future Stuxnet-like operation). So of course some criminals get their hands on it, and hey look it works. It's an absolutely bonkers story.

<comment><USER6> "older Windows versions"

Win 10 is vulnerable without the patch that came out in march.

<comment><USER7> >Win 10 is vulnerable without the patch that came out in march

Microsoft clearly disputes this in their own posts on the subject.

[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msrc/2017/05/12/customer...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msrc/2017/05/12/customer- guidance-for-wannacrypt-attacks/)

"Customers running Windows 10 were not targeted by the attack today."

What's your source?

<comment><USER8> From your source:

"Customers who are running supported versions of the operating system (Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016) will have received the security update MS17-010 in March. If customers have automatic updates enabled or have installed the update, they are protected. For other customers, we encourage them to install the update as soon as possible."

If you don't have the update, you are not protected, you are vulnerable.

<comment><USER9> If you or your IT dept is not installing updates, especially security patches, over 2 months after they come out, somethings horribly wrong.

<comment> dorian-graph The reality is, this is very common.

<comment><USER9> Then what, realistically, can be done when nation-state knowledge of vulnerable systems is hoarded for cyber-warfare purposes?

<comment><USER7> Frankly, there is only one solution I can see anymore:

Laws must be passed to:

* Force the US government to report vulnerabilities to vendors

* Create a regulatory body to monitor the use of vulnerabilities in clandestine operations and ensure that mandatory reporting is upheld

I cannot see anything less working.

Get that through US and EU governments, and you'll likely have the vast majority of vulnerabilities being reported and patched.

Of course this is akin to asking the US and Russia to convert their nuclear stockpile into reactor fuel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get it: why are the using using many fake but valid domains? Wouldn't a non-existing TLD do exactly the same thing while being impossible to register by anyone trying to stop the malware?

<comment><USER11> Or even just sha256(unixtime().rand()).com

Or a domain in a TLD that allows only second level TLDs (such as some of the commonwealth countries).

<comment><USER12> > sha256(unixtime().rand()).com

Yep, that's the way to do it.

<comment><USER13> That gives you 64 characters to the left of the dot. The maximum number of characters allowed in any single component of a domain name is 63. Some systems might react in unexpected ways if you try to resolve an invalid domain name, making your check unreliable. Better use md5 or sha1.

<comment><USER11> Well, that'd be an implementation detail, but the general concept stays the same.

And is superior to hardcoding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really am a bit puzzeled by the killswitches. Why does WannaCry have this functionality in the first place? It sounds almost ironically like a hollywood villain mistake.

<comment><USER15> They're more analysis defeaters than killswitches. Some testbeds will respond to all dns lookups as valid. If this is the case the binary assumes its in a testbed and exits to avoid analysis.

<comment><USER16> Which makes me think there might be utility in always running Windows (or other OSes) in a VM. If the malware assumes VMs are bad and self exit in response, then it should be safer to run everthing in a VM. A side benefit would be you can perform snapshot backups and easily migrate your main environment to new hardware.

<comment><USER17> You might wanna take a look at Qubes OS, which tries to provide such workflow in a nicely packaged distribution: [https://www.qubes- os.org/](https://www.qubes-os.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > A new variant with no kill-switch recovered by Kaspersky as a virustotal.com > upload — not detected in the Wild.

Uploaded to virustotal MEANS found in the wild. That's what admins do when they discover things.

<comment><USER19> I don't know if this one was detected in the wild or not (99% chance it was), however, malware authors occasionally use Virustotal too.

<comment><USER20> There are virustotal clones that don't send back results to the vendors. This is specifically done to prevent that kind of problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Could a grey hat create a self propagating but non-ransoming variant that inoculated target machines against its more malicious brethren? Seems like something a state actor might want to do.

<comment><USER22> You mean bundle and forcefully install MS patches? This would require reboot which AFAIK can't be done without user's action (if not using undocumented APIs).

<comment><USER23> > You mean bundle and forcefully install MS patches? This would require reboot > which AFAIK can't be done without user's action (if not using undocumented > APIs).

Considering you're using a vulnerability to forcefully inoculate systems, and you gained admin if not Ring0 privileges, you could trivially "reboot" the box by just crashing it, no APIs required. You could even be nice and check if there are applications with open files, or schedule it only when the user has been idle for a while, and only do it during the usual hours of inactivity (Windows 10 even has a control panel section to choose them).

Or, you could just open a dialog box, masquerade as a legitimate update and ask for user consent. You _are_ an important security update after all, just a fairly unconventional one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These systems would be better of security wise if they would use the latest open source operating system including the embedded code. The damage this will cause to embedded systems is distasteful.

<comment><USER25> I'm am very much in favor of open source always but let's not pretend that embedded systems don't end up with out of date software just because it's open source.

In the case of WannaCrypt0r, the vulnerability had already been fixed by Microsoft but those who were hit hadn't patched because as discussed elsewhere applying patches may break things so some postpone or ignore it. Same thing could have happened to a system running Linux.

<comment><USER26> Thank you for your thoughtful comment... People who get drunk with the Linux cool-aid are really tiresome. They believe they're safe by using Linux, and completely disregard good security practices with their windows-bashing speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How does 'Patient A' get wcry2? Phishing? Via internet facing open 445/3389?

<comment><USER28> My guess is this is why we're seeing multiple bitcoin addresses:

The original authors first released it with their own bitcoin address. It then spreads p2p around the world wherever it can to front-facing PCs.

Then 3rd-party spearfishers are sending it to corporate networks with their own bitcoin address so they can get the credit for getting past/through firewalls.

<comment><USER29> If the payment goes to them instead of the original authors, how could the new hijackers of the virus offer to decrypt the data? I'd assume only the original authors have access to the private keys needed for that.

If someone was really clever they could change the Tor addresses it talks to for command & control and write their own complete replacement backend, but at that point it seems like you'd be looking at people capable enough to just write their own malware from scratch anyway...

<comment><USER28> It could be one back-end, with the malware authors paying a cut to the spearfishers. The spearfishers could monitor the bitcoin address to ensure they get the right cut.

Some level of trust would be involved.

I think the spearfishing industry and the malware writing industry aren't one and the same. The former is the marketing department, the latter is the tech department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Could the 51% "bug" in bitcoin actually be used to an advantage here? A 51% vote to invalidate all these transactions? I assume it doesn't work like that but figured I would ask.

<comment><USER31> It's a feat that _could_ be leveraged, but the likelihood and work to do so would outweigh actually pulling it off.

If this attack occurred against, for example, the CN government, they may step in and force miners to invalidate.

This scale is world-wide, there's no loss of public image and the amount of BTC is very small in the scheme of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's hilarious how these "kill switches" are supposedly meant to detect sandboxes, to make it harder for security researchers to analyze the malware. While actually making it easy for security researchers to completely disable all installations around the entire world.

That's just what I heard, but it makes sense. There are far more sane ways to implement a kill switch without using unregistered domains. (For instance, using a registered domain.)

<comment><USER32> The point of the killswitch is to detect if the worm is running inside a sandbox. Some sandboxes will resolve any domain you try to ping, so an easy way to detect this is to ping a non-existent domain name. I'm not totally sure how pinging an existing domain would give you the same behavior, but doing something like checking a handful of random non-existent domains from a large list could do the trick.

From the sounds of it, it seems like the researchers didn't expect the killswitch to disable the malware outside of the sandbox any more than the author of the malware did[0].

[0]: [https://www.malwaretech.com/2017/05/how-to-accidentally- stop...](https://www.malwaretech.com/2017/05/how-to-accidentally-stop-a- global-cyber-attacks.html)

<comment><USER33> I wonder why there are multiple kill switches?

<comment><USER32> Precisely to prevent the registration of one domain from neutering your malware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Two researchers said they found a variant with a kill switch.

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/round-two- wannacr...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/round-two-wannacry- ransomware-that-struck-the-globe-is-back)

<comment><USER35> *without

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why would they keep releasing it, and release it in the first place, with such a simple kill-switch. Doesn't make much sense.

Reminds me of the Archer episode where Cyril plants the computer virus and was going to be the hero by "fixing" it.

