Will you be seated on a jury? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/20/nyregion/jury-duty-quiz.html <comment><USER2> If you ever get the chance to do jury duty go for it. I used to hear people talking about how to get out of it but I was curious enough to show up and go along with the process the first time I was called. It was quite interesting, and at the time I was employed at a company that paid 100% daily wages if you were selected for a trial.

The defendant was accused of stealing a car and I had been the victim of car theft before, so I figured I was out quickly. After I told them about the theft the defence lawyer just asked 'were you traumatized?' and I laughed and said 'no, just annoyed. I got my car back a week later undamaged'.

Couldn't believe it but I was seated on jury for trial, and I got to see how the police worked it and learned about 'shaved keys', etc. Fascinating. I'm not really pro-police but I remember wishing the detective who caught the defendant had worked my case, where the thief was never found.

The personality dynamics of the deliberations are really interesting, too. The defendant was a young Hispanic man and our foreman was an old white guy whose first words were 'Well, he's guilty why waste time talking about it?' Total shocker, the others were furious with him and shouting and arguing, etc. Great stuff. I grabbed the evidence bag and looked through everything, deciding that I'd be pretty good at stealing cars if I ever needed to.

The tl;dr of this is that if you are a fan of short stories (like a good Kurt Vonnegut story) then jury duty is definitely for you. After doing it I'm certain I would go do it again and I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER3> That's nice that you get paid the same either way, but I've been called twice - once while I was in school where if I didn't spend time studying I didn't pass, and more importantly, I wouldn't learn the information. I got called again a couple years later where I was working independently on my own software projects, where if I didn't ship, I didn't get paid.

I took the obvious rational choice of using every trick in the book to successfully get out of it both times. The alternative would be a potentially unbounded chunk of my time gone, and that much farther behind on my goals. Large companies can get a kind of diversification, but I'm sure jury duty hits small companies hard as well.

The system is broken. I get the need for civilian juries, but the cost should be more fairly distributed by encouraging jurors to show up by paying jurors a reasonable wage rather than the pittance of a couple dollars a day that is currently paid in most jurisdictions, and at the same time, let people opt out by just saying "I don't want to" without having to give a reason (or better yet, opt in instead). We'd raise wage high enough to get some target percentage (like, say, 50%) of called citizens motivated enough to show up, or possibly compensate jurors pro rata based off of 120% of their average declared income on the previous 2-3 years of tax returns.

We'd have to raise taxes by a small amount to cover these payouts, but that's completely reasonable as we're shifting the burden from randomly chosen individuals of whom unreasonable demands are made today to a more broad and even and shallow tax base. It's the same reason we pay road work crews a wage rather than randomly selecting every week who cleans the roads. And if we pay enough to still get 50% of jurors showing up completely volitionally, we'd still avoid the problem of "professional jurors" who would try to game the system by serving on many juries.

<comment><USER4> Letting people opt out or opt in would destroy the entire point of a jury. It'd turn what needs to be a representative random sample of the population into selection bias.

I think that a better solution would be for small companies, independent contractors, students, etc., to buy into an insurance pool; such that when they _are_ selected for jury duty, they can be fairly compensated.

<comment><USER3> Yea, that's basically what I suggested; I called it taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been called for jury duty once, and wound up being seated, and was foreman. We acquitted the guy, accused of stealing some stuff from a cop car. I _think_ he was guilty, but none of us thought the State proved their case beyond reasonable doubt.

It was an interesting experience, and I was heartened to see that pretty much every juror in the group really took to heart the whole "presumption of innocence" idea and the notion that the State really had to prove guilt, not just hint at, or suggest, guilt.

</comment><comment><USER6> I served on an attempted homocide trial two years ago. It was the most interesting five days I had in while. If you do get called, make sure it's for a crime that requires a 911 operator, EMT, surgeon, detective, and incarcerated gang member as your witnesses.

</comment><comment><USER4> > The defense lawyer has now fallen in love with you…

Uhhhhh. There wasn't a single thing that sided me with the plaintiff. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

<comment><USER5> Same here.

<comment><USER7> Same...

<comment><USER8> All of you are young :) Being over 30 makes you likely to side with the plaintiff.

<comment><USER9> the points given for being over 30 doesn't help much at all. Frivolous lawsuits & being involved in "Social services, health, mental health" appear to be the big deal.

<comment><USER10> I think there are frivolous lawsuits and I am involved in social causes. The defense lawyer still loves me, even if I change those answers. But I'm solidly in the defense's ballpark with under 30, high salary, white collar, puzzles... already.

It's a bit disappointing, given that at face value I'm very sympathetic to the plaintiff (think the parent/family/long term "that could be me" angle) and I'd consider siding with her except in specific cases such as one where she willingly agreed to high-risk investments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was selected for jury duty and was seated for a 6 week civil trial last year.

Post-trial after talking to the defense attorneys it seems likely I would have been dismissed by the plaintiff (they were dismissing 'engineer types'), but because of the rules of selection the plaintiffs were basically out of arbitrary passes (I don't know the legal terminology but at a certain point they can appeal to the judge to pass on a potential juror, but only if there is a very specific reason (like I know somebody on the case), but there's a limit on how many arbitrary passes they get ("we don't like this guy, he won't see things our way"). So I guess my point is, you may be selected even if you are not ideal for one side or the other just because of the rules of the dance of voir dire and random luck of the draw (I was the last one seated, if they had avoided on passing one less person I would have walked out on day 1).

The trial ended up being about cold therapy devices and a guy who was suing a local corporation saying the device caused problems in his knee. I was initially surprised the defense (who still had passes) kept me around because in the original juror questioning I'm sure I came off as the liberal/borderline-anti-corporate-socialist lefty that I am.

In any case, the defense did a really good job of rationally showing that the device didn't cause the harm and the harm was the result of medical malpractice from the actual doctor; but the plaintiffs had a way more charismatic law team and almost won the case; in the end it was a mistrial with me and a few others holding out for the defense, plaintiffs would have won with one more vote (since it was civil it wasn't required to be unanimous); 3 days of very painful deliberation, trying to calmly explain to others on the jury how badly they misinterpreted the testimony and evidence and how they were manipulated by the plaintiff's attorneys (but, you know, not saying it outright like that).

The whole experience was actually pretty interesting though 6 weeks was at least 5 weeks too long. At least we had Fridays "off" (though I went to my regular job on Friday and worked a lot on the weeknights on days I was at court to keep up).

</comment><comment><USER12> A friend of my uncle told me a story about one of his jury duty experiences.

He went through a similar process like the one in the article. In the end, the judge asked a question like, "is there anything else you feel we didn't cover that may introduce bias in this trial?"

He raised his hand and said, "Yes, your honor. The defendant is black and everyone in the jury is white."

He wasn't selected.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems that the jury selection process selects for people who don't really have jobs and who don't have particularly strong views on much.

If the goal is to act as mere fact checkers and verify that the law is being applied consistently, I get the intention.

However, this is a narrow view of the role of a jury. Juries should also serve as fail-safe, exercising discretion and preventing grotesque aberrations, for instance those coming from minimum sentencing laws.

This is unlikely to happen with this kind of selection.

</comment><comment><USER14> The "Do you believe investing is similar to gambling?" question has choices of Yes and No. Some investing is similar to gambling. Some of that gambling is benign or even beneficial and some, like the derivatives bomb that blew up in 2008 is dangerous on a global scale. Some investors would never see themselves as gamblers but are. Some are over-cautious and moralistic about their investing.

Similarly, while there are frivolous lawsuits, and lawsuits that are technically not frivolous but are very harmful, like patent trolls and SLAPPs, there are also domains where personal liability does not reach today, like police violence, that could benefit from bonded practitioners with their bond at stake.

No matter, the plaintiff thinks I'm too establishment. I've been dismissed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand the questions. Who is asking these questions? Am I legally obligated to answer? Is that really how jury selection works? Seems a bit ridiculous that they are allowed to ask such specific (and often irrelevant to the case at hand) questions.

<comment><USER16> Read the associated NYT article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/nyregion/for-service-on- so...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/nyregion/for-service-on-some-juries- expect-a-lengthy-written-test.html)

<comment><USER17> The UK court system just picks 12 jurors, and that's the jury - no discussion or debate unless there's a significant conflict of interest.

Is that so bad?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I appreciated the humor here. That's not something I see much in the NYTimes.

> Do you believe that there are too many frivolous lawsuits in this country?

> Yes.

> The defense lawyer has now fallen in love with you.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's funny, the defense is swooning over me, while I feel more sympathetic (just based on the prompt given, obviously I don't have any evidence) with the prosecutor.

<comment><USER20> Just for what it's worth, civil cases have plaintiffs, not prosecutors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> IMO, jury duty is one of the most important things you can do as a citizen. It's probably more important than voting. A competent jury is often the only thing standing between an innocent person and prison.

I've never had be judged by a jury, but if I did, I hope the jury would be composed of intelligent, thoughtful and serious people.

I've done jury duty once. It was inconvenient but I would gladly do it again.

