Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/3/in-transit/unhappy-truckers-and-other-algorithmic-problems <comment><USER2> Nice article. I would love to know more details about some of the specific examples, though. Like this one:

 _Yellow Freight used to have some 700 "end of lines," Powell says, which are sorting terminals where cargo is transferred to its end customers. Powell developed a model that delivered a counterintuitive message: Trucks were traveling farther to get to the customer with so many terminals. Today, he says, Yellow Freight has 400 end of lines. "That was the right number," he says._

I can understand 400 endpoints being more efficient for some overall process, but I have a hard time seeing how it could reduce miles travelled without some sort of unmentioned complexity (like sending stuff to the wrong endpoints through confusion). Or maybe it includes miles driven taking stuff to the endpoints in the first place? That I could see.

</comment><comment><USER3> All of this makes me wonder: will business be the first to adapt to self driving vehicles, as opposed to passengers? or are there still significant legal barricades to impede either one now?

<comment><USER4> Of course, you still need someone to actually make the delivery; even a self- driving car can't really give a person a package.

At least, not yet.

<comment><USER5> Actually, delivering a package is nothing more then someone who walks in the truck and using a QR-Code (smartphone) as authentication.

Or just let them put a NFC sticker on their smartphone to automate it more..

(Explanation is simple, execution is something else though)

PS. The only problem i really see, is making deliveries in snow (can't detect the road).

<comment><USER6> > The only problem i really see, is making deliveries in snow (can't detect > the road).

Surely they can use sonar/radar to see the road through the snow?

<comment><USER5> Not really, it's one of the problems (so i've read) Google's automated car is still struggling to handle.

Road, Bicycle part of the road, road marks, ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was a really quality article. I wish I saw more stuff of this quality posted on here. Definitely checking this site out more.

<comment><USER8> The only problem is MIT's news office; "roughly speaking, P is a set of relatively easy problems, NP is a set of incredibly hard problems, and if they're equal, then a large number of computer science problems that seem to be incredibly hard are actually relatively easy." (It's wrong first because P ⊆ NP and second because it doesn't tell you what's really at stake here.)

I think you could instead say "Roughly speaking, P is a set of easy-looking problems, while NP is a set of problems which can be solved the hard way, by a brute-force search. If they're equal, then every brute-force-able problem is hiding some much easier solution." You could also add a sentence like, "Most computer scientists believe that this is wrong -- that sometimes you can't really improve on a brute-force search. But nobody knows how to prove that negative, it seems to require understanding everything which computers can possibly do."

In one paragraph you _can_ explain the gist of P = NP, I think, to a lay audience. I guess many of them might not know what a brute-force solution is, but you might replace it above with "trying all the combinations" or so. (Hat tip to Scott Aaronson for an essential element of this explanation.)

<comment><USER9> While I think your definition is apt, I think you vastly overestimate the number of people who grasp the phrase 'brute-force search.'

<comment><USER10> People understand what "try all the possible combinations"

<comment><USER11> means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something doesn't add up here. The article says:

> For each mile saved, per driver, per year, UPS saves $30 million.

Then at the end it says:

> As for UPS, Santilli notes that a driver in Gettysburg, Pa. is now driving > nearly 25 miles less per day, from an original route of more than 150 miles > down to 126 miles—with the same number of stops.

So they are saving $30 million * 25 * 365 = $274 billion per year. However, UPS' revenue is only $53 billion. What gives? Is this driver in Gettysburg saving a very atypical number of miles, and the average number of miles saved with this system per driver per day is way less? It's a bit disappointing that they left the actual savings out of the article.

<comment><USER11> > For each mile saved, per driver, per year, UPS saves $30 million.

Err, there's no way _a single mile per year_ costs them $30 million. Looks like the $30m figure is the total savings, unless they're using gold, single- use robots that burn gold to push the gold trucks.

<comment><USER12> They did say _per driver_. It's still a high number of course, but I don't see how you can read that differently? UPS has around 400,000 employees, so if 200,000 of those are drivers that number becomes $150 per mile saved. Still way too high, but not single use golden robots high.

<comment><USER13> I think the goal has to be to read what it doesn't say.

The most sensible interpretation I can come up with is saving 1 route mile for each driver for a year (that is, chopping 365 miles off the work of one driver). That puts the per mile savings right around $0.40.

<comment><USER12> Alright, so it should have said:

> For each mile saved, per driver, per _day_ , UPS saves $30 million per > _year_.

That would put the total savings at $750 million per year, assuming that Gettysburg driver is typical.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html <comment><USER2> This isn't food "waste"

Have you noticed that the foods being intentionally destroyed are the very same ones that you can't buy, because they're all gone?

This is not an accident. This is an intentional process, part of the consolidation of power that just happened.

Instead of letting people buy the food they need, we are forcing food production facilities to close (nearly 20% of American meat production has already been permanently shuttered)

This is not about "waste"

This is the intentional starvation of America. Farmers ordered to dump milk rather than deliver it to markets (despite massive shortages), processing facilities closed permanently for dismantlement.

In a month or two, our markets, which already look much like the USSR's did, will be utterly barren, at which point people's only source of nutrition will be from the government.

Meanwhile, it is impossible to get a freezer anymore -- and no more are being produced or imported any longer -- which conveniently stops people from being able to stock up and preserve meat, dairy, and fresh foods now, while they're still available, which will make the starvation more serious and more sudden when they finish turning off the food supply.

The national guard has already been called up in many states to "facilitate food delivery"

That's the final piece of the consolidation -- when people welcome the military coming into every street in America, to enforce the house-arrests, yes, but also to deliver the now-unavailable and critical foodstuffs to the good, cooperative citizens who snitch on their neighbors -- you do want that extra 100g of beef rations, don't you?

Well, if you don't rat out someone by the time I'm back in three days, I might not have any meat for you.

Oh, and if you'd like to have this little certificate that lets you leave your house every day, well, you could go work at the government farms. You do the back-breaking work in the fields, and we'll pay you by letting you keep a little of the food. Besides, otherwise, you can never leave your house again.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you query and manage creds for multiple DBs - slo-dev I've been a developer for 12 years. I work with multiple apps in multiple environments (local dev stage prod) each with their own DB. Some MySQL, some postgres.
Every single time I need to make a query, I need to open the right desktop client or terminal and copy-paste or recreate a query. Wondering if there's a better approach I've just missed out on.
1. How do you keep track of queries for each DB?
2. How do you keep track of creds for each DB? 3. How do you share queries and results with other devs? <comment><AUTHOR> Put the data in a data warehouse. RedShift and Google Big Query allow for saved queries that can be accessed by other users with their own accounts.</comment>


Gaza: Coding in a conflict zone - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45643834 <comment><USER2> Having worked closely with GSG for the last few years and done 2 trips there to mentor and host workshops, I would encourage anybody who has the time and interest in sharing their knowledge to reach out to them and help them. As the saying goes that constraint breeds creativity, I have never meet a more energetic, enthusiastic bunch of people who just want to make themselves useful and build something that they can be proud of while helping themselves. As unfortunate as their situation is, it does not stop them or the GSG crew and I believe that one day in the future, this effort will have laid the foundations for a vibrant and impactful engineering community. If anyone has any questions, please ask away and I can answer.

<comment><USER3> Be more precise. What kinda help they need? I aint got money, are they still enthusiatic about taking non-monetary help? Or is the help in such case simply reduced to "well contact them and ask them if they need anything" (in this case I can tell you their answer even without bothering to email them: "nah, we only need money bruh")?

I assure you that I dont have nothing against Gaza and its inhabitants, what irritates me is that you encourage to help them, yet you use the language so vague that it sounds more like an advertisement of their "future vibrant community" (yea, without actual drinking water and severe overpopulation, but with computers, sure, sounds plausible), without any clearly pronounced areas where they need help, except of money of course.

<comment><USER4> I would assume the GP means "to mentor and host workshops".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gaza Sky Geeks looks like an excellent programme.

For European programmers who would like to help out with similar programmes, but perhaps not move to Gaza, be sure to check out Hack Your Future. It's currently located in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden (with I think more locations coming up), and it's teaching programming courses to refugees in those countries.

I'm sure all of them could use more volunteer teachers. Teaching a group of motivated individuals and giving them a real shot at properly being part of society is an incredibly satisfying experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> In case you missed Manish Sinha's "Mentoring in Gaza's first hackathon" in 2016, it is an insightful perspective that complements this article.