<comment><USER37> It's possible that people are taking the code, modifying it to add in a new kill switch address, change the bitcoin address and leave every thing else as it is. Usually because they don't understand the code but can do a ctrl+f, delete and replace with the necessary info. Script kiddies of the malware world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am trying to understand impact of crypto currency. Sorry for my ignorance, and or impertinence. 1\. Is it possible to run such large scale ransom demands without cryptocurrency? 2\. Do we know if the attacker is using a single BTC wallet, or if ransoms are being collected in a distributed fashion. 3\. Is it possible for BTC n/w to hijack BTCs going to the ransom wallet(s). That is to say collectively overwrite/override the transactions and may be reroute the coins to some non-profit wallet? I know it will be a very bad precedent, but I am trying to understand if it is technically possible.

<comment><USER39> > 3\. Is it possible for BTC n/w to hijack BTCs going to the ransom wallet(s).

No, by design that's not allowed as part of the protocol for bitcoin. Every transaction must be signed by the private key for that address in order to be valid. You could in theory do it if you can get a majority of the miners to agree to the change in the protocol but it wouldn't happen since it'd require forking the whole blockchain to insert new transactions without the private key. And then you'd have to get everyone to agree on where those would go.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the response. I should have been more explicit, but when I said BTC n/w I meant a consensus sort of thing from users/miners. Thanks for your explanation regarding the need of a fork to achieve this even with consensus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This makes me think of a different kind of a kill-switch. What if the OS itself is required to have a kill-switch that triggers once it goes out of support, and it prevents regular use unless the admin goes through some serious hoops to override. It at least squarely puts the blame on 1) Orgs that willfully override v/s passively ignoring to update 2) OS vendors who have really short support cycles (~1 year for most android phones)

<comment><USER41> if you put a killswitch in Windows that can be triggered from Redmond, I guarantee you it will be used by virus of sorts

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> We were warned this would happen but it's interesting to me that we have detected new variants that include the same type of naive kill switch. I'm not well versed in information security, so my question is whether this means attackers tried another wave by simply changing the kill switch domain or were there several variants used for the initial attack?

</comment><comment><USER43> Are these new variants new compiles?

Is it possible that multiple variants with randomly-generated kill-switches are being automatically generated?

</comment><comment><USER44> Is there analysis on what encryption algorithm was being used? And how the payment confirmation switch works on the malware.

Is it possible instead of patching the OS, to release a patch which patches the malware binary to no-op the payment switch?

</comment><comment><USER45> I would like to know whether the decrypted data can be trusted again in case the contents have been somewhat changed. Then again it is much better than not having any data at all in some cases...

</comment><comment><USER46> If they attach this to a new exploit, instead of an old one that targets Windows XP, there's going to be a real problem.

<comment><USER27> Anyone got XP infections? It is being touted around as XP (for various reasons) but wcry 2.0 affects newer versions of Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Just wait until this hits the files of a Russian mob who then take some Americans hostage and fly to China and end up entangled in an islamic terrorist plot. 'Cause then we're in for a very long and drawn out story involving MI6, the CIA, Canadian smuggling routes, and Christian Isolationist 2nd Amendment fanatics.

<comment><USER48> Psst, downvoters - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde)

<comment><USER49> Downvotes are appropriate. HN isn't the place for in-jokes or pop culture references.

<comment><USER50> "Don't tell me what I can't do!" \- John Locke, LOST

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> They will get them following the payments soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER52> Who is doing this knowing fully well that GHCQ , FBI and possibly even the NSA are hard at work trying to get them ?

These people are going down . No doubt about it.

<comment><USER27> This is what happens when spambot skiddies accidentally acquire a treasure- trove of NSA tools via a C2 server they have pwned. They failed to sell ('broker') them as nobody was stupid enough to touch them, they failed to blackmail with them (omg what a bad move), then they failed to weaponise their own gear with them (wcry 1.0 in February), and even though wcry 2.0 is widespread and very disruptive, really they failed again only making 50k out of how many infections? They have only 3 bitcoin addresses making it obvious nobody is getting decrypted (how do they know who has paid?) or there is a single master key which will be found soon, their sandbox detector is a killswitch. Larry, Moh and Curly have invited a world of pain upon themselves - as well as probably killing people on NHS - they also infected Moscow Police - so FSB too.

Definitely, would not like to be them.

<comment><USER53> A bunch of articles, even Snowden, argued that it's very likely that the NSA tools were stolen by the Russians.

[https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765514891813945344](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/765514891813945344)

<comment><USER54> And given the indications about how hard various Russian infrastructure was hit, that would be ironic.

Of course, if you were a nation state and you _wanted_ to attack an adversary but you knew that if you did you would get blowback, you _might_ "lose" some tools that you knew some script kiddies would be able to weaponize.

Interesting times indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Maybe it would be better to wait until the attackers registered the domain, then sopoeana the registrair for their account info.

<comment><USER56> Do you seriously expect criminals are dumb enough to leave any useful information there?

<comment><USER53> Remember the guy which created Silk Road. People talked about him in mythical terms, that he probably has the op-sec of God, but afterwards facts pointed to major mistakes, like connecting identities to his real name, and suddenly everybody was like "how can he be so stupid, doing this while being the owner of a $100 mil criminal empire"

<comment><USER57> It's a classic asymmetry: the defender needs to defend all the time, the hacker just needs to get in once. Ditto op-sec, the hacker needs to keep their identity protected at all times, the security services only need to connect the dots once.

<comment><USER58> He kept his diary unlocked along with the rest of his operational assets. That's a far cry from one slip.

Was it ever released how they found and imaged his server though?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Atheist invocation makes history in Greece - <AUTHOR> http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2014/07/15/atheist-gives-historic-invocation-greece/12714037/

<comment><USER2> That would be the town of Greece, in upstate New York (population 96,095)[1], not the country of Greece.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece,_NY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece,_NY)</comment>


The quote that to date inspired me the most - <AUTHOR> http://blog.badgateway.net/2013/05/the-quote-that-to-date-inspired-me-the-most

<comment><USER2> I kind of like that quote in the sense of "don't let anyone hold you back" / "don't settle for what is already there".

OTOH it can easily come of as pretty arogant. What do you think about that?

<comment><AUTHOR> I also think of it as "don't settle for what is already there".</comment></comment>


"Learn This One Weird Trick to Debug CSS" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.org/learn-this-one-weird-trick-to-debug-css-88529aa5a6a3 <comment><USER2> It literally is clickbait, though. Use descriptive titles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note! I was going for internet humor, I might have missed, though :)</comment></comment>


What is growth hacking? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-is-growth-hacking?share=1 <comment><USER2> Growth-hacking is marketing for irritating people.</comment>


Steve Wozniak on Apple's Success - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3314263389542792050&q=wozniak&total=333&start=0&num=10&so=1&type=search&plindex=0

<comment><USER2> Steve Jobs created Apple's success.

'Woz' created the first products up until the Mac. The Woz really chaps my hide, he could be a multi-millionaire but instead he crash landed his plane, spent his stock on concerts, and starts companies that fold up.

Woz now gets a small salary from Apple, he has some stock left (but not a lot), in other words he is not rich. Come on Woz you could have done better then that, kick your butt back to Apple and get a good management job that comes with stock options.</comment>


You have ruined JavaScript (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://codeofrob.com/entries/you-have-ruined-javascript.html <comment><USER2> He's upset with the following:

"An Angular "service" is a singleton object created by a "service factory". These service factories are functions which, in turn, are created by a "service provider". "The service providers are constructor functions". When instantiated they must contain a property called $get, which holds the service factory function."

He programs his front end in React. I'm not an expert in React in any way, but let's look at some sample code:

      "use strict";

      var HelloMessage = React.createClass({
        displayName: "HelloMessage",

        render: function render() {
          return React.createElement(
            "div",
            null,
            "Hello ",
            this.props.name
          );
        }
      });

      ReactDOM.render(React.createElement(HelloMessage, { name: "John" }), mountNode);

In this code, I see what looks like a singleton object called ReactDOM, which would be an Angular service. There's a factory function "createClass" (a service factory), which is created by an object called React - which looks suspiciously like an Angular service provider.

Call me a cynic, but this rant looks like an uninformed screed, written by someone who thinks that creation patterns are only creation patterns if they are called factories, singleton factories and factory-functions (or constructor functions).