<comment><USER22> intelligent, thoughtful and serious people don't stand much of a chance of making it onto a jury - I think that was the point of the NYT quiz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was removed from the jury by the judge when I refused to swear an oath to only use the letter of the law to determine innocence or guilt (paraphrasing, might have that wrong.) I didn't know at that time that you can't be prosecuted for deciding however you want.

<comment><USER24> I believe they can however, at least in theory, get you for perjury if you tell them that you that you would only use the letter of the law to determine innocence or guilt but in fact are aware that you are not required to and are willing to not.

It is unfortunately likely that I will never serve on a jury because 1) I would never convict somebody of a crime if I believe that the law is unethical, and 2) would never lie about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25>
         What is your total household income?

If you select "Under $50k" they say "More likely to side with plaintiff". If you select "Over $50k" they say "No effect on either lawyer". That's not how conservation of expected evidence works. (Several other questions work the same way.)

<comment><USER26> Are you sure? Assume the lawyers have access to a table like the following, of previous results.

                  Plaintiff    Defense
        Under 50k        75         25
         Over 50k        50         50

What's wrong with the Times's conclusions?

<comment><USER25> If this was the first question, and both incomes are equally common, then before they asked your income they would estimate your chances of siding with the plaintiff as 62%. They ask the question, and either your chances go up to 75% or down to 50%.

If one of two answers gives "no effect" then so must the other.

<comment><USER26> Think about it like point system. Based on the answer, the plaintiff gives you a point and the defense gives you minus a point; or nobody gives you any points. Theoretically, maybe you should have started with half a defense point, but I don't think that's how it's really run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's interesting how well the jury system is set up- innocent until proven guiltily, beyond a reasonable doubt, jury of your peers, appeals, etc. even this reducing bias in jury selection.

I'm sure there's disgruntled people that will tell me it's all garbage, but it's certainly a lot better than I could have done.

<comment><USER22> This process INCREASES bias in jury selection.

Suppose you're accused of, say, marijuana possession. Far more than 1 in 12 people think marijuana should be legal, so an actually RANDOM jury would almost never convict - that jury pool would correctly reflect the sentiment in the populace at large that this law is stupid and shouldn't be enforced.

But a jury in which everybody who seems "biased" on the issue has been removed by the judge or the prosecutor, leaving only people who "had no opinion" or are willing to accept the law exactly as the judge interprets it...is hugely MORE biased towards conviction than a random group of 12 people would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Many NY Times links require a subscription. Am I missing something here, or is this only read by subscribed HNers?

<comment><USER29> The question isn't "Will you be seated on a Jury?", it's "Will you provide the NY Times advertisers with very specific demographic information?"

<comment><USER27> It says at the top "Your responses will not be stored."

If you open a profiler while you are filling out answers you can see there is no network activity (-> they are telling the truth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> At first I thought this was a trojan horse for the NYTimes to gather demographic information about their readers (household income, age, employment status). But then decided the A/B answers were probably too broad to be very informative.</comment>


Solar Window coatings "outperform rooftop solar by 50-fold" - <AUTHOR> https://solarwindow.com <comment><AUTHOR> Are there other solar window technologies like SolarWindow?

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


Ask HN: How do you use Parse.com? what about performances and scalability? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I currently bootstraping a new project (a mobile app) witch will require me to handle a basic user profile, some categories for each profile and a advanced search based on these categories/criteria and the user location.
I also want to track the usage of the app, and probably be able to send some emails to inactive users.
To be able to launch an MVP quickly I'm thinking about using Parse.com but I don't see much feedback from project who might use it.
Does anyone have some experience to share?
Thanks a lot!
Thibaut <comment><USER2> Hey Thibaut! Co-founder of Parse here. I think your use case is perfect for Parse. But, don't take my word for it. You might get more responses if you post in our google group: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/parse- developers](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/parse-developers)</comment>


Google scrubbed natural health sites from search results; whistleblower explains - <AUTHOR> http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/google-just-obliterated-natural-and-health-freedom-websites-its-search-results-wh <comment><AUTHOR> must be a coincidence: the video hosted by Vimeo with the interview with the insider stutters and stops all together at 8:23 in Chrome but has no issues in Firefox.</comment>


Show HN: SecretCrypt – Keeping secrets in plain sight - <AUTHOR> http://zemanta.github.io/2016/08/09/keeping-secrets-in-plain-sight/ <comment><USER2> > Since the configuration file is kept in the same repository as the code, > configuration options or secrets can easily be changed or added by > developers themselves.

This is terrible advice. Code and config should be separate. Otherwise you can't deploy the same _code_ to a different environment.

<comment><USER3> We deploy code to 3 datacenters so we simply have 3 config files in the repository. Deploy script then decides to link the correct config for the environment.

If you want to run local environment you can simply create your own configuration.

I don't really see what you gain by moving configuration files into a separate repository.

<comment><USER2> > If you want to run local environment you can simply create your own > configuration.

Externalizing config forces you to cleanly handle local environments as well. There's nothing special about them.

I generally recommend having an env.example file listing out required environment variables with sensible local defaults. This eases onboarding a new developer or even an existing developer on a new machine.

> I don't really see what you gain by moving configuration files into a > separate repository.

Because config and code should be kept separate. Updating the database that your production app is using is not a code change. It's a config change.

Setting up a new CI environment should not require pushing new code.

If you have a production issue in version X, separating code and config allows you to reproduce it using an isolated database/mq/foobar service. It's _exactly_ the same code.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry but I really don't understand how having env.production.toml commited in the same repository as code makes anything that you said impossible/more difficult.

I can always grab the build from production and run it locally with the modified config.

<comment><USER4> > env.production.toml

Which production env? Which datacenter? Which database cluster? &c

The deployment should take care of generating configs, they shouldn't be hardcoded or stored anywhere imho.

<comment><USER3> I mentioned earlier we have one config per environment. So for example env.use1.toml, env.use2.toml and env.usw1.toml. Then one more for ci and one example for local development.

Sure deployment can generate configs but it has to take it from somwhere. So you need a database preferably with versioning and encryption. It's also nice if you know which settings are used in specific builds so you can go back and debug past production issues.

Of course for larger teams and deployments it makes sense to develop and maintain this infrastructure. But since we already have git, why not just use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Using KMS is a good idea, but I'm not really sure what this package gives you - just a simple abstraction / cmdline to deal with it?

This would be better if it could use the aliases directly, so you could have one config across N environments and separate them by AWS keyspace.

Having to embed the full KMS path for each key gains you the secret management they claim (which is a good thing) but sacrifices ease of use. That said, aliases wouldn't help with missing secrets or misconfiguration across environments, and its a lot easier to audit string-for-string to match your KMS store, so either approach has its pluses and minuses.

</comment><comment><USER6> How is this different from/better than Stack Exchange's blackbox[0] which doesn't require a third-party service (just plain-ole gpg) and is written in bash?

[0] [https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox](https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox)

P.S.: I think the image looks aesthetically pleasing, but why is it there? It's a scaled-down 1,600x680px image that costs me 140KB and doesn't add anything to the article; what's worse is that it's not even a nice banner image, it's just smack dab in the middle of the article.

<comment><USER7> > image that costs me 140KB

What year is it?

<comment><USER8> That's besides the point. Wasted bandwidth should be avoided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So... storing your secrets in AWS then... and not in plain sight.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, that wording is odd.

Storing your secrets in plain sight*

* as long as plain sight includes a remote service call at some point

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like this design. Infrastructure as code. Store your config data in you repo. Screw 12 factors.

You can do this with the inhouse AWS tools, awscli and boto3 for python This was for use within a python lambda function so i used the secrets in a seperate file, but no loss of generality here.

* Create your keys in KMS via Web UI or otherwise * encrypt your secrets before commit aws kms encrypt --key-id alias/TokenKey --plaintext fileb://unencrypted_token --output text --query CiphertextBlob > encrypted_token

Decrypt the token from your python lambda function with boto3

kms = boto3.client('kms') token = kms.decrypt(CiphertextBlob=base64.b64decode(token_encrypted))['Plaintext'].decode('ascii')

The blob from KMS contains the appropriate fields for decryption from their service. Give the lambda role rights to decrypt with the key.

</comment><comment><USER12> It should be made clear that this requires AWS KMS, and for automatic decryption, EC2 (so that the instances can be associated with an IAM role that has key decryption permission).

<comment><USER13> I think that's pretty clear in the article that's linked. It explicitly mentions AWS KMS and its reliance on it and how IAM roles are used to grant access to a secret.

It also states that KMS isn't a requirement, you can use Vault too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Repository: [https://github.com/Zemanta/go- secretcrypt](https://github.com/Zemanta/go-secretcrypt)

</comment><comment><USER15> What happens if Amazon's KMS service is down - does that break the app or can you operate ok without it ?

<comment><USER3> We decided to decrypt secrets on service startup so if KMS is down during the deploy we can stop the deploy after first server fails to start. Not perfect but good enough for our use case.