[http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/](http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/)

EDIT Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the shout out. Happy to extend that AMA here in case I missed anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a network engineer I would be really interested in learning some real world info about what ISPs are operating in Gaza, what their ASNs and IP space are, where their upstreams are (both network topologically, BGP adjacencies/other larger ASes, and at OSI layer 1).

If there is anyone reading this who is physically located in Gaza and using a local ISP, I could get a lot of info if you just google "what is my IP", go to one of the first few links, and reply with the results. You don't have to send your exact IP, to the /24 level of accuracy is enough.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like Marwa Hassanein physiology. The worlds past generations have always fought over physical borders and resources. Our generation is learning to live, work and share with out these physical borders. I true believe time is our friend.

</comment><comment><USER9> Note that the article quickly turns political, and often the follow up political discussion is not welcome here on HN.

It will take a lot of restraint for those kids to stay in development.

<comment><USER10> Of course it has to explain the circumstances and background for people who don't know, and that necessarily will be a political discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's an incredible article. It must have taken some amazing mental gymnastics to talk about the situation in Gaza and Palestine without laying any responsibility at the feet of Israel. Instead the Israeli stance is noted as being the same as Egypt, or the same as the EU.

Lets be clear, Israel's behaviour marks it out as an exception internationally. Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Israel's blockade contrvene's international law.

<comment><USER12> Gaza is ¬1M people and has received tens of BN$ of aid.

Israel has withdrawn all its forces from Gaza 10 years ago.

At what stage do Gazan start behaving like responsible adults rather than blaming the Great Satan?

<comment><USER13> Probably the moment the 'Great Satan' stops to control all flow of goods into and out of the Gaza. It's easy to say Israel has withdrawn when all they did was move a few kilometers further out.

<comment><USER14> What would you recommend Israel do when Hamas's charter literally says that they what to destroy Israel and the Jews? Hamas is Gaza's elected party and letting them import weapons is very bad for Israeli civilians.

<comment><USER15> Hamas is Israel's creation. Fatah were the dominant political force in Gaza over the decades and decades of oppression until Hamas were finally founded more recently as an attempt at firmer and less tolerant response to Israel.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but you didn't answer the question. Even if Hamas and even Gaza are totally Israel's fault, the fact that Hamas wants to destroy Israel makes some of Israel's actions pretty damn rational. What else can they do? "Shit, we pushed these Palestinians way too hard for way too long. Fair enough, they can bomb the shit out of our country now".

All that said, I'm not invested in the matter, and I'm a geopolitics noob, but I wonder what would happen if Israel would, unprovoked and unilaterally, drop all restrictions, recognize Palestina as a country and supply as much financial aid as is needed to rebuild the place. Just overnight. Wouldn't Hamas's support crumble instantly? Wouldn't the atmosphere be exactly like when they took down the Berlin wall?

I mean, would Palestinian combatants truly use the newly opened borders to immediately drive into Tel Aviv and shoot everybody? Tbh I don't see it.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. For all of Hamas' talk, it's not only reactive, it also results in a disproportionately small level of anti-Israel violence in practice due mostly to lack of resources (comparatively).

If Israel withdrew all restrictions unilaterally, would there be offensive actions by Hamas: almost certainly. But they'd likely be on a scale many orders of magnitude smaller than Israel's actions to date, and I doubt they'd be sustained.

<comment><USER17> Seriously? So following your logic the US should just let al qaeda access to weapons and let them vent off in NY.

"would there be offensive actions by [al qaeda]: almost certainly. But they'd likely be on a scale many orders of magnitude smaller than [US's actions in Afghanistan] to date, and I doubt they'd be sustained"

I hope I'll never live in a country that will allow their citizens to die in order to appease some murderous religious group.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Try to Oust.me - <AUTHOR> http://oust.me Your life should be a game - something new in geolocation play.<p>Have you tested it yet? <comment><USER2> MrBrown, I don't know if this is your service or not... but please don't make me sign in to Foursquare and not allow me to try your application. You can take my email and tell me when you are ready, but it scares me to have just given you authorization to Foursquare for no apparent reason.</comment>


NVidia DevZone Hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gpu_gems_2_home.html

<comment><AUTHOR> WEBSITE SECURITY NOTICE, AUGUST 22, 2012 NVIDIA suspended operations last month of the NVIDIA Developer Zone site (developer.nvidia.com) in response to attacks on the site by unauthorized third parties, who may have gained access to hashed passwords. We are in the process of restoring site functionality.

As a precautionary measure, we strongly recommend that you change any identical passwords that you may be using elsewhere. As an additional precaution, we have invalidated the passwords of all accounts on the Developer Zone. Once user logins are restored, you will have to reset your password using the email address associated with your account. Currently, there is no access to your user login on the site.

NVIDIA does not request sensitive information by email. Do not provide personal, financial or sensitive information (including new passwords) in response to any email purporting to be sent by an NVIDIA employee or representative.

Thank you for your patience as we restore the NVIDIA Developer Zone site and services

\- The Developer Zone Team</comment>


If cities ruled: A conversation between Jonathan Haidt and Richard Florida - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/04/the-need-to-empower-cities/521904/?utm_source=twb <comment><USER2> I think the people underestimate the potential of tax revolt as a form of resistance. It's a lot less risky than you might think. If you file accurately and don't pay, they can still penalize you for late payment, but you won't face tax evasion charges. The government has to get it from you through civil action. If hundreds of thousands of people all stopped sending in their tax bills at once, the federal government would need a small army of attorneys to get the taxes they're owed.</comment>


NLP in Python vs other Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/howto/nlp-python.html <comment><USER2> His Ruby

        for line in ARGF
          for word in line.split
            if word.match(/ing$/) then
              puts word
            end
          end
        end

I'd write as

        for line in ARGF
          puts line.split.grep(/ing$/)
        end

Or

        puts ARGF.map{|line| line.split.grep(/ing$/)}

<comment><USER3> The Python implementation doesn't use ARGF and so appears clearer. Luckily this is no problem in Ruby too:

      while line = gets
        puts line.split.select { |word| word =~ /ing$/ }
      end

<comment><USER4> This is clearly not as bad as Perl, but it's still raving a bit. My key complaints are the complete lack of clarity as to what kind of thing split is, as well as what exactly is going on with select. (I'm assuming it's getting passed a predicate in the form of a lambda or block or whatever the cool kids are calling it these days, and it's obvious _to the Perl programmer_ what the block does after that.)

The equivalent Python is something like

        import sys
        for line in sys.stdin:
          print '\n'.join(filter(line.split(), lambda word: word.endswith('ing'))

which I would argue is more readable to a layperson because function calls look like function calls. (By the way, does Ruby's puts automatically do the join with newlines, or what?)

<comment><USER3> _My key complaints are the complete lack of clarity as to what kind of thing split is_

The post seems to be about language independent readability. Rather than "functions should be called with () - that is clearly not a function - can not compute!!", the question is "can this code be understood even ignoring unfamiliar syntax?"

Most developers familiar with languages like Java, JavaScript, Python, Perl, C# or Ruby could correctly guess what "split" refers to and that it is unlikely to be used as a variable name. Further, if a developer is familiar with the idea of method calls, it will be inferred that "whatever.split.whatever" is a sequence of method calls.. much as if it were, in some fictional languages, _whatever- >split->whatever_ or _whatever:split:whatever_. Similarly, _a(b(c()))_ and _a[b[c[]]]_ could both be easily inferred to be a set of nested function calls.

"import sys" is not exactly clear either, but again, the meaning of this could be accurately inferred by most developers.

      print '\n'.join(filter(line.split(), lambda word: word.endswith('ing'))

I want to join the array's elements together, not join the string. Joining together an array's elements by calling a method on the delimiter is no less raving than any Ruby I may cook up. Your example is both longer _and_ has more syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's many dimensions on which we can evaluate programming languages, but the NLTK folk are only really interested in one: readability. Their page implicitly argues that high-level languages with good string processing are the most readable, and that amongst those Python is more readable than the alternatives (for both non-programmers and experts).

NLTK is supposed to be an educational toolkit. It's used by linguists taking their first steps in programming, and by CS students taking their first steps in complexity and mess of human language. They're not looking for the shortest code, the fastest code, or the most <quality attribute X> code, just the most readable, insofar as readability can be supported and encouraged by a language.

<comment><USER6> In that case, Python and Ruby must be front runners. I'm not sure why they put Ruby so close to the bottom, or why they used the obscure ARGF mechanism instead of the more readable examples elsewhere in this discussion. It seems as though the author may have an interest in promoting Python as the choice.

