UK plan to create Pirate Finder General: power to appoint militias, create laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/19/breaking-leaked-uk-g.html <comment><USER2> Very sad. When I read the headline I thought they might be going after _real_ pirates like the ones off the coast of Somalia. Seems like that would be a more worthwhile use of taxpayer's money.

<comment><USER3> Seems like we should wait till we have some kind of _actual_ confirmation of whether the UK government is planning on doing something like this before we jump to conclusions. Actual confirmation, not just someone on the internet syaing they know someone who says they're planning something. I don't think this would pass muster with Labour back benches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to think that the more draconian they make laws like this, the faster they'll fall.

I'm just not so sure...

<comment><USER5> They're already all but gone. There will be an election by next May and they are expected to lose heavily - there is currently a spate of legislation they're attempting to shove through in a rush before they're booted out.

However, I can't see the next (Tory) government being particularly sympathetic to the interests of file-sharers. We can expect more of the same, if not worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the cat already out of the bag?

I mean, creating laws like "three strikes and you lose internet access" might have worked years ago, but now _everyone_ is used to downloading media online.

Laws that effectively make the majority of citizens into criminals (America's drug laws, for instance) tend to just be ignored, no matter how draconian.

<comment><USER7> They may be ignored, but they can still do a lot of damage. Consider all the folks languishing in prison for possession of small amounts of the wrong neurotransmitter agonist.

 _This_ mess -- if it goes through -- will do for your ability to keep information private what the war on drugs did for your ability to keep your home life private: that is, it'll give the cops not merely the power (which they already have) but the incentive to carry out intrusive searches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I doubt this would be unilateral action, perhaps this is the UK's part of ACTA? <http://www.eff.org/issues/acta>

</comment><comment><USER9> Sensational headline, righteous tone and an anonymous source. It has all the markings of a ... _cough_ ... reliable article.</comment>


Amazon reportedly wants to turn your hand into a credit card - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/18/amazon-reportedly-wants-to-turn-your-hand-into-a-credit-card.html <comment><USER2> If a cashless society is implemented.

What happens to the people, companies and organizations banned from using the cashless payment network?

</comment><comment><USER3> As long as you are still protected 100% against fraud, that's sounds like a good idea...

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh Amazon...</comment>


What do you think about Wolfram's teaser strategy? - <AUTHOR>

I have noticed a bunch of "Wolfram let me watch while he used his new engine" posts in the last few months. I understand that there is a point of building tension in your target audience. However, to me it looks that this is too much for such kind of geeky application - after too much of "I've seen it and it is too cool, it will put google to shame, but I won't let you try it yet" the result could be Wolfram singin' the blues with Cuil. Or I am too sceptic? <comment><USER2> Maybe he just likes screwing with Google.</comment>


Ph.D. 2.0: Rethinking the Ph.D. Application - <AUTHOR> http://jeffhuang.com/rethinking_the_phd_application.html# <comment><USER2> This reminds me of YC's "Apply without an idea" experiment. Both experiments seem to arise from a innovator's insight that a whole class of otherwise highly qualified candidates self select out because of a self perception that they don't "fit the mold". This is especially true of YC, where there are so many articles every day that tell the story of a founder who "saw a problem, and set off on this quest to solve it" that people who don't have an idea on hand when YC applications come up can immediately self exclude. Never mind that many great founders pivoted more than once on their way to success.

I'm excited to see this experiment "meet the marketplace", and see what pans out. Given the small number of PhD students these top programs take each year, just yielding one or two great people into the PhD program that otherwise wouldn't have applied seems like it'd really move the needle.

[Disclosure: I went to undergrad with Jeff and we're good friends. He really is a great "mold-breaker" himself and I'm excited to see how a great "hacker of systems" in the best sense of the word changes academia during his career]

<comment><USER3> +1000, and latching on to this top comment for more visibility ...

also check out jeff's related post on bringing startup culture to academic research! [http://jeffhuang.com/adopting_the_startup_culture_for_resear...](http://jeffhuang.com/adopting_the_startup_culture_for_research.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _An offer letter from Google or YCombinator (where you are the tech co- founder) which serves as evidence that you passed a challenging programming interview at Google, or that YCombinator believed you would be successful at developing your company product._

Interesting. Because I have no intention of moving to a Google or YCombinator location, I never applied to either, but this makes me wonder if merely having been offered an opportunity at such a place could have value. Even if one never intended to follow through.

Which might not be a great thing for the folks reviewing applications...

<comment><USER5> Of course. I have no intention of moving to Cali, but one thing I do plan to do when I go to vacation West next year is to apply to Google, possibly Facebook or/and Amazon. If I get the offer letter, I can frame it and use it as negotiating tactic here in the midwest. It's almost as good as saying "I worked at Google"

<comment><USER6> Possibly better: you don't have to actually _work_ at Google. 80% of the benefit minus 1% of the opportunity cost.

<comment><USER7> That's a very interesting perspective on working for Google. That is, that it's a waste of time. In my experience, working at Google is a blast both in terms of compensation and exciting projects.

<comment><USER8> If you were luckier than others it doesn't necesserily make you an example to be followed.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't call it luck. Google is consistently ranked as one of the top workplaces. Out of a large number of my co-workers at Google, almost all of them seem to enjoy their work. Very few people are unhappy or seeking to leave. The main difficulty is getting in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is a very interesting idea, and I look forward to the results of the experiment!

Allow me to take a moment to reiterate some of the comments I left on the Georgia Tech master's thread [1], specifically as a student who has taken graduate level computer science courses at Brown University with the majority of his experience working in industry.

* I went directly into industry in 1998 working at a software/systems engineer for a telecom working on Solaris deployments. I worked full-time and paid for my undergraduate education which I pursued part-time and which took me 9 years to finish. I majored in "information technology," as there was no computer science online program at Northeastern University. I didn't take any theory courses at all, and the majority of my course work was programming in languages like Java, C++, and C# (also COBOL, and the like...)

* I applied at Brown University after talking to the admissions and computer science departments multiple times, in which they told me I wouldn't be able to pursue a master's due to lack of independent or undergraduate research or an undergraduate education in computer science. The process of being told this was rather unfortunate, as the responses I received via e-mail telling me it wouldn't be possible were ended with "Sent from my iPhone."