In case of catastrophic KMS failure we can always manually replace secrets with plaintext and revoke them afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The "write-only" feature could be implemented without a third-party with a keypair.</comment>


Death by Coconut: A Story of Food Obsession Gone Too Far - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/03/457124796/death-by-coconut-a-story-of-food-obsession-gone-too-far <comment><USER2> _" He believed that since the coconut grew high up in the tree, closest to God and closest to the sun, it was godlike," says Kracht. "And since it had hair and looked like a human head, he thought it came closest to being a man. According to his rather crackpot theory, to be a cocovore was to be a theophage — or eater of God."_

Then apparently I like to fry steaks in a couple of spoonfuls of liquid God, and wash it down with the blood of Christ (ie, wine).

<comment><USER3> Why are you _frying_ steak?

If it's cut that can stand the heat of a grill/bbq, it will have enough fat in it to keep itself moist and to prevent it from sticking, as the fat will start to melt.

<comment><USER2> Because every cut of steak is different. Some grill well, some go under the broiler well, some fry well, some braise well.

And the way commercial butchers carve steaks nowadays, they cut off too much fat. Its annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This Death by Coconut reminds me some mice from my colleague Jun.

These mice had a mutation in one gene but they were doing fine.

One Friday Jun gave them a chow diet from another supplier. The following Monday all mutant mice were died, control mice were OK.

TLDR, the new diet contained coconut oil instead of lard. After more study, this serendipitous observation led to discover a gene important for the break down of vegetal fat.

The study: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2013.08.032](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2013.08.032)

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord _Kracht 's title Imperium has an ironic double meaning: the absolute power of the coconut in Engelhardt's philosophy, and the imperialism of Germany._

The book's subject matter makes it fit even better when you consider _Imperium_ is also the title of Francis Parker Yockey's opus.

</comment><comment><USER5> The comments on the NPR story are amusing.</comment>


Ask HN: Best country for startups - <AUTHOR>

Which is the most favorable country in terms of tax & infrastructure for a web startup focusing on Asia to operate from?<p>If anyone has a startup servicing Asia (China, India, Korea, Japan etc) with online payments please share where you incorporated and why. <comment><USER2> The answer depends on the context you define the term startup. In countries with bloated and corrupt government organizations it is nearly impossible for an individual to start a company and be profitable unless he has "connections".

In my country (Turkey), a close friend of mine just started a software company and developing software for government organizations. I know the architecture of the software and it is very robust, but he was able to get the offer from our government because of his co-founder,who's not a software developer but an ex-swat officer with "deep" connections.

It's already hard to come up with good software when you're in the startup scene, and trying to get "connections" multiplies the effort you must put into the process. I bet the system is similar in eastern countries such as Russia, China, India etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> My (totally unqualified) opinion: corporate and individual tax rates don't tell the entire story. If you are making a high-risk venture, you are best served to do it in a place in which there are lots of other people making risky ventures, so that the risks you take will be proportionately rewarded. This means any business culture that inordinately stigmatizes failure and bankruptcy is one to avoid. It's hard to tell whether the location you're considering has such a culture, but warning signs should include an ossified bureaucracy, restrictive startup thresholds, and a workforce that doesn't switch careers a lot. My gut instinct is that you should avoid India, China, and Japan. I would go for South Korea.

</comment><comment><USER4> A guy I work with a lot just moved to Taiwan and just went through all the hurdles to get an offshore developer office set up there. He claims it should be a great place to start a company, provided he can find the developer talent. There are considerably lower operating costs in Taiwan, but without the chaos of China. There's a pretty high acceptance of entrepreneurial risk, technology and international business ventures etc. The education level and english language skills of the engineering talent pool are favorable as well.

Considering how many hardware companies operate in Taiwan I'm surprised more software & social media hasn't gravitated there as well

</comment><comment><USER5> US has one of the highest total tax rate of both corporate and individuals when taking into account federal tax and state taxes.

i don't know anyone with a startup in Asia, but I can't see starting a company in China being easy.

I'd say Korea most likely has a good infrastructure of a growing tech startup ecosystem. they also have a relatively low corporate tax rate as well as individual rates.

two startups from S. Korea were part of the fbFund I believe.

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems Singapore and Hong Kong are quite attractive because of the low corporate taxes and great infrastructure. But best to take advice from a lawyer and accountant.

<comment><USER7> _It seems Singapore_

I would second Singapore, they have a favorable government and stable government, fairly low taxes and they are actively trying to attract non- manufacturing sector companies. It would be one I would look at if I where looking to open an Asian operations. A second would be Australia though often overlooked when looking at Asia it has a fairly start-up friendly business environment.

<comment><USER8> Checkout the Business Portal by the Singapore government: <http://www.business.gov.sg/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Check out this site... <http://doingbusiness.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I've heard multiple reports that Hong Kong is a good choice- quick to start businesses, moderate or low taxes and a good culture for business... though others have complained that the successful businesses are snooty there, so if yours requires getting meetings with larger business execs might not be the best place. But a consumer internet startup, it sounds good.

Also, hear good things about singapore, though it is a bit less freewheeling.

All of this is just what I've heard attempting to research the same question, don't have direct experience.</comment>


Inside the World of International Medieval Combat - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/timchester/inside-the-violent-geeky-world-of-hardcore-international-med?utm_term=.ui2qyQyRP#.yde3o8oMW <comment><USER3> Battle of the Nations have held the UK national tournament in our local park for the last couple of years. My wife and I went to watch the first year, thinking it would be a quaint medieval reenactment thing.

It wasn't. A few minutes into the first bout we realised they were dead serious and properly going for each other. It was a lot of fun, but there was definitely an odd feeling of 'how much should I be enjoying this?' as it was so violent. Basically two people in full armour beating the crap out of each other with a heavy metal bar and a big wooden plank.

A fun day out for all the family.

<comment><USER4> Team fights are even better. There's better dynamic and tactic to observe.

<comment><USER5> I found this video of a team fight:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjJT-8bY6x4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjJT-8bY6x4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's certainly an activity that requires a lot of fitness; sparring/bouting without all that armour on is tiring enough for me.

But, I hear from mediaeval HEMAists that it's not really quite the same as mediaeval combat in that thrusting into the gaps of the armour has been replaced (for obvious safety reasons) with bludgeoning and that it is not based on any particular historical systems.

I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself.

<comment><USER7> _> I hear from mediaeval HEMAists that it's not really quite the same as mediaeval combat_

As soon as anything becomes a sport it deviates from how it works in real life. It has to, especially when the thing is combat based because killing someone in the name of sport simply isn't cricket.

I'm a member of a group that practices medieval sword, dagger, and unarmed techniques - with a view to being martially sound and historically accurate (within the limits of not actually maiming each other - there are things we know how to do that we would never try on a live training partner or in a tournament). Other groups have a different set of priorities: re-enactors tend to be very detailed about the look of the uniforms, equipment, and formations, but are much from lax/free with the actual combat techniques; people doing it for sport obviously can't be entirely accurate both for safety and audience entertainment reasons; and so on.

 _> I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself._

Even those that do don't 100% know how people back then trained and fought because the surviving manuscripts are not complete and even if they were would not contain all the information a modern audience would need as there was a certain amount of play combat kids would have been exposed to very early that didn't need to be taught - no one writing the training down thought that some of those details would ever need writing down. As with many historical studies, working out how the masters intended their work to be trained out is often therefor an exercise in reading between the lines (filling in the gaps with morsels of information from other sources and sometimes just from what we know about how the human body and the materials in the weapons and clothes/armour physically work) and of course this leads to multiple differing interpretations. This isn't just an issue when looking as far back as medieval periods: there are a few parts of the original Fairbairn/Sykes techniques from WWII (modified versions of which are still in use today by many forces), including the areas that were deliberately simple overall so they could be taught quickly to new intakes of soldiers who were sometimes completely inexperienced at fighting, where people can't entirely find agreement about how to translate the written instructions to useful physical techniques.

<comment><USER8> > _Even those that do don 't 100% know how people back then trained and fought > because the surviving manuscripts are not complete and even if they were > would not contain all the information a modern audience would need_

My wife and I did HEMA for a bit, and as I understand it, most of the knowledge in longsword combat comes from Liechtenauer, who - and he was not unique in this - would write down his training techniques, but almost as a riddle, to ensure that it would not be enough to just read his book and apply it - you'd have to actually have to pay him, or his students, to come and teach you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Loved the photo caption: "We've got a lot of people who work in IT; they've obviously got a lot of anger to work out."

<comment><USER10> Lol reminds me of the Charlie Bradbury (Felicia Day) in supernatural - <USER2> is one episode set around a LARP

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >I overhear one particularly worrying account from a fighter talking about receiving a head blow from a pole axe: "My right vision completely went; there were sparkly lights and stuff. I spent a week in a brain-fog haze, walking around like a zombie."

This sport sounds like a great way to earn a concussion and acquired brain injury.

<comment><USER12> Like plenty of other violent sports. No shortage there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Your post ironically will probably draw more people to this activity. Their choice of course. It seems a bit nuts to me but then again I used to climb mountains every now and again. That might seem nuts to some people.

