Tell HN: Just got delivery of TAOCP 4A - <AUTHOR>

...as Knuth says in the preface "The Kind of Programming I Like Best". <comment><USER2> Where did you order it ? I preordered it on InformIT and havent received my copy yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Preordered from InformIT. I figured I'm one of the first outside a close circle to get my hands on the hard cover edition. I was following the shipment tracking. I thought it would already be here when I got home from work, but Mr FedEx delivered it in the dark after dinner.

At 883 pages, it's the longest of the hardcover volumes (so far).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> what's the follow-up of Knuth's words? Please!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> He's referring to _Combinatorial Algorithms_ , the title of this volume.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the info foxy lady.</comment></comment></comment>


A Sociology of Steve Jobs (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2011/10/10/a-sociology-of-steve-jobs/ <comment><USER2> Jobs wiped out the original Pixar engineers' stock options by selling the company, "Old Pixar", to "New Pixar", which he had created specifically for this purpose. It was a mere formality to him as he was the controlling shareholder in Old Pixar, just signing some papers. "As part of the reorganization, Jobs exercised a clause in the employee stock option agreements that allowed him to buy back their options at the original strike price, which was a pittance." *

[Charles Ferguson, High Stakes, No Prisoners pp 98-99]

<comment><USER3> Was anything mentioned about stock grants in "New Pixar" to the wronged employees?

I presume something must have been done to right the wrong at least with the important people, otherwise they would just walk out at that point.

<comment><USER2> Ferguson writes, "During the public offering, the underwriters forced Jobs to distribute about 15 percent of the stock among key employees, because nobody would have invested otherwise...but many were shut out entirely, including some who had spent many years creating the technology."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back in late 1980's I went to a university where the administration thought it would important for every freshman to get a macintosh. So, we bought on this idea and shelled out 2000 each for a machine that would propel us into the future. A machine that had no hard drive, ran software on diskettes and had no memory protection. I can not remember how many times I lost my paper because that damn thing would just reboot out of memory. It was a badly designed machine that would be ok for games but not for serious homework/work. A classmate of mine got so fed that that he threw it out of his dormitory window. Steve had the charisma to sell an idea but at that time there were other alternatives that would better for a lot of people. Sometimes I wonder, if the administration of uninversity got any kick-backs from Apple executives, if you understand what I mean

<comment><USER5> > I can not remember how many times I lost my paper because [the mac] would > just reboot out of memory.

This is less of an Apple problem and more of a 1990's problem. I often had painful nights where I'd lose hours of work on Documents and PowerPoints because my Windows 98 either froze or crashed.

<comment><USER6> My girlfriend's PowerPoint crashed and froze just yesterday... To her, the computer is just as bad today. What's the point of nicer graphics when it's still slow and unreliable.

<comment><USER7> Well Microsoftware makes any computer look bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Steve Wozniak is who built the original Apple, the hardware and the software, Steve Jobs did manage to create the Apple image and sell himself as some kind of a tech guru in the process.

<comment><USER9> I hate this trope. Woz was a technical wizard, but Apple would have failed (and nearly did fail in 1998) without Jobs.

Apple's worst years were when Jobs was gone and the company's management was trying to beat IBM clones when Apple had few distinguishing features and the clones were competing on thin margins, while Apple largely tried to avoid the (except the few years when they allowed Apple clones). When Jobs returned, the OS changed, the CPU architecture changed, the shape and design of the computers changed, and new computing devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad) and created the iTunes + App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apple's 2013 "Misunderstood" ad [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v76f6KPSJ2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v76f6KPSJ2w) is probably a bit of a hidden apologia for Jobs personally, among other things. Apple seems to have been going through a phase of making rather defensive ads around that time.

</comment><comment><USER11> A common thing you hear also is "I did my best work under Jobs".

</comment><comment><USER12> Can we stop celebrating this guy and move on? Times have changed, the wold has changed, but the aloof reality distortion continues. I will not rattle off my list of issuex but suffice to say he is not worthy of emulation in a mjority of his actions. I will boldly state: Nobody actually wants to work with the next Jobs, they just want to say they did.

<comment><USER13> > _I will boldly state: Nobody actually wants to work with the next Jobs, they > just want to say they did._

So, if the next Jobs gets them from near bankruptcy negative -200 million to a trillion dollar worth company and huge cultural cachet and consumer influence, they wouldn't want to work with him because he occasionally yells at people, or is very demanding, etc?

I'd say if someone is recognized as the "next Steve Jobs" there would be lines to get hired there... As there were lines to get hired at Apple during his tenure, so this "nobody actually wants to work with" seems a little wishful thinking...</comment></comment>


JPEG image of Shakespeare which is also a zip file containing his complete works - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1057042085029822464 <comment><USER2> Just tried it out and it does indeed work.

      curl 'https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DqteCf6WsAAhqwV.jpg' > shakespeare.zip
      unzip shakespeare.zip
      unrar e shakespeare.part001.rar

I'm excited for the inevitable curl | unzip | bash method of installing software directly from twitter that is sure to follow.

<comment><USER3> Interesting that Winrar seems to have trouble to uncompress the first layer of it (zip to rars).

(7-zip works fine.)

<comment><USER4> Well, if someone out there had paid for winrar, perhaps the support would be better XD

<comment><USER5> "I paid for Winrar, AMA"

<comment><USER6> [https://www.reddit.com/r/paidforwinrar](https://www.reddit.com/r/paidforwinrar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> PoC||GTFO's [0] most issues are polyglot files.

Taken from 0x16 [1]'s introduction:

        This file, pocorgtfo16.pdf , is a polyglot that is valid as a PDF document,
        a ZIP archive, and a Bash script that runs a Python webserver which hosts
        Kaitai Struct's WebIDE which, allowing you to view the file's own annotated bytes.

[0]: [https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/](https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/)

[1]: [https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/pocorgtfo16.pdf](https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/pocorgtfo16.pdf)

<comment><USER8> 0x15 is a laser-projectable PDF that's also a ZIP containing, among other things, another PDF that is also a Git repo of its own source code.

0x17 is a PDF that's also a valid ZIP and valid firmware for Apollo Guidance Computer.

And that's just the tip of an iceberg. This project is absolutely crazy, in the most positive possible way.

<comment><USER9> > _0x17 is a PDF that 's also a valid ZIP and valid firmware for Apollo > Guidance Computer._

Wait, what?

Edit: 0x15 has the additional feature that viewing it in Chrome makes my work machine throw a "Threat detected: A threat has been blocked and quarantined" message, so I think I'm going to avoid this site now. Not to say that I don't trust this random PDF hacker (...that sounded less sarcastic in my head), but I don't need IT asking me pointed questions about what sites I've been visiting.

<comment><USER8> Yes, that.

PoC||GTFO is a well known project, and has a tradition of turning their PDFs into absurdly polyglot files. Your Chrome is giving you a false positive here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
       binwalk DqteCf6WsAAhqwV.jpg
       DECIMAL       HEXADECIMAL     DESCRIPTION
       </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--
       0             0x0             JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01
       182           0xB6            Zip archive data, at least v1.0 to extract, ..., name: shakespeare.part001.rar
       ...
       1971177       0x1E13E9        End of Zip archive

</comment><comment><USER11> This is also somewhat interesting...

 _" It survives all of twitters scaling, compression and thumbnailing. /how/ is left as an exercise to the reader :P"_

<comment><USER12> Guessing Twitter doesn't scale/thumbnail/compress already tiny images... which is probably an oversight in this case because the file size is disproportionately large.

<comment><USER13> No, the rars are in the image metadata, not in the actual pixels at all.

<comment><USER12> They still contribute to filesize.

<comment><USER14> They don't address the metadata in compression, which is probably what the bug report [1] was about. This thumbnail is over 2MB. With the metadata removed, it's only about 2KB.

[1] [https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1057042727945322496](https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1057042727945322496)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is hardly new. I remember collecting ebooks on 4chan circa 2005 via this method. The fact that it was a jpg allowed you to post it on the imageboard with the zip/RAR file therein containing a txt/doc/rtf of the ebook.

<comment><USER16> And yet, nobody has done the same for Twitter until now.

The difference is that twitter applies a series of operations to all uploaded image, stripping EXIF data, recompressing, etc., which would normally be difficult to work around.

<comment><USER17> Did people do this back in the day? 4chan used to be totally fine with just uploading a jpeg concatenated with a zip, but I haven't seen this ICC profile trick before today.

<comment><USER18> Well, 4chan served you the original file, so you didn't need to evade image processing at all

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I do extend him, sir, within himself; Crush him together rather than unfold

<comment><USER20> Well found!