<comment><USER7> _It seems as though the author may have an interest in promoting Python as the choice._

Clearly the author has made a strong assumption that the peculiarities of Python syntax and semantics (`import`, `sys.stdin`, `for` ... `in`) are somehow clear to Python novices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A C++ version:

        #include <iostream>
        #include <string>
        int main()
        {
            std::string s;
            while (std::cin >> s) {
                if (s.size() >= 3 && s.match(s.size()-3, 3, "ing") == 0) {
                    std::cout << s << '\n';
                }
            }
        }

<comment><USER9> were you trying to make an argument as to how this compares to other languages? (sorry, i don't mean to sound trollish, i'm actually curious as to your intent)

<comment><USER8> If anything, this particular comment is to show that C and C++ are quite different although they have quite a bit in common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The entire time I was reading, I hoped that a Haskell solution would be there (knowing it would be much simpler), I got my wish :) +1 to haskell

<comment><USER11> Except for Prolog, I am familiar with all of the languages presented. Python and Haskell were the easiest for me to parse, not that any of them were overly hard.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps more idiomatic:

      import Data.List
      main = putStr . unlines . filter ("ing" `isSuffixOf`) . words =<< getContents

(To be read from right to left.)

A Forth example would be interesting.

<comment><USER13> Here is a Factor version:

      : print-ing ( filepath encoding -- )
      [ [
          " " split
          [ dup "ing" tail? [ print ] [ drop ] if ] each ]
        each-line ]
      with-file-reader ;

It's kind of ugly because it's designed to print out the values without leaving anything on the stack. It can be prettier if it produces an array of matching words

      : collect-ing ( filepath encoding -- seq ) { } -rot
      [ [
          " " split
          [ "ing" tail? ] filter append ]
        each-line ]
      with-file-reader ;

and then just prints that out

      : print-ing ( filepath encoding -- )
      collect-ing [ print ] each ;

<comment><USER12> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I agree with everyone that Perl syntax can look random gibberish, however, their particular Perl example seems quite easy to interpret.

<comment><USER15> Yea. I don't agree with them ragging on the '$' in the Perl example. I could have made the Python code just as obtuse by using the regex library rather than word.endswith(). Ragging on a language because a beginner doesn't understand regular expressions seems a bit misleading.

They are also inconsistent with their coding style. In the while() loop, they make use of $_ implicitly (even in the split statement in the foreach loop), but in the foreach loop, they don't use $_, but instead define $word. Then they go off on split being 'difficult to guess what it represents.'

      > Having used Perl ourselves in research and teaching
      > since the 1980s, we have found that Perl programs of
      > any size are inordinately difficult to maintain and
      > re-use.

Says more about the programmer than the language. You can write maintainable code in any language. "Too many choices" doesn't cause code to be unmaintainable. Lack of discipline in your programming practices does (as well as lack of documentation). Saying that a language is better in this respect is just to say that "X language took the ability to choose away from me so that I'm forced to do things a certain way, whether I like it or not."

<comment><USER16> I agree with you. Bad code isn't the programming languages fault. Bad code is the programmer's fault. Perl itself and the Perl culture has changed enormously since the "1980s".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The lisp code has a few problems. It's using a regex library that's only available in clisp (I think), it's not using the standard input like the other examples, and having two functions named has-suffix and has_suffix is no good. Also, it'll return an error if the string is shorter than the suffix.

In the following example I'm using the portable <http://www.cliki.net/SPLIT- SEQUENCE> to split the words:

      (defun endswith (string suffix)
        (let ((size (- (length string) (length suffix))))
          (unless (minusp size)
            (equalp (subseq string size) suffix))))

      (loop for line = (read-line *standard-input* nil) while line do
            (loop for word in (split-sequence #\Space line) do
                  (if (endswith word "ing")
                      (write-line word))))

It's still wordier than python, though.

</comment><comment><USER18> The C and Prolog examples solve a different problem than the others. The others split on either any whitespace or on only spaces. The Prolog example splits on whitespace and punctuation. The C example splits on anything that isn't alphanumeric.

</comment><comment><USER12> "LISP is a so-called functional programming language, in which all objects are lists, and all operations are performed by (nested) functions of the form (function arg1 arg2 ...). "

Reading this hurts.

</comment><comment><USER8> The C version has a buffer overflow if more than 1024 consecutive alphanumeric characters are input. And a much less serious point,

        isalnum(c)

looks much better than

        (c >= '0' && c <= '9') || (c >= 'a' && c <= 'z') || (c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z')

<comment><USER9> yup, agreed, and

      if word.endswith('ing')

looks much better than

      if word[-3] == 'i' and word[-2] == 'n' and word[-1] == 'g'

clearly the authors of that article weren't proficient in the C standard library :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For what it's worth, this could be written in one line of Io:

      File standardInput readToEnd split select(endsWithSeq("ing")) foreach(println)

(Given that I don't actually use Io a lot, there might be shorter ways to do this.)

Anyway, as usual, code samples prove very little. =)

</comment><comment><USER20> lua (a better version is welcome):

        for line in io.lines() do
          for word in line:gfind("[^%s]+") do
            if word:find("ing$") then
              print( word )
            end
          end
       end

</comment><comment><USER9> i love python more than anything else in the world (well, almost), but i think that this example is quite superficial ... this line alone gives python its enormous 'readability edge' over other languages:

      if word.endswith('ing')

of course, it's great standard library design to have a string method called endswith() rather than making people use a regexp ending in '$', since finding suffixes is a common operation. but such a simple operation is hardly indicative of hardcore NLP (which would mostly be hidden in special-purpose library code anyways)

</comment><comment><USER21> I use Ruby, and not Python. That said I still bought a print copy of this book a few years ago: nice book and the NLTK package has a lot of grate tools built in. Definitely "batteries included."

<comment><USER21> The comments on why "my language is better than yours" could have been toned down however.

The book is available at the same site: <http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/book/book.html>

really nice work on both the book and the NLTK library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> C#

      Console.ReadLine().Split().Where( word => word.EndsWith("ing"))
        .ForEach( word => Console.WriteLine(word));</comment>


Google's New Tool to Weed Out 'Toxic' Abuse of Online Comments – Ie. Censorship - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/02/23/alphabet-jigsaw-perspective-comment-moderator/ <comment><USER2> Great, now just flag "every opinion that's not ours" as toxic and you're set. Brave new world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. The term "toxic" is highly subjective and prone to misuse.</comment></comment>


AllenNLP – An open-source NLP research library, built on PyTorch - <AUTHOR> http://allennlp.org/ <comment><USER2> Wow, is this really state of the art?

        Joe did not buy a car today.
        He was in buying mood.
        But all cars were too expensive.

        Why didn't Joe buy a car?

        Answer: buying mood

I think I have seen similar systems for decades now. I thought we would be further along meanwhile.

I have tried for 10 or 20 minutes now. But I can't find any evidence that it has much sense of syntax:

        Paul gives a coin to Joe.

        Who received a coin?

        Answer: Paul

All it seems to do is to extract candidates for "who", "what", "where" etc. So it seems to figure out correctly that "Paul" is a potential answer for "Who".

No matter how I rephrase the "Who" question, I always get "Paul" as the answer. "Who? Paul!", "Who is a martian? Paul!", "Who won the summer olympics? Paul", "Who got a coin from the other guy? Paul!"

Same for "what" questions:

        Gold can not be carried in a bag. Silver can.

        What can be carried in a bag?

        Answer: Gold

<comment><USER3> Sadly, the NLP world is full of hot air. I've seen so many companies get funding for complete "written by a 12-year old" dogshit "industry leading IP", it's not even funny anymore.

The hype has gone down and some are actually doing great work, but 90% of the people who say they do NLP/AI stuff don't even fundamentally understand what NLP/AI is.

<comment><USER4> I still hold hope. However, it seems naively exploit the function approximation capacity we have with deep learning can only go that far to understand our own language.

Maybe we need to look back and start from beginning and ask ourself: How does human learn, exactly? How do we learn with so few examples? How do we jointly learn image/audio/video/language with only one brain?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps we should consider working only on techniques which improve as more computational power is thrown at it.