* At the time I talked with them, I had been working at Basho Technologies for a year on Riak, an open source distributed Dynamo-style data store, as well as serving as a maintainer of rubygems.org.

* I was finally able to get accepted as a "non-degree" or "special" graduate student, which is allowed to take courses at full price. This role exists primarily to allow students to determine if they would be a fit for graduate school, at which point I would then have to re-apply for degree seeking status. This was possible because of an independent meeting I scheduled with Shriram Krishnamurthi, who, based on my industrial experience expedited the process along.

* Since starting as a "non-degree" student, I've been heavily motivated to attempt to stand out from other candidates for when I eventually re-apply to be a degree seeking student by independently publishing papers, publishing a blog, organizing a podcast, and speaking at conferences.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6510142)

<comment><USER3> what kind of research are you interested in for Ph.D.? i can't seem to find your academic info from your HN profile. email me if you want to chat more.

<comment><USER10> Distributed systems.

My website is located here: [http://christophermeiklejohn.com](http://christophermeiklejohn.com).

<comment><USER11> If you haven't already, you should really talk to [http://cs.brown.edu/~rfonseca/](http://cs.brown.edu/~rfonseca/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmmm. This is an interesting spin the Brown Professor has taken on the PhD application process.

For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is almost a must. Getting on to a prestigious PhD programme is incredibly competitive, and as someone who has gone through the whole process and seen it from both sides, I can say that I've seen individuals who'd make great computer science researchers not being given an opportunity because they don't tick the right "boxes".

Sure it's not perfect, but worth a shot if you're interested.

<comment><USER13> For those interested in a career in development, a PhD is rarely helpful. For the PhD candidate, it can even be counterproductive, as any gains in initial salary will be more than offset by the lost salary during the 5-6 years of the PhD.

Only for a career in research is a PhD important.

<comment><USER3> i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a young hacker can spend his/her 20s, regardless of which career they end up pursuing in the future. pursuing a Ph.D. + interning at several companies during summertimes = amazing combo for a wide variety of future careers.

the ONLY enduring downside (which you mentioned) is the lost income.

see: [http://vimeo.com/73178238](http://vimeo.com/73178238)

<comment><USER13> > _i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a > young hacker can spend his /her 20s_

No need to argue that point, because I'm not arguing against it. Look at the comment that I was replying to:

> _For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is > almost a must._

A PhD is a must for a career in research. It is not a must for a career in development. We use the term "R&D," but those are quite different things. There's a lot less "R" around, and a lot more "D."

When I say that the PhD is "rarely helpful," I do not mean that it is totally useless. I mean that the person who would otherwise have done the PhD is probably a self-starter who would've done other equally-valuable things in the meantime. Different things, certainly. But unlikely to be worse than what you would've done in the PhD. Thus, it is not helpful _compared to what else you could 've done in the meantime_.

For a career in the "D" side of computer science "R&D," it's about your technical skills and experiences. Doesn't matter if you acquired them while doing a PhD, or in a company, or working on open source. This is very different from a career in research, where it is much more important to have a piece of paper with "PhD" written on it.

<comment><USER3> "I mean that the person who would otherwise have done the PhD is probably a self-starter who would've done other equally-valuable things in the meantime." -good point! i agree with that a lot. i see what you mean now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised that admission into Computer Science PhD programs is so competitive. I would think that with the strong job market for computer scientists, there would not be as many students who would want to make the commitment to a PhD program over other job and entrepreneurial opportunities.

<comment><USER15> I believe someone who is not a good software engineer or even can't code at all, can still be admitted into some CS PhD program.

<comment><USER16> How about theoretical computer science? That probably doesn't need one to be a good software engineer.

<comment><USER17> Well, you really don't need to be a good engineer, but the skills required to do anything meaningful in theoretical computer science PhD program are more hardcore and rare than good SW engineers - from what I see, most of the people who can do theoretical CS are already doing it; and most engineering-oriented CS researchers couldn't/wouldn't cross to theoretical CS no matter what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would you be filling out a PhD application if you already had an offer letter from Google or YCombinator?

<comment><USER19> Because you always wanted to do academic research? Because you someday want to teach at the college level? Because you have no idea what you want to do and you want to keep your options open a while longer?

I left grad school to work in industry, but I'm not so naive as to think that everyone shares my preferences. I have friends who turned down Google offers c. 2001 to go to grad school, and they've never regretted that decision. (And I don't regret the time I spent in grad school before leaving, either).

<comment><USER20> Personally, I'd want to get a PhD to be able to work in such places as Microsoft Research. I don't want to become a teacher/professor. Other than that, I really hate some perils of academic world - bureaucracy, nepotism/favoritism/elitism, ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Like Jeff I am also a young faculty member at Brown ([http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/](http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/)) and I couldn't agree more with him. The Ph.D. application process has a lot of flaws. We (the Big Data Management Group at Brown) are also always looking for very talented people and similar to Jeff we started to hand out small challenges to candidates interested in doing data-centric systems research (see also [http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/phd14.html](http://cs.brown.edu/~kraskat/phd14.html)). In addition, last year we started a research internship program ([http://database.cs.brown.edu/big-data- internship](http://database.cs.brown.edu/big-data-internship)) - it is quite competitive to get in, but still easier than to be admitted to the PhD program, and the best way for both sides to determine if there is a good fit with the group and the PhD program. Finally, I would like to mention, that we actually do consider MOOC courses and github portfolios as part of the candidate evaluation.

</comment><comment><USER22> While I agree the application process needs improvement, I think this entry greatly exaggerates how hard it is to get into a PhD program. Since when do you need to be published to even get into a PhD program? When I went through the application process, I got accepted by 6/6 schools that I applied to, with no publications and no real ideas for what I wanted to research on. In fact, most PhD students actually don't even have a research topic until the second or third year of grad school. I think more than anything, your personal statement is the deciding factor in a lot of cases. What had worked for me was to have a list of research topics and faculty from each school that you're interested in working with, and directly address them in your statement. Other than that, of course whatever supporting evidence to differentiate yourself is helpful. I thought proposing to use offer letters from Google or YC (both have much lower acceptance rates than a PhD program) just to prove you can code is pretty hilarious.

<comment><USER23> When did you apply, and to what schools?