If he can't identify patterns in use in his favourite tool that are precisely the same as the ones he criticises, then I'm not sure he's as good a coder as he thinks he is. Even if he enjoys writing in Erlang.

<comment><USER3> I think the code you posted is much simpler, both conceptually and at the level of the code itself. We know what classes are, we know what render means.

I think the requirement to express markup as a tree of function calls is inelegant (JSX is no different, just shorthand for this) and my least favorite part of React, but I'll take inelegant over WTF any day.

<comment><USER2> I'm not an Angular expert, and this isn't quite the same, but seems to show the same basic principles at play:

      var helloWorldApp = angular.module('helloWorldApp', []);

      HelloWorldApp.controller('HelloWorldController', function ($scope) {
        $scope.displayName = "HelloMessage"
      });

I believe you just add a directive to add a new element. Slightly more code, but the same concepts in play. React uses an MVC framework, only it doesn't use those exact words.

Seems pretty much the same to me!

Note that React may well be easier to understand, but its not because it doesn't use a singleton object to access an object factory created by a provider of factories (a factory that creates factories).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My feelings exactly, it's like people in tech intentionally complicate things in order to stay relevant and irreplaceable, or maybe using complicated solutions makes them feel superior? No one cares how your app works as long as it works, I've created large web apps using a small set of libraries and guess what - they still work fine after so many years. Keep it simple, stupid.

<comment><USER2> Einstein said that everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. In the case of certain enterprise apps (yup, such things exist!) frameworks like Angular are often required.

<comment><USER5> Required as in _mandated_ , perhaps, but certainly not required as in _necessary_.

<comment><USER2> You say that, but you would be often wrong.

<comment><USER6> Anything you can do with a framework, you can also do without a framework.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for expressing that insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To me this is mostly just a rant about why Angular is terrible. And I agree, it's absolutely terrible. Frustratingly overwrought (I dare you to output a URL in a template, go on, I dare you) and built on top of some unfortunate ideas like dirty-checking and all this service factory madness.

Fortunately, it's far from being dominant in front-end dev.

<comment><USER2> How would you build a templating framework in JavaScript?

<comment><USER3> I'm a big fan of Ractive, check it out. Ractive.org

<comment><USER2> Takes me to a page under construction then redirects me to a blank page.

Edit: I think you meant ractivejs.org

<comment><USER2> Ok, seems pretty cool! But here's some news for you: it's doing dependency injection also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The previous submission already has a very good top comment from haberman and provides a balanced perspective: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7633625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7633625)

</comment><comment><USER8> Somehow I can rant about any topic on the internet, but so long as the topic includes a dissenting opinion about javascript, it will be upvoted.</comment>


This Parking Lot Is Paved With Solar Panels - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/05/solar-road/?mbid=social_fb

<comment><USER2> "Power signs and street lamps"? As long as you don't mind if they fail to work much of the time. Solar power being unreliable in foul weather and seasonally.

Its a smart idea to use existing large surfaces for solar collection. Some issues: when you want the power (e.g. to charge electric cars parked at work) it'll be mostly covered up by those same cars.

<comment><USER3> The existing power grid is also still available when solar power is insufficient.

<comment><USER2> ...and vastly more efficient than dirty snowcovered parking lot paving stones at collecting energy. The cost-effectiveness of pasting 'solar cell' on everything in sight is certainly debatable.</comment></comment></comment>


Coinbase to wallet transaction pending 3 days, can't be found on blockchain - <AUTHOR> Hello
So on December 19th i bought some Ethereum on coinbase.com, which conveniently enough was instantaneous, and the money was withdrawn from my bank. I immediately sent the ethereum to my Exodus wallet, which since that moment has been pending and cannot even be found on the blockchain!
My intention was to exchange the ethereum and I have now therefore lost several days of day trading because of this... I have heard of people having problems withdrawing crypto to their bank but not for simply sending to their wallet. I have submitted a ticket to the coinbase team but to no avail.
I hope that a coinbase representative sees this and helps my case along. If my case is delayed further I will take to reddit and larger platforms to express my concern with coinbase.com.
Has anyone else experienced a similar situation? <comment><AUTHOR> My exodus wallet's adress is

0x078Ea6bf3648AB03B464AcAc0d333901089c6B3E</comment>


Putting time in perspective - <AUTHOR> http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html <comment><USER2> I guess Tim did not read this article.

Time Might Only Exist in Your Head. And Everyone Else's

[https://www.wired.com/2016/09/arrow-of- time/](https://www.wired.com/2016/09/arrow-of-time/)

For technical folk's out there, here is a paper for you.

On decoherence in non-renormalizable field theories and quantum gravity

Dmitriy Podolskiy, Robert Lanza

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05377](https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.05377)

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be even more interesting to see it all on one massive horizontal timeline.</comment>


Facebook's war on free will - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks-war-on-free-will?CMP=fb_gu <comment><USER2> This article started strong and then about half way through turns into incoherent raving. The author clearly has only the foggiest grasp of basic programming concepts. This thimble of knowledge seems to have been gathered with the sole intent of painting Zuckerberg and other tech giants as a cabal of warlocks plotting the demise of humanity.

If Mr. Foer, or anyone from The Guardian happens by this comment, Bravo! I admire your commitment to your narrative, even when all facts point in a completely different direction.

It takes a certain amount of audacity to call the link between Computer Science and Mathematics 'sleight of hand'. To imply that this link was a parlor trick to lend credibility to an industry that helped the Allies win WWII requires an Olympian level of mental gymnastics.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Hard to believe someone that does not understand algorithms at all can write with so much confidence on the topic. But let's not forget this is the Guardian echo chamber, I'm sure this piece will be well received by their audience.

While there is indeed a need to examine the motives and doctrine of the new "engineering ruling class", this article's argumentation is thoroughly lacking.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Meetup in SF for YC rejects - <AUTHOR>

Let's face it. You still think your idea is great and has legs but you didn't get your seed funding.
How about we all meetup? It would be beneficial to meet people in the community to share ideas, find partnerships and be a support group. If there's critical mass, it can be a sort of weekly happy hour/coffee thing that's a good excuse to get out of the house and interacting with people again.
Anybody interested?
(Edit: I created the event. RSVP if interested. Date and place are TBD.)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=401254911062 <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. Love to meet with fellow entrepreneur. You can use <http://www.meetup.com/> for arrangement.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK here's the event.

<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=401254911062>

<comment><USER3> I'm in. Looking forward to meeting whoever shows up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> if you make this on a weekend, you might get more people to make it up the city. I would love to attend, either way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet. Add yourself to the RSVP as further discussion will continue there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sweet, this sounds like fun!

</comment><comment><USER6> All the YC rejects should pool their money, pick the best rejected idea, and start a company.</comment>


C++ Programming How To Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.examville.com/examville/C++%20Programming%20How%20To%20Guide-ID5521

<comment><USER2> Please don't post links to a PDF reader site when the document is available as HTML from its original author:

<http://beej.us/guide/bgc/output/html/multipage/index.html>

Your title is wrong, too... this is a guide to C, not C++.

Edit: Judging from your other submissions and the similarity of your user name to the one on examville.com, it seems you are trying to attract attention to free content that you have uploaded behind a download-paywall. Please don't do that, either.</comment>


TSLint in 2019: TSLint Will Be Officially Deprecated in Favor of ESLint - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/palantir/tslint-in-2019-1a144c2317a9 <comment><USER2> Title should either reflect the original article or be amended to include "at some point in the future". FTA:

> Once we consider ESLint feature-complete w.r.t. TSLint, we will deprecate > TSLint and help users migrate to ESLint; our primary tasks until then > include:

> Continued TSLint support: The most important maintenance task in TSLint is > ensuring its compatibility with new compiler versions and features.

> TSLint → ESLint compat package: Once the ESLint static analysis checks are > on a par with TSLint, we'll publish an eslint-config-palantir package, a > drop-in ESLint replacement for our TSLint rule set.</comment>


Ask HN: Your Code Reading List? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone been reading code lately?  Share your links!
I've been trying to up my Android game and was examining the code for the Google IO scheduling app.  As someone who generally builds web apps in HTML5, it is a bit of a mindfuck to see the "proper" way one is to organize Android and Java code.
https://code.google.com/p/iosched/ <comment><USER2> Been learning type level programming. Learning scalaz and reading the simple codebase is where I'm at. [https://github.com/scalaz/scalaz](https://github.com/scalaz/scalaz)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been spending some time with Jeff Atwood's Discourse* lately. Meaty new concepts and taught me a lot.