[https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view....](https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=cymbeline&Act=1&Scene=1&Scope=scene&LineHighlight=30#30)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried doing something similar with an mp3 first, and that worked. You can't upload mp3 files to twitter, but I have one here: [https://instaud.io/2RLM](https://instaud.io/2RLM) Play it on the page, and it's an mp3, download it via the buttons, and it's also a valid zip file with a jpg in it.

So then I tried the same thing with MP4 video on twitter. Twitter didn't like that at all :) [https://imgur.com/a/O0QFZC9](https://imgur.com/a/O0QFZC9)

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh I did this too a few years ago. Except I used gifs instead of jpegs, and then wrote a Ruby wrapper for backing up files to Flickr. Blog post about it here: [https://namwen.svbtle.com/hoardr](https://namwen.svbtle.com/hoardr)

<comment><USER22> Did the same a few months before with PNGs! [https://github.com/ricardobeat/filr](https://github.com/ricardobeat/filr)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anybody have any insight into what kind of trickery goes into this? I know a decent amount about both of the compression algorithms, but I've forgotten the structure of the file formats so I can't tell if this required any really funny business.

<comment><USER24>
        cat file.jpg file.zip > magic.jpg

that's all there is to it (tested under linux, file compressed and decompressed with zip command)

<comment><USER25> That's not all there is to it. Did you try uploading the resulting file to twitter?

<comment><USER24> I did not. This is just a response to the parent comment not to the post itself.

(Although if they do something with this file and you still are able to do this trick that would seem even more .. interesting on their side than leaving images below certain size untouched)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you are interested in this sort of thing, make sure to checkout Funky File Formats by Ange Albertini [https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/5930.htm...](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/5930.html)

<comment><USER27> Something else interesting from a few years ago: a compression algorithm that's bijective. [http://www3.sympatico.ca/mt0000/bicom/bicom.html](http://www3.sympatico.ca/mt0000/bicom/bicom.html)

It's similar in the sense that there's more than one possible operation on any file (decompress it, or compress it), and different in that the file type doesn't change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very thought provoking. The file size is 1.93 MB. I wonder what dimensions would a disk just big enough to store that much have? Not long ago I read of a suggestion to archive information as DNA (for its durability iirc). But in terms of physical space required to store stuff, is DNA more or less efficient than today's disks?

<comment><USER29> There are 512 GB micro SD cards on the market today. So at that density roughly:

2 MB / 512 GB * 100 mm2 ~= 400 um2

400 square micrometers is an area of a square with 20 micrometer sides. Approx. 1/100th of the cross-section of a human hair.

<comment><USER28> Thanks, I like that comparison. Now I wish I could think of a way to mesh this with the infinite monkey theorem!

<comment><USER30> So Borges' Library of Babel -- every possible 3200 character book from a 25-character alphabet; essentially the 'space' equivalent of the infinite monkey theorem's 'time' domain -- is sufficiently large that if we took this universe and shrunk it down to the Planck length (the smallest length there is) and filled another universe with these femtouniverses, and then scaled that one down likewise, and repeated this process EIGHTY times, we'd be able to fit all the books in.

And Hamlet would be split amongst dozens of these books.

25^3200 is a large number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can the technique be used to bypass content censorship (e.g. in China)? Can it be made resistant to detection?

<comment><USER32> > Can the technique be used to bypass content censorship (e.g. in China)?

Steganography can be used to hide data in clever ways, but it isn't a substitute for encryption -- anybody who knows whatever trick you used can extract the payload. You could always encrypt the payload, but all you're doing is giving your adversary another (trivial) hoop to jump through when you could've just encrypted the message to begin with.

> Can it be made resistant to detection?

Yes and no. There are some clever steganographic techniques that take advantage of PNG and JPEG implementation details to foil basic entropy checks, but anybody who knows the algorithm can trivially extract the payload. In other words, it's security by obscurity, not by any sort of strong cryptographic property.

<comment><USER33> > You could always encrypt the payload, but all you're doing is giving your > adversary another (trivial) hoop to jump through when you could've just > encrypted the message to begin with.

Wouldn't "an encrypted message that no one is sure you sent in the first place" sometimes be more useful than "an encrypted message that any eavesdropper knows you sent" in oppressive-surveillance-state scenarios? (It seems that, if you find some subset of bits in a JPEG/PNG that normally have random distribution and don't affect the image that much, putting an encrypted message into those bits might be indistinguishable from a "completely normal" image even to a well-informed attacker.)

<comment> 0-_-0 That's true, the least significant bits of a png encoding of a photograph could be effectively random (if the photo had high noise) and could be replaced with random looking data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For those who don't know the trick: ZIP files have their index at the end of the file. So you can add a zip file to anything else and have it unzippable.

This was done because it allows adding files to zip archive files without rewriting the whole file, instead just start writing where the index starts and add an updated index at the end. Please note that over the years there's been multiple methods of doing this, including partial indexes which don't even rewrite the index.

If the file you're adding things to is also tolerant of wrong file sizes and extra data at the end (like JPG and many others), you can just:

cat someJPG.jpg someZIP.zip > wth.jpg

feh wth.jpg => shows image

mv wth.jpg wth.zip; unzip wth.zip => works

<comment><USER35> It's astonishing that it's as simple as CATting a zip file to the end of a jpg. I feel there are consequences here for any website that accepts image uploads.

<comment><USER36> > I feel there are consequences here for any website that accepts image > uploads

Steganography can be done even without file-format hacks; all that's special about this hack is its simplicity.

It could easily be defeated -- I'm sure Twitter would have no trouble sanitizing uploaded image files if they wanted to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Would be interesting if Renaissance paintings were actually similar repositories.

<comment><USER38> Quite a what-if. "The Library of Alexandria was not lost, merely hidden"

<comment><USER39> That would be a great scifi plot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There was a similar technique used in the tv show Mr. Robot, season 3 episode 9, to hide some secret information (trying not to spoil anything). Ryan Kazanciyan, the Technical Consultant, wrote a blog piece on this technique.

[https://link.medium.com/x7YFdksWrR](https://link.medium.com/x7YFdksWrR)

</comment><comment><USER41> Dr. Mike Pound from Computerphile did a video on this "Secrets Hidden in Images (Steganography)" [Youtube video] [https://youtu.be/TWEXCYQKyDc](https://youtu.be/TWEXCYQKyDc)

<comment><USER42> Good video, but what was done here is not Steganography. No ZIP data was embedded into the pixels of the image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is there any reason the zip contains .rar files?

<comment><USER44> To get around JPEG block size limits.

<comment><USER3> Is it possible to have split files with zip?

<comment><USER45> Yes, it is. I feel like this hack is a wry nod to the old warez scene where multipart archives within archives were, for some reason, de rigueur.

<comment><USER46> No way to resume BBS and later FTP uploads back in the day.

<comment><USER9> I thought it was assumed that the files, once downloaded, would be distributed locally on floppies. The sub-archives were usually 1.44MB to fit on a 3.5".

When did resumable BBS download protocols become a thing? ZMODEM at least was widely used by the early '90s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I dealt with this problem on a photo site 15 years ago where people were embedding RAR pieces in their JPGs to use us as a distribution repository. The bandwidth increase was a giveaway so I just wrote an incoming processor that re-compressed everything that had more than X bytes per pixel. I can't believe Twitter doesn't have similar logic given its scale.

<comment><USER48> Twitter does re-compress everything. This method survives re-compression.

<comment><USER47> Then it's not recompression. Recompression is pulling (let's say) a JPG into memory so it becomes a bitmap and writing it back out to a JPG. If you want to keep metadata you only keep a specific set and you cap the value lengths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Similarly, here is one with music. Winamp necessary. [https://a.doko.moe/uigihv.jpg](https://a.doko.moe/uigihv.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER50> Great What If question: what are the odds of taking a picture of a Shakerpeare play and get that play's text in the resulting JPG?.

</comment><comment><USER51> Do this for mp3.

<comment><USER11> Probably easier. The MP3 standard didn't include any standard for tags, so the tags standards evolved separately. Basically, you can append any random crap you want at the end of an mp3. Since a zip file has it's headers at the bottom, it wouldn't be hard to do. I don't know if popular mp3 sites scrub/transform mp3 files in the way image sites do to images though.

Edit: Tried it, and got it to work. The zip command on Linux has a -A option that will fix the offset headers after you cat an mp3 and a zip file together. Just "cat file.mp3 file.zip > newfile.mp3;zip -A newfile.mp3" and you're done.

I did notice that some mp3 file upload sites reprocess the mp3 file and strip out the extra bits. Some don't though.

Here's a Bach mp3 that you can play online: [https://instaud.io/2RLM](https://instaud.io/2RLM)

But, if you download it, via the buttons on the page, you'll see it's also a valid zip file containing a jpg meme of bach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm pretty sure Ender's Game has this in it. It was how one of the characters snuck info out.