These days, good luck getting in a top tier institution for CS without a solid track record (I.e. a publication or two at an ACM/IEEE conference, and letters of rec from reputable professors/researchers in your field). The letters of rec are what make or break your application.

I agree that it's a bit over the top, but that's how it is.

<comment><USER22> 2005, Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UIUC, and my alma mater UT Austin. Ended up at Cal. Granted, I was EE and admitted as EECS, so maybe a bit different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Usually the Ph.D. is aimed at being a college professor and working toward tenure. The CS Ph.D. now seems to be aimed at such a professor but also at a career as an employee.

Sorry to say this, but Ph.D. or not, it is getting clear that in the US being an employee is no good for a career.

Can get hired as an employee in your 20s, but the chances go down in your 30s, and the chances go to near zero long before your 40 year career is over. Exception: If you rise high into management, then you might be able to continue to get hired until, say, 50. And high management positions commonly don't last very long.

E.g., a big tech company might hire 100 Master's or Ph.D. degree holders, promote 1 to management, and at age 35 or so fire the other 99. Then the other 99 can wish that they could convert their Ph.D., say, in electronic engineering, to an electrician's license or had followed the path of a friend in high school who was mowing grass and now has 5 crews mowing grass and is getting into landscape architecture and commercial instead of just residential clients.

In broad terms, for a long career in the US, be a sole proprietor with a geographical barrier to entry. If want to do something technical, then be a CEO of a startup that takes advantage of your technical background. For being an employee, regard that as a temporary slot that will have to be replaced by owning part or all of the business from which you get your income.

Then, a problem with a Ph.D. is that you spend in grad school most of your 20s when you are most employable. Then to go into the job market in your late 20s or 30s can be a big disappointment because, really, the _jobs_ are for subordinates, not narrow subject matter expert researchers. Actually, a Ph.D. can be highly resented, can be a black mark on your resume.

Be careful.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm applying as we speak, but in Bioeng. When I email professors and get to talking they always coach that they do NOT have control over the admissions process, that a committee acts as Maxwell's demon. Though I am not applying to Brown and do not know anything about the internals of their process, this seems to indicated that professor Huang has at least some control over the admissions. If I were professor Huang, I would be very very careful about this, as sparks of racism, sexism, and homophobia can quickly ignite into a fire. I want to be clear, I am not accusing professor Huang of this at all. Heck I don't know the guy a bit and I do like this alternative approach to the application a lot. Still, he needs to be careful.

<comment><USER26> Are you kidding?

Of course a professor has control over the admission process. If he wants you on his team, you're in, unless you have a criminal record, or GPA below 3.0 (or whatever is absolute minimum for that particular grad school).

Think of it as a hiring process, with the professor as a hiring manager.

<comment><USER25> No, I am not kidding.

Based on the conversations I have had, it seems to be typical that a committee selects the applicants, not the professors. That is what all the professors tell me.

That being said, I would be stunned if this were the truth. There is no frickin way that this happens. Here's how I imagine it:

'Admissions committee is in session' 'So, which of these bozos we gonna pick?' 'I want Joe, Schmo, and Dingus' 'Sweet, I want Harry, and Fiona' 'Ok, we all cool?' 'Yep' 'Aite, lets get beers'

<comment><USER26> Well, the committee also has a job of selecting the rest of the applicants, if there are still places left after professors made their recommendations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cool idea-- people inventive enough to go down an entrepreneurial route would probably be interesting/compelling candidates for academic innovation.

I actually think that creating many interesting projects + one's corresponding Github would be a better metric than getting a Google (or even YC) acceptance letter. You want people who are constantly tinkering and thinking of new ideas/projects/approaches and inventing just for the sake of inventing.

If you go too entrepreneurial, you might also be selecting for students who might be more amenable to dropping out from the program and doing a start-up (which then wastes the resources/time that Jeff mentioned he had to give to every PhD candidate).

</comment><comment><USER28> I love this. Especially the part where it gives you a few problems that you can try to solve. Not only is a good way to find talent that may otherwise be detected. It increases the chances of finding new ways to solve some problems. (Edit: grammar)

</comment><comment><USER29> As a person who was about to apply to PhD programs but changed my mind due to insufficient recommendations, I'm glad somebody else realizes that PhD admissions is utter bull crap.

185 dollar GRE that I can get in the 99th percentile on with ZERO studying? Grades that aren't normalized across institutions weighed heavily? Need recs from established professors who can slip in a good word for you?

Oh sorry, you were actually doing things that interested you, not necessarily things that would impress the right people. Oh sorry you took tons of hard classes at a prestigious institution and so have something less than 4.0. Oh sorry you hopped labs for a bit instead of staying with that boring CS guy that would've gotten you into any PhD program in America for 4 years. Oh sorry you spent a year or two out of college doing startup tech work without building credentials with other PhD grads but nevertheless solving research grade problems.

I've realized that the PhD admissions does not select candidates who actually want to do research. It selects candidates who want to be admitted into a PhD program. No thanks. I love science and math, and I love research, but I think the PhD application has been so harrowing for me, I won't consider it again unless drastic changes are made.

<comment><USER30> As a person who reads PhD applications and works with graduate students, bullshit.

I care a little about your GRE scores, it is a filter, you need some kind of standardized comparable. Congrats on getting in the 99th percentile (that's expected). I don't care much about your GPA. I might look at what classes you took. I will probably look at your reference letters briefly. They might be from professors, they might not. I don't care. I love the fact that you have some startup or industry experience, you are slightly more likely to actually know how to get things done.

The very first thing I read is your cover letter, then straight to your research statement which I will read in great detail. The only thing I care about is do you have a passion for research, are you likely to be successful at it.

At most research institutions in most areas of science, we have to pay our graduate students stipend and tuition, either right away or after a year. This is a damn good incentive to get students in who are going to do great research.

All I care about is getting great researchers in the door and (eventually, hopefully) into my lab. So, my advice: focus on your research statement. Tailor it to the department your are applying to, talk about the research they are doing there. But, have your own agenda. At least know what research areas you are passionate about.

<comment><USER29> What you are telling me is completely at odds with what others have told me (including faculty on admissions committees) so I imagine it varies from institution to institution. I had a pretty compelling application a year ago and my statement (in my opinion anyways) demonstrated that I was caught up with the academic literature on a particular topic and I had done some work myself implementing and attempting to improve existing techniques. I realized that I may not have worked on that topic in particular, but my hope was that it would demonstrate research aptitude. My application was rejected from 8 schools and I contacted several to see what the problem may have been.