Ruby on Rails + Emberjs. Nice to see how they've integrated the two technologies and how some of the decisions they've are very different from the Ruby community at large (SQL queries over Active Record pattern, data serializers etc).

[https://github.com/discourse/discourse](https://github.com/discourse/discourse)</comment>


Why isn't my child as clever as me? (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/22/why-isnt-my-child-clever-as-me <comment><USER2> This author ironically comes across as really quite obtuse. I'm willing to bet her daughter would outdo her or her "higher stream" peers in many measures of success one day if she were free from her no-doubt oppressive home and educational environments. The way the post concluded I'm not confident, so I feel bad for the little girl. She's likely never gonna get a chance.

<comment><USER3> I think this may be correct. What kind of mother pens an article to the Guardian about how her daughter is dumb, blames it on her husband, and holds nightly reading lessons that make her child cry? Certainly an overbearing one. It sounds like she's doing more harm than good at this point.

<comment><USER4> Are you trying to say that the mother is the dumb one here?

<comment><USER5> "Intelligence" and not doing dumb things are related in the same way that money is the difference between a Chevy Aveo and an S-Class. Input and output are obviously related but it's nowhere a X:1 relationship (for small values of X). Just being "twice as intelligent" might make you more likely to be a successful parent but not twice as likely in the same way that spending 4x as much on some product doesn't get you something that's 4x better than the entry level item.

There's a correlation between rich/poor/smart/dumb and parenting effectiveness but there's so much noise that nobody's surprised when a rich smart couple has a deadbeat kid or vise versa.

Just being smart won't save her if she's a crap parent but people are resilient enough that unless she's really good or really bad it probably won't make a huge difference a decade down the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This statement is suggestive: "the teacher encouraged me to practise reading and writing every night with her, but every letter was a struggle and every session ended in tears, tantrums and dejection. "

The kid is not in control, the mother is. It is a job of the person in control, to adapt and change the behavior, in order to change outcome "every session ended in tears and dejection".

<comment><USER7> you haven't tried raising a kid, I assume...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't be hard on the mother. In this era where unskilled jobs are being automated and other skilled jobs are being outsourced what do you expect from a protective mother ? The mother obviously wants the kid to survive and she is very much upset about the thought of being not fit in the society. Well all this will disappear if basic income becomes reality and robots does all our jobs and humans are free of wage slavery. And that is where engineer(especially software) takes the role of god .

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if the author is discussing the culture of intellectualism rather than being "bright" per se.

Not that this point contradicts anything in the article. You can still wish your children had inherited your cultural posture.

<comment><USER10> I feel that she's conflating specific (though rather arbitrary) intellectual milestones with being "bright."

<comment><USER11> I believe she's got a broader view.

"All the other milestones found her trailing behind her peers: potty-training, dressing herself, identifying colors."

These seem less like specific intellectual milestones than general developmental ones.

I think it's the integrated picture her daughter presents that she finds challenging, not solely her intellectual milestone schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author doesn't seem very bright herself. I wonder if her parents thought the same way about her that she thinks about her daughter.

</comment><comment><USER13> Horrifying. Who cares if she's book smart?

There are many kinds of intelligence!

<comment><USER12> Well for one thing it's a huge disadvantage in life.</comment></comment>


Postel's Law Has No Exceptions  - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001025

<comment><USER2> Mark Pilgrim didn't understand the "be conservative" part of Postel's Law.</comment>


The Economics On Yahoo's Big Flickr Storage Deal Are 'Insane' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-economics-on-yahoos-big-flickr-storage-2013-9

<comment><USER2> To my knowledge, Facebook has never set a limit on your photos, presumably for essentially the same reason: there's a network effect benefit from me posting my stuff on Facebook, or on Flickr. Me posting my photos will help recruit my grandmother. Me backing up more of my data on Dropbox will help recruit no one.

If I'm adding "content", it makes sense to let me add as much as possible, for free.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use communication tools differently now? - <AUTHOR> I have noted a change in communication techniques in my company, and am wondering if its a widespread change.
With the shift from phones to email to IM, there seemed to be an advantage where messages could be posted to a person or group, and in async fashion a reply received in short order. A sender did not have to find an open slot in the receiver's schedule for a meeting or call. A simple queue was established that made scheduling less important.
Now I'm finding more success in "bugging" people I need information from, because email and IM are being increasingly ignored for hours or days in attempt to manage workflows. People schedule time to review messages, at times once a day or a few times a week and in the end make the communication bottlenecks worse than in the pre-IM days. In some cases a carefully crafted email with an ask does not find the 1 minute window needed to answer (which in turn creates a permanent, searchable reference), and we wind up having meetings.
"This meeting could have been an email" is painfullt ironic in this scenario. <comment><USER2> I used IM at work for 10 years in small and enterprise companies where everybody had an account. Of course you still had your personal contact list, users had to invite/verify you as contact so usually you wouldn't just (online) chat-up the CEO. You saw who's online, who had a kind-of vacation/away status and it removed a lot of phone calls or even walks to another building. It was used together with email and worked great.

Now with Slack and its public groups (channels) everybody can post to 10s or 100s of user. Even in small companies friends report you cannot reach "inbox zero" because there's always some message asking for attention. Many users over-communicate, too few users understand the threading feature (I'm one of them). You can put somebody on the spot by marking them in a group message. Overall it starts to feel overwhelming and less productive.

On top now we started putting devops/cron messages into Slack which often need immediate attention.</comment>


Clandestine black hole may represent new population - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-06-clandestine-black-hole-population.html <comment><USER2> Black holes seem to be much more abundant than previously thought. Earlier this year there was the discovery of the gravitational wave from the collision of two black holes with masses of about 30 times the sun, later this year another such collision was detected in the data. And all of this during an experiment that took only about a month.

And now this discovery again seems to indicate that there must be many small sized black holes and that they have been very easily overlooked.

Maybe it is too obvious, but I'm wondering: could dark matter be made up of all those undiscovered black holes?

<comment><USER3> As other commenters have noted, the idea that dark matter could be composed of undiscovered black holes has been proposed before. The idea is that there might be somewhat more generally "massive compact halo objects" (MACHOs), which would be at least as massive as planets, but would not emit light. A black hole would be one kind of MACHO, but neutron stars and free-floating planets would also be MACHOs as well.

The issue is that these MACHOs would be detected through microlensing. If the conditions as right, as they pass in front of more distant stars, their gravity focuses the light from the background star, leading to an apparent spike in the star's brightness. By monitoring the sky for these microlensing events, astronomers have built up quite strong statistics about the presence of MACHOs in the Galaxy and have found that they are far too rare to comprise a significant component of dark matter.

<comment> T-A As pointed out in [1]: There is a window for PBHs to be DM if the BH mass is in the range 20M_sun <~ M <~ 100M_sun. Lower masses are excluded by microlensing surveys. Higher masses would disrupt wide binaries.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.00464](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.00464)

<comment><USER4> The surprising thing to me, as a practicing professional physicist, with astrophysics connections, is that the MACHO hunts stopped without closing that window. It's such a clean explanation, and so many resources have been devoted to the hunt for particle dark matter while MACHOs still had a chance.

In the late 90's/early 2000's, the paradigm was "WIMPS vs MACHOs", and then the MACHOs dropped off the radar following the lensing studies. When the paper you've cited appeared, my reply to the friend that pointed it out was, "Oh, there's all those lensing studies that convincingly sunk the MACHOs more than a decade ago, can't be true." When I went back, read the lensing papers, and realized that there was still a window, I felt really let down by the astrophysics community at large.

What existing physics only gravitates and is intrinsically invisible? A black hole. They may not be the dark matter, but we owe it to ourselves to be real sure that they're not.

<comment><USER5> Is this a case of searching under the lamppost? As in, since lensing didn't demonstrate MACHOs, and there wasn't another obvious way to find them, maybe we should just look for something else? If so, that seems defensible on practical grounds?