</comment><comment><USER53> Simple Steganography. I wrote a similar article to use Amazon Photo storage as a free way to store files if anyone is curious how this works:

[https://medium.com/@eirurueta/free-unlimited-cloud- storage-o...](https://medium.com/@eirurueta/free-unlimited-cloud-storage-on- amazon-w-this-one-weird-trick-6f50d35b1159)

<comment><USER24> While technically it would probably fit the definition, usually what's meant by steganography regarding images is hiding the data within the image itself (using differences in pixel values that are not easy to spot). As far as I understand it, this just makes use of the file structure. It's beyond me though how it survives twitter thumbnailer. I would assume that one of its purposes is to strip any unnecessary metadata from the image, making it as small as possible.

<comment><USER54> The easiest implementation would be to use the 2 least significant bits in the blue channel, and the least significant bit of the red channel, to encode your data payload. Just sticking the data in the metadata portions of an image file seems like hiding behind the only bush in an otherwise featureless field. ("Reginald Maudlin, will you stand up, please?")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I f __*ing love technology...

</comment><comment><USER56> are the complete works actually encoded in the pixels?

</comment><comment><USER57> раржпег? this trick was used on anonymous forums for years.

<comment><USER58> Is there a recent repo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Love it

</comment><comment><USER60> Title should say "JPEG", not "JPG". "JPG" is just a file extension, not the name of the compression method.

<comment><USER61> I know that the real reason is a requirement for length 3 combined with a slight preference for vowel elision, but I just realized that if one were so inclined it could be interpreted as a snub.

Joint Photographic Experts Group -> Joint Photographic Group

No experts to be found here! :P

<comment><USER62> I never really understood why people still adhere to the 3 character file extension limit when that is a throwback to FAT32 on pre-Windows 95 (and some very old mainframes which shouldn't be internet connected anyway). Yet some people still favor the 3 character extension despite it looking objectively uglier (as a dyslexic I do find them harder to read) and dropping a solitary vowel in a file extension saves you nothing in terms of development time / file size / etc.

So I honestly don't get why people still use them.

Extensions that particularly annoy me are:

        yml instead of yaml

Why do people do this when even the earliest YAML spec is much newer than the last of the systems that had a 3 character extension limit.

        jpg instead of jpeg

Nearly all of the .jpg's in the last 10 years would be too large to load on any systems that couldn't handle a 4 character extension anyway. So backwards compatibility isn't even an argument here.

        htm instead of html

Similar argument as JPG except this time it's more to do with the HTML specification and browsers capable of rendering them.

<comment><USER63> > objectively uglier

Not sure why'd you'd say "objectively" when it's clearly not, the hint being the word "ugly."

I can certainly appreciate the limitation of "extensions will always be three characters". In fact, I wasn't exposed to extensions habitually longer than that until I did iOS dev. "Main.storyboard" "Model.xcdatamodeld" So if we're going to talk about ugly, I'd start there. ;)

<comment><USER62> Sorry, as another poster commented, I did mean "subjectively" (doh!)

xcdatamodeld is definitely ugly (though main.storyboard is ok in my personal opinion) and I'm sure there will be other examples where file extensions have been taken too far. I think if one wants to use long extensions then the extension needs to at least be readable at a glance (eg xcdatamodeld is ugly to read - even if you switched it the other way around, xcdatamodeld.model would still be unpleasant). So I'd argue that xcdatamodeld is more of an example of a poor naming convention than a problem with longer extensions (I say this with no experience of iOS development, however I see the same problem quite as acutely in the other languages and platforms I've developed on).

It should also be noted that my argument was really more focused on people who shorten already short 4 character acronyms - just for the purpose of making it 3 letters (eg the yaml and html examples I gave).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Could the future of open source and P2P be tweeting apps to one another?</comment>


EmDrive: China claims success with this 'reactionless' engine for space travel - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/emdrive-engine-space-travel-china-success <comment><USER2> So they used twisted pair DC cabling to minimize torque errors due to DC magnetic field (and the torque follows direction of cavity orientation), but.... I'm wondering if there is DC current circulating in the cavity due to rectification from oxides or impurities on the copper surface; i.e. Passive Intermodulation Distortion (disclaimer I'm an RF EE). They said the torque was strongly non-linear with applied power; which is a hint.

DC cavity currents were not listed as a potential error source, but these phenomenon could show up with high power and high Q.

Anyway, I just emailed a couple of the NASA guys; see what they say.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why they don't just use a battery to power the experiments... Now all power supply related concerns are gone.

<comment><USER4> on the scale of micronewtons being measured, batteries change significantly thermally as they're discharged. You would have to account for the chemical and thermal activity of the battery which is not a 100% inert thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a paper or technical source? All the articles I find seem to be copy pasta of one another, none of which have sources...

<comment><USER5> Here is a link to the most recent nasa eagle works paper.

[http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B36120](http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B36120)

<comment><USER6> He's asking about the Chinese test. That one appears to be hearsay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Why after several positive tests, has the physics community not gone full throttle to try and disprove it, like they did with cold fusion?

So far the tests have been static torque? Could there be an interaction with the earths magnetic field?

<comment><USER7> China is shipping one up to their space station to test it there. That is already a pretty big allocation for research resources considering that there is a large prior against this working: conservation of momentum.

So every time a positive result turns up incrementally more effort will be applied to test it, assuming the new result improves on previous ones.

Seems like a reasonable approach to me.

<comment><USER8> I still haven't heard a good explanation why this must mean that conservation of momentum is being violated. Couldn't there be a new phenomenon at which forces act at a larger or more distant scale on other masses, similar to gravity? That seems more plausible than beating conservation of momentum.

<comment><USER9> > _Couldn 't there be a new phenomenon at which forces act at a larger or more > distant scale on other masses, similar to gravity?_

Gravity doesn't act at large distance. If you have a star like the Sun, it modifies the gravitational field locally. The modifications travel for a while and when the modification hits a planet like the Earth it applies a force to the Earth and modifies it's direction. The modifications are like the gravitational waves that have been recently measured. They travel at the speed of light.

If you have a force that can truly act at distance, you can use it to transmit information faster than light and it will break special relativity.

<comment><USER8> Well all experiments have been near large large objects so far, so if such a force exists nothing is being said about it being faster than light.

<comment><USER9> Near is very near here.

Let's analyze a similar case. The weak nuclear force is transmitted by the W+, Z0 and W- particles. They live approximately 1E-25 seconds. Assuming they travel near the speed of light, they can travel 3E-17 meters. That is a very small distance

You can think that an electron and a neutrino at 3E-17 meters can somehow interact at distance, because it's very small. But this is not true. The electron has to create one of the W+, Z0 and W- particles, send it to the neutrino, and the neutrino has to absorb it. Even 3E-17 meters is a long distance here, and it's possible to measure indirectly the properties of the intermediate particles.

If the Em-Drive device somehow interacts with the floor, walls or the Earth that are a few inches away, this is a extremely very big distance for the current theories. The Em-drive must interact with some kind of field and create some intermediate particles, like photons, gravitons or some new particle.

The problem is that if the Em-drive using some field and particles to conserve the energy and momentum locally, then the maximal theoretical output of a device that don't break the currently accepted physics laws is 1/c = 0.0033 mN/KW. I couldn't find in this article the experimental results in China, but it the recent "successful" experiment in NASA measured 4000x this value. [In my opinion, it was an experimental error.]

Getting 0.0033 mN/KW is "easy" with a perfect light source, like a perfect laser. Less is easier with a real light source, like a real laser. More is theoretical impossible with the current physics laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just wanted to point out that thrust without expending mass is already possible without an emdrive.

Anything that asymmetrically radiates photons will generate a net acceleration. This very mechanism has been experimentally verified as the pioneer acceleration anomaly.

If the emdrive is some kind of special case of this mechanism, it's entirely compatible with existing physics. The proposals so far are based on mechanisms which are different, and incompatible with the existing understanding of the universe.

It's also worth noting that in 2016 the Chinese research team was unable to replicate their findings after accounting for a power cable that was magnetically inducing a force on the experimental apparatus.

<comment><USER11> Photon rockets are not actually reactionless, because the emitted photons carry momentum and energy out of the system. This makes conservation laws to hold for such systems, cf. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00494](https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00494)

Now, the emdrive people are apparently claiming that it is truly reactionless. If so, you can build a perpetual motion machine of the first kind (produces energy from nothing) out of it --- which should demonstrate the degree of plausibility of such claims.

For photon rockets, there's apparently a hard upper bound on the efficiency, which limits the practical usability.

<comment><USER10> You're right, what I really meant was radiation pressure doesn't require reaction mass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It smells like bullshit: no source, no paper, no verifiable test available. It seems the classic scientific fraud that , resurrecting like a cockroach again and again in the socials, has only the purpose to feed the conspiracy theories.