<comment><USER6> Computation won't help if we don't have the right representations. Arguably computation can help us discover the right representations but the space of possible representations is very, very large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is very brittle: it works really well on the pre-canned examples but the vocabulary seems very tightly linked. It doesn't handle something as simple as:

'the patient had no pain but did have nausea'

Doesn't yield any helpful on semantic role labeling and didn't even parse on machine comprehension. If I vary it to say ask 'did the patient have pain?' the answer is 'nausea'.

CoreNLP provides much more useful analysis of the phrase structure and dependencies.

</comment><comment><USER8> In "Adversarial Examples for Evaluating Reading Comprehension Systems" [https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07328](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07328), it was found that adding a single distracting sentence can lower F1 score of BiDAF (which is used in demo here) from 75.5% to 34.3% on SQuAD. In comparison, human performance goes from 92.6% to 89.2%.

<comment><USER9> There's a blog post (the morning paper) about this: [https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/09/13/adversarial-examples- for...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/09/13/adversarial-examples-for- evaluating-reading-comprehension-systems/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "the squid was walked by the woman"

"what is the fifth word in that sentence ?"

Answer: squid

</comment><comment><USER11> We need more demos of AI models: there is what people claim their model does, and there is what the model actually does.

</comment><comment><USER12> How does this compare with spacy?

<comment><USER6> Different set of tasks. SpaCy is focused on bread-and-butter tasks like tokenization, part of speech tagging, and dependency parsing (not to say that these are easy, but that they are things people have been working on a long time). AllenNLP seems focused on distributing relatively recent neural models (last few years) of more complex language understanding like labeling semantic roles (agents, patients, etc.) and identifying textual entailments (=mining facts from a sentence). It is not great at these tasks, because this is v. difficult and a very active area of ongoing research.</comment></comment>


Supreme Court wary of unlimited cellphone searches - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-wary-of-unlimited-cellphone-searches/

<comment><AUTHOR> A problem here is that the Supreme Court is, by its nature, not very tech- savvy. FTA:

The justices expressed varying levels of sophistication about cellphones. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Kagan and Alito seemed most comfortable talking about the technology. They are, perhaps not coincidentally, the four youngest justices.

On the other hand, 75-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer, who is given to self- deprecation on the bench, gamely tried to engage the Justice Department's Dreeben in a discussion about encryption technology. "I don't know what kind of phone you have, Justice Breyer," Dreeben said.

Breyer replied: "I don't either because I can never get into it because of the password."</comment>


Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn't work - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/walmart-employees-are-out-to-show-its-anti-shoplifting-ai-doesnt-work/ <comment><USER2> There is a lot of information in the article but little to draw a conclusion from. They bring up examples where the AI failed, but that alone does not indicate it doesn't work.

An AI that fails to recognize some thefts but does recognize others can still be considered to work as long as enough thefts are caught. Imperfect, but given the low cost of a failure relative to not using an AI, imperfection seems quite tolerable. Even the false positives seem to be of little concern as they involve a shopping associate coming over and having to assist an individual. As long as the experience for the shopper remains more pleasant than waiting in line for one of the cashier operated checkouts, it is still an overall win.

So yes, the AI is imperfect, but where is the information that justifies the conclusion it doesn't work and not the conclusion that it doesn't work perfectly?

<comment><USER3> They must have forgotten the name of the game is loss prevention for the business and not about stopping shoplifting. Cutting payroll on your loss prevention is loss prevention in of itself.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure. When self-checkouts were introduced here, they had staff supervising to help and educate customers then significantly scaled back that headcount.

Fast forward several years, there's more staff stationed with self-checkout due to theft.

I think retailers are going to calculate the cost of headcount and theft and make a decision based on an equilibrium.

Of course, the best outcome for Walmart is to have an automated LP system to reduce staffing cost for the long term.

<comment><USER5> Self checkout has 1/2 to 1/8 the staff of full checkout.

<comment><USER4> In my example, big grocery chains here had 5-6 employees at launch then dropped it to just one.

Now they have 2-3 employees monitoring the self checkout.

There is a certain point where employers become more focused on reducing shrinkage than headcount.

<comment><USER6> If they're open 24/7/365, that's still six figures in savings. And if one of those employees is watching the self checkouts then losses might not even be that much higher. And that with 90s technology — very little/no CV. I think Cashier as a stand-alone job will probably die off in our lifetime. Maybe you still have a store manager who is up at the front of the store whenever they are not doing something else.

(I've been a cashier at a grocery store)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who has inadvertently stolen from Walmart on more than one occasion, I cant attest that their anti-shoplifting AI does not work.

<comment><USER8> How does one inadvertently steal?

<comment><USER9> If you have kids it's really easy. You don't notice that they put an item in their stroller or inside another item that you're buying (like you're buying a cooler and they put a toy in the cooler).

Technically it's your kids stealing, but since you are responsible for their actions, it's on you.

When this happens to me I usually let them know the next time I'm at that store (or if I discover it in the parking lot I go back in). Sometimes they charge me for it, usually they just say thanks for being honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a very hard problem and thinking a product could do this without extremely high error rates is naive.

Any implementation should use this as a supplement only, not replacement for humans. For example a human watching 10 checkouts and quickly manually reviewing scenes flagged as suspicious. Any implementation should also account for the fact that loss will still occur and account for that in the RoI.

The fact that the technology is very error prone is not surprising (to anyone that actually builds AI tech). The issue here sounds like poor implementation and unrealistic expectations from management on what AI truly can and can't do.

<comment><USER11> Preventing scanning one item and placing two on the bag? It's an easy problem. Just have scanned items be placed on a scale. People will be bagging stuff to take home, so just have bags placed on a scale and observe the weight increase as items are placed in the bag.

You probably know the weight of one jug of milk, but even if you don't, it's easy to "learn" the weights of new SKUs statistically.

<comment><USER12> Early self-check kiosks did this very poorly. It was super frustrating as a customer to be constantly asked to "please place the item in the bagging area", even when I already had, not to mention the hassle it caused when buying something you don't want to bag. Eventually I'm assuming they gave up on that and turned it off.

<comment><USER13> Checkouts in the UK still do this. They just seem to have gotten better at it, so I rarely have problems anymore. Possibly they loosened the tolerances.

<comment><USER14> Still pisses me off endlessly though, I'm only scanning a couple items that are going right in to my backpack. Takes 3x the time because of those stupid scales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm suprised they even bother to try and stop it. My grandfather works at WalMart, and said that they're told to not try and stop shoplifting because they don't want customers to be afraid to shop there.

<comment><USER16> Some around here hassle people for their receipts near the exit. It was already my least-favorite place to shop for a ton of reasons, so that was enough to stop me ever going. It's one thing at Costco where I agreed to it and they're very fast and nice. I'm not standing in line to get permission to leave friggin' Wal-Mart (yes I know you can just ignore them but they sometimes try to stop you and make a big deal of it and that's just not a situation I want in my day)

<comment><USER17> Also Best Buy, which is particularly annoying as they watch you check out at the register five or ten feet from their post, then "randomly" (almost always) demand the receipt.

Who are you checking, the cashier or the buyer? My guess is a deterrent for some kind of collusion.

<comment><USER18> Change of ownership happens at the point of sale. Toss them a cheery "no, thanks," and walk on by. They have no authority to detain you.

Same with Fry's. Not the same with Costco; there, you're subject to the membership agreements.

<comment><USER19> They do have the authority to prevent you from returning to the store. This is the only reason I ever agreed at Fry's.

At Best Buy I stopped shopping there for years. I don't remember why I eventually went in one again, but in the years since I've never been asked once. I do wish they'd get rid of the guy at the door entirely. It's weird. And they always greet you from the side or back.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like a good reason to show your receipt... at the returns counter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My local walmart now has cameras getting your face at self checkout. I cover it with a bag before using checkout

<comment><USER9> If it bothers you so much, why not just use the regular checkout? Or just shop somewhere else? Do you cover their security cameras all around the store with bags or just the self-checkout one?

This seems a really odd place to draw the line on surveillance.

<comment><USER21> I've noticed that some stores put cameras behind cashiers such that they point at both the cashier and the customer.

<comment><USER22> A lot of these cameras are intended to primarily capture the cashier, to prevent them from stealing cash from the till.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While not super related, I've always been fascinated by shoplifter analysis of loss prevention you can find on the internet: [https://raddle.me/wiki/shopliftingml](https://raddle.me/wiki/shopliftingml)

</comment><comment><USER23> Is it just me or do the "Concerned Home Office Associates" not sound like they actually work at Walmart? I talk to the workers at my local Walmart and they don't refer to themselves as "associates", or care enough about a minimum wage job to contact media over anti-shoplifting AI failing.