<comment><USER4> As I understand it, the reason that the MACHO surveys weren't continued was because the event rate was low (you expect 1% the event rate with 100 M_sun MACHOs than 1 M_sun MACHOs). Looking longer would solve the problem.

The thing I'm really bummed about is that MACHOs dropped out of the conversation ten years ago, so nobody new to the field would have known without digging that MACHOs still had a shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nearly off topic, but the sight of a black hole close to Earth reminded me of this novellette of Geoffrey A. Landis: "Approaching Perimelasma" [http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/perimelasma.htm](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/perimelasma.htm)

Hard sci-fi, it's a dive inside the event horizon of a much closer black hole: 57 ly vs 7,200.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any way we could build a miniature black hole in a lab?

<comment><USER8> Yes, but it's not terribly useful. It was theorized that the LHC could possibly generate a micro black hole that caused a bit of brouhaha, but it turns out they evaporate exponentially faster as they get smaller. (This is due to the surface area being more domininant as the volume shrinks.) So the damn things just evaporate before they get to any detecting equipment.

Of course, if we could make bigger ones, well, that'd take some significant mass, and at that point you'll have some rather impressive innovations in crushing stuff. (After all, particles are darn near point masses already, but crushing matter down past neutronium is gonna be _hard_.)

<comment><USER9> It might be just what we need to power an Alcubierre drive. I'd probably want them to research this kind of energy source for at least 200 years before trying something like that, though. We wouldn't want to wipe out the solar system _by accident_.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship)

Potentially useful even if Alcubierre drives turn out to be impossible after all.

<comment><USER8> How... how in the name of Science are you supposed to keep track of an attometer-wide object?! The dang thing would be so easy to lose I imagine that misplacing the drive would be the biggest problem such a ship would have! We always imagine spaceships with these brilliant, impressive reactors and drives, and here's one that is so underwhelming it may as well not be there. (Save for the petawatt energy flowing off it...)

<comment><USER11> Well, it's not that hard to keep track of an atomic nucleus. I suppose you charge the thing up and manipulate it with electromagnetic fields.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A LoraWan Pager - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.io/project/22038-the-lorawan-pager <comment><USER2> I'm also working on this, but with a Zero and 240x240 color screen instead: [http://radiomesh.org](http://radiomesh.org)

<comment><USER3> You should make a Show HN post of that when you're ready! Email email@example.com when the time comes and we'll give you some tips. (Same offer goes for any user.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://snaponair.com/](http://snaponair.com/) apparently got hacked :\</comment>


Stupidity scales - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/07/19/stupidity-scales/ <comment><USER2> ++

My line of thinking lately is to try to solve a big problem on a small scale very completely, with very few resources. If I can do that, maybe I can inspire the next person to step it up.</comment>


NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepscicon-briefing.html <comment><USER2> Kepler has certainly made a lot of discoveries. It should be fairly clear to us now that planetary systems are pretty common and, by extension, sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too.

But I have to wonder how many assumptions go into this so-called "habitable zone". Doesn't it greatly depend on the atmospheric composition? With a different atmosphere, couldn't Venus be habitable (actually it might be in our Sun's habitable zone)? If Mars were larger, couldn't it support the kind of atmosphere that would allow liquid water.

Particularly if such planets were geologically active.

Even if all this stacks up, at 600 light years away, like pretty much any other star system, this planet is across a gulf I'm not sure we'll ever cross, which is a somewhat depressing thought.

<comment><USER3> >sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too.

Why? Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us, like wings on a bird.

There millions of species animals on our planet, and only a handful of them are sentient.

We have a bit of a cognitive bias towards thinking that sentient life is something that evolution would work towards, but that isn't really how evolution works.

<comment><USER4> > that isn't really how evolution works.

Taking this a step further, finding intelligent life out there is simply impossible. The reason our intelligence is unique to only humans on our planet is largely because we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess. We defined it based on our own nature. Finding life out there that would be socially compatible with us is ridiculously unlikely. That life would have had to spring up in an evolutionary environment identical to ours and that's so unlikely that it might as well be impossible.

<comment><USER5> > Taking this a step further, finding intelligent life out there is simply > impossible

What? How can you take this position? That's absolutely crazy. Really, you're going to take observations from just a couple of decades and determine that finding something is "impossible"?!

No way. There's absolutely no way that finding intelligent life is impossible.

> The reason our intelligence is unique to only humans on our planet is > largely because we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess

Slow down there. Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are intelligent. So are some of our computer systems. There's a lot more intelligence that we can recognize that _isn't_ like ours.

> Finding life out there that would be socially compatible with us is > ridiculously unlikely.

I agree. That has nothing to do with intelligence though.

> That life would have had to spring up in an evolutionary environment > identical to ours and that's so unlikely that it might as well be > impossible.

identical? Sure, nearly impossible. But why bother making it identical? Do you need 20.946% O2 in the atmosphere? Nope! There are probably billions of planets in the Milky Way alone that could support Earth-like life, if we extrapolate from the Kepler mission data.

The chances are better than you might think.

<comment><USER4> > Slow down there. Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other > planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are > intelligent. So are some of our computer systems. There's a lot more > intelligence that we can recognize that isn't like ours.

When I think of intelligent alien life, I think along the lines of Klingons, not alien dolphins. Are we going to find alien dolphins? Absolutely. Klingons? Nope.

<comment><USER5> > When I think of intelligent alien life, I think along the lines of Klingons, > not alien dolphins. Are we going to find alien dolphins? Absolutely. > Klingons? Nope.

Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons? We both have space travel, some sentience, a taste for weapons, etc.

You think this happened only once in the entire (say) Milky Way, and that there is absolutely 0 chance of it occurring elsewhere? That's certainly possible. But it's not _the only possible_ way things have unfolded.

<comment><USER4> > Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, > in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons?

You don't understand my argument.

We (and our intelligence) are the unique product of our evolutionary environment. There is no tendency in evolution towards intelligence. There are far many more organisms on this planet in far greater numbers than us that don't even have a brain, nevermind a complex one like ours.

We define intelligence based on traits that we (humans) possess. Some animals possess some of those traits (like dolphins, chimps, etc.), but no animal posses them all, save for us humans, by definition.

For us to find a species that is identical or even just compatible with us psychologically, that species had to evolve in an identical evolutionary environment spanning millions of years. That is so astronomically unlikely that it might as well be impossible.

You may find life that posses some of our traits (like dolphins), but you won't find life that has them all (like Klingons).

<comment><USER6> _astronomically unlikely_

Interesting choice of words. So while we're talking in astronomical terms: How big is the universe? How many earth-like planets does it contain? Are there other universes?

Until we can answer at least one of these questions I would refrain from calling anything in this context "astronomically unlikely".

<comment><USER7> I think that in the whole universe there is intelligent life out there like ours (not in body but in mind/thought). However due to the time/distance scales that are required to interact with them, it might as well not exist, since we'd require a huge amount of luck to ever interact with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I highly recommend reading the wikipedia article (which, of course, has already been partly updated from this press release).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)>

you will find out that:

\- it has 42 sensors with 95 MPixel resolution total

\- they only cover 10 square degrees of sky

\- only 150k stars were selected for monitoring the rest of the pixels is thrown out

\- they are read out every six seconds and every 30mins the pictures are combined and stored

\- it sits on an orbit similar to Earth's, trailing it somewhat

\- it can communicate with the mission center in Boulder at 4.3Mb/s in bursts of ~100Gbits

\- it has a 16GB SSD

\- from the frequency of finding planets somebody estimated that there are 2 billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy and 6 sextillions in total :)

<comment><USER9> _they only cover 10 square degrees of sky_

"only", heh (BTW, it's 12 linear degrees, 105 square degrees)

It's hard to make instruments that provide good images across wide angles. Many visual telescopes, both amateur and professional, stay at 1 degree and less of true field of view for medium and high magnification; 2 degrees true field is already pretty good and it's usually obtained at low magnification.

Astrographs can produce wider fields of view, 10 degrees being considered pretty studly, to borrow a quote from Linus. But normally you don't get that "for free". You force an optical element to work at such a wide angle, and then correct the inevitable distortions with various correctors, which are usually lenses or combinations thereof.