</comment><comment><USER13> I kind of expected China would fund a let's try it where measurements are easier amd obvious and see approach.

Some experiments just cannot be done properly in of our gravity well. EmDrive claims are tailored made for testing in space.

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought it was shown that the thrust was due to the power cable's electromagnetic field.

<comment><USER2> No; See page 9 section 3 of paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised at how quiet SpaceX has been on this, the tech seems right up their alley.

<comment><USER16> You shouldn't be - all signs point to this being crackpot science. A couple of the biggest reasons are:

1\. The magnitudes recorded in the several badly done experiments are very small and there are plenty of possible experimental errors.

2\. The original inventor's own theory of how it works plainly violates very fundamental physics, like how all frames of reference are equivalent.

There is really no reason to think this will work, except hope. Still, it's a good idea to do some more research and put the idea to rest.</comment></comment>


YouTube gets material design - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/08/a-new-youtube-look-that-works-for-you.html <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125722)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't like it at all. It feels like it is made for touchscreens. Anything made mostly for touch screens kind of sucks with mouse and keyboard.

I also do not like how the "grids" do not have lines anymore.

<comment><USER4> The funniest thing is that Material redesigns are often worse for touch. When they gave Chrome a Material overhaul they _made the toolbar icons smaller and harder to see_. For something that started out as an Android thing it's pretty absurd. Chrome's recent UI overhauls also make it harder to access central features (like extensions) on touch by nesting them in obscure context menus.

The only good thing about this YT redesign is that they finally got around to making Theater mode fill all the horizontal space instead of playing videos in a tiny box, something they should've done 5 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks pretty good but is extremely buggy on Safari. Every so often the page will simply refuse to navigate, no matter what I click on or type into the search bar, so I have to hit refresh to get a "working" page again.

<comment><USER6> Same here. It is indeed unusable on Safari.

There is an option in the top right menu to restore the old YouTube design and leave a feedback.

<comment> a-nikolaev With Google, I wouldn't be surprized that it could be a mild but intentional attack on non-Chrome browsers. For such a high-profile web application, testing the usability for all their users is a must.

<comment><USER7> No, it's just Safari. YouTube seems to works alright on Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> YouTube was never really good at design, UI or UX, so it's no surprise they make it even worse.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm really glad they added a dark mode. But performance is absolutely horrible, I don't get how this made it through QA.

<comment><USER10> Probably the "move fast and break things" approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Might just be my machine but it feels extremely "heavy" (slow) in Firefox compared to Chrome. I'm assuming it is some rendering bottleneck in Firefox.

<comment><USER12> Probably due to usage of polyfills for Shadow DOM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Now Youtube doesn't even open without javascript. It used to be possible to at least see what the video was about.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love their detailed explanation of the benefits I will receive from their new logo. What groundbreaking innovation!

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't quite describe it but the use of #F00 just looks wrong to me. Over saturated somehow

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a lot of problems on Safari (macOS). It abruptly stops accepting clicks on videos. In the last 2 days, I've had to move to Firefox to browse Youtube.

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://toogl.es](http://toogl.es) is a good replacement and still works.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's funny looking at the time lapse of the UI and watching white space grow like a contagion across the screen.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really want them to fix scrolling in the left rail. Frequently it fails to scroll until you explicitly click in the panel. Having to do this breaks the entire point of background scrolling

</comment><comment><USER20> Except for the comment UX, I like the simplified visuals, and the black top on wide-player configuration.

Also the fat logo typography, it's a detail of smashing consequences. I cannot not see it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm nostalgic for the clean and simple websites before the era of gifs...material design brings back the good parts of that...

</comment><comment><USER22> Best part about it for me is the dark theme. No more plugins for making it work ! Kinda great for better web.

PS: Did anyone notice the blog's favicon looks a little pixelated.

</comment><comment><USER23> Let me guess, even more whitespace and less information density. I wonder how much energy is wasted displaying all these useless white pixels.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thanks goodness they're finally adding playback speed control to mobile.

</comment><comment><USER25> The only thing nice about the new design is the dark theme.</comment>


Making an 18th-Century Potato Pudding - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.brown.edu/jcbbooks/2016/06/07/making-an-18th-century-potato-pudding/ <comment><USER2> For anyone interested in 18-th century cooking I'd highly recommend youtbue channel Jas. Townsend and Son: [https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/videos)

They have amazing videos about that era cooking.

<comment><USER3> how surprisingly! Youtube seems to have channels for everything theses days

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it a weird thing to use potatoes in sweet dishes? My mom/grandma/aunts always made needhams[1] with the bulk of the filling being mashed potatoes. Boiled potatoes without anything added to them are about as close to tasteless as you can get.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2012/08/26/159998395/maines-needhams-a- sw...](http://www.npr.org/2012/08/26/159998395/maines-needhams-a-sweet-treat- of-earthy-potatoes)

<comment><USER5> The recipe we've used for Scottish macaroons involves roughly an entire bag of icing sugar, about the same amount of coconut, and one small boiled potato :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given the other ingredients in those proportions, you could substitute an old combat boot for the potato and it would taste just fine.

</comment><comment><USER7>
        'It's a lot better than I thought it would be.'

Oh?

        ... the boiled pudding calls for two pounds of potatoes
        and one pound of butter...

Oh.

<comment><USER8> We probabbly shouldn't be surprised. I have a hard time finding a reference but I do remember very vividly the core recipe for a "sinfully delicious" Michelin 3-star restaurant's mashed potatoes.

 _Per portion, a pound of potatoes, half a pound of butter + seasoning._ Of course there are cooking techniques to consider, but the fractions for ingredients are still the same.

<comment><USER9> Robuchon's mashed potatoes?

<comment><USER8> Could be. Name is certainly familiar, and after having had a night's sleep I believe I learned about the recipe from one of Bourdain's episodes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Time Warner Cable trying to make municipal fiber illegal in North Carolina - <AUTHOR> http://www.innovationpolicy.org/fat-pipe-dreams-in-north-carolina <comment><USER2> I am originally from rural North Carolina and happen to be visiting my parents at the moment. I'll give a quick run-down of their internet options over the years:

From 1995-2000, their only option was dialup. 56k dialup was offered but the quality of the phone lines in the area only allowed for 26k - 28k at best.

Sometime around 2000 or 2001, "broadband" finally moved to the area. However, they can not get DSL or Cable. They have a wireless ISP (radio installed on the house, receives signal from a tower.)

They get about 1mpbs down and about 10% packet loss. Last night I was battling 35% packet loss while trying to do some work.

Parts of the county do have DSL and Cable. A guy who lives about 10 houses up from my dad has Time Warner broadband. He's had it for 10 years and loves it. My parent's can't get it, however, because they're just over the county line and apparently this county has some sort of exclusivity agreement with another small/local cable company.

That small cable company does have broadband, but only to small/select area of the county, and they don't seem to have any interest in heading out this way.

I really don't even know what to do to help them anymore as far as connectivity goes. I just know that it annoys them.

Anyway, the point of my little tirade is: It angers me to see possible additional imposed limitations to an area which already struggles to have anything to begin with.

<comment><USER3> All we had to do was have a few meetings about community WIFI and put up a few radios and suddenly the local cable company decided that what they said would take a decade could be done in a couple of months. I've never seen them move so fast. It was like leprechaun magic.

Have a few meetings, invite your local cable representative to talk about "options". (They always send a guy to tell you how committed they are, how many new places they hooked up last year, and how your neighborhood is just too rural to serve at this time.) Once you get a T1 somewhere with a big antenna, they'll freak.

<comment><USER2> I'm not entirely certain that they (the cable company) cares. There's the wireless ISP in the area (what the parents currently have) and they didn't seem to fret when that came into the area.

This is mostly an old, poor, mill town -- except all of the mills have long since gone away.

You pretty much described exactly the kinds of things they say. When I first called on my parent's behalf in 2008, I was told it would be 2010. In 2010 I was told "maybe 2011." Here we are in 2011 and they still have no answer for me.

Bell South apparently doesn't have a DSLAM near by... though my sister has DSL and lives about 6 miles from my parents.

They're pretty much at the county line, so I think this has caused them to end up in a "no man's land".

Time Warner can't come that last 1/4 mi and the other cable company doesn't care to come out this far.

900mhz seems to be the way to go.

 _edit_ Just stumbled across this article online, written about someone in the same county: <http://www.internetforeveryone.org/americaoffline/nc/day5>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I live in the triangle area. My broadband options are limited. An excerpt I wrote nominating my municipality for Google Fiber for Communities:

 _Though there are many technology workers here, the area has limited Internet access providers, primarily BellSouth DSL and Time Warner cable, both of which have higher prices, yet offer less bandwidth compated to providers in other regions.