<comment><USER24> I bet they do. "Home Office Associate" means office worker or manager. A programmer falls under this. It isn't a minimum wage "store associate". Of course they won't refer to themselves as store associate when casually chatting to a shopper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> And that is why such technologies are best deployed with humans in the loop. Tech flags, human checks, human label is fed back into training. Fewer humans will be needed now, even fewer 2-3 years from now. There are literally tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people every day doing nothing but watching security feeds. And 99% of the time nothing is going on.

</comment><comment><USER26> Walmart self-checkout is the second best working self checkout I've used so far. (The best one is Sam's Club: you scan things with your phone as you put them in the cart, and when you're done you tap checkout and leave the store. Payment happens in the phone app.)

If the cost of having self-checkout machines that actually _work_ and let you complete your purchase is that some items slip by, that might well be worth it.

In contrast, Safeway chain self-checkouts are such a miserable experience that for more than two items, even waiting in a long cashier line is worth it. Their system requires you to place every purchased item on a scale after the scan, and a good fraction of the time the scale fails to read the expected added weight, forcing you to wait for staff to unlock the machine again. For a cart full of purchases, this will happen half a dozen times.

</comment><comment><USER27> I mean, presumably Wal-Mart has excellent statistics on "shrinkage" from regular inventory checks like any store, as well as recording how often shoplifters are caught, and so they have clear data as to whether or not Everseen is an improvement or not.

And I don't understand what this has to do with COVID-19 at all in the article.

Finally, what do _employees_ care about theft? It's not coming out of their paycheck. False positives from an anti-theft system seems like a small job nuisance at best -- not something to whistleblow with a "slickly produced video".

Nothing about this article makes sense to me, unless it's motivated by an Everseen competitor -- whether another company or an internal division of Wal- Mart that thinks they have a better solution. In either case, why would the general public care at all?

<comment><USER28> Employees are often the ones accused of theft?

<comment><USER29> When I worked retail, employee theft was the big deal. From pocketing cash to a dock guy bringing up stuff for his buddies during busy times to the Theft Prevention team doing something to all get fired I think the employees did more damage than the shoplifters.

We didn't have self checkout back then, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> self check out systems are great and the concerns of the workers should be heard but it comes down to not having all the numbers.

what is the positive to false positive rate? projects can have metrics that those in the field are not privy too and it could down to they are preventing a sufficient dollar amount to not consider the false positives are an issue. Again, what are the percentages?

<comment><USER6> Right. It takes _a lot_ of theft to pay for a whole extra human standing there. Even a minimum wage.

<comment><USER18> See also farmers' produce stands that are often completely unmanned and run 100% on the honor system.

People take fruit and vegetables, and put the money in the box--or if the farmer is tech-savvy enough, through their phones. And even if a few people don't pay, they still get more money from their inventory than shipping it to a wholesaler or a grocery store. (As far as I know, direct to a local gourmet restaurant pays best.)

For an extra employee on the duty roster, you're probably paying minimum $7 per hour, every hour that store is open to the public--probably 16 hours a day, every day, for a big box. That's $41k per year, plus the per-employee costs for 2 or 3 people, which are probably another $60k, unless you're an employer that doesn't offer benefits (i.e. Wal-Mart).

The employee would likely have to stop $200/day of petty theft. That doesn't seem impossible, but the problem is that if you pay your employee minimum wage, they don't actually _care_ that people are stealing from their employer, because they have no actual incentive to do anything beyond what is the bare minimum requirement to avoid getting fired, which may be just catching _one_ shoplifter per day.

And then, after all, if one caught _every_ shoplifter, _every_ day, people would stop trying, and one might miss quota on later days. The person whose job depends on shoplifters has a perverse incentive to encourage shoplifting, just as cobra-catchers have an incentive to breed and release snakes.

So the problem is more that it's too expensive to hire someone at a rate high enough to make them _care_ about doing their job well, instead of just keeping it indefinitely while gaming the right metrics.

<comment><USER31> > People take fruit and vegetables, and put the money in the box--or if the > farmer is tech-savvy enough, through their phones. And even if a few people > don't pay, they still get more money from their inventory than shipping it > to a wholesaler or a grocery store. _(As far as I know, direct to a local > gourmet restaurant pays best.)_

It does.

> The employee would likely have to stop $200/day of petty theft. That doesn't > seem impossible, but the problem is that if you pay your employee minimum > wage, they don't actually care that people are stealing from their employer, > because they have no actual incentive to do anything beyond what is the bare > minimum requirement to avoid getting fired, which may be just catching one > shoplifter per day.

> And then, after all, if one caught every shoplifter, every day, people would > stop trying, and one might miss quota on later days. The person whose job > depends on shoplifters has a perverse incentive to encourage shoplifting, > just as cobra-catchers have an incentive to breed and release snakes.

You just explained the the broken window type fallacy of LEO and Police in general. When the crime no longer exists, you create it... by force. Oddly enough, it also applies to loss prevention.

> So the problem is more that it's too expensive to hire someone at a rate > high enough to make them care about doing their job well, instead of just > keeping it indefinitely while gaming the right metrics.

Agreed. And again, it applies to more than just shoplifting prevention.

<comment><USER18> For those not familiar with why cobras were mentioned above:

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

Long story shortened:

      1. British are ruling India
      2. Concern about cobras
      3. Establish dead cobra bounty
      4. Cobra population crashes
      5. Entrepreneurs breed cobras
      6. Bounty program halted
      7. Breeders release stocks
      8. More cobras than before

The source story is just an anecdote, but there are plenty of historically verifiable examples of the effect, not necessarily involving cobras, specifically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> False Positives don't matter. It's all about mitigating False negatives enough to lower shrinkage and justify the costs of the software.

<comment><USER33> False positives may cost more than the items being protected in diverse costs.

<comment><USER34> It seems that the self service kiosk just stops functioning if it thinks something is wrong.

I'm not sure how many high intensity "you're stealing!" confrontations really occur.

<comment><USER35> It should really allow you to continue scanning but prevent you from paying until the associate confirms that you're not stealing. That's 90% of the issue with the weight sensors -- the sensor stops me from moving forward with other purchases because it's making me wait for someone to check my stuff. But if they left the notification on while I continued to scan that would eliminate my issues with it entirely. Then they wouldn't need to rely on flaky AI.

The other issue I have is that the barcode scanners are not activated until the weight sensor settles out, which can take several seconds up to a minute, so it's way slower than going to a checker. If the weight sensor didn't gate barcode scanner activation I would have a much better experience.

All they really need to do is verify the weight of the total transaction and have the associate check on any discrepancies. And they can probably use a very noisy weight signal with a low-pass filter. They don't need to blow a ton of money on an AI solution that is about the same level of inconvenient.

If I had 10 or 20 million dollars I'd build a better self-checkout.

<comment><USER36> The self checkouts at my local Walmarts already do this. When an error occurs it flags for help but lets me proceed up until it is time to pay. By then usually an associate has already made their way over to check the errors in batch vs 1 at a time as they come up.

It's so much nicer of an experience compared to machines that just stop functioning until an employee can "help" you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hire more humans. Problem solved.

<comment><USER38> Not quite simple, human are expensive and finicky.

<comment><USER39> And employees in any retail establishment are prone to shoplifting, so adding more might not help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So, I didn't read the article but if these employees didn't want to be replaced by API they could theoretically be helping the AI team find weaknesses in system and improve the system even more quickly.

<comment><USER41> Not really.

Their job isn't to "identify" the shoplifting, but deal with the consequences and shoplifter after it has been identified.

So if the A.I. get's better, then they harass less innocent people, and the humans job gets better.

The employees job will be at greater risk when Walmart goes full ROBOCOP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Walmart are scumbags who will pursue shoplifting charges with no evidence and try to collect from innocent people. [1] I'm not surprised they are using AI for this, a system that's bound to cause false positives. It should be illegal for them to make such accusations and take up the court's and the defendant's time, money, resources, and freedom. False accusations should carry heavy penalties. Instead, they carry no penalties. Once again, another instance where the average person will get fucked over with no recourse.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/business/falsely- accused-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/business/falsely-accused-of- shoplifting-but-retailers-demand-they-pay.html)</comment>


Apple Store is down – unable to pre-order - <AUTHOR> http://store.apple.com

<comment><USER2> You can pre-order using an iPhone or an iPad. The iPhone ran out of stock very quickly, but the store on the iPad still had some more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, mainly I found server down during the big events. Apple must take some notice</comment>


Yes, Rackspace Is Down And So Are Many Of Your Favorite Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/29/yes-rackspace-is-down-and-so-are-many-of-your-favorite-sites/ <comment><USER2> We (<http://ticketstumbler.com>) use Rackspace's Mosso and were only down for 10 minutes.