The Kepler mission is essentially a Schmidt camera, an old, true and tested design:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_camera>

Its almost 1 meter aperture would allow a theoretical resolving power of almost 0.1 arcsec (which is my full height as an average guy, standing in Los Angeles, as seen from New York), which could be exploited freely in space since there's no atmosphere to reduce it. Unfortunately, for the type of measurements they do, the image is softened intentionally back to 10 arcsec, which is the theoretical resolution of a 1 cm aperture, or the lens in your digital camera (assuming your camera is a true diffraction-limited system, which it very likely isn't). However, the light gathering power of Kepler is, of course, 10k greater than your camera's; and, again, it's unimpeded by messy and light-polluted Earth atmosphere.

Sorry for the pop-sci journalism comparisons, but the numbers really are kind of mind-boggling.

[http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/QuickGuide/MissionDesign/Phot...](http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/QuickGuide/MissionDesign/PhotometerAndSpacecraft/)

Please note the curved sensor array, which is due to the fact that a Schmidt scope actually does have a curved field (the light comes to true focus not in a plane, but in a segment of sphere). In fact, flat fields are something you strive for, you don't get for free; even common types of instruments have curved fields, but in most cases the radius of curvature is so big you can ignore it.

Optical instruments are tricksy.

<comment><USER8> oh, you're right I got confused by the mention of HST.

> 0.1 arcsec, or 6 arcmin

I'm pretty sure 0.1 arcsec isn't 6 arcmin :) it's less than 0.002 arcmin

<comment><USER9> Huh. Not enough caffeine (grumble).

It's actually funny the way I made the mistake; things got flipped at a semantic level, above syntax. I guess a neuroscientist would see some significance in it, or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recommend reading _How to Find a Habitable Planet_.

The first half of the book is about why Earth is habitable, and then it goes to project that against what the search for a similar world requires.

The "snowball earth" scenarios were terrifying (basically, you get an ice ball that is very reflective and thus stays ice, unless you have something like plate tectonics to dirty-up the atmosphere to the point where some insolation can be retained).

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember when Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series was first shown on PBS; the episode when the Drake equation was covered was one of my favorite, although even as a teen I understood how small were the chances of finding other sentient life as we hadn't found a single extrasolar planet at the time, let alone in the Goldilocks zone of a star.

Planetary discoveries (like this one) in the past few years are so cool to me.

<comment><USER12> I love the "Big Bang" episode where Howard raises the topic of the Drake equation. Sheldon immediately rattles it off, first the equation itself, then a rapid-fire explanation of each term in the equation. Sheldon loves that thing. Of course it turns out that Howard has adapted the equation to his own purposes, namely determining how many sentient human females willing and able to mate with Howard exist within the greater Los Angeles metro area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The idea of a 'habitable' planet is a cool one, but how relevant is it? Do we really expect that climate is going to be a concern by the time we are colonizing planets 600 light years away?

Now that I think about it, I guess it could be that they are looking for life on other planets and figure that alien life that is recognizable to us will likely be on planets in this zone. I looked at Kepler's mission and they don't really specify why they are looking:

"The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone→ and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets."

<comment><USER14> Well, one of the reasons to look is certainly to figure out what kinds of solar systems are typical. Are all solar systems like our solar system? What are the differences? How common are rocky planets? Its mission is to give us a more detailed picture of the solar systems out there.

It's about knowledge, not whether or not that knowledge is actually useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes us history buffs get laughs out of these things. I was listening to a Catholic thinker make a case for the uniqueness of Earth, and what came to my mind was how Augustine accepted the possibility of other continents and how the world was round, but concluded based on the Bible that humans could not possibly be inhabiting anywhere beyond Asia, Africa, and Europe. This view remained the standard view until after it became clear that Columbus had in fact not reached Asia but instead a new continent, and that it was INHABITED.

I wonder how much theology of so many people will have to be discarded or rethought as we find more reason to think there are inhabited planets elsewhere in the universe.

</comment><comment><USER16> All these comments are fun conjecture, but no one commenting (or on this planet) will be able to reasonably assume anything regarding life or sentience on other planets based on our utter lack of data. There may be life that exists outside of 'habitable' zones. There may be several different types of 'intelligence' that may or may not match our own. No one here can definitively claim that anything is or should be with so many possibilities.

Our only frame of reference is this planet, and while diverse, doesn't represent steadfast laws that all life in the universe follow (convergence, carbon-based, etc.). These questions will only be answered when we send probes, people, or find some other way of observing these planets directly.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away

So what we are seeing now are the light that came out the planet when Lorenzo Di Medici was inventing capitalism and financing the renaissance in Italy in 15th century.

Not very good chances we'll get there soon.

<comment><USER18> But plausible to have a conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What's the gravity on the surface? It's 2.4 times the size of earth, is the density the same? If so, that amount of gravity may very well make it uninhabitable.

<comment><USER20> Humans can withstand much more than 2.4Gs although the time is exponentially and inversely proportional (for example, 3Gs is a space shuttle launch for a number of minutes, 10Gs is the maximum force allowed during space capsule landing, but only for a few seconds).

Therefore, I wouldn't say "uninhabitable," but probably less friendly (and not immediately lethal) to humans. Also, different animals have different thresholds -- mice, for example, have a much lower tolerance for G-forces than whales.

I recommend reading "Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach -- very insightful book that discusses all sorts of things about planet habitability, space travel, space suit design, psychology, and among many other things, G-forces.

<comment><USER21> That's curious... I would have thought a land-dwelling mouse would have more G-force tolerance than a whale living in neutral buoyancy oceans. Are you using that as an illustrative example (eg. mice and elephants), or does that still hold for mice and whales?

<comment><USER20> You're right, it was a bad example. I just looked through the book I referenced, this is what it said (p. 126):

"...a beached whale will die from an overdose of gravity... The whale's diaphragm and rib muscles aren't strong enough to expand its lungs and raise the now far heavier blubber and bone that press in on them, and the animal suffocates."

It goes on:

"You can see what a rat's organs look like inside its body at 10 G's and 19 G's [in] the February 1953 issue of Aviation Medicine... Anesthetized rats were immersed in liquid nitrogen while riding a centrifuge... Heavier blood in the heart has pooled at the bottom of the organ and weighed it down, elongating it like a wad of stretched Silly Putty... This is why the astronauts lie down during reentry -- so the blood doesn't pool in their legs and feet"

I wish I could say I was using it as an illustrative example... But I just remembered it wrong :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How can a planet 600 light years away be habitable for humans?

Please forgive my total field ignorance and educate me.

<comment><USER23> Their usage of 'habitable' has nothing to do with whether you could get there. It's about distance from the star and the brightness of the star.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who cares?

US is financially fledgling and we're pumping over $20B/year into this behemoth money pit called NASA to tell us there is another Earth we'll never get to. We can barely get to Mars!

Let's focus on problems here!

</comment><comment><USER25> first class M planet!

<comment><USER26> I'm glad to see this is not downvoted into grey. This may be HN, but we still love Star Trek. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> When do we leave? Oh, yeah... WE DON'T HAVE A MANNED SPACE PROGRAM ANY MORE. Grrrrrrr.

Yes, I know it's impossibly far away. I just find it harder to get excited about this these days. And yes, I know that's not totally rational.

But yeah, what cletus said. Depressing.

</comment><comment><USER28> We are rapidly approaching the day where humans can colonize other worlds. maybe that is how we got here.

<comment><USER29> We are in a new space race, since we are also rapidly approaching the day that our Earth will be inhabitable.

<comment><USER30> Excuse me, uninhabitable?

I don't think our planet is going to become uninhabitable, not by a long shot.

<comment><USER29> excuse me, yes, I intended to write UN-inhabitable. Its a fear I think is well founded considering global poisoning of air and water, CO2 emissions, uncontrolled population growth and threats to global food production capabilities, and alarming rate of rogue nations with nuclear missiles. Give that another 200 years to take us to the brink. Humans are great at exploration (continents or space), but lousy at stopping or changing their own behavior.

<comment><USER29> and to think that is best use of downvoting, because you disagree or you spot a typo.