For example, Comcast advertises (in Santa Clara, CA) 15 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up (w/PowerBoost) for $42.95 per month, after a six-month intro of $19.99.

By comparison, Time Warner Cable offers only 10 Mbps down, 512 Kbps up for $64.90 per month, after a six-month intro of $39.90/month. Two-thirds the bandwidth for 1.5x the cost, nevermind that I can't even get higher speed if I wanted to.

DSL is even worse. I can't get BellSouth's website to tell me what DSL options are available at my address, but att.com advertises 6 Mbps DSL for $42.95 per month after a 12-month intro of $24.95. AT&T U-verse is not yet available to me either._

Now look what Wilson, NC, 60 miles to the east, offers to its residents:

<http://www.greenlightnc.com/about/internet/>

10 Mbps symmetric service for $35/month up to 100 Mbps symmetric for $150/month.

More about what's going on at <http://savencbb.wordpress.com/>

<comment><USER2> (sigh) I guess I need to move to Wilmington (or back to CA.)

A fellow HNer/friend mentioned this: <https://epbfi.com/internet/>

Chattanooga TN offering 1gbps service for $350/mo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't be bothered to read this article, I'll get too angry.

I have no clue about this particular case, but I've been involved in other municipal fiber projects, and big telcos (plural, not just one) routinely tried to stop or sabotage these projects, often surreptitiously. As far as they're concerned, you're encroaching on their territory. It's complete crap. It happens all over the country.

A commenter below mentions that they thought the headline was editorialized heavily or plain wrong. Again, I have no clue about this particular case, but these corporations work in underhanded ways.

<comment><USER6> It's a shame you can't be bothered to read it. It's an even greater shame that the comment at the top of the page was written by a person who didn't read the article.

<comment><USER5> If it pleases you, I did end up reading it, and getting angry, as predicted.

<comment><USER7> That's funny!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Be sure to read to the end and see the update at the bottom where he mentions that he has received grants from Time Warner Cable (the ISP here in NC).

I agree with some of the statements, we shouldn't have municipal fiber networks where it doesn't make sense. On the other hand, I've had stellar experience with locally owned and operated broadband networks in other states, and I don't think we need a bill to make that illegal. A few bad examples doesn't mean we need a law to prohibit it in the future.

<comment><USER9> "I don't think we need a bill to make that illegal."

It doesn't sound like this makes it illegal. It sounds like it makes it illegal for municipalities to engage in anticompetitive practices, or what we'd call anticompetitive practices if they weren't a government. That's not the same thing.

I have no opinion on the bill itself. I found the article thought-provoking, but being libertarian I'm still inclined to say that a municipality shouldn't be running a business like that. Not even because it'll give bad service to the customers necessarily, but also because a municipality just shouldn't have to deal with a case where it builds out millions of dollars of infrastructure and then can't recoup the costs because its business analysis was crappy. Society has solid, tested mechanisms for dealing with that when companies go wrong and have to go under, it's a lot harder for a municipality. They shouldn't be engaging in that sort of risky behavior, even as I'm not sure I want to _ban_ it.

<comment><USER10> Given that this sort of infrastructure tends to be a natural monopoly or close to one, it seems like a perfect case for either the government to build it, or some sort of quasi-governmental regulated utility, the same way power lines are operated. If you consider it an actual utility, the government is implicitly going to be guaranteeing it one way or another, because people aren't going to be willing to put up with a company going bankrupt resulting in service just being discontinued.

Even in states where energy _production_ is free-market/deregulated, with consumers choosing which power generators to buy from at market rates, the actual lines over which the power flows are either government-owned or quasi- governmental, because competition for provision of power lines doesn't work particularly well.

Regardless of the pros/cons though, _municipal_ experimentation in this area seems the least problematic to me. If the federal government or even a state is doing something, it's hard to escape and covers a large area. If a town is doing something, and people don't like it, it's much easier to just avoid that town. If some strategies clearly end up working much better than others, we'll be able to see which towns succeed in their strategies and which fail. Municipalities are also somewhat more constrained in their ability to waste unlimited taxpayer money, due to a mixture of fewer taxes they're allowed to levy, and the fact that people can just move to another town if things get too onerous.

<comment><USER9> Building power lines isn't the same level of risk. What's the probability a given house wants power? Basically 100%. Municipalities have lost their metaphorical shirts on fibre rollouts before. If it was similar in all relevant ways you wouldn't have such different outcomes. That's a sign your argument isn't capturing something about reality.

The reason why I'm not in a hurry to ban it is that I'm actually not upset to see people experience the consequences of their actions. It inevitably happens anyhow and trying to legislate it away has the usual problems that arise when you try to legislate an impossibility.

I suppose I shouldn't have used the dreaded l-word; we say nearly the same thing but you wouldn't know it from the karma outcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was under the impression that telephone lines were considered utility infrastructure and not everyone wants a land line (or ever did).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article focuses on two cities that bought out their failing local providers. Considering that they were failing, it's probably no surprise that city managers with no experience in that business can't run them any better.

The article completely ignores Greenlight (<http://www.greenlightnc.com/>) -- the successful municipal broadband network in Wilson, NC that has been battling TW in the courts. To me, it appears the bill is aimed directly at Greenlight.

BTW I live in Raleigh, I pay TWC $105 per month for business class service: 10/2 with 5 static IPs. (I get roughly 7/1. They won't prorate for the missing bits.)

<comment><USER12> Is Greenlight profitable on its own (including capital costs), or is it subsidized?

<comment><USER13> Why would that matter? Are roads profitable on their own (including capital costs), or are they subsidized?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The headline is not just editorializing heavily, it's plain wrong.

 _[The bill] seeks to ensure that cities, who function in the dual role of regulator and competitor in such markets, don't abuse their regulatory power to privilege themselves with respect to their competitors. [...] The bills require municipal broadband operators play by the same rules and regulations that apply to commercial operators, to refrain from cross-subsidizing their networks by raiding other kitties, to price at cost or above, and to allow fair access to rights of way._

Say what you want about Time Warner being out there, pushing any bill, but let's at least judge the bill by it's actual content.

<comment><USER14> So, you're relying on the editorialized summary of the legislation instead of the actual text to call the article "wrong"?

Municipal broadband operators shouldn't have to "play fair". Broadband access is a natural monopoly, and a municipality offering quality service should not be bound by the same obligations as a profit-making enterprise.

If the city and its residents believe that broadband is worth funding, via any method they choose to do so, that should absolutely be their right regardless of what TWC and their lobbyists think.

<comment><USER15> _Broadband access is a natural monopoly, and a municipality offering quality service should not be bound by the same obligations as a profit-making enterprise._

Neither of these statements make sense.

First, regarding the "natural monopoly", I just can't understand why you'd say that. You've offered no supporting argument. So I'll just point out that, 30 years ago, ATT said exactly the same thing. But we've come a long way from there, virtually all of it good. Why would you want to run your broadband access under the same ideas that gave us the evil old phone monopoly?

I don't understand why you'd think that a government-run service should have special privileges over a corporation. I would say the other way around, because the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and all that. Plus there's the dismal track record of other governmental efforts. Take sports stadiums, for example. Giving public education huge benefits in that business certainly hasn't delivered better outcomes.

<comment><USER14> AT&T was _right_ that telephone service is a natural monopoly. There's still only one set of phone lines running into your house. This trend on HN of expecting every argument to be entirely self-supported and encyclopedic- length, defining everything from first principles, is really quite annoying. You don't win an argument by going "HA HA YOU DIDN'T DEFINE A TERM." If you don't know what a natural monopoly is, go look it the fuck up. Utilities such as telephone service and internet access are the textbook definition of a natural monopoly.

Government run services already have tons of special privileges corporations don't. Try not paying your taxes and see what happens. Regardless, it is my opinion (and I'd believe the article writers would agree with me) that infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.) You don't drive on four separate interstate systems, you don't have eighteen sets of phone lines running into your house, and you don't have 4 sets of power cables either.

<comment><USER16> >infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.)

By this idiot "argument", government should go back to the 1950s through 1970s and start nationalizing railroads, power companies, and oil companies again. How did that work out again?

<comment><USER14> I don't know, let's ask California how their energy prices are doing now that they've been radically deregulated. Let's take a train on our efficient, safe, and inexpensive national rail system there to ask them.

<comment><USER15> Sigh.

The brownouts a couple years back were because the State deregulated only one side of the market, leaving the sellers of electricity in an untenable position. Essentially, they had to compete to sell on the one hand, but were forbidden from competition on the purchasing side. The problem was _entirely_ (and it's not often one can point a finger at one single cause, but here it is) the fault of ham-fisted State regulation.