The GRE point I was trying to make was that since 99th percentiles are expected, the test shouldn't exist at all as it is clearly a poor filter.

<comment><USER31> Did you have a low GPA by any chance? In academia, this is considered a black mark :(

Honestly, I think you dodged a bullet. Academia isn't that magical (CS PhD here). I think you get a better education reading Hacker News some days.

<comment><USER29> Perhaps this was the case. I did not do well the first two years. I hated school in fact and averaged a 3.3 or so (the engineering courses felt very soft and uninteresting). This changed when I discovered pure math and theoretical physics and I averaged almost a 4.0 for the last two years with the most difficult courses so I didn't think it would matter. I like engineering now, but I wished that the fundamentals were covered more rigorously as the lack of rigor made me initially very disinterested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm still waiting for a REMOTE PhD position :)

<comment><USER32> I doubt if it would happen at all.

I'm a full time Ph.D. student. You might, of course, know that professors interact with the students very often (except if the professor is super busy always). I interact with mine almost every day. I do work with couple of collaborators in different countries. That is because my advisor knows them in-person before deciding to collaborate. I work with lab colleagues frequently. Remote makes all this extremely challenging.

<comment><USER4> What about it exactly is challenging? How is doing computer science research (probably what many people here would do; I don't know what your research field is) with a team of remote individuals harder than doing software development with a team of remote individuals?

<comment><USER3> remote software development is _very_ challenging, and when it works well, it's due to super-clear specs and project management. by its very nature, research isn't as amenable to crystal-clear specs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Application looks too involved for Brown. When applying to 10 schools I wouldn't do this one because it has no overlap with my other application. I can reuse my letters of recommendation, I can't reuse this application.

<comment><USER34> I graduated quite some time ago. Getting letters of recommendation from professors would be impossible for me. I doubt I'd have one professor that knew me when I graduated let alone now years later. And yet, fulfilling these requirements would be very easy for me. I think it's very nice to have multiple routes in. Even if very few candidates avail themselves of this latter route, they might be interesting candidates worth strong consideration.

<comment><USER35> I'm in the same boat applying to a Master Program. It doesn't help that i spent the better part of my 20's as a business owner with no boss that can write a letter for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wonder how would this work in fields other than CS. I'm in physics, and I got my D.Phil, but has been thinking seriously about the state of academic research, including the admission process & finding good student/lab fit.

Looking at the examples in the original post, I think the "demonstrate scholarship" section could directly apply for physics as well. Offer letters, github, are more more marginally useful...

Tough one. I'd love to hear how this works out, he sounds like a very thoughtful professor.

</comment><comment><USER37> That sounds right up my alley! I'm currently tracking the geolocation of computer science professors by tracking the gaze of the NSA's agents who are watching them through the myriad of security cameras in our country.

My academic resume isn't going to get me noticed for a PhD program but it sounds like someone is finally looking at ability (I had great scores on the Computer Science GRE in 1990, but they apparently only last five years and that test has been discontinued)!

<comment><USER13> The GRE Computer Science exam was pretty heavy on theory and systems. This made sense for 1990, when CS departments were heavier on theory and systems. It has grown less relevant as the field of CS grew to encompass additional areas.

Thus, CS programs stopped requiring it, so fewer people took the exam, so the ETS decided to drop it.

<comment><USER37> I understand the rationale for dropping the exam, but it's the last academic endeavor on my resume. I've got a ton of work experience since then and many of my projects would be worthy of today's buzzwords. My lament is that only forward-thinking advising professors would see the value in what I have done.

Note that no professors have actually been tracked or harmed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm almost certain that a Ph.D. in the UK takes 3-4 years max. Why does it take so much longer in USA?

<comment><USER39> You still need to do your masters, "along the way". If I remember correctly, in England, first you do you masters, and then start a PhD. 2 masters + 4-5 phd = 6.

Most European countries require a masters degree before starting, but the PhD is officially supposed to take 3 years (but usually takes 3-4+)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Submit your GitHub portfolio and join the Ivy League university that also develops Racket? Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER41> This got me to consider applying to brown whenever I'm looking at grad schools.

</comment><comment><USER42> even better: don't apply at all. simply work/study/design/research/build whatever you wanted to do anyway. then share/publish/collaborate as you desire. or not. rinse, repeat. be a genius. or a crank. or an entrepreneur. or some mix. just do things and get it out there. see what sticks. not all smart people are in academia and not all people in academia are very smart. and you can publish, collaborate, ship and show accomplishments without/outside a university paradigm.

<comment><USER43> Please don't underestimate how much it helps to have an adviser who has been through the ropes, or how awesome it is to have peers that are brilliant and working on similar stuff. I'm a self-taught programmer, so I know exactly what it's like to wing it, and I loved the PhD experience. The anti-PhD attitude on here is so weird, considering YC seems to be largely the same thing on a smaller timescale (weed out everyone but the very best, have them make things, give them connections, ...)

<comment><USER42> understood

personally I think HN has both a pro-PhD, pro-academic, and also an anti-PhD or anti-academic segment. Sometimes within the same people! I certainly do.

I think it has both strengths and weaknesses. I think to the extent that universities and PhD track stuff serves an unnecessary and embarrassing anachronistic echo from the Middle Ages then that is a bad thing. But to the extent it helps teach disciplined thinking, cultivate a new generation of teachers and researchers, and helps to cull out noise or invalid/false/dumb contributions to the advancement of an art, it's a very good thing. The weed- out effect is good. I think some antipathy comes from the folks who perceive there to be a lot of non-weeds outside academia, and weeds within it. All discipline and curation is good. But it's not the unique providence of universities or professorship tracks. A lot of programmers have a libertarian bent too and dislike profit-maximizing monopolies or priesthoods, and universities/academia has at least a little of that aspect to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Classifieds: "Master is looking for more cheap power with experience from Google to pay minimum wage". Good luck, professor Huang.</comment>


Text messages being resent from February, in November - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20953422/text-messages-delayed-received-overnight-valentines-day-delay <comment><AUTHOR> I first learned about this in the Google FI subreddit here [https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleFi/comments/dszauf/unexpected...](https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleFi/comments/dszauf/unexpected_early_morning_messages/)

I was one of the people that received a message, just before 4am ET I received a message from someone I am not on speaking terms with and replied in a fashion one would expect for dealing with such an individual. Yay fun. Someone in another thread in that sub had reported they received a message from their ex calling them babe, and also replied.