</comment><comment><USER14> > More GBH than LARP, it substitutes foam weaponry for real steel and scripted > acting for unpredictable scuffling

This sentence confused me deeply, given it contradicts the rest of the article, until I realised they meant to say "it substitutes real steel for foam weaponry and unpredictable scuffling for scripted acting". Or, if you prefer, "it substitutes foam weaponry _with_ real steel and scripted acting _with_ unpredictable scuffling". You substitute new for old, and old with new (but in the latter case you may as well say "replace").

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a friend who does this and I went to watch one of their events. He says he only does 1-on-1 fights for safety reasons and I can understand why. At least you always have your opponent in front of you in this case. The group fights are super fast and dynamic and the biggest strategy is basically covering distance quickly, teaming up on people, and tackling from behind. They're less about weapons and more about American football-style tackles from the side/back while the opponent is busy sword fighting with your team mate. The armour is also so padded and thick that ordinary weapons like swords are really more for just point fighting. Two handed weapons definitely do more damage. Also, getting jabbed in the face with the edge of a wooden shield looks pretty serious, not to mention quick and unexpected! Watching their event was super exciting, but at the same time there's a looming feeling that someone will get seriously hurt at any second.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, "Reenactment is for pussies", eh?

I'm part of the SCA. I've done fencing (heavy rapier) and some heavy. Yes, the heavies use rattan (wood) for their weapons. That's because we like our fighters to live afterwards, and be relatively uninjured. Have injuries happened? Yep. Have deaths happened? Yep. But the SCA's policies on fighting are battle-tested, over melees of thousands of fighters.

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

This article is just 'Not Even Wrong'([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong)) - There's ways to do mostly safe fighting, and ways to be a douchebag that can end up breaking bones and killing people. This is certainly the latter.

<comment><USER17> I've fought both European re-enactment and SCA, and they're both totally different styles, and both about as safe as each other. I wouldn't say the SCA method is the only safe way of doing this. But I don't think they're too worried about safety anyway.

Re-enactment (in Europe anyway, I can't speak about US or Japanese re- enactment) has always has two sides:

The desire to recreate historical costume and practices

vs

The desire to get drunk in a castle with your mates and have a damn good fight

As re-enactment spread east through Europe from the UK, the latter tendency became more pronounced. The Russians and Poles get a real reputation in the European scene for fighting dirty, hitting hard and not taking their shots.

This sport developed from that. Their gear is almost completely unrelated to what was actually used in the time period they say they portray, and safety takes a back seat to "not being a pussy". I suspect the rules around drinking are more lax than you'd expect from a conventional re-enactment society too. They're all about the "beer and bash".

I expect that there'll be a few more splits as they evolve, with the safety- conscious moving to a more toned-down style while the real nutters keep the rules rough and accumulate scar tissue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Part of me is like yes, yes, yes, do it. And then I realise that I already have chronic knee, shoulder, and brain injuries.</comment>


$5100 penalty for unintentionally using a copyrighted photo - <AUTHOR> http://afflante.com/ <comment><USER2> _I always try my best to give credit to the artists, designers, and architects whose work I admire and try to support_

I have very little sympathy. If you don't have permission to use a photograph the proper course of action is not to use it. To use it without permission is definitely _not_ trying your best to give credit.

<comment><USER3> Without knowing the full details, how can you be so quick to cast judgment?

There is a wide spectrum between actively stealing photos and mistakenly using photos because they seemed to be in the public domain. The key questions are: was the intent malicious? And how soon was it rectified?

And I say this as someone whose photo was used by a highly read tech blog without attribution; and when I pointed this out, they quietly put a link to my original photo in there, but still did not attribute it to me.

<comment><USER2> _...they seemed to be in the public domain._

There's no such thing as "seemed" to be in the public domain. Either they are or they aren't. If you don't know then you assume they're not. If you assume they are when they're not, or you assume the attribution attached is correct when it isn't, then the photographer is entirely within their rights to sue you for approximately $5100.

This is why running a website properly is actually quite a lot of work.

And I say this as someone who's been running websites for 20 years, and I've seen _lots_ of my content reused without permission. It's really annoying. I used to be on the side of "if it's online then it's fair to reuse it", but as more and more sites have appeared that do nothing more than repost content from /r/<some subreddit> I've changed my mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I'd have made this particular blogger the target for my ire if it was my work, but in principle I agree with the penalty. Copyright sustains the people who create the art that this blogger was curating. Without copyright, there would be nothing for him / her to curate in the first place because there would be no such thing as professional photographers, designers, or writers.

<comment><USER5> I'd agree if the blogger made any money from it. Like this it is nuts!

<comment><USER4> People don't usually make money from the art or the books they buy. If "making money" was the only condition on which the requirement to pay or give credit was predicated, there would be no photography industry.

The creator has the right to license their work in any way they see fit. That work doesn't automatically become community property just because it's been published online.</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing the Azure project - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.com/joe/2011/04/26/introducing-the-azure-project/

<comment><USER2> Isn't this an unfortunate name collision? I mean, naming your 2D API the same as Microsoft's cloud-ish thing will sure make it hard on search engines to figure out what people are talking about.</comment>


On Joi and MIT - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lessig/on-joi-and-mit-3cb422fe5ae7 <comment><USER2> I dunno. Lessig's description of the case seems overly generous to Joi. For starters, he claims Joi's private defense to him was that he'd heavily researched Epstein's behavior and made a personal call that he was reformed and should be given a second chance. That might be a decent defense if Joi had actually made it publically, but its basically the opposite of what Joi said in his attempt at an apology, where he basically claimed to be in the dark regarding Epstein's behavior.

Secondly, he makes it sound like Joi wanted to keep Epstein's contributions secret to keep Epstein from getting any benefit from them. But almost all the reporting on the issue make it pretty clear that Epstein used the donations, and his relationship with Joi, to publically associate himself with the lab, visit the researchers there, present himself to Gates and others as an unofficial go-between, etc. The relationship went far beyond Epstein cutting a check and no one knowing about it.

Thirdly, Lessig's defense is largely based on the claim that Farrow's reporting is factually incorrect, and that MIT told him to take the $, and thus Joi was making a moral compromise in service of his employer. We'll have to wait and see if he or Farrow is correct here, but Farrow's article was obviously drawing on internal MIT docs, so I'd be pretty surprised if that was the case.

Finally, Lessig skips over the fact that Joi took on the order of a million dollars from Epstein for his personal projects. This makes the claim that Joi was just doing what MIT told him to do pretty weak. It also bypasses what I thought was the most damning implication of the Farrow article, which was that Epstein basically bribed Joi to help him get around MIT's prohibition on taking his money.

<comment><USER3> But see, he _knows_ Joi. And naturally, nobody he knows would be the type of person to do something as terrible as enable a notorious abuser of children for profit!

This is the deep rot at the heart of the American elite system: once you're in the club, it's effectively impossible for anything you do to get you kicked out of it. You become anointed as the Right Sort of Person, and everybody accepts that when the Right Sort of Person does something terrible, it's not because they're actually _not_ the Right Sort of Person. It's just an oversight, an oopsie, an opportunity for Learning and Growth. You're operating among friends, and standards among friends are more forgiving than they are among the public at large.

(Even worse, not only are _you_ anointed as the Right Sort of Person, but your children automatically are as well. And they have even less justification for being treated that way than you did.)

Which is why a lot of people are misunderstanding the root problem in the Epstein case. It's not that Epstein corrupted everything and everyone he touched, it's that an Epstein _could only exist_ in an environment where everything was corrupt already. Epstein was the symptom, not the disease.

<comment><USER4> Exactly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lessig needs to stop digging.

Ronan Farrow has Joi Ito inviting Epstein to the Media Lab, in person, and Epstein arriving with two escorts in tow so young that Lab staff had to debate among themselves whether to interview to rescue them from Epstein. Has your boss ever put you in a position like that? Ito did, in order to retain favor with Epstein. That this was going to happen was so predictable that Ito worked to keep Ethan Zuckerman out of the building the day Epstein arrived, because Zuckerman had already been on Ito's case about Epstein.

Worse still, Farrow has Epstein brokering donations from billionaires like Bill Gates. Lessig retcons Ito's actions into accepting anonymous donations from a "class 3" donor; at least Ito wasn't accepting public donations from "class 4" donors like the Koch Brothers. But Epstein is, in Farrow's telling, literally functioning as an agent for Ito and the Lab. Anonymous? He's got the highest possible profile the Lab can offer with precisely the set of people whose influence he hopes to buy.

Presumably, that level of influence peddling is what enabled Epstein to obtain a 1-year work-release sentence in Florida years earlier. In this telling, Epstein isn't "laundering" anything. He's purchasing the influence he hopes to bank to shield himself from further scrutiny. He's enlisting the Lab to protect him. And the Lab complies, _for a pittance_ †, for a tellingly low amount of money, so low, in retrospect and context you have to wonder if the directorate of the Lab gave a shit at all.