The federal rail system is not inexpensive, it's heavily subsidized. Don't start with the per-passenger-mile comparison to highways, because it's wrong: the study failed to account for capital cost in the railway, while counting for it against roads. On the topic of rail, the network of rail in the US was subsidized and built using eminent domain -- yet all of those railroads failed or were merged into others. The one exception, the one railroad that stood on its own without federal strongarming others into supporting it, is the only one that managed to survive until the present day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Time Warner is probably the worst cable service provider I've ever used in my life. I was so happy to move to Florida and get Verizon at 30/30 for the same price I paid for Time Warner's poor quality and consistently dropped service.

As for the bill itself - I don't see why any regulatory body or bill should tell a business how much they can charge, government or otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER18> I spoke at length with my Representative about this several weeks back and he was on the fence. He does not want to see Government compete directly with private corps, but in this case I would argue that the internet is a core utility like water/power, especially if you expect growth in high paying tech jobs in an area. This is an example of old world thinking/planning being played by the savvy private interests, and it is alarming.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a horrendous thing for consumers but let's remember municipalities lured in cable companies to build in rural areas by promising little or no competition via exclusive franchising agreements. The municipalities usually get a small cut of profits from the cable provider as well. Blame TWC but also blame the municipality itself for 20-30 years of anti-competitive behavior and the voters who allow this to happen. If this passes it will be entirely consistent with the history of cable franchises. In the end this may all be a show to get a higher kick-back out of TWC.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some more background:

<http://www.wxii12.com/money/27123939/detail.html>

[http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2009/04/nc-considering- bill-...](http://www.techjournalsouth.com/2009/04/nc-considering-bill-to- limit-municipal-broadband-efforts/)

[http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-raleigh/raleigh- city-c...](http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-raleigh/raleigh-city-council- adopts-resolutionagainst-limiting-municipal-broadband-1)

</comment><comment><USER15> If the government wants our data usage records, today we have at least a hope that our (corporate) ISP will protect our privacy, at least until the government comes up with a subpeona.

If the government _is_ our ISP, do we have any hope of avoiding the scrutiny of government?

<comment><USER20> You trust corporates more than you trust the government?

At least the government is in theory suppose to look after your best interests, corporations have no such requirement. Either way the best solution is maintaining strict privacy laws with monitoring and oversight by the free press and well funded and respected organisations such as a better funded EFF.</comment></comment>


New security flaw impacts 5G, 4G, and 3G telephony protocols - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-security-flaw-impacts-5g-4g-and-3g-telephony-protocols/ <comment><USER2> We dont need a new flaw, the old ones have not been fixed yet...

</comment><comment><USER3> These attacks are valuable inputs for new generations, but no cause to consider 3G and 4G insecure in practice.

The authors learn about user's activity and location. But the comments often lack understanding what that means in context of mobile networks. Usually, it simply means:

* Is the user currently active in the cell?

If yes, the user's location is known (somewhere in this cell) and also his activity (he's online, otherwise he wouldn't be present). The authors here present an issue where the authentication procedure allows tracking with some probability.

</comment><comment><USER4> Welcome to another year of not trusting cell towers.

<comment><AUTHOR> *years

<comment><USER5> decade(s)

It isn't like they switch off the old networks 3G, 4G etc when the next generation comes out. I also assume this cannot be fixed with a firmware update.

Also:

[https://www.pcmag.com/article/360533/what- is-6g](https://www.pcmag.com/article/360533/what-is-6g)

> _In a paper proposing 6Genesis, director Matti Latva-aho explains "a new > mobile generation appears every 10 years, and thus, 6G will emerge around > 2030 to satisfy all the expectations not met with 5G, as well as new ones to > be defined at a later stage."_</comment></comment></comment>


When Will Amazon Start Shipping Cash? - <AUTHOR> http://www.xobni.com/asmith/archives/75

<comment><USER2> I don't get the joke. And I thought everyone knew about the Tuscan Milk (see 991 reviews):

[http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk- Gallon-128/dp/B00032...](http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk- Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0)

And let's not forget the Badonkadonk:

[http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser- Tank/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/JL421-Badonkadonk-Land-Cruiser- Tank/dp/B00067F1CE)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've started using Amazon for a lot more stuff since they set up 'Subscribe & Save' ([http://www.amazon.com/Subscribe-Save- Grocery/b/ref=sc_iw_r_1...](http://www.amazon.com/Subscribe-Save- Grocery/b/ref=sc_iw_r_1_16310101_1?ie=UTF8&node=251482011)).

Basically, they provide 15% off a lot of household items and free shipping. There isn't really any 'subscribing' either. You just sign up for what you want, and after you get it once you can cancel that 'subscription' with no penalty.

I've found that it's often cheaper than even Costco (generally they're about equal once I factor in transportation costs and tax). And it's far faster and easier.

(Not affiliated with Amazon, just a happy customer)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll bet Tipjoy would appreciate it if they did.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why would you want cash when you can have amazon bucks? :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Talk about poor margins!

<comment><USER7> Are you nuts? ATMs get away with margins around 1% (say, a buck or two on an average withdrawal between $100 and $200). That looks low compared to the margins bookstores make, but the warehousing costs are negative!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who needs cash?</comment>


Could you survive Germanwings 4u9525 by jumping out? - <AUTHOR>

Would it at all be possible to survive Germanwings 4u9525 by opening the door and jumping out at the optimal* point of its decent?
Some things to consider:
1) If a passenger had a parachute, does this make a difference?
2) What would be the best altitude for jumping out? I presume above a certain height the air pressure inside the cabin would be too great relative to the outside pressure to actually open the door.
3) The wind speeds going across the door would be 700km/h. Can a human even jump into such a force without being torn into pieces?
4) Obviously without a parachute, the best we can hope for is slowing down from 700km/h to terminal velocity. Some people have survived terminal velocity falls so this might be worthwhile.
5) Any other scenarios I have not considered?
*Not sure what the optimal would be, if any. <comment><USER2> A thing to consider is that if you manage to depressurize the cabin by opening the door or otherwise making a hole, an automated mechanism should open the cockpit door (to prevent the differential pressure from blowing it up / damaging the airframe / destroying the plane).

Then instead of jumping to an almost certain death you and your fellow passengers can storm the cockpit, angrily beat up the murderous co-pilot and let the captain guide the aircraft to safety.

<comment><USER3> _Then instead of jumping to an almost certain death you and your fellow passengers can storm the cockpit, angrily beat up the murderous co-pilot and let the captain guide the aircraft to safety._

According to this article, that is unlikely to succeed: [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/03/28/germanwings- tr...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/03/28/germanwings-tragedy-how- to-protect-against-mentally-ill-pilots/)

<comment><USER4> Even a slight increase in survival chances is worth a shot.

<comment><USER3> True and you can still jump out after an attempt if you're high enough that there's time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Space shuttles had a mast that would extend out the mid-deck door to carry astronauts to a safe position out of the way of the wings in case they had to leave the vehicle in atmospheric flight. I don't think any astronaut ever wanted to actually use it, but it almost certainly beats dying.

Bailing out through a relatively small door at 700 km/h is not something I'd like to try. I think I'd take my chances storming the cockpit.</comment>


A Cryptologic Mystery - <AUTHOR> https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/neinnines/ <comment><USER2> >Both the US (and its allies) and the Soviet Union (and its satellites) made extensive use of shortwave radio

Spot the bias.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://xkcd.com/221/](https://xkcd.com/221/)</comment>


Dear Logitech, please support Linux! - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/browse_thread/thread/cd84bac9d748f325/566efab9e1b08fb5?lnk=raot

<comment><AUTHOR> Read the post that was made on Sept. 22 at 6:30pm. It's a tear-jerker :(</comment>


Ask HN: Why do recruiters avoid rejecting candidates? - <AUTHOR> Every time I was informed that I was being rejected for a position, it was through automated emails (you submit your resume, wait 1-2 days and then the automated email comes saying you're awesome but they will pursue other candidates).
Every time I actually had a phone screening or went through multiple interviews, I had to wait many weeks and never heard back from recruiters. Even when I asked them directly if I was still being considered... just silence.
Sample data of 1 of course. Please share your experiences. <comment> UK-AL Why put effort in something your not going to get benefit from? Or in fact may make you liable for legal action if you get it wrong.

In my opinion this is bad thinking, but its the reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> They can simply use the same automated message they use for people who are not even invited to interview. At least candidates can move on. I can't see how someone could take action for being rejected in a non-specific way.

I have invested time/energy on their interviewing process, why can't they spend a few seconds copying and pasting a canned response letting me know I didn't make it?

It's funny because it probably takes more time for them to open emails or ignore Skype messages than to simply let me know.