Rackspace's twitter account just said: @Rackspace: All power is restored to the DFW data center - all devices affected are starting to come on-line. Details to follow.

<comment><USER3> Same here. Couldn't have happened at a worse time, but at least it was only for 10 minutes or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have several servers with Rackspace and several hundred of our own customers were affected by this outage (for about 30 mins).

For what it's worth, I still think they are the best managed hosting company around. The customer service is great.

This is the only major problem I can recall since this one: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/12/quick-plug-the- internet...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/12/quick-plug-the-internet- back-in-major-rackspace-outage/)

</comment><comment><USER5> We were down for over 2 HOURS! Not acceptable! Found out that one of our servers was stuck at a BIOS screen waiting for someone to hit "Enter". Not happy about it at all.

<comment><USER6> Are you using them as a colo? That's usually one of the first things I do when I setup a machine to be shipped off to a colo -- make sure that a remote boot doesn't require console interaction. Reduce the grub menu timeout to 5 seconds, always skip bios prompt regardless of errors, etc. Even if the colo provides the ability to remotely interact with the console, it's less hassle if you don't have to.

<comment><USER5> No, they set up the servers for us. Didn't think to ask, "please make sure the servers reboot without someone standing by to push 'enter' if needed". They told me that the server's BIOS was saying something about the RAID battery being charged and required someone to push 'enter' to continue. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a Rackspace customer (fortunately, in VA). Last week, they accidentally sent emails out to many customers letting them know that there was heavy construction (that they don't control) adjacent to their lot of land in Texas. I'm betting that has something to do with it.

<comment><USER8> So what has really happened, or Rackspace does not go as far as explaining customers what was the reason and what measures are taken so it won't happen again? I'd be surprised if that is the case.

My current hoster costs less and does much more (you're informed and kept updated in case anything remotely serious happens, especially if it affects the whole DC - though happened only once during 6 years, customers had live progress on the failure resolution).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know nothing about hosting but how much more expensive can running fully redundant be? Backups available at a separate physical location ready to go online incase A goes offline? I guess the question is how much can businesses afford to pay.

Has anyone done the math to see income lost per hour offline? (I'm pretty sure Twitter makes money for being offline. heh)

<comment><AUTHOR> well if its fully redundant, it'd be 2x as much.

Personally I think, the best bet is to just have a backup on Amazon. Sure its not as fast as switching to another dedicated server, but its just something to have in case of emergency, users can afford to have the page take an extra ms to load.

<comment><USER9> My thinking was, if they already own a datacenter in another location, why not add another floor? Obviously it's not cheap but is it really 2x? If you're big enough, you don't have to hire double the staff or buy double the resources since you already have them.

<comment><USER10> The expensive part about data centers isn't the square footage, it's the HVAC/power/bandwidth/servers. So you have the space, that means you still need to reserve twice the bandwidth, power, cooling and hardware. x2 cost. Actually somewhat more because you need to account for all the bandwidth and time to keep everything synced up.

<comment><USER11> at what rackspace can charge, new hardware is nothing. the problem is that if I rent you a server, it's going to be pretty difficult for me to replicate that server to another location without a lot of cooperation from you. the more I screw with your server, well, the more likely I am to break it, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I saw my sliechost box go down for about 10 minutes. I'm really surprised that they haven't sent me an email yet, they're usually RIGHT on top of that...

Anybody have any word on what happened?

<comment><USER13> You posted JUST too soon... 10 minutes ago I received:

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment> Hello,

We have experienced an interruption in power to a portion of our Dallas-Fort Worth data center facility. Power has been restored and our DC engineers are working on devices that need to be manually brought back online as quickly as possible. Further updates will be made as soon as new information is made available. Please monitor our MyRackspace customer portal as this is the quickest way we can get updates out to you.

Sincerely,

Rackspace

<comment><USER14> That actually sounds pretty scary. What sort of incoming fault trips (what sounds like) DC breakers?

<comment><USER15> If I recall, they were doing maintenance to their chillers this week. Hmmm....

<comment><USER14> Ah, so perhaps a little <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had a laptop with 2 good batteries and I lasted out a power cut watching a whole DVD. The ADSL 'modem' was powered by the phone socket and shared over Wifi from another laptop with a (single) good battery, so I could continue using the internet while watching this DVD!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that laptops might be a good solution for a hosting company, because of the lower power requirements and cheap batteries.

<comment><USER17> That's not even remotely price feasible. Also, lower power requirements does not necessarily mean efficient. In terms of power/watt, they have inefficient power conversion and are particularly difficult to cool. Trust me, rackspace knows what they're doing.

<comment><USER7> Actually, they aren't doing anything particularly amazing - my servers are just Dell 2950IIIs.

Still, for one guy managing things, it's way easier than co-lo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 10 minutes is 1% of 17 hours, 0.1% of a week, 0.01% of 69 days, or 0.001% of 23 months. So they could maintain "five nines" if they had an outage like this every two years — except for people like jme.

But of course outages follow a power law. On January 15, 1990, AT&T's entire long-distance network crashed for 9 hours.

<comment><USER19> there was a _major_ outage less than two years ago iirc in the same data center, a transformer blew up and shifted a wall. they're not going to get their 5 nines for a long long time.

<comment><USER20> Wow. That sounds almost as bad as the CIHost outage where thieves sawed through the walls, stole a bunch of servers, and tazed the employee that responded to the alarm.

I'm so glad I got my servers out of there only 2 months prior (after being there for almost three years).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cheers! May this source of so much spam be offline for 150 years.

<comment><USER22> What are you talking about?

<comment><USER23> I guess he gets a lot of spam from Rackspace customers.</comment></comment></comment>


Acer to offer App Store, E-Reader, Chrome Netbook, ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=apHkljW2huSM

<comment><AUTHOR> Acer jumps on all bandwagons at once in 2010, offering an application store, an E-reader, Chrome OS netbooks, and hints they are possibly working on a tablet.

An app store for Windows software seems a bit questionable, since Steam and the Microsoft e-store probably cover most people's software needs. Maybe a Linux-related app store, but that doesn't seem much more likely to succeed.

I have been happy with functionality and price of my Acer netbooks, so I look forward to their Chrome OS offerings.</comment>


Mozilla Persona and Surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://identity.mozilla.com/post/52729477874 <comment><USER2> The statement that Mozilla should have issued:

"Some have claimed that we should move Mozilla out of the US. Unfortunately, for reasons of connectivity, workforce, ties to US market, legal issues and restructuring costs we are not able to do that.

Current (recurring) developments in the US have shown that our government can not be trusted. No amount of legislation is going to achieve a fully accountable government.

Because of this, we are unable to guarantee that Persona is or will be exempt of data requests from one of the government agencies. Even worse: we will not be able to tell you when / what data has been requested. We are and will not be able to confirm or deny data requests. It can be that future legislation forbids us to even make the statements that we are making in this paragraph, so this is maybe the last time that we can tell you this.

The only solution to a private internet is to fully embrace cryptography for all our communications. Until then, you can use Persona at your own risk."

<comment><USER3> The last bit here is a reach. For starters, Persona uses SSL, so it's encrypted. But more broadly, if you're going to use centralized, third-party authentication mechanism you could do far, far worse than Persona. I'd go so far as to say if your site is implementing its own authentication system, you could do yourself even more damage with a poor implementation.

Your critique seems to missed an important part about Persona's design: "It's also worth pointing out that we do take certain technical measures to limit the data we collect. We've designed Persona so that the identity provider – including the fallback Identity Provider that we run – does not learn your browsing history. We consider that a good security practice, not specifically because of surveillance, but generally because collecting data without a user benefit just creates risk."

Further, the main "centralized" risk would be their default identity provider. If you don't want to use that for your domain, you can provide your own, and host it in another country. In this case, Mozilla's servers aren't even being contacted when you authenticate.