† _apparently, and maybe double check because i could be wrong, less than the amount ito_ also _collected from epstein for his own private venture fund._

<comment><USER6> > Ronan Farrow has Joi Ito inviting Epstein to the Media Lab, in person, and > Epstein arriving with two escorts in tow so young that Lab staff had to > debate among themselves whether to interview to rescue them from Epstein.

AFAIK there was no reason cited for their trafficking suspicion. It is not known whether the women with him at the time appeared to anyone to be underage.

<comment><USER5> You made this point on a previous thread, at length, in repeated back-and- forth with other commenters. I also doubt the escorts were "trafficked" in the lurid sense we generally mean by the word, or that they needed or would have been receptive to a rescue. That is not at all the point I'm making, and you know that.

Your rebuttal is even less relevant to this thread, which simply contends that there was no meaningful anonymity about Epstein's donations; in fact, there was _infamy_ over them.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20906541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20906541)

<comment><USER6> > You made this point on a previous thread, at length, in repeated back-and- > forth with other commenters. I also doubt the escorts were "trafficked" in > the lurid sense we generally mean by the word, or that they needed or would > have been receptive to a rescue. That is not at all the point I'm making, > and you know that.

You were absolutely making that point. You literally said:

> Ronan Farrow has Joi Ito inviting Epstein to the Media Lab, in person, and > Epstein arriving with two escorts in tow so young that Lab staff had to > debate among themselves whether to interview to rescue them from Epstein.

I don't know how much more clear your intent could be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Matthew D. Green actually managed to pre-debunk / refute Lessig's grossly flawed and immoral argument:

[https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/11707895922635161...](https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1170789592263516161)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm kind of surprised to see the Koch's invoked as true evil that upstanding people accept money from rather than, say, Saudi royalty. There are many examples of direct murders that universities, corporations, and governments glibly partner with... But maybe I'm not up-to-date on the Koch's.

The details and the timeline of the donor disqualification in the New Yorker article sounded odd to me-- in particular, that it juxtaposed conjecture and unsupported claims with emails to make it sound like the request for anonymity was a workaround for MIT policy yet it didn't actually introduce any factual support for that conclusion.

In particular, when was he disqualified (e.g. before or after things being discussed) and how was this communicated in the institution? These were obvious and surprising omissions in the article. For Joi's sake I hope Lessig's belief on this point is based on more than just the writing smelling suspicious. Regardless, the absence of clarity on details like this is why investigations are superior to lynch mobs.

<comment><USER9> Considering the Kochs a level below Epstein is pretty disgusting. I don't think anyone in the Koch family or Koch industries has ever been accused of breaking any criminal laws - although their factories regularly break civil laws. This so called lawyer is intentionally blurring that line. This is definitely a new low for Lessig. We should expect more from influential lawyers.

<comment><USER10> If Epstein had limited himself to taking advantage of young girls who had reached the age of consent, so that his relationships were not breaking any laws, would you no longer have a problem with Epstein?

Whether or not what someone does breaks the law often his almost nothing to do with the morality of that action or whether or not that action causes harm.

That section of the article was more about the taint upon money donated from various types of donors than about the donors themselves. The distinction it is drawing is between people who do bad things but do not derive their money from those bad things (such as Epstein) and people that do bad things and those bad things is the source of the money they are donating (Koch). It's not saying that donors of the former type are necessarily less immoral or evil than donors of the latter type--just that taking their money is not benefiting directly from their immorality or evil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> i stopped reading when he classifies epstein as a "type 3" person. i think it's quite bold, especially without any evidence whatsoever, to claim that epstein's money came from non-criminal activities. and this is coming from a "top" law expert. epstein's previously upcoming trial would have sorted through some of this, but it isn't clear at all that his money wasn't funded directly by his own criminal activities or indirectly by others' criminal activities. in fact, it's one of the biggest open questions: where did epstein get his money from?

also, his type 1 examples are laughable. tom hanks makes movies. taylor swift makes music, and vindictive music at that. what is it about those professions that is "doing good"? they aren't about doing bad, but they're just jobs.

the people really doing good in this world don't make any money at all.

all this epstein stuff and the avalanches caused by his actions and associations is just giving us a peek into how the world really works: a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing who think they do are running things in complete, total self and those like their self interest. nobody really cares about anyone else, and people prop up their decisions in the context of institutions with an inability to step outside and ask "what am i really doing here"?

<comment><USER6> > i stopped reading when he classifies epstein as a "type 3" person. i think > it's quite bold, especially without any evidence whatsoever, to claim that > epstein's money came from non-criminal activities. and this is coming from a > "top" law expert. epstein's previously upcoming trial would have sorted > through some of this, but it isn't clear at all that his money wasn't funded > directly by his own criminal activities or indirectly by others' criminal > activities. in fact, it's one of the biggest open questions: where did > epstein get his money from?

He addresses the questions around this directly...

> It may be that we'll discover that Epstein got rich by blackmailing people > whom he had encouraged or enabled to commit abuse. I doubt it, but it's > possible.

> also, his type 1 examples are laughable. tom hanks makes movies. taylor > swift makes music, and vindictive music at that. what is it about those > professions that is "doing good"? they aren't about doing bad, but they're > just jobs.

They're not doing a whole lot of good, they're just not doing anything particularly bad. He's not holding them up as examples of perfect people, just examples of people with no toxic publicly known behaviors that an institution like MIT might want to avoid.

<comment><USER11> >> He addresses the questions around this directly...

> It may be that we'll discover that Epstein got rich by blackmailing people > whom he had encouraged or enabled to commit abuse. I doubt it, but it's > possible.

providing a loose supposition and then immediately dismissing it is not addressing something directly. i am not an expert on the epstein situation, but from what i understand, lessig's supposition is a rather naive one. it seems it is much more likely that epstein was making money from the services he provided and even more likely that he was bankrolled by some other entity or entities.

the fact that lessig, as a supposed law expert, is just grasping at straws with unrealistic guesses to recover his and his friend's position is really depressing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lessig has mis-categorised Epstein as type 3 when he really should be type 4.

He not only personally offended with minors, but amplified that offense by supplying them to others.

This was certainly done for either direct profit, or for buying or paying off favors.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure you can't have _too_ many qualms when raising money, but MIT is no cash-strapped institution. It has a sixteen billion dollar endowment!

</comment><comment><USER14> This amounts to "sometimes the ends justify the means, also, oops, mea culpa!" My respect for Lessig diminished significantly after reading this.

<comment><USER15> Is your respect for people correlated with how much you agree with them? If so, are you able to have deep respect for people you disagree with? What if you're wrong?

<comment><USER16> I lost some respect for Lessig on reading it, and it has nothing to do with disagreeing with him. It's that his essay presents itself as a tortured apologia for his support of Ito, but is an implausible, badly-reasoned rationalization. His arguments are terrible. He's supposed to be brilliant, and then shovels twaddle like this on a topic on which he could be an authoritative voice.

He fails to note that Ito's apology was incredibly selective and self-serving and was basically a lie of omission in furtherance of the longtime covering up of the conspiracy to take Epstein's money.

He accepts as self-evident that Epstein's money was not morally tainted itself by dismissing the most implausible explanation for it (i.e., blackmail).

He ignores Ito's personally profiting from facilitating Epstein by also taking Epstein's money for his own ventures.

Lessig tells a story of a "sweet soul" taking dirty money at the institution's direction and failing to consider the possible future damage of the revelation of same, and then castigates the rest of us because now when someone commits a comparably innocent error, they'll have no motive to confess, apologize and repair. Everything we've seen so far screams that this is a dark, corrupt, wide-ranging affair full of venal people using each other for mutual benefit, and what we get from Lessig is a puff piece on par with Ito's apology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Intelligence, wealthy, and righteousness: pick 2. Any counter example?</comment>


Why Perelman refused the million dollar prize - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/rx9u9/til_grigori_perelman_best_known_for_resolving_the/c49gpjj

<comment><USER2> Why is there no upvote option on this post?</comment>


Ask HN: What are the fundamental tradeoffs in programming languages? - <AUTHOR> I read about Peter Naur passing away today, and found myself spending a long time learning about BNF [0]. This re-opened a question I've thought about awhile, but never really had a chance to discuss with full-time developers, core language developors, and CS theorists. I've worked some with C, Fortran, Python, and some Julia, and have seen some of the superficial tradeoffs (e.g. antipatterns in Python being slow, C having a steep learning curve).
What at the deeper level separates languages? What keeps languages from implementing things
A) Fast
B) Simple syntax
c) Ubiquitous across architecture?
I imagine sometimes it's a core dev issue, like Python's UTF-8 implementation between 2 and 3.
More than a specific language issue, what kinds of tradeoffs are faced in the design of a language?
Looking forward to the answers!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_Form <comment><USER2> Access to resources would be one - web apps dont have access to much resources beyond what's provided in the browser, where native languages can take better advantage of a computers hardware and peripherals.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sanity and time vs. employability and monetary compensation.</comment>


New York Public Library opens grandest Wi-Fi environment - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/07/wi-fi-goes-elegant-in-new-york.html <comment><USER2> When in London, visit the British Library in Kings Cross. Free wi-fi, desks with built in sockets, pretty inspiring environs. There are a limited number of seats though, so get there early!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a fantastic room. It's hard _not_ to be creative there.