On one hand, it's actually good you get to see how people from that company behave before you decide to join. On the other hand, these are usually outside recruiters that don't represent the company culture very well...</comment></comment>


Windows 8 Consumer Preview to debut new Windows logo? (rumor) - <AUTHOR> http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-8-consumer-preview-debut-new-windows-logo-rumor#.Tzkk6WL9HkE.hackernews <comment><USER2> This isn't the first time Microsoft has altered their logo, check the google image search for Microsoft logos [http://www.google.ca/search?q=windows+logos&hl=en&rl...](http://www.google.ca/search?q=windows+logos&hl=en&rlz=1C1LENN_enCA452CA452&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Ajk5T_g8w9_RAZCzgb4C&ved=0CDEQsAQ&biw=1067&bih=588)

I was looking at the start-screen of windows7 on the weekend, and thinking it is time for a change. A new design is needed, both to move beyond the baggage of the past, as well as promote that their is a BIG difference between the old Microsoft and the new (or old Windows if you'd like).

At the same time, the logo in this example is very much a model of the Metro UI. I don't think the current logo says much about Windows, a clean fresh logo is needed.</comment>


Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Donating $25M to the CDC Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101696761533081 <comment><USER4> It's pathetic that a government agency is beholden to charity from billionaires instead of being fully funded from tax receipts. What a debacle.

That said, hat's off to Zuckerberg. His reaction sharply contrasts with so much of the shameful, cynical fearmongering from some quarters.

<comment><USER5> Most experts think that Ebola presents low risk to US so I am not sure why CDC should spend significant resources on it. Private company is working on vaccines and at current funding CDC is perfectly capable of handling a few cases of Ebola in US. Voiding visas of everyone who was in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other affected countries together with mandatory three week quarantine for few US citizens who was there is probably all that is needed to be done. Should not be too expensive.

CDC budget for 2014 is $6.8B so 25 million is drop in a bucket anyway.

<comment><USER6> _CDC budget for 2014 is $6.8B so 25 million is drop in a bucket anyway._

And the budget for the department tasked with responding to the Ebola crisis is how much?

<comment><USER5> CDC should be able to re-allocate budget on a short notice - I am sure there are contingency plans for it. On CDC website they list priorities - <USER2> Safety, Healthcare-associated, Infections, HIV in the U.S.,Motor Vehicle Injuries, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, Teen Pregnancy, Tobacco. I am sure they can cut 1% from these programs - none of them is any kind of emergency.

If there was a risk of Ebola reaching African proportion in US, I am sure there are emergency funds to bolster up CDC. But currently there is no such risk and realistically there is no good way to spend significant amount of money in US on Ebola.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it interesting that nobody here has asked the question why have Mark and Priscilla suddenly decided that they need to donate this amount of money? Has someone with inside knowledge of what is happening on the ground spoken to them?

<comment><USER8> Have you read the front page of the news recently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For extra fun, compare and contrast with his simultaneous $100M purchase of a 700-acre waterfront estate in Kauai:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454885)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's official, we're back in the robber-baron age

</comment><comment><USER10> In the US, we hear that government and process gets in the way of getting the funding needed to be prepared or respond to these types of emergencies. Somehow I feel that only 30-50 years ago, there was not so much red tape in the way (nor was there the ability for a sophisticated/organized response - <USER3> it cuts both ways).

I vacillate between thinking that just giving money will not make a huge difference here, and thinking that it's about all most of us can do that might help. I also thought that in this day and age, maybe we could do something like, a Kickstarter to fund a response to Ebola (so that the "people" can make an immediate impact), possibly to get the money to the CDC or other government (or non-government) organizations, with the expressly stated restricted use being defined in advance by a non-profit or NGO as being for the Ebola response. If money were truly the problem, it seems like we must be able to get money and fast.

It seems like money is definitely a part of the solution, but we also need those experts, heroes and volunteers who will put themselves in harm's way, with the proper tools/training/safety precautions to help. I don't know if money really helps with that aside from supporting those folks, which is definitely needed.

Certainly, funding for educational outreach to help prevent the spread of Ebola on multiple fronts is helpful.

We also need to make sure that the fundamental medical research/drug development is being funded and supported (for example, accelerated ZMapp/other drug development/testing/research and production, in conjunction with government support).

It's a catch-22, we all talk about how the drug manufacturers make fortunes on the licensing/patenting of drugs. At the same time, if we can help those who are suffering by getting those "fortunes" in the hands of the people who have the drugs or can make the drugs that are needed, then while we may not like it, if it helps then it's worth getting those funds in place. I am aware of policies for compassionate use and pre-FDA approval, special relationships between government and private industry, where sometimes they can get the drugs needed without much trouble and they are often donated by the drug manufacturers (as I believe was the case with ZMapp).

In any case, it certainly is a complex challenge and I am glad to see people trying to make a difference. I yearn for simplification here with regards to such issues.

<comment><USER11> Fifty years ago there would be a quarantine, no travellers from Africa, and no response necessary.

<comment><USER12> There was a flu pandemic in 1957, for which I can't find any evidence that the United States initiated a quarantine or blocked travelers from Asia. So, I'd love to know why you think there would've been a quarantine 50 years ago. Would it have been in response to the flu pandemic 7 years before?

<comment><USER13> That pandemic killed an estimated 69,800 Americans. It's simply not in the same class as this Ebola outbreak, and as an airborne disease (infects the upper respiratory tract) that's easily transmitted a quarantine would have been much less practical.

That was also a period when we had a bunch of new antibiotics available to help with secondary infections, which are frequently the biggest problem with influenza.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not that this takes away anything from this generous philanthropic gesture, but this happens to coincide with Zuckerberg's recent purchase of a large portion of a Hawaiian island that certain reports say cost more than $100MM: [http://mashable.com/2014/09/29/zuckerberg- hawaii/](http://mashable.com/2014/09/29/zuckerberg-hawaii/) [http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg- buys-700-acre...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg- buys-700-acres-in-hawaii-for-more-than-100-million-2014-10)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to see them donate to the EFF

</comment><comment><USER16> I know Zuckerberg is rich from creating Facebook, but where did Chan find her stash of money? Or are they donating Mark's money but using both people names? Asking out of curiosity, not trying to make some dumb point.

<comment><USER17> When you are married, all of your spouses money is your money (unless you agree it isnt).

<comment><USER18> It's not quite that simple. California, where they live, is a "community property" state[1]. This means that anything _earned_ while married is community property - owned 50/50 by both people. On the other hand anything you had before marriage (or inherited) is "separate property" \- owned 100% that person.

Due to these rules the fact they were married after - one day after! - the IPO could make a big difference if they were to ever divorce[2]. Of course, like almost every very wealthy person, they likely have a prenuptial agreement which should establish exactly who owns what.

[1] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_property](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_property)

[2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/us-facebook- prenup...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/21/us-facebook-prenup- idUSBRE84K02H20120521)</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Adds Bitcoin Currency Conversion to Bing - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/02/10/microsoft-beats-google-adding-bitcoin-currency-conversion-bing/#!vbb9S

<comment><USER2> If I had to make a guess, it hasn't been added to Google because there is no concrete set exchange that people use on a daily basis more than another. Mt. Gox's recent publicity indicates that it wouldn't be a reliable source. CoinBase? Btc-e?

<comment><USER3> Mt.Gox has been an unreliable source for the exchange rate for quite awhile now. Bitstamp is pretty much the current gold standard for USD<->BTC rates (Coinbase and BitPay are based on the Bitstamp rate).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DuckDuckGo also supports BTC conversions (through Wolfram|Alpha):

[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=1btc+to+usd](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=1btc+to+usd)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's okay, Google will one up that by doing a Dogecoin converter.

Much wow.

;)

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a hard time seeing them adding more useless crap to their interface as beating anyone.

</comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft didn't beat Google at anything.

They still have Bing

</comment><comment><USER8> I suppose this is nice in a 'get new people to try bing' type of thing, but what is really going to be the tipping point to make people leave google for more than kicking the tires?

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this really HN-worthy? I'd expect to find this on reddit.</comment>


Show HN: Smarter Search for GitHub Repos - <AUTHOR> https://gitrelevant.netlify.app/ <comment><USER2> @bilater You might also make a search to execute after hitting enter, which doesn't work like that at the moment - one must mouse click the search icon.

(thx for fixing that C# thign!)

</comment><comment><USER2> Yeah...

@bilater The search can't distinguish C from C# [I corrected myself in a comment below]. If you'd be willing to make it work, I'd be happy to use it. Other than that, good job!

<comment><USER2> OK, I just figured out you can use quotation marks around the language field which does the job for C#, but I'm not sure you want to keep it that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for catching! I'll take a look

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm for some reason C++ equates to 'cpp' in github search.