My question here is, why is there some server out there that is storing messages from at least 4 carriers from 9 months ago and resending them.

I assumed carriers kept our messages for a certain length of time, and that one or more government agencies might store them indefinitely, but why is some random server out there holding onto messages for 4 major carriers for 9 months and as configured in some way that allows it to resend those messages NINE months later?

Forget the security implications of this, what about people that received messages from a friend/family member/co-worker/loved one that has since died like in the article:

>one person said they received a message from an ex-boyfriend who had died; another received messages from a best friend who is now dead.

Can anyone familiar with this part of the communications industry speculate on why such a thing is even possible or shed some light on just how long these messages might be stored on such servers?

<comment><USER2> Telcos use a third parties to transfer messages between networks so you can sms anyone (eg att to Verizon). Someone like Syniverse probably restored a database from Feb which caused the resends.

They store the data because it's valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The conspiracy theorist in me says that unnamed "vendor" is a 3 letter agency that had a bunch of messages drop into a dead-letter queue or similar and something caused them to all be re-processed... a la Room 641A (Yes I know in Room 641A they weren't in the middle but just saving off a copy but still).

</comment><comment><USER4> better headline: Across major US carriers people received text messages sent Valentine's Day

Its not clear that the messages are being resent. They appear to being delivered for the first time.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Its not clear that the messages are being resent. They appear to being delivered for the first time.

This thread has multiple people reporting receiving messages they'd already received previously:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/GoogleFi/comments/dswhi2/random_tex...](https://old.reddit.com/r/GoogleFi/comments/dswhi2/random_texts_at_310_am/)</comment></comment>


Google has a secret apartment where Page and Musk meet to discuss crazy ideas - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-secret-apartment-where-larry-202728134.html <comment><USER2> Why do I now imagine Elon busting in to the apartment like Kramer, spinning around wildly then just proclaiming something like "piezoquantum computers, Larry! We could put them in all the tires!"

</comment><comment><USER3> The last bit identifies the building. Not so secret now?</comment>


Show HN: Death Note – write a name WhoShallDie - <AUTHOR> http://whoshalldie.com <comment><USER2> Clicking a name votes on it, right? That was not obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> i believe instead of GPL, you should be using BSD or similar more open licenses, so one can fork and create "who shall live", "who shall have sex with an alien" etc.

<comment><USER4> [IANAL]

GPL doesn't prevent forking or derivative works. It just means that the source code to the forks or derivative works has to be made available to users to whom the software is distributed...e.g. if the code is put into iOS app. If it runs on a web server, then only Affero GPL requires the source to be made available.</comment></comment>


Create interactive "how-to-do" manuals in a few minutes - <AUTHOR> http://www.helppier.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> What did you think about Helppier?</comment>


Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/restoring_trust.html <comment><USER2> The question is then; in a two party system where both offer the blue pill, who the hell do you vote for? Neither Democrats nor Republicans will change this. Due to the way that the political system works, a third party isn't possible. In the UK we have a Conservative/Liberal coalition, where traditionally Liberals were strong privacy advocates, but now turn a blind eye to the massive Orwellian/Huxley-esque society growing like hydra's heads in front of their very eyes. The complaints are muted. The mass media looks the other way. Why?

To me this means:

\- the system is broken

\- the current political framework (especially in the US) is a fabrication, designed to make you believe that you have a choice, but in reality your vote is meaningless and your choice an empty vassal. The red pill is just a blue pill painted red.

The problem is that the intrusions so far, do not impact the majority in such a way as to hinder their daily quality of life. The change from a private world to a 'all-seeing government' is slow, but it is sustained. At some point we will reach a tipping-point, and then the only option is revolution, because by that point, the system will have enveloped the public fabric of life so tightly, that there will be no way to gently extricate ourselves.

It is your (US) own great thinker and do-er that said:

       "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a
       little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
       safety."
       ― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life & writings
         of Benjamin Franklin

The irony is that the 'little temporary safety' may well have been a ruse. Even if Al-Qaeda is a real and present danger to the US at home, I doubt that the scale of that threat is worth the loss of liberty and the billions of dollars spent on funding the 'fight against terror'.

<comment><USER3> _The question is then; in a two party system where both offer the blue pill, who the hell do you vote for?_

Greens or libertarians, which I have been doing for a long time. Real change starts at the ballot box.

<comment><USER4> The problem with "Real change starts at X" statements is that they necessarily handwave around the circularity of the problems we face.

We can't get better policies until we elect better parties, but we can't elect better parties until we address campaign finance and fix the electoral system, but we can't address campaign finance and fix the electoral system until we elect better parties willing to pass better policies. And the merry-go-round goes on and on.

<comment><USER5> >We can't get better policies until we elect better parties, but we can't elect better parties until we address campaign finance and fix the electoral system, but we can't address campaign finance and fix the electoral system until we elect better parties willing to pass better policies. And the merry- go-round goes on and on.

So you have to pick one and fix it. It's an engineering problem.

So for example, you have to fix campaign finance. The people in Washington aren't going to fix campaign finance in Washington because the system that exists is the one that got them elected. Ditto for the people in Sacramento, Albany, etc. But wait, you can have Sacramento and Albany fund the federal campaigns of Senators running in California and New York (and so on). State Senators don't get money from K Street, they get money from an entirely different set of lobbyists, so you can get the bills through by taking advantage of the regional weakness of the specific opponents. And then do it the other way around and have the federal government pass a national campaign finance bill for state-level offices.

That is obviously not a trivial undertaking, but we can't jut say "damn it, we're stuck in a cycle" and throw up our hands or it'll never get fixed.

<comment><USER4> I don't mean to suggest there's nothing people can do. However, it's facile and unhelpful to suggest that this is a simple engineering problem. The reason campaign finance is hard to fix is that the people who have the power to fix it are the very same people who benefit the most from the current system, i.e. the people who are most effective at securing the financing of wealthy benefactors.