Since I rarely travel with electronics, I use the New York Public Library for internet access when I'm there. All you have to do is get a library card. Not sure why I'd need wifi.</comment>


Uranium Ore Customer Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/product-reviews/B000796XXM

<comment><USER2> Really like the Q&A about delivery :)</comment>


United Airlines Tries Hypermiling a Boeing - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/united-airlines-tries-hypermiling-with-a-boeing-777/

<comment><USER2> Bad show Wired. _1400 pounds of fuel_ … out of how many? What is the typical variation in transoceanic flights? Is this noise?

<comment><USER3> First it's 1,400 _gallons_

Second, about 6-7% (Extremely rough estimate)

Calculation:

Boeing 777 data: (nmi = Nautical Miles)

        Model      Fuel           Range      nmi/g
        777-200    31,000 US gal  5,240 nmi  0.17
        777-200ER  45,220 US gal  7,725 nmi  0.17
        777-200LR  47,890 US gal  9,380 nmi  0.20

(1,400 gallons * nmi/g)

Which means 238 to 280 nautical miles on a flight that is 3,772 nautical miles long. Which is a difference of 6-7%

Data from

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777>

\- [http://www.travelmath.com/flight- distance/from/Chicago,+IL/t...](http://www.travelmath.com/flight- distance/from/Chicago,+IL/to/Frankfurt,+Germany)

<comment><USER2> Thank you for fixing both Wired's article and my units!

I still wonder about the variation due to weather though. I can say that flight times vary by at least 7%, so that would suggest that fuel use variation should also be over 7%.

<comment><USER3> > I can say that flight times vary by at least 7%, so that would suggest that > fuel use variation should also be over 7%.

Couple of things to remember.

1\. This was a single test flight. Not statistically significant by any measure.

2\. My calculation was back of the envelope with unreliable figures. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I never heard the term "hypermiling" until this article. Did anyone else find it term cryptic and misleading? I envisioned windmilling the engines by setting them to idle or something alike.

<comment><USER5> Every occupation has it's jargon.

<comment><USER6> "Hypermiling" comes from a hobby, not an occupation. See yumraj's post.</comment></comment></comment>


TensorFlow Data Validation - <AUTHOR> https://www.tensorflow.org/tfx/data_validation/get_started <comment><USER2> See also [https://github.com/tdda/tdda](https://github.com/tdda/tdda), which has some of the same features and can run tests against new data. It runs on Pandas dataframes, CSVs, and can generate hand-editable JSON constraints for a dataset.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would help a lot if they ran the example notebook before sharing

[https://github.com/tensorflow/data- validation/blob/master/ex...](https://github.com/tensorflow/data- validation/blob/master/examples/chicago_taxi/chicago_taxi_tfdv.ipynb)

<comment><USER4> GitHub doesn't render javascript-based visualizations in notebooks. Consider viewing in nbviewer:

[https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/tensorflow/data- validati...](https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/tensorflow/data- validation/blob/master/examples/chicago_taxi/chicago_taxi_tfdv.ipynb)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: My Cofounder has decided to pursue another venture - <AUTHOR> I'm presenting to angel investors in 2 weeks and my cofounder decided to head across the street to a venture that just got funded.  He's got kids, and isn't exactly the visionary type, and so the security of VC being involved was enough to soothe his anxiety.  I adored working with him and thought we were going to conquer the world together, but it seems that his short term financial concerns were deeper than I thought.
We're close enough on our prototype that I think I can finish it on my own, but what the heck do I tell these angels?  They are expecting two guys.
As hurt as I am that he totally ditched me in my moment of need, I have absolutely no hard feelings towards him.  I want him to be successful.
I keep reading Paul Graham's note about what he looks for and I have read about what others are looking for.  It's always the founding team.  I'm not McGyver or Rambo, and don't present myself that way.  I am terrified that if I reschedule these meetings that 1) they won't have another one or 2) they'll see it as a major red flag and lose interest in the deal.
Please comrades, help me think about how to handle this. <comment><USER2> I am not an investor nor a lawyer but if I was on the other end, I'd want open honesty regardless. I would explain the situation to them exactly as you did here. I would include the comment about how he was invaluable to getting the MVP done as you mentioned in the comment but you have confidence in doing this moving forward solo and why.

Discuss in advanced with your former cofounder about what he expects shares, if any, for his contribution this far so you have something to let the angels know. In reality if you guys did things right and was on a proper vesting schedule he wouldn't vest anything unless it was past the one year cliff period. Either way, know your numbers cold and a solid plan of action from here on out.

Any hard data you can get from now till the meeting is much better than what you project i.e. sign ups of interest, paying customers, launch trajectory, etc..

Best of luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice, I thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A couple of things.

You should have seen this coming... Nothing is ever a surprise.

Welcome to owning your own business! If you don't have your shit together, its better to push the meeting off then to toss it at the wall and hope it sticks.

If you have a compelling business, the way you handle this will only make the VC's like you more (unless you mess it up). Call them, tell the what happened and also tell them, you'll handle it... and want to reschedule for a date when you'll be on point. If they don't respect you communicating with them. You don't want their cash anyway. They know people flake... and they'll be more happy that the guy took off before they gave you some money.

Don't BS money guys... They'll find out and then your done.

EDIT: Does the guy that walked own any of the company? If so be prepared to discuss how you get him out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking back, there were signs. But it was like a marriage, I just thought I was being paranoid or something.

I appreciate your advice and I thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much of the product depends on your partner? If his area of expertise is something that will be hard to replace you may have issues. If you did the majority of the work then it may not be an issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for commenting.

He is a EE. The part I really needed him for is now over, and I can either get interns to carry on or do the lightweight stuff on my own.

The idea, the design, the parts, pretty much everything was stuff I spec'd out. He took them all and got them to work together, which is no small thing. Now that he has done that, I know how to go from here.

Great comment, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, would you mind sharing with us what you are pitching? Maybe someone here would be interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would be more than happy to, and appreciate you asking. But I would like to wait until this angel thing is over with in case they read HN.

It's in a market that you're seeing in the news a whole lot right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I could come by and be your co founder if that would Help. Just for The meeting though.

Steve.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2pm in Atlanta on wed, you game?

<comment><USER5> Awesome, let's fake it till we make it .</comment></comment></comment>


Ancient Roman Water Networks Made the Empire Vulnerable - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-roman-water-networks-made-empire-vulnerable-180953679

<comment><USER2> I was really hoping this article was going to discuss how Rome was somehow more open or prone to invasions due to their water networks. Instead, I was treated to the fairly unexciting conclusion of Rome traded a lot, causing its various regions to be interdependent, therefore _possibly_ vulnerable because of additional risks inherent in relying on a trade network to supply your city with food.

<comment><USER3> The article has so little to do with ancient history it's staggering. It's the "conceptual drought modelling" equivalent of a woodworker trying to drum up attention for his range of kitchen cabinets by saying "they're the kinds of cabinet I think Justin Bieber would like".</comment></comment>


Avoiding BlackBerry's fate - <AUTHOR> https://marco.org/2016/05/21/avoiding-blackberrys-fate <comment><USER2> Apple's acquisitions in AI: Emotient (Jan 2016), VocalIQ & Perceptio (Oct 2015); hiring: 86-100+ PhD level positions [1,2]; Apple's jobs board about "machine learning" (keywords): 109 [3].

I'm not sure which part of these spells _" Apple's apparent inaction"_ in AI field stated in the article?

[1] [https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-apple-ups- hiring...](https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-apple-ups-hiring- faces-130336514.html)

[2] [http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/07/apple- finds...](http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/07/apple-finds- difficulty-recruiting-ai-experts-thanks-to-tough-user-privacy-stance)

[3] [https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?#specs&ss=machine%20learnin...](https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?#specs&ss=machine%20learning&t=0&so=&lo=0*USA&pN=0)

<comment><USER3> Also Amazon has their store as the killer feature, Apple has HomeKit as the killer feature.

What does Google have? I don't care about search results, they never work automatically, they don't work in a voice only environment.

If you disagree, search Google for "what happened to dinosaurs".

<comment><USER4> Google has many things going on for it other than search (and you dont have to go for dinosaurs, basic search in some Google properties, like YouTube, is quite terrible), that can count as killer features. Many people use it to organize their lives (calendar) or as comminication platform (hangout, email...) not to mention Google also has its own version of HomeKit as well.

My first insctinct when reading this article, though, is to question wether we put too much faith in the success of any service launched by Google and downplay any other competitor. Weirdly absent from Marco's list is IBM's Watson, quite a success story from a company that does not collect personal information on a daily basis yet somehow has been able to advance significally in the field of AI and Machine Learning.