<comment><AUTHOR> should be fixed now</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Location of Plates in a Book - <AUTHOR> https://collation.folger.edu/2019/04/the-location-of-plates-in-a-book/ <comment><USER2> That's a funny coincidence. I was just writing a LaTeX document yesterday where the template had a separate table of contents for all the Plates in the document and I thought

"What the hell is a Plate in the this context? Whatever, I'm not going to bother looking it up right now"

Lo and behold, something shows up on HN the next day explaining what a Plate is.

</comment><comment><USER3> <!-- RFC EDITOR TO REMOVE THIS --></comment>


A diet supplemented with red algae could reduce greenhouse gases emitted by cows - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/ <comment><USER2> Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17036221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17036221)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998395)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting that very effective technical solutions exist to the global warming. Yet, we are rejecting for political reasons the regulatory solutions that would see them deployed on an industrial scale.

A 10% levy on beef produced with strong methanogensis would make producers scramble for solutions such as these, while having an almost negligible effect on consumer prices - if sufficient time is allowed before the tax comes into effect. The results, absolutely massive, displacing trillions of equivalent investments in energy generation and transportation.

<comment><USER4> When I hear ideas like this, I keep wondering what the backlash would be if there was a 10% levy on all internet based services/software to tax the energy use of data centers, laptops trying to run electron apps and compile react projects.

<comment><USER5> If the levy was on data centres not consuming green energy sources, the backlash would be nil.

<comment><USER6> Agreed! In fact, many tech companies with large datacenters already use 100% renewable energy (or will soon). For example:

[1] [https://blog.google/outreach- initiatives/environment/100-per...](https://blog.google/outreach- initiatives/environment/100-percent-renewable-energy/)

[2] [https://www.apple.com/environment/climate- change/](https://www.apple.com/environment/climate-change/)

[3] [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/renewable- energy/](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/renewable-energy/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was going to patent this idea but it's so simple I think I'll let you guys have it.

Did you know methane is lighter than air and rises? So we simply house cows in a building where the ceiling is a conical shape and we periodically collect the methane from the top.

Or if it's too hard to collect we simply pass it through a flame as it leaves the top of the cone and convert it to co2, way less of a warming gas compared to methane.

I suggest this under the assumption most cattle are factory farmed meaning raised indoors? But you could arrange for them to at least be in this building during peak methane production. Timing their food intake and such.

<comment><USER8> A cow release on the order of 100 kg of methane per year. Natural gas costs about 1 dollar per 2 kg of methane.

I don't know how hard methane extraction is from air with ppm concentrations of it, but could it be done for less than about 50 dollars per year per head of cattle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Carbon emissions from cows are made up of carbon from the current environment. Not fossilized carbon. Even as methane, it's not a big deal, it's short-lived, and ultimately carbon-neutral.

<comment><USER10> Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas in the short and medium term, which is non-negligible due to feedback effects.

Additionally cows are not carbon-neutral if you take opportunity costs into account. The land used to make feed could be forest sequestering carbon instead since eating vegetarian or poultry based diet requires less primary production to yield the same calorie intake for humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or we could re-evaluate how we eat and drastically reduce the amount of meat produced and consumed.

<comment><USER12> Or we could do both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So instead of taxing carbons... just mandate that cows have to eat these

<comment><USER14> And if any cow disobeys the mandate the punishment is dismemberment and being eaten.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cityrank, Find your next travel destination - <AUTHOR> https://cityrank.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> I created this site for myself to have a more realistic cost estimate compared to nomadlist and easier to parse than numbeo.

I lost a bit the focus i wanted it to go and now it just sits there, online, with nobody visiting it except me. If you have any ideas how to make it more interesting give me a shot :)

<comment><USER2> I did a basic UI design for a site that would produce the place on Earth that a user would most like to live, based on a lot of tunable parameters. It's a very big project and I'll never get to it, but maybe you can find some ideas that are interesting enough to implement. Shoot me a mail and I'll send you the ppt.</comment></comment>


Why a Mars-Orbiting Space Station Is a Logical Next Step - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2017/12/18/why-a-mars-orbiting-space-station-is-a-logical-next-step/#41eef6d13834 <comment><USER2> Both moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, wold be cheaper targets than surface of the Mars itself. They would provide better radiation shielding than Mars- orbiting space station if the crews stay for longer durations.

Few satellites and remote control from the orbit around Mars would speed up robotic missions on the Mars surface.</comment>


97% Would Let The Police Search Their Phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/opinion/police-phone-privacy.html <comment><AUTHOR> Also related: [https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states- canada/article...](https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states- canada/article/3005460/i-stayed-my-house-months-chinese-american-doctor)

 __" A young couple was told to leave first, Bridges recalled. "They begrudgingly got up and left," he said. Then an older man, who refused.

"He says, 'Nope. I'm not getting off the flight. I'm a doctor and have to see patients tomorrow morning,'" Bridges said. The man became angry as the manager persisted, Bridges said, eventually yelling. "He said, more or less, 'I'm being selected because I'm Chinese.'" __

</comment><comment><USER2> No way. Never consent to a search of anything, always ask for a warrant. If you give consent, the police have the right to look for _anything_.

</comment><comment><USER3> No

<comment><AUTHOR> Then you are better than 97% of US citizens who would... read the article</comment></comment>


The Future of Money Depends on Busting Fairy Tales About Its Past - <AUTHOR> https://howwegettonext.com/the-future-of-money-depends-on-busting-the-fairy-tales-you-believe-about-its-past-30cbd90619e0#.lvf83ue9p <comment><USER2> If you're interested in the history of this topic, check out _Debt: The First 5000 Years_ [1] by David Graeber and _The Philosophy of Money_ [2] by Georg Simmel, a sociologist whose main work was on money as a social phenomenon.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years)

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

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the recommendations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great summary. All value is future value and the only real way to 'store value' is to pump water uphill(or equivalent).

I've tried to address amny of the authors points with [http://Catallax.info](http://Catallax.info)

-Rather than adding new ways to interact with the bank ledgers, change the power dynamics of who controls the ledgers

Build on Bitcoin or etherium

-Change who gets to issue money on those ledgers

Everyone is a bank.

-Change what it is redeemable for.

I don't think changing the object is as important as changing incentives and giving people reasons to spend local.

-Change the internal properties of money.

We use demurrage.

-Alter the financial institutions that dominate the standard money system.

We offer quasi-government accounts and self elected taxation to find those.</comment>


Ask HN: Does the scientific part of Comp Science have no place in industry jobs? - <AUTHOR> These days, all jobs I see (at least in my area) is anything related to web and mobile development, like frontend, backend, DevOps, iOS and android. And these jobs can be grabbed without much knowledge of computer science fundamentals or mathematics thanks to libraries and frameworks.
What other fields I'm talking about? Computer Graphics, Computational Science, Theoretical Computer Science or any "core" field. I'm very passionate about getting a masters degree in any field of the above, but they hold no value to the jobs that I mentioned, especially that they are the only ones available here.
Do any jobs that require strong theoretical and mathematical knowledge of computer science exist today? If so, in what quantities? Are they rewarding as the common software engineering jobs, or not worth it, even after getting masters? <comment><USER2> Considering science is mainly research nowadays, any job you seem to be looking for you'll need a PhD

</comment><comment><USER3> What is your area?

<comment><AUTHOR> West Bank of Palestine. Many successful companies here are outsourcing companies

<comment><USER3> Here is my take.

There is a lot of "science" behind those boring business and consumer applications. People spend a huge amount of time at work with applications they hate. Quality is always a problem and people are also upset about costs, schedules, etc.

I think it's possible to do a radically better job at making that kind of application and from compilers to software engineering I think there is a lot of CS behind that.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Community-curated Python news - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailypy.com/ <comment><USER2> Looks great!

The RSS feed seems broken?

Also, is the sourcecode available?

<comment><AUTHOR> The rss feed is working file check it out here [https://www.dailypy.com/feed/rss/](https://www.dailypy.com/feed/rss/)

The source code is not available, its a django based website.

<comment><USER2> I see, thanks.

The html head has the wrong link for the feed: <link href="/feed/" rel="alternate" title="Python news feed" type="application/rss+xml"/>

And the feed has a wrong link for the site: <link>[https://www.dailypy.com/news/</link>](https://www.dailypy.com/news/</link>)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NextDoor warns Pinterest about using React Native - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vivekxk/every-company-that-i-know-of-that-has-tried-this-hybrid-approach-has-walked-it-back-months-later-b00678b68f4b <comment><USER2> Ah, WORA strikes again.

Why people keep falling for this I'll never know.

<comment><USER3> Starting out, it helps keep cost low while still having presence in multiple platforms. I hate every electron based app I use but that's exactly what I would use in an early company.

Can't really say much about bigger companies though.

<comment><USER4> It's much easier and cheaper to find engineers that have web technology experience as opposed to those that have native mobile development experience, hence part of the draw for bigger companies. And the ability to share code is a non-negligible optimization at scale.</comment></comment></comment>