That's a human problem, not an engineering problem. It can still be solved, but it won't be solved with an engineering approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never trusted the government or the internet. I trust my family and friends.

"...the three aims of the tyrant. These are, (1) the humiliation of his subjects; he knows that a mean-spirited man will not conspire against anybody; (2) the creation of mistrust among them; for a tyrant is not overthrown until men begin to have confidence in one another; and this is the reason why tyrants are at war with the good; they are under the idea that their power is endangered by them, not only because they would not be ruled despotically but also because they are loyal to one another, and to other men, and do not inform against one another or against other men; (3) the tyrant desires that his subjects shall be incapable of action, for no one attempts what is impossible, and they will not attempt to overthrow a tyranny, if they are powerless. Under these three heads the whole policy of a tyrant may be summed up, and to one or other of them all his ideas may be referred: (1) he sows distrust among his subjects; (2) he takes away their power; (3) he humbles them."

Politics By Aristotle

[http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.5.five.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.5.five.html)

<comment><USER7> I only "trust" distrust. Mutual suspicion of belligerents (adversaries) to keep each other in check. Balance of powers.

I was a _very_ engaged election integrity activist. The reason elections in the USA worked as well as they did for as long as they did is because no one trusted the system, each other, etc. Hence the Australian ballot system of voting. If all the players agree to the count, then I as Joe Citizen have greater confidence (vs trust) in the results.

The moment anyone mentions "trust", I assume there's a scam of some sort, either by default or by design.

PS- I sometimes trust family.

<comment><USER8> Bruce Schneier may be the wrong blogger for you to follow, then. He talks about trust all the time. To quote his recent book:

> [T]oday, I passed several strangers on the street without any of them > attacking me. I bought food from a grocery store, not at all concerned that > it might be unfit for human consumption. I locked my front door, but didn't > spare a moment's worry at how easy it would be for someone to smash my > window in. Even people driving cars, large murderous instruments that could > crush me like a bug, didn't scare me.

>Most amazingly, this worked without much overt security. I don't carry a gun for self-defense, nor do I wear body armor. I don't use a home burglar alarm. I don't test my food for poison. I don't even engage in conspicuous displays of physical prowess to intimidate other people I encounter.

>It's what we call "trust." Actually, it's what we call "civilization."

His point is that we _need_ trust. You _can 't_ actually watch for every possible betrayal. Trust in fear of retribution will suffice, but there needs to be some trust, or there can be no complex civilization.

<comment><USER7> re Civilization, I'm in the Robert Wright "Non-zero" camp, where progress is made when non zero sum alternatives are found to win/lose (zero sum) situations.

As for Schneier, he's great, have a few of his books, read his blog. The distinction he doesn't make is between governance and civility. Or perhaps its a spectrum. If someone else has power over me, or delegated to them thru me (eg elections), I'm always going to be very skeptical.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has found a better answer to the conundrum of governance than balance of powers (mutual distrust).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to compare the framing of this column with Schneier's commentary on the revelations of NSA surveillance in 2005:

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/nsa_and_bushs_...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/nsa_and_bushs_i.html)

It's full of "Bush did X", "Bush wanted Y". Now he says the NSA has "gone rogue". Huh.

If Schneier is as unhappy with today's programs as he was with 2005's, then perhaps he should communicate a bit more clearly that today's occupant of the Oval Office could end any of them with a phone call.

<comment><USER10> I don't think its as simple as "ending it with a phone call". Billion dollar programs don't ever get killed that easy.

<comment><USER9> It is literally that simple. If Bush ordered this surveillance started, Obama can order it stopped. The NSA works for him. If they don't do as he asks he can start firing people until they do.

Obviously Schneier understood this when he wrote his 2005 column.

<comment><USER11> Yes. The Obama fiasco has been a huge disappointment. I'm interested in ideas about what could have been done differently -- Obama talked a very good game during his candidacy about issues of this sort. The really big indicator he was being dishonest was the post-election flip-flop over unwarranted wiretaps.

Only picking candidates that have a track record of opposition to programs like this would be good, but such candidates are in very short supply. (Feingold is about the only one that comes to mind.)

<comment><USER12> >post-election

Pre-election. He flip-flopped about the wiretaps prior to his election, after winning the primaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We should be able to trust the government to do things like run courts, build roads, and deliver clean water.

We should never trust the government when it comes to standing armies, criminal prosecutions, intelligence gathering, and expansion of its own power.

<comment><USER14> > We should be able to trust the government to do things like run courts

> We should never trust the government when it comes to criminal prosecutions

And now I'm confused again. Do all cases simply become civil cases? Murder is now OK again?

<comment><USER13> I said the government shouldn't be trusted. That's the point of the adversarial system.

<comment><USER14> The same adversarial system that would be used for Snowden, and was used for Swartz, Ellsberg, Drake, and even DJB?

Admittedly that's kind of a strawman as you're not claiming here anything to do with those one way or another. But many who don't trust the government to put people on trial do point to cases exactly like those.

On the other hand if you're simply saying that we shouldn't trust government to prosecute cases, operate surveillance without oversight, etc. _just because_ they're the government I would agree with you 100%.

But on the other hand by the definition I wouldn't even trust the government to deliver clean water or build roads without oversight. As an example of where even the latter could go wrong I'll point to a book that HN pointed out to me, "Fatal Purity" about the French Revolution... one of the many examples of then-current corruption by the nobles was of road-building. The specific example was of a new provincial road that was argued necessary for the people to build despite there being an existing road... it was built right up to a nobleman's estate and then the rest was canceled, leaving the lord with a gratis road built straight to his property.

Or for a modern example, the famed "Bridge to Nowhere".

So there is no part of government which is inherently trustworthy and worthy of operating without oversight. But once you've established good oversight (such as you'd definitely want over criminal prosecutors!), that leaves the possibility of other government-provided functions open again.

There may certainly still be reasons that government should _not_ perform those functions, but it wouldn't be about the impossibility of providing oversight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Personally I reserve trust for people, and I have standards and expectations for non-people. I'm sure General Alexander, DNI Clapper, and Michael Hayden are good people that would make excellent neighbors (if I were so inclined I would likely consider them personal friends) -- but in their official duties they are intractable foes.