<comment><USER29> point proven

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Frak it, I'll move in.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is why I love Hacker News.</comment>


President Obama: new Form 1099 rules are "probably counterproductive" - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuplawblog.com/?p=565

<comment><USER2> Although, I'm quite aware it would cause a lot of accountants and government workers to have to look for new careers, they could solve this problem with the following hammer:

<http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main>

<comment><USER3> The Fair Tax is a clear political loser (as demonstrated in the elections a few days ago), as people _know_ there's absolutely no way it will replace the income tax, no matter what its proponents say.

I'm not even sure starting with the repeal of 16th Amendment would be enough (the Supremes aren't sufficiently trustworthy), but any proposed implementation of the Fair Tax is a non-stater until at minimum that's done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would suck! I'd have to send 1099's to so many office supply and computing supply companies it would be ridiculous. Then again, I could hire my 12 year old son to do the work and pay him a rate fat enough to drive my taxes down... hmmmm.</comment>


5 happiest nations Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, and Swiss by UN finding - <AUTHOR> http://unsdsn.org/files/2013/09/WorldHappinessReport2013_online.pdf The rest of us - ignorant, unequal, poor, short and ugly - cannot help but feel our misery all the more
here's the full report:
http://unsdsn.org/files/2013/09/WorldHappinessReport2013_online.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> The rest of us - ignorant, unequal, poor, short and ugly - cannot help but feel our misery all the more</comment>


Delete Hate Speech or Pay Up, Germany Tells Social Media Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-facebook-google-twitter.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feurope <comment><USER2> Real life Ministry of Truth. Not only is this another strike at freedom of expression in Germany, but it's an attack on the privacy of Germans.

The idea that arresting people for "hate speech" online is going to make your country any better or safer is laughable. It just means people making jokes will get arrested because one of their jokes offends a few people [1].

Here's a great video by a German who is concerned about the expanded surveillance state and limitations on free speech: [https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU](https://youtu.be/WFCKTvGU8oU)

Here's another video about German hate speech crime and statistics that I found insightful: [https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU](https://youtu.be/kX84h6aKpaU)

1\. [https://www.rt.com/uk/342513-dog-nazi-salute- arrested/](https://www.rt.com/uk/342513-dog-nazi-salute-arrested/)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but no. Forcing companies that disregard the law to pay fines (not 'arresting people') is no strike at freedom of expression in Germany. (Note that your link [1] is about the UK, a different country.)

Yes, holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda are prohibited in Germany for historical reasons, but the notion that his severely impedes the freedom of political speech is mistaken.

And yes, I've read my John Stuart Mill, and mostly agree with him.

As an aside, I'd still rate the level of public discourse in Germany as way above what's happening in many other countries (though it's going downhill, with all the private TV stations and social media, whose goal is not edification and education, but advertisement driven profit and "engagement").

<comment><USER4> This law will absolutely be used to curb political speech, that's the whole point. And you know it will be applied by the ruling party against anybody whose views they don't like.

When you're banning "hate speech" without strictly and narrowly defining what it is, it's a pure censorship instrument with pretty much unlimited reach.

I, for instance, think The Bible and The Quran are full of hate speech, but do you think they should be banned in the whole country simply based on my view?

What about a Android vs iOS debates? Should we ban every shit-talking conversation on the internet?

What about BMW vs Audi? Tabs vs spaces? Chocolate vs vanilla?

<comment><USER3> So, first, I'm no expert in this (and defer to rbehrends's excellent comments in this thread). The law seems to have problematic parts, as mentioned in the article: "the statute gives companies incentives to remove content, and it lacks a procedure for users to appeal removals."

Yet, the issue is _not_ clear cut. There are legitimate limitations on free speech - the famous "screaming fire in a crowded theatre" thing.

So, in Germany (with a history of institutionalised genocide), the lines are drawn a bit differently.

The notion that the ruling party will use it against views they don't like seems far fetched, though again, I grant you that it's a slippery slope - _Principiis obsta_ ("resist the beginnings").

But, I object to the notion that freedom of political speech is fundamentally under attack here.

[As for the Abrahamic texts, there is case to be made that they ought to be banned, though I grant that that wouldn't help much. As for your "reductio ad absurdum" (tabs/spaces): again, there's unproblematic speech, and there's legitimately prohibited speech, and then there's a grey area, and that's what we're discussing here - where in the grey to draw the line.]

<comment><USER5> The "fire in a crowded theater" standard is considered a legal joke these days. It has been superseded since the 1960s by FAR more stringent tests on speech limits. Expunge this saying from your vocabulary — it has zero relevance in modern case law.

<comment><USER3> Good to know. (As I said, I am no expert here, but (as I know from other areas) that does not prevent people from having an opinion...)

Do I understand you correctly in saying "more stringent tests" that more types of speech (beyond that) are considered off limits today?

<comment><USER5> Precisely the opposite. "More stringent tests" mean that any law that tries to limit speech must pass an exceedingly high bar — higher than ever before. The "clear and present danger" test used by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his "crowded theater" opinion basically says that any speech that could cause dangerous effects could be outlawed. Modern 1st Amendment jurisprudence, by contrast, has evolved toward the "fighting words" standard, which basically limits restrictions on speech to outlawing "true threats"; e.g. me saying I'm going to kill you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a bad law, but this is also frustratingly bad reporting. I understand that American media have to often translate foreign legal concepts into something closer to American ones, so they talk about "hate crimes" and "hate speech" (offenses that as such don't accurately reflect legal concepts as they exist in Germany), but in this case it's not even an accurate representation of the law.

The list of offenses that the law talks about includes a whole list of things that aren't remotely hate speech: they include things such as the creation of a criminal or terrorist organization or illegal distribution of pornography (pornography is not per se illegal, but you cannot, for example, sell it to minors).

The goal of the law is basically to enforce offenses that are commonly committed online by deputizing social media companies. And this is where the actual problem lies; the law does not regulate anything that isn't already an offense, after all.

1\. Many of these social media companies do not even have a legal presence in Germany and it is questionable whether Germany even has jurisdiction under current EU law.

2\. Even if Germany has jurisdiction, having social media companies adjudicate the legality of online content (even where there is a legitimate interest and we are not dealing with offenses that affect freedom of speech) is a bad idea in too many ways to count. The social media company is incentivized to err on the side of banning content; they generally do not have the resources and/or personnel with adequate legal training to properly adjudicate the issue in many cases; and if they get things wrong, there is often no practical way to appeal their misjudgment.

3\. The law may (due to its crude mechanisms) have a chilling effect far beyond what any that current laws create, even though on paper we're talking about the same offenses. That's because the legal system generally subjects potential prosecution for many of these offenses to a high level of scrutiny in order to protect freedom of expression. It is unlikely that Facebook and Twitter are going to do the same.

4\. As a result, the law is probably headed for a collision course with the Federal Constitutional Court at the earliest opportunity.

<comment><USER7> As the law only applies to stuff that is already illegal, and only requires companies to remove it on request, if it is obviously violating the law, ...

Well, we already know what this law looks like. It's just the DMCA, expanded to other types of content. This is bad, but it's not nearly the end-of-the- world that the hypocritical US-Americans on HN have been claiming it is.

<comment><USER6> > As the law only applies to stuff that is already illegal, and only requires > companies to remove it on request, if it is obviously violating the law, ...

The problem is that these things often aren't "obvious". For example, one offense that is listed in the law is §185 of the penal code, which criminalizes insults (I'm not kidding). Because making every insult a criminal offense would make real freedom of speech impossible in practice, actual application of that law is subject to various and sundry constraints as the result of case law of the Constitutional Court. As a result, it's actually virtually impossible to commit such an offense in the political arena (in practice, the law has therefore been reduced to an institutionalized form of contempt of cop for the most part, and occasionally sees use as a modern form of dueling for the few bored and rich enough to pursue a private lawsuit: lawyers at ten paces, so to speak). But to understand that, you do have to be sufficiently familiar with the case law.

That's not much of a problem when an actual prosecutor examines the facts: the case against Boehmermann, for example, was pretty quickly dismissed, because the prosecutor knew it was going nowhere fast. But now let's have Facebook's staff – most of them without legal training – examine the same facts and they may very well get it all wrong. Or, worse: decide to simply not bother with getting it right and just err on the side of caution. The law does not penalize inadvertent censorship, after all.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for the useful insights.