Aside from that, maybe its me but I don't feel like Siri is so far behind serevices like Alexa or Cortana and until Google Assistant shows up in a more defined state, I wouldnt dare to put it ahead of the pack as well. There are a couple of things Alexa does better, but it mostly has to do with being open to third party services (which im assuming Siri will have soon) and better mic technology on the Echo, a hardware problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >But if Google's right, there's no quick fix. It won't be enough to buy Siri's creators again or partner with Yelp for another few years. If Apple needs strong AI and big-data services in the next decade to remain competitive, they need to have already been developing that talent and those assets, in-house, extensively, for years.

This is so true. It's not easy to out-accrue data over your competitors, especially if your competitor has multiple services used by millions of people everyday. This has an interesting side effect when it comes to hiring: The companies with "best" data have a better chance of hiring the best data talent because they can provide most challenging problems (for systems and data engineering people) and better equipment (There's no substitute for a vast amount of high-quality data for data scientists). This, in turn, means that best algorithms will come from data-rich companies.

What Marco is hinting at is that smartphones will increasingly become a conduit for data-intensive algorithms. If this is indeed the case, it means that data-rich companies can create deeper engagement and hence acquire more data, and the virtuous (or vicious?) loop will continue.

<comment><USER6> > What Marco is hinting at is that smartphones will increasingly become a > conduit for data-intensive algorithms.

I don't think that will really threaten Apple as a hardware-first business, though. There's no reason they can't hook in to other companies' services.

<comment><USER5> The question Marco was posing is different: What if hardware mattered less to the point that consumers will switch over to different hardware with better/1st class software support. If that happens, the future doesn't look too bright for Apple (or so posits Marco).

Apple might as well continue to be a first-class hardware-first business. However, if their hardware advantage is eclipsed by their data/AI disadvantage, Apple might lose a big chunk of their market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> AI for consumers is not a logic problem, it's a data problem. Whether strong or weak, consumer AI needs to be personal. It needs access to personal data.

Certainly better logic will create the foundations of whatever system is developed, but this only needs to be solved once. Smart people will solve it, and Apple could very well buy this answer in an acquisition if no one beats them to it.

But the main problem is still with feeding the system food for thought, so to speak. Data is the fuel. Apple barely has any data.

So in this sense, Apple could never win because it doesn't have a fuel source. And consumers will have a hard time allowing Facebook or Google to sell their data to Apple. For even now, the whole premise of this data collection is that their privacy is still being protected and is mostly for ad targeting. But this fuel is their bread and butter. It's no coincidence that ads are the main revenue for both companies. And only they are in a position to leverage their data for personal AI.

Ultimately though, neither Google nor Facebook have all the important stuff, and their data is always a product of their other services, which will always make it partial. For example, Amazon may have data on your shopping habits on Amazon, but won't have data for other things.

What is needed is a personal data mining system. This system needs to be owned, and not sponsored. It needs to be open source, so there are no ulterior secrets. And it needs to be able to gather fuel from Google and Facebook and everyone you give data to. The future will be more about us tracking ourselves than corporations tracking us in secret.

Maybe call the system "Introspection". It will happen one way or another, because there is immense value in such a system. And it can happen now, because it's about the data. Logic can be updated when better systems are developed. The data just needs to be collected, and already, there are enough tools to make data about ourselves insightful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oddly enough I find Apple's approach to AI more to my liking than Googles. When I do a voice query on Google and all of a sudden every ad on the device is related to what I just did, I feel abused.

I think the confusion here is the difference between data mining and AI. Google is great at data mining and less convincing when it comes to actual learning (Look at Alpha GO, it is an algorithmic exploit of a game, not a breakthrough).

I've been thinking recently that Google is the one with the losing approach. Personally, I have been using Bing a lot more because Google has been pushing the good results to page 2-3. Whatever their big AI is doing seems, at least for me, to not be working.

<comment><USER9> >Look at Alpha GO, it is an algorithmic exploit of a game, not a breakthrough

Huh?

<comment><USER8> The "Breakthrough" for AlphaGO was that Go is well mapped by a Monte Carlo tree search. Once they figured out it became a domain specific problem and totally irrelevant as a general AI breakthrough.

<comment><USER10> Won't we end up saying that about all AI breakthroughs?

Once you know the trick, it doesn't look amazing anymore

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article makes a great point about Apple's susceptibility to being overthrown in the phone market. The watch hasn't really done well and iTunes DRM theft of people's music libraries is becoming a thing. It's ok if Apple dies like Blackberry. They've died before. This time, though, there's no Jobs to resurrect them. They might become the IBM of their generation of companies, still around, still hoarding cash, but not very relevant.

<comment><USER12> > The watch hasn't really done well

Can we stop this? 6.5 Billion in it first year?

<comment><USER13> There is no conceivable metric that shows the Apple watch as a success. Apple, which routinely leaks units sold to business media, has not provided numbers for the watch. According to analysts sales dropped 90% a month after launch and 66% of watches sold were the low end model. Apple is a remarkably successful hardware company but (so far) their watch has fallen flat.

<comment><USER3> There aren't also "official" numbers for Samsung smartphones, but everyone says they are the best sellers.

There are no analysts numbers that support what you said.

And the "low end" model is above what others call the "high end" model.

The Apple Watch is, in all analysts reports, the #1 smart watch in sales numbers, by a wide margin.

Yes, Fitbit and Xiaomi may sell more, but those are $150 and $14 fitness bands, a stopgap solution.

<comment><USER13> _There are no analysts numbers that support what you said._

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-watch-may-not-be- tick...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-watch-may-not-be-ticking-with- customers-2015-07-07)

Metrics from article based on data from Slice

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _these AI services could be a socially awkward fad like Google Glass or a > tonedeaf annoyance like Clippy_

That's my general feeling about most things AI and "chat" these days. I see one or two useful applications, but no paradigm change on the horizon.

<comment><USER6> Remember what "smartphones" looked like before the iPhone: [http://joshblackman.com/blog/2013/03/14/i-had-a- smartphone-i...](http://joshblackman.com/blog/2013/03/14/i-had-a-smartphone- in-2005/)

Also, I think you're underestimating how heavily machine learning plays into the services that you use every day (e.g.: spam filters, web search, movie recommendations, autocorrect on your phone,...). The best AI services are the ones that you don't even think about using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think he's overstating the possible negative effects of this shift for Apple.

Facebook and Google especially wouldn't dream of excluding Apple devices (read, very lucrative Apple customers) from their ecosystems. Apple make their money from devices and will continue to do so for a very long time.

</comment><comment><USER9> In BlackBerry's defense, Nokia, Palm and Pocket PC also got sidelined by the iPhone and, to a lesser extent, Android.

<comment><USER16> A common pattern in new industries is that they have tons of competition when they're immature. Then, one or more players figure out what people really want. The first to release gets most of the market with the First Mover advantage. The rest mostly disappear with final result being maybe 2-6 competitors getting almost whole market to themselves depending on industry.

It was inevitable that most would die off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sorry, but Machine Learning and statistical AI is way over-hyped in my experience working in the industry. There are definitely very cool things coming from it. But the hype implies it will solve way more cases than it currently can.

Modeling complexity/cost is worse than exponential. The low hanging fruit is already taken. This doesn't mean we should stop doing it. But we should curve our expectations.

</comment><comment><USER18> Apple has been taking a nuanced approach in blending public and on-device private analytics. The advantage of this privacy-oriented approach is that Apple gains better on-device metadata than Google, because it is based on explicit consent via structured APIs for data interchange. Over time, this can create implicit contextual search queries, with all the economic value that comes from deriving user intent.

<comment><USER11> In other words, since they got permission once in the past by means of some impossible to read ToS, they'll be better at reading our minds so they can monetize it? And we'll all feel better about it than Google's method of sucking up everything that's available and having their AI figure out how to monetize it?

Dave? What are you doing, Dave?

<comment><USER18> Fine-grained permissions that are actively maintained by users via Settings, not ToS.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I was wrong, and I see your point. The article says AI could be Apple's undoing, though, if it is able to deliver something far beyond what Apple can do.

Are you saying that even if this is the case, users will stick by Apple instead of abandoning their platform? Or that Apple will still be able to make enough on a diminished user base because of their privacy concerns?

The latter seems a little like RIM's strategy of marketing secure communications until they had no more market share.

<comment><USER18> On the AI front, Apple of course needs to compete. But AI/statistics relies on a combination of signal and compute. If Apple can convince customers that they will honor customer consent signals (on-device permissions), they can gain cultural permission to mine data on the device, then send only a computed result to their servers for combination with public data/signals. They can add another custom processor on the device for user data analytics (there is already a motion co-processor).

Apple has a good track record of using marketing to sidestep technical limitations, although it remains to be seen if that can be maintained without Jobs. They were relatively early in marketing Siri (long before Echo), even if the execution has been weak.

It's a fallacy that AI requires loss of privacy. It's easy to forget that the most powerful general purpose computing object on the planet is the human brain. Any AI strategy must leverage this in some manner. Harvesting historical data is one tactic. There is no reason why we cannot create AI business models around consent and 1:1 delegation from AI to human, e.g. explicit permissions.