<comment><USER2> I know nothing about Persona. I have never used, and I have not read anything about it. But that much is clear to me: the communication between you and the Persona provider can happen very much over an encrypted channel, _but_ the data in the Provider is not encrypted with a key which _you_ only know. The Persona provider has the data in the open (except passwords, which are hashed)

This whole fiasco has shown a weakness in the system which was there all the time, but little acknowledged: it is not about encrypting communications anymore. The eavesdropping risk is well understood and there are technologies available to get rid of it (SSL, SSH tunnels, whatever). But now we need to encrypt the data everywhere. Nobody can be trusted with the data anymore because the government can be accessing that data, and they do not need to eavesdrop: they just need to send a letter and implicitly threaten with litigation and imprisonment to obtain _whatever_ data they want.

This makes the technological solutions much more challenging, and some services can probably not be provided. How does Facebook provide services to their users if the data they have must be encrypted and they can not access it? How to share with friends photos if they are encrypted? Maybe creating ad- hoc group passwords to share data? I do not know, it is difficult.

<comment><USER4> Dude, what the hell are you talking about?

The only thing those in power would find out by looking at Mozilla's servers in charge with Persona authentication would be your freaking email address and that's it. This is by design.

<comment><USER2> "It's also worth pointing out that we do take certain technical measures to limit the data we collect. We've designed Persona so that the identity provider – including the fallback Identity Provider that we run – does not learn your browsing history."

That does not say "we only store your email address". It also does not say they are storing more than that, either. In any case, the data is not encrypted, so my argument stands.

<comment><USER5> You should read up on what Persona is before making judgments about it. Just a general guideline for reasonable discourse.

<comment><USER2> Here: [http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/](http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/persona/)

"Many sign-in systems carry your profile data with them; some even share that info with other sites and social networks. We believe you should control how your personal information is shared. Persona lets you get started with just your email address; you can add your profile data later, when and where you think it's appropriate."

Whatever that "profile data" is, can be requested by the government.

<comment><USER6> The "profile data" that refers to is the profile data you want to add per- site. It's got nothing to do with Persona.

All Persona knows is your email, a password and the fact that you (maybe) want to authenticate at some point (but it doesn't know where, and it can't be sure you're actually trying to authenticate somewhere even).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> "First, it's not clear to us that other governments have any less intrusive surveillance activities."

Well, it is clear the US has it. That should be enough. There are some unknowns unknowns, but this is a known unknown. There are other governments with the same willingness and capabilities of spying on everyone (do not move to China), but most of the countries in the world do not have a Government with both willingness and the technical abilities to do it. And most of the countries do not have a _huge_ and highly sophisticated shadow-government, with multiple agencies working out of the public oversight. Most countries have secret services, but they are a joke compared to what the US is able to deliver.

"Second, as a US company, Mozilla is subject to US Laws, wherever we host our servers."

Move the company out of the US. I undertsand that it won't be easy, but is the only way to be 100% sure that the US Government will not come requesting data (not that they will not take it anyway, if they are able to)

"Third, we'd rather not engage in an arms-race with US government agencies."

Read: we are afraid to lead here, because backlash from the government (and the public?) could be too damaging for Mozilla.

"We'd rather focus on efforts to change the Law to respect user data wherever it lives."

We know so much: the privacy situation in the US is bad, and getting worse _very_ fast. No amount of public discussion or legislation is going to change that. If PRISM is outlawed, even if those responsible are put into prison, they will start the PROSM program, more secretive, more broad. We will know about it on 2037 (maybe not, since by then we will be already living in a fully accomplished Orwell world). By then Mozilla will issue a statement similar to this one, explaining why they are not really taking the necessary steps.

Fazit: if even a company committed to freedom and openness like Mozilla is not willing and/or able to take the necessary steps, it shows how unavoidable 1984 is.

<comment><USER7> NSA and GCHQ are _very good at math_ and _very good at surveillance_.

Not engaging in an arms race with well funded, very smart, government agencies is probably a good idea.

If they think you're a criminal (doesn't apply to Mozilla) they will coerce foreign governments to cooperate - see for example the illegal attacks on Mega or the domain seizures for gambling or torrent sites.

But we know, from ECHELON, that they're happy to spy on anyone, and use weird loopholes in the law to do so.

Mozilla would need to find a country that had great Internet infrastructure; good strong laws and privacy culture[1]; lack of links to US; comfortable living for staff; etc etc.

That's not easy.

[1] The US has a strong culture of privacy, which is what makes PRISM so surprising for their citizens. (Not for many other people who were saying it's happening, and have been doing so for a while.)

<comment><USER2> "good strong laws and privacy culture[1]"

"[1] The US has a strong culture of privacy, which is what makes PRISM so surprising for their citizens. (Not for many other people who were saying it's happening, and have been doing so for a while.)"

When will the public accept that "good strong laws and privacy culture" is not in the _least_ a characteristic of the US, and hasn't been for the last 30 years?

The US is probably not a democracy anymore, and hasn't been for over 20 years, since Governments are elected by corporate interests (via campaign funding)

<comment><USER8> That's not the impression you get from people's reactions to PRISM (see "nothing to hide").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One great thing about Persona is that it doesn't have to get involved every time I log into some website. The keys can be cached, so Persona doesn't need to know which websites I visit the most frequently, how long I spend on each site, which pages I read, etc. Persona just provides the identity and stops there. In that sense, Persona's very design makes it an unattractive target of surveillance. Not much data there.

Right now, Mozilla knows my email address, my (hopefully salted and hashed) password, some keys associated with said password, and the set of IP addresses from which I ever accessed Persona. Maybe also the set of IP addresses from which its key was requested, but that's not a particularly useful piece of information when NSA is trying to figure out what I'm up to.

However, Two of the planned changes to Persona gets me worried a little. The first is that Persona will allow people to add multiple email addresses to each account and choose which one to use at any given time. This means that if NSA gains access to the contents of a Persona server, they'll be able to link several (seemingly unrealted) email addresses to the same account. If you're a heavy Redditor, imagine that somebody will be able to find out every throwaway account that you made and abandoned over the years to talk about things you don't want traced back to you. That's the sound of the Eureka! that the NSA agent utters when he finds out that the person who has been posting anti- factory-farming comments all over the place is actually the same guy who retweeted some anti-Esso catchphrase, who is the same guy whose personal blog contains pictures from a recent trip to Pakistan.

My second worry is that Mozilla expects email service providers to serve as a Persona provider for their users. If I'm not sure whether I want to trust the Mozilla Foundation (the good guys) with information about my various alter egos, I'm definitely going to be wary of giving Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft the same kind of information. Although it's possible for you to be your own Persona provider, realistically, not many people are their own OpenID providers at the moment, and not many of them are going to be their own Persona provider, either. Decentralization is often advertised as one of the better features of Persona, but I suspect that it's going to remain little more than an advertisement. Everyone else will just use Google-hosted Persona with their Google-hosted email, with no real improvement of privacy.

<comment><USER10> Unless I'm mistaken[1], right now the popup that has multiple emails in it is the part that will eventually become native to the browser itself, so no service should have access to that list of multiple emails.

Each of those emails is instead tied to an identity provider: for example, you might have a GMail address that uses Google as the IdP, while a Yahoo one would use Yahoo as the IdP. But Google and Yahoo don't actually know that you're using multiple emails to login to stuff, they only deal with the emails you register with them.

What happens right now is that Mozilla Persona hosts the JS-powered popup that lets you choose between emails, so we end up with that info. This is for use in the short-term and for older browsers, but long term I think it will shift to client-side only.

[1] I work for Mozilla, but not on the Persona project, so there is a chance that I'm completely wrong. Doh!

<comment><USER9> When I log into persona.org, it seems to allow me to remove my (currently only) email address by clicking the first blue "Edit" button and then clicking "Remove" next to my email address. So I assumed that, in the future, I might also be able to add email addresses. Sorry if I was wrong about this.

<comment><USER6> You can add email addresses now, this is just for the bridge, so it allows you to use alternate addresses to log in with. It's not specific to Persona, it's just how they designed the current bridge (which they aim to phase out in the long run).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any plans to pin the login.persona.org SSL certificate in browsers? It seems like a pretty tasty MITM attack target, especially while most identity providers don't have native persona support.

login.persona.org is listed in the key pinning list in Chrome[1], but marked as kNoPins, DOMAIN_NOT_PINNED - whatever that means.