I would apply the same term "intractable foe" to every other person acting in their professional responsibility too: everybody has a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed. It's perfectly natural to have a strong sense of self- preservation, and by the same token many cannot have the convenience of a maintaining a clean conscience. Yes it's a cop-out and yes people like that are what's wrong with this country, but it's reality.

Not all of us are willing to sacrifice our lives for an ideological cause.

<comment><USER8> Do you buy food from a supermarket? Do you test it for salmonella and ecoli using your own bio-lab?

Do you fly on commercial (or governmental) airlines? Do you personally preflight the plane?

Even if you trust every member of these organizations, that isn't enough. It's them acting as organizations that allows them to achieve safety. If you don't trust organizations, you basically can't function in society.

<comment><USER7> Which organizations do you trust?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The common pattern in the responses of most organizations is "word play".

Skype -

        Skype wasn't changing its protocols to make it possible for the government to eavesdrop on users,
        because the government was already able to eavesdrop on users.

Google and Facebook-

        Google and Facebook insist that the NSA has no "direct access" to their servers. Of course not; the
        smart way for the NSA to get all the data is through sniffers.

Apple-

        Apple says it's never heard of PRISM. Of course not; that's the internal name of the NSA database.

I am surprised that such large organizations are using "word play" to put a veil on their activities. Are they not aware that they would be found out in this Internet age? Personally, I think this would make an interesting social science study.

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately they probably can get away with technicalities. As long as it sounds reassuring to the vast majority of people who were only engaged enough with this issue to read a couple of headlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A lot of people in tech want to complain about innovation. Why are there so many Farmville apps and nobody seems to be solving important problems?

Well here you are, the biggest and most important problem in modern society today, the fact that our governments are recording most everything that we're doing. And they will use these recordings as they see fit in the future. You couldn't ask for a bigger or more important problem to solve.

<comment><USER19> It's solvable, too. If they are interested in having credibility, Internet services can implement secure communications and storage. They may have to charge for it because they will forego some ad revenue.

So what to make of the fact that nobody who has loudly declared they are all for customers' privacy has actually done anything about it?

<comment><USER18> Don't forget mesh networking. Seems like mesh with a combination of trusted anonymous P2P would be very difficult to tap into.

There's lots of nerd fun here for those interested. And there's a big need. A shame more folks aren't stepping up to the plate.

Just to whet the appetite, how much of the internet do you actually participate in, versus just consume? Most server stats show a 40-1 or even 200-1 ratio of readers to commenters. And how much unique material is really out there, anyway? I'd bet a couple hundred MBs of text represents the vast majority of internet content most consumers passively consume each day.

So why all of this client-server, point-to-point nonsense? For most consumption content, do some kind of BT for common content distribution, then use some other solution if a consumer wants to send information the other way.

I understand many will yell "But that violates the TOS!" but screw 'em. If whenever I get on the internet all my information is being stored against my will, I have no obligation to abide by any subsequent agreement.

<comment><USER20> Bittorrent is so last decade! We need a replacement that is truly anonymous. An not just file sharing, but also browsing, email and search.

Problem is, suppose TOR is fixed and we are anonymous on its network, we still need to NEVER log in with an account we used over clear net. We have to give up our "friend" lists on FB and followers on Twitter, our karma on reddit, all that could tie us back to a known identity. We can never email a friend on his clear net email account. We are reduced to an anonymous identity talking with anonymous others. It's like 4chan in a way.

So, there, we can have anonymity if we give up our old identities and everyone we connected with in the past. And that's assuming we can trust TOR. Sad/

A deeper problem is that we need to treat our computers and phones as hostile. They can push updates with backdoors any time they want, to everyone or to selected few. Apple, MS and Google hold the update keys of most devices in the world. We need a secure OS. Maybe it's Linux, if we can be sure it does not carry hidden backdoors implanted by the state(s).

And even then, we need to trust the hardware. The disk, the networking card, all components could spy on us. Maybe they too have backdoors.

<comment><USER21> No snark, this is a chance for the libertarians to be vindicated in a big way. Let's see if the geniuses of the software/IT world can design and build a world-wide infrastructure that replaces the DARPA internet, without government help? It would put paid to a lot of tropes propagated in the last 20 years about the decreasing importance of the state, the evil of the state (which is in clear evidence here). Are we capable of allocating capital and human resources at the scale required? Facebook has a billion users, so the network effects should be easy to harness, no? Or does it only work for capturing ad dollars and spying on activists? I am sincerely asking - if there is to be any hope, we have to advance past the internet as it is technically constituted, while preserving the huge social gains it has brought.

edit - maybe I should clarify - anonymity is not possible now, and it is at odds with the values of the police state and, unfortunately, the ad-driven media economy. I am agreeing that anonymity is important, and asserting that to reclaim it, we will have to come up with some revolutionary social constructs on a scale of the space program, that exclude the possibility of government involvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the article:

"Accountability means that those who break the law, lie to Congress or deceive the American people are held accountable. The NSA has gone rogue, and while it's probably not possible to prosecute people for what they did under the enormous veil of secrecy it currently enjoys, we need to make it clear that this behavior will not be tolerated in the future. Accountability also means voting, which means voters need to know what our leaders are doing in our name."

We should pay attention to the last sentence especially. Look at how your elected representatives voted on, for example, the Amash amendment[1]. If your representative voted against the amendment, let them know that you are not going to vote for them in the next election, and follow through. If they voted for the amendment, send them a letter thanking them for standing up for their citizens' civil rights, and encourage them to continue.

[1] [http://americablog.com/2013/07/amash-conyers-anti-nsa- amendm...](http://americablog.com/2013/07/amash-conyers-anti-nsa-amendment- lost-by-12-votes-205-217.html)

<comment><USER23> NSA? It seems as if as a whole the Executive branch has. From ignoring laws, selectively enforcing them, or even delaying when they take effect, the Executive branch seems hell bent on ignoring Congress and the Courts. Congress doesn't get a free pass either, but for any Executive branch persons to lie either directly or by omission should not be acceptable.

I guess we should have realized the day we got Czars

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why on earth would you want people to trust the government?

That's what got us into this mess.