I worry that the chilling effect, and people self-silencing/self-limiting, are already happening to an extreme degree. One might even regard this law as an expression of that. So I worry that this law is fruit of what is happening, not the other way around. I wonder whether there isn't already too much self- censorship going on, especially with people who just have their own nuanced (harmless) ideas.

HackerNews to me sits is remarkably well inside the eye of numerous storms. Really happy about that.

Outside from here though people might just risk so much when all they want is to try and express those (apparently "arguably") harmless thoughts. The risk of falling pray to all kinds of social dangers can be very scary. Not worth it at all, in fact. So devolves the discourse which obviously gives rise to agression and spite as the most popular clothing of free speech.

To an extent we're doing this to ourselves more than the governments are to blame. I'm not arguing that this law is any kind of solution to our problems. Au contraire - what I'm just saying is that individuals in positions of authority get more than their fair share of spite and hate, so, this is what happens.

Yet however also, not long ago the public discourses that take place at present were unfathomable! The whole world being able to talk together on to such an immense scale via thing called the Internet - which, somewhat hilariously ironically, apparently should be called just internet without a 'the' and capital I from now on, per decree put forth by some editors.

But never mind that. Point is, when we do a thing like this (give ourselves 'an internet' -o, hey!), pain is just bound to start flowing and we should be careful with that. Our social evolution is what feels to be at stake here, with the way things are headed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a scary trend of countries trying to force internet companies to enforce their speech standards globally. We recently saw that in the Canadian Supreme Court decision forcing Google to remove a domain globally from search.

If this continues, the only allowable content will be that which does not offend anybody, and if that happens, the open, free Internet we all knew and which has driven a lot of social change throughout the world will be dead. Think of an Internet where atheism is banned because it offends religious people, corrupt politicians's misdeeds are expunged pursuant to their right to be foegotten, exposure of police brutality is deemed offensive and disturbing and banned, and every country's human rights violations are suppressed because they can be.

</comment><comment><USER10> > The draft bill defines "violating content" as content under Sections 86 > (dissemination of propaganda material of unconstitutional organizations), > ... 90 (defamation of the president), ... 166 (defamation of religions, > religious and ideological associations), ... 241(causing the danger of > criminal prosecution by informing on a person) ...

Over reaching laws like this are the biggest adversary to free speech. Even if the current government believes that hate speech/propaganda needs to be restricted, what is gonna stop someone down the line from using this law to silence all of their opponents and criticism?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to see tech companies band together and play hardball with governments that try and pull this shit. Just discontinue services on the whole country.

The politicans would quickly change their tune once the entire country's voting base wakes up to the fact they've been thrust into the internet dark ages by their own legislators.

<comment><USER12> Like when Google left china.. that really showed them /s

You know there are countries where Facebook does not operate.. local companies get easy funding to recreate the service.. after all it's a proven business model

The eu is certainly a big enough market to support a local version

<comment><USER9> Maybe the EU is, but I doubt Germany is. In addition, Even though there is Baidu, it is preferable that the rest of the world can Google "Tianamen square" and get back something resembling the facts. If Google had used this logic of "well somebody else will do it anyway", the rest of us would have only seen what China permitted.

<comment><USER12> I wasnt advocating western companies compromise their values. I was saying if they withdraw, other companies will fill the void... so any pain that the people experience will be temporary and the western company will be forgotten. Just like Google was forgotten in China. Companies disappear for many reasons all the time. People dont go out and protest to change the laws.. they move on and find alternatives.

That's not a call to abandon values. It's just an acknowledgement of reality and market forces. Just because someone else will do it, doesnt mean that you have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I expect that this trend of deputizing companies to police speech on their platforms will evolve in tension with rising antitrust scrutiny of the tech giants, because the rise of utterly dominant companies (a trend that the EU seems intent on slowing) would make efforts to regulate speech easier.

Large companies like Google have a global presence, and assets that can be targeted within the jurisdiction of most major governments, while a fragmented - and more competitive - market would make it more likely that "holdouts" can rise beyond the reach of a given government. These platforms would provide a redoubt for regulated speech, because it would be much harder to compel them to pay fines (though of course a country can simply block them).

At the same time, these new regulations give a competitive advantage to the companies with the scale and resources to invest in automating the removal process, and increases the challenges for upstart platforms, which now need to develop the infrastructure to aggressively police content on their networks if they want to grow beyond a certain size.

I think that in the long run, this will evolve into a stable equilibrium where governments periodically levy large-but-not-devastating fines in the name of "antitrust" in order to show their dedication to "competitive markets" and "customer choice", while simultaneously working hand-in-glove with these companies to enforce what they consider to be acceptable standards of speech in online communities. In the long run, no major competitors will emerge, and both the established firms and the government will silently thank their lucky stars.

</comment><comment><USER14> The issue of hate speech is real, but putting private companies in charge of deciding what is hate speech and what isn't, is a bad idea.

<comment><USER15> It was not too long ago that in Germany a political artist was prosecuted for a poem insulting a politician.

In other words, governments have already repeatedly proven they should not have authority over what speech is acceptable, even in Germany currently.

<comment><USER3> Not so fast. That was German satirist Jan Böhmermann reading a "poem" on TV about Turkish president Erdoğan (the content is not really important, but it was rather insulting, and purposefully so: calling him dumb, cowardly, and smelly; alleging he beat little girls, fucked goats, watched child porn, and subjugated minorities, and so on.)

Now, as it happens, Germany has a paragraph on its criminal code, § 103, that prohibits insulting foreign heads of state. Thus, prosecution was initiated. However:

1\. The case was dropped.

2\. In fact, legislative proceedings to drop § 103 are on their way.

So, I'm not too worried about the freedom of political speech in Germany. Holocaust denial and nazi propaganda are prohibited, for historical reasons, but apart from that political speech is free and vigorous.

<comment><USER16> I don't see anything wrong with a person calling a head of state mean names.

That's like the definition of political speech.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. "Smelly goatfucker" might not be the most political of insults, but the guy certainly made a point (plus he did have actual politics in there, e.g. the one on suppressing minorities).

Also, I'm glad that this §103 will be canned - it's uncomfortably close to the Lèse-majesté laws e.g. in Thailand (that _are_ actually used to suppress political opposition).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wonder how this affects websites that allow comments, but are not primarily "social media" sites?

Many sites that use e.g. Disqus for comments are filled with vile racist, homophobic, and other hateful comments.

<comment><USER7> Any site that isn't social media is exempt. Any site with less than 2'000'000 German users is exempt.

You only have to remove content if it is obvious that it is violating existing law, and someone has filed a report, within of 24 hours. The original poster can also oppose this.

The law is basically the same as the DMCA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is just media and goverment trying to put the dschinny of the internet back into the lamp. You can allmost hear the sigh:

"Why, cant we go back to the days - where you all pretended that we represented the public, and the angry with there lifes citizens where firewalled from one another?"

Well, guess what, these people know now that they are not alone- and even if you burned the whole internet to ashes- they would just meet in real life. Some people in germany have a serious freedom of expression is only my opinion attitude. And they radicalize there opponents regularly by not discussing with them (That opinion is beneath me).

</comment><comment><USER19> FB's policy is ridiculous. Show a breastfeeding woman and it's certainly gone in the next hours. But I've reported countless foreigners for gas chamber and teleheating crap postings and it was not considered inappropriate...what a BS. Still, the problem with law enfocement is always that "hate speech" is pretty fuzzy (obviously especially fuzzy for facebook)

</comment><comment><USER20> Dangerous precedent. Expect this to be "good" for a couple years, then the definition gradually expands while nobody is looking and is used to penalize any sort of thought that doesn't fit the social norm.

<comment><USER21> the definition isn't expanding, it's simply applying laws that existed since the inception of the German Federal state seven decades ago to businesses that operate on the internet.

Here in Germany racebaiting, holocaust denial and so forth are not protected under freedom of speech, never have never will be. Americans will probably not understand it in the near future, but in German jurisdiction German law still applies. Digital business or not.

I mean, Facebook basically censors every naked piece of skin already and I have to live with it because apparently this is offensive to Americans. Now I find banning nazi propaganda to be much less controversial than a naked human body, but apparently tastes diverge

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> ..the abyss stares also into you.

</comment><comment><USER23> From what I've heard, this isn't/shouldn't stand up when challenged in court.</comment>