Apple seems well aware of the technical challenges in protecting privacy while training algorithms, e.g. Apple Maps only retains query data for 15 minutes, [https://thestack.com/cloud/2015/09/07/apples-privacy- policie...](https://thestack.com/cloud/2015/09/07/apples-privacy-policies- repel-the-data-scientists-it-needs-to-create-predictive-smartphones/) . Past technical breakthroughs have come from constraints, let's hope Apple can recruit smart people up to the challenge of balancing privacy & AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> His Apple concerns are merited. His Blackberry story I somewhat disagree with. Relevant quote:

"No new initiative, management change, or acquisition in 2007 could've saved the BlackBerry. It was too late, and the gulf was too wide."

He's saying Blackberry couldn't make it vs Apple at what Apple did. That's true. Yet, Apple wasn't doing what Blackberry did: great at battery life, enterprise integration, business-grade apps, and (relative to others) security. Apple might have knocked out half to three quarters of Blackberry's user-base with some that still care about those above features.

I kept saying Blackberry should buy a better microkernel, reinvent their image for reliability/security, catch up where they can, double down on enterprise stuff, and go from there. They started doing some of that with QNX and new Blackberry OS's. The Playbook smoked the iPad in comparisons with incredible responsiveness that's still inconsistent on iOS and Android. It's security potential at OS/component layer is still higher given it's a proper, fast microkernel.

Also, the author noted that the reason Apple was unstoppable was that they built on 10 years of Mac-related research and tooling to produce the phone. The reason that's wrong is that their strategy is exactly the method Google used to fight them: building on Linux, Java, and otherwise over a decade of proven, constantly-improved software. Blackberry could've done something very similar with their own interface and API on top of it. The OS would shift where more of it was free and open but their key benefits would be the differentiator. Their app ecosystem would differentiate similarly by leveraging those benefits.

So, I think there was an exit strategy available for RIM that they just didn't capitalize on properly. I about wish I could've been in there to help them as we really need privacy/security/reliability-focused platforms at mass-market prices. Especially smartphones. Apple is luxury with inconsistent, security results. Android is open enough that many harden it but its owner runs surveillance platforms. Blackberry still had potential to be different there. Still does although I wouldn't place any bets at this point...

Instead, we just get to watch it implode trying to be a better Apple than Apple and now a half-arsed Android. All I hope is that something good happens to QNX's as RIM's acquisition of it is suddenly a bad thing. Lots of tech disappears or withers because it's absorbed by idiotic bureaucracies in downward spirals.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hmm, I've never directly given Google a dollar, but I've spent thousands on Apple stuff primarily because they _do not have big-data AI_ services. No company is perfect, but it's easy to see their priorities.

<comment><USER20> Thats the scary thing about Google. They've become so ubiquitous that you don't need to pay them directly for them to make money off of you. They make money off of the data that they are able to glean from your interactions on the web, your devices etc. Its strength might also be its weakness if the mass of consumers shift towards a more privacy oriented mindset.

<comment><USER13> _Its strength might also be its weakness if the mass of consumers shift towards a more privacy oriented mindset_

I'm guessing you mean consumers will stop using the internet because otherwise your comment makes no sense. You don't have more privacy on the internet because you don't use Google services.

<comment><USER20> I believe that where there's a will there will be a way. As it stands most consumers don't care about privacy enough to make changes to their habits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "desktop-class operating systems"

This guy is totally wrong. I could never develop software, games, or do my work on a current mobile platform.

Why do iOS fans seemingly feel like we've reached desktop/mobile feature parity?

<comment><USER22> For your work, maybe not. But for many people iOS has replaced their desktop.

<comment><USER21> Has it for you?

Do you know anyone for whom this is true?

I'm genuinely interested in where mobile has replaced desktop for production work.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Cast a Powerful Financial Vision for Your Finances - <AUTHOR> http://www.mybreadmoney.com/financial-vision/ <comment><AUTHOR> Casting a financial vision for your money is crucial to your financial success. "Without vision, managing your money is like trying to climb Mount Everest without a harness, proper shoes, or prior experience of climbing.

It's almost..." Read on @ www.mybreadmoney.com/financial-vision</comment>


Create a DDOS attack using NTP servers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vpnguy/ntpdos <comment><USER2> Spent the night last night dealing with this attack. Here is what you should know to deal with it:

[https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA14-013A](https://www.us- cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA14-013A)

</comment><comment><USER3> hdmoore re-disclosed this back on mar 2 2010. nothing new here. more about this:

[https://labs.ripe.net/Members/mirjam/ntp- reflections](https://labs.ripe.net/Members/mirjam/ntp-reflections)

templates from the team cymru guys to secure your ntp installations, which have also been around a while.

[http://www.team-cymru.org/ReadingRoom/Templates/secure- ntp-t...](http://www.team-cymru.org/ReadingRoom/Templates/secure-ntp- template.html)

<comment><USER4> The attack is ongoing [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7216492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7216492) It should be "nothing new" but too many people are still running vulnerable servers.

<comment><USER5> Hacking is always based off of exploiting other people's laziness. Well at least 95%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're concerned your NTP servers may have the monlist command enabled and therefore be available for attackers to use to mount these reflection attacks there is a Nessus plugin to check for this: [http://www.tenable.com/plugins/index.php?view=single&id=7178...](http://www.tenable.com/plugins/index.php?view=single&id=71783)

<comment><USER7> Is there an website where I could just paste the server IP?

<comment><USER8> Try [http://openntpproject.org/](http://openntpproject.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So can a server just close or move NTP ports to survive this and block default ports via firewall?

<comment><USER10> No, what this is exposing is a threat like the DNS DDoS amplification. He sends NTP servers small packets, spoofing the sender address (UDP), and the server sends big response to the target (the spoofed sender address).

This allows to send a much bigger DDoS from a less powerful uplink.

The target can't just firewall a port, as it does not rely on NTP being running on the target, but on some other unprotected machines.

<comment><USER11> On the plus side, I would imagine there are relatively limited number of NTP servers (at least compared to DNS when DDoS amplification attacks first caught on)

<comment><USER12> You would wrong. Dedicated NTP servers yes, but there are things like routers, IPMI controllers, and firewalls that run the NTPD server. Even a bunch of linux distributions were shipping vulnerable daemons until a few weeks ago.

Anyone that's done '<package manager> install ntp' has the potential to be vulnerable, depending on configuration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      $ nmap -sU -pU:123 -Pn -n --script=ntp-monlist <target>

\-- [http://nmap.org/nsedoc/scripts/ntp- monlist.html](http://nmap.org/nsedoc/scripts/ntp-monlist.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Has someone tried getting all vulnerable NTP servers with zmap and shutting them down?

<comment><USER15> Yes, I've been getting a steady trickle of email from this site: [http://openntpproject.org/](http://openntpproject.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's a dangerous tool to be releasing this early but hey if you can why not :)

<comment><USER17> I disagree.

Although some people might take this tool and a list of NTP servers and use it to generate a DDoS against a site or service, it's worth seeing just how simple these attacks are by examining this tool.

They are trivial to perform and the solution, BCP38, needs to be rolled out.

[http://blog.cloudflare.com/understanding-and-mitigating- ntp-...](http://blog.cloudflare.com/understanding-and-mitigating-ntp-based- ddos-attacks)

<comment><USER18> If its so trivial why stress about me releasing it? I figured out how to write the attack from rfcs, wireshark and reports about attacks in early January. Also you can only launch an attack from somewhere that doesn't drop invalid udp packets (windows machines post XPSP2 and many consumer level ISPs) so it has skid protection naturally. To attack with this effectively someone could spawn a AWS instances id imagine.

Imagine my surprise as I was enjoying my cereal this morning and saw this on HN.

<comment><USER12> I'm unsure what you're hoping to accomplish by releasing this?

Also, you (or whoever 'DaRkReD' is, referenced in the script comments), released this on 01-22-2014 to hackforums.com. Personally, I find arming the script kiddies to be inexcusable behavior.

From the hackforums post:

> NTP has a feature called monlist which lists recent clients. Asking for the > monlist takes about 90 bytes, the monlist is about 1640 bytes and since NTP > is UDP we can spoof the IP origin and those 1640 bytes will go to your > target of choice. As a result we have an 18x amplification attack so for > every 1 byte you get sent you get 18 bytes sent to the target your home > internet can now DOS 18x faster!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here are the important lines from ntpdos.py:

> #Magic Packet aka NTP v2 Monlist Packet

> data=str("\x17\x00\x03\x2a") + str("\x00")*4

> packet = > IP(dst=ntpserver,src=target)/UDP(sport=48947,dport=123)/Raw(load=data) > #BUILD IT

</comment><comment><USER20> 220.127.116.11

</comment><comment><USER18> Suggested reading: [http://blog.cloudflare.com/understanding-and-mitigating- ntp-...](http://blog.cloudflare.com/understanding-and-mitigating-ntp-based- ddos-attacks)</comment>