[1] [http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/http/tra...](http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/http/transport_security_state_static.h?view=markup)

<comment><USER12> Yes and we're tracking it here: [https://github.com/mozilla/browserid/issues/2158](https://github.com/mozilla/browserid/issues/2158)

That list you see in Chromium (which is now also shared with Firefox) is the list of sites that come with HSTS ([https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Security/HTTP_Stric...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Security/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security)) turned ON.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The best things in Persona's favour:

1) A lot of people are working on it (hopefully eyeballs translate to fewer flaws)

2) You can host your own

3) Eventually when browsers are in on the game, it can be decentralised

The best response Mozilla could give is to highlight the above and ask for more help from those able to give it to make those things come true sooner.

We all know where we are today, so let's just get to where we want to be tomorrow.

And finally add a link to Github: [https://github.com/mozilla/browserid](https://github.com/mozilla/browserid)

<comment><USER9> > _it can be decentralised_

Technically, yes. Realistically, highly unlikely.

What's going to happen, at best, is that email service providers like Google and Microsoft will begin to support Persona. Either as a replacement for OpenID, or in addition to it. A negligible minority of the human population, such as regular HN readers like you and I, might opt to implement Persona on our own servers, but everyone else will remain hostages of their respective email service providers.

<comment><USER3> Realistically and perhaps sooner than you think They are finishing up the LDAP based provider, once that happens, you could hook it up to most company-wide authentication systems.

Once that's working @university.edu and @bigco.com would authenticate directly with the organization. That'll be huge. This is a very very high value feature, I expect it to be _the_ driving force for adoption.

One of the big challenges of large organizations is shutting someone off once they've left the company. This provides very unintrusive way to do so for applications that use Persona. I could see large organizations requiring that all logins use Persona (and the @organization domain).

<comment><USER6> That's exactly my thinking when creating [https://persowna.net/](https://persowna.net/). Providing authentication that hooks up to the corporation's specific system _for the entire web_ is potentially a very big thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems to me as though an interim solution would be to partner with organizations in other countries to set up Persona fallbacks there. Key to this is that it would need to be a partnership with an entity local to the nation where the server is stored: Mozilla should not run these services itself, for the reasons listed in Mozilla's own post.

Has this option been explored, or at least considered?

</comment><comment><USER15> The most important line for me from the blog post was

        Third, we'd rather not engage in an arms-race with US
        government agencies. We'd rather focus on efforts to
        change the Law to respect user data wherever it lives.

This effectively tells a lot about Mozilla's intent.

<comment><USER16> how do you know mozilla was not forced by US to post just that? and they cant tell you they have been forced to do this. This simple fact basically destroys persona imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > First, it's not clear to us that other governments have any less intrusive > surveillance activities.

This is a surprising statement, and somewhat dismissive of the respect for privacy and personal rights in the rest of the world. The NSA program is not a mundane activity, and should not be regarded as such, especially by a foundation like Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER17> We can run, or we can fight!</comment>


Nuclear War Survival Skills (1987) - <AUTHOR> http://www.oism.org/nwss/

<comment><USER2> The real thing, expedient stuff developed or collected at Oak Ridge, and actually tested in the field. Which you can't say about e.g. a number of Civil Defense shelter designs dreamed up by bureaucrats inside the Beltway that have insufficient ventilation (heat and humidity of too many people).</comment>


Keurig accidentally created the perfect business model for hardware startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@BoltVC/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect-business-model-for-hardware-startups-18e9c3b4e796 <comment><USER2> Except for this model to work, you need to enforce DRM, otherwise competitors will sell that product for much less. I think quite few people do have a problem with the DRM:

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt- to-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt-to-drm-its- coffee-cups-totally-backfired)

[http://mashable.com/2015/02/07/keurig-2-0-bad- taste/](http://mashable.com/2015/02/07/keurig-2-0-bad-taste/)

[http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/06/unsurprisingly-people- did...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/06/unsurprisingly-people-didn-t-like- keurigs-drm-protected-coffee/)

[https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom- Clip.html](https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/Keurig-DRM-Freedom-Clip.html)</comment>


Performance Oriented Next.js Starter with TypeScript, Redux and Built-In CLI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pankod/next-boilerplate/ <comment><AUTHOR> I want to point that Built-in CLI is huge timesaver.

It can generate page, functional or class component, connect to redux, add style files and stuff.

It saves a lot of time during the development.</comment>


Trump says he's prepared to slap tariffs on all $500B in Chinese imports to U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/07/20/trump-threatened-slap-tariffs-all-505-b-chinese-imports/805700002/ <comment><USER2> Correct me if I am wrong here, but I think a non democratic country like China will always have the upper hand in trade wars against a democratic one like the US, all else being relatively equal. They can always target politically sensitive agricultural produce in the swing states. I think the farmer vote in the US is quite significant. And the Chinese government does not need to worry about elections in the short term.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that China built its economy on exports and relies on them, but the US doesn't.

Also, I bet that farmers like Trump a hell of a lot more than they like selling to the Chinese.

<comment><USER4> China's leaders have enough money, they could hunker down for a decade and not export anything and still be successful. The people would starve, and there'd probably be some put out of there misery, it'd be a humanitarian nightmare, but China is a dictatorship and will wither the storm better than we will, and face it America will cave as soon as we have a competent leader who repeals the tariffs and fixes our geopolitical status.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's he gonna say? "I'm not ready to slap more tariffs?" This is entirely expected.

<comment><USER6> I almost hope his self created recession/depression hits sooner than later. Possibly nothing else will affect his polling.

<comment><USER7> You'd rather see your own country go into economic depression than Trump's decision working out? How are you so certain that tariffs on China are a bad idea?

<comment><USER6> Tariffs lead to market inefficiency and failures. I'm only voicing statistical likelihood. People also largely vote based on the economy - which is itself its own falsehood, but beside the point.

The thing I would like to see is Trump, the extremist right wing, and Russian influence driven from power.

Unfortunately, this guy is also the slippery character that always chickens out before he meets his fate. Someone will eventually convince him tariffs will push him out of power and he'll reneg. He is the pathological case that leads the self balancing system to destruction.

<comment><USER8> I agree that Trump is a Russian agent, it's more than clear at this point.

Economically though, the same theories that say that tariffs are economically inefficient say that running a $400 billion trade deficit for twenty years straight should be impossible. If you go back to first principles and some basic economic observations, it's fairly obvious that the trade policy of the U.S. over the past 40 years has not served the interests of a large majority of the American public, i.e. it is economically inefficient from the U.S. perspective. Trump wasn't elected by Putin, even if Putin did push him the last few yards over the goal line. If the Democrats are going to win, they need to be the party of truth and standing up for all Americans instead of just opposite-day Trump.

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that a trade deficit is equivalent to an investment _surplus_. So a long-running trade deficit just means foreigners have been investing on net in the US for a long time.

One day the President is complaining about the trade deficit and the next he's saying the US needs more foreign investment. I don't think you can coherently hold these grievances together. But if foreign investment is good right now, then the trade deficit must be good.

<comment><USER10> My knowledge of these topics isn't very deep. But the fact that the deficit is in USD should make this case different. The US is overspending in a resource that it has complete control of, so the impact of that behavior should be quite different from what a typical borrower would experience.

<comment><USER4> It's not like the US can just print more money when it needs it, it needs to raise taxes to account for money, to put money in it's bank account. Printing more money can upset the scales of deflation/inflation.. I'm not an economist, so can't say more than that.

<comment><USER10> I think that's what happens in the case of regular world economies who don't have the luxury of a reserve currency.

But if the US really did need to do all that accounting then how come they've accumulated a debt of 20 trillion?

I'm not saying that the US economy is completely immune, but they certainly seem more immune than other economies.

<comment><USER9> There are other countries with a higher debt/GDP ratio, so I'm not sure what facts lead you to assume the US is the sort of outlier that demands a special explanation. The number $20T does not seem meaningful in a vacuum.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Navy's Probe into Sky Penis - <AUTHOR> https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/05/14/the-navys-probe-into-sky-penis/ <comment><USER2> I endorse this headline. Also, don't google for "sounding rods" with your work computer.</comment>


Mobygames mysteriously broken in Firefox 4, cause unknown - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/portal-2

<comment><USER2> It is strange. The linked page works for me (ff4.0.1 on Kubuntu) but not the homepage - appears to be related to download of the CSS file. Saving locally the page opens properly however but I noticed that the CSS file is now named with .ACS extension (in the saved page's files folder).</comment>


What happens when the maintainer of a JavaScript library goes to prison? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/26/corejs_maintainer_jailed_code_release/ <comment><AUTHOR> Full title "What happens when the maintainer of a JS library downloaded 26m times a week goes to prison for killing someone with a motorcycle? Core-js just found out"</comment>