<comment><USER25> You can't verify everything and everyone you're dealing with on a daily basis. You need to trust someone. If you're not trusting your government you need to trust the people watching the government. Or the people watching the people watching the government. Or... It's turtles all the way down from there. The government acts as a large trust provider in a lot of daily interactions. Police authority derives from the government. Passports and ID-cards derive their validity from trust in the government...

So it would be nice if in general we could trust the government and to be able to trust the government we need them to be open and transparent about what they do in our name - and held accountable if they fuck up in our name.

<comment><USER26> Chain of trust? Maybe the USG is an organization that's too large to put your trust in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If your service provider isn't a target for NSA snooping, it's a target for foreign state actor and criminal hacking.

The first step to healing this situation is the radically reduce the need for trust.

</comment><comment><USER27> Welcome to the press briefing today. Our first agenda item is to discuss where the drones will attack...

Schneier must not mean that when he talks about coming clean.

Anyone who has been betrayed by a friend or lover can regain trust in that person somehow, but that's not the same as regaining trust in a group of people. I don't trust large groups, and how does a whole group (or government) start down the path of regaining trust anyway? I agree with Mr. Schneier, but balancing power seems closer to the solution than what he said about the government starting down a path, coming clean and other things that individuals do better than groups.

<comment><USER28> I have an easier time trusting large groups over individual people, because groups can display trend behavior whereas individuals are always going to have eccentricities that can't be mitigated by aggregation.

<comment><USER27> So call tmobile or verizon they are thankful for your call after all.

<comment><USER28> That's an awesome non-sequitur and I hope you use it at parties.

<comment><USER27> Okay I will, if conversation permits. What are the chances? Probably low.

I'm thinking the premise is that tmobile and verizon care about your call and the conclusion is that you should call them. That conclusion doesn't follow the premise because you may not care that they care, but I presupposed you did because you were talking about trusting groups. When a tmobile support person thanks me for my call I do not trust that they are truly thankful.

<comment><USER28> Under this model, you should be calling every single person in the world and telling them how much you care. Because they're individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In addition to the transparency, oversight, and accountability that Schneier proposes, there also needs to be some ability for the population to reasonably assess risk. A lot this stuff is driven by fear. And the government does use that to its advantage to push things through that might otherwise be objectionable. If the population of our country is scared to death of possible terrorist attacks (as it seems to be), then I don't see how that same population will vote/protest to restrict the government as long as it claims to be protecting them from imminent disaster.

</comment><comment><USER30> Schneier pointed out the 'trust and verify' mechanism, i.e. the need to have accountability on Government policy and actions. That is a basic instrument to ascertain legality of government actions. However, if we talk about improving the level of 'trust' in institutions, that is a whole different level. We can't possibly stop there. Gaining and maintaining 'trust' means a lot more than simply acting in a legal way and takes more then just verification. I consider a basic need for establishing trust also the analysis of their motivation behind certain choices. Government officials are not just 'citizens', and their agencies are not private companies. While the private citizens and companies can do whatever they want which is not considered illegal, public officials and agencies are governed by a different concept: they have a specific mandate/scope and can only perform in that narrow path. They should not exploit policy wording to perform questionable actions; especially if such policies are classified and only a restricted number of people has the ability to review and assess them. If the government wants to conquer back some form of trust by the public opinion, not only it should improve transparency, but should also steer from this farce of hiding their real intentions behind legalese and wordplay contained in all the latest security related policies.

</comment><comment><USER31> > Transparency first involves coming clean. Not a little bit at a time, not > only when you have to, but complete disclosure about everything.

I have this uneasy feeling that they will fight this as long as they can. I'm not sure true transparency will ever happen, without drastic measures.

Their strategy will probably be:

1) Wait for the end of the revelations

2) Assess the level of public outrage

3) Make the cheapest concessions possible (a bit like Ms Merkel recently canceling the old "spying pact" that was never used)

</comment><comment><USER32> People should NOT trust either governments or corporations, ever. Otherwise it maximizes corruption due to little or no oversight.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Restoring Trust in Government and the Internet"

Interesting title, Bruce.

Is this your first `walking in on little kitten feet', getting your tippy-toe wet, capitulating inverted ClapperSpeak, or `Shark Jump' or `Breaking Bad'? Too much recent popularity, and now that you're a street celebrity doyen, you don't want to stampede the restless herd?

You entitle this as a CNN 6 O'clock News headline, sanitized and pleasantly amilorating our bellowing constant surveillance disgruntlement into a Family Hour's "Group hug everyone, let's sing Kumbaya, and `Restore Trust'."

Please, not you too Bruce. Not now.</comment>


Every team needs a calendar. Some are better than you excel sheets/gantt charts - <AUTHOR> https://teamweek.com/team-calendar <comment><USER2> > Color code everything to get a better overview of what's coming.

Really? It could look like a 90s geocities website with flashing text and icons.</comment>


Library Science Helped Me Understand Databases - <AUTHOR> https://www.stephaniemorillo.co/post/how-library-science-helped-me-understand-databases <comment><USER2> Oddly I can trace my interest in databases back to playing Championship Manager in the early-mid nineties. For those not in the know, it's a football management simulator that, apart from the actual game mechanics, is basically a rdbms.

I made my own in FileMaker Pro for a school project. They were the days.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> From what I understand (I'm just starting to look into this myself as a potential career option), database design and other technical skills like scripting and web design are becoming an increasingly important part of library science. There's a new-ish degree, "Masters in Library and Information Science", that combines both library and information knowledge like this.

There's plenty of open source library management tools such as Evergreen[1] or Invenio[2] for more standard data (like book metadata) but it's still helpful regardless to understand how databases work, what fields might be useful, how normalization works, etc. to better organize and understand the data in a library.

[1][https://evergreen-ils.org/](https://evergreen-ils.org/) [2][http://inveniosoftware.org/](http://inveniosoftware.org/)

<comment><USER4> When I got my MLIS in 2007, it was not a very technically rigorous program, and the technical classes were only meant to introduce non-technical people to systems they might eventually have to talk about in a meeting, but not work with directly.

The people I graduated with mostly went into libraries (naturally), or else went into Product Management, UX, or Information Architecture. If you want to have a contributing technical role in your future position, I urge you to ask very specific questions about curriculum of the program you consider applying to!

<comment><USER3> That's good to know, thank you. Really this is more of a what-if thought experiment than anything serious right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked at a place that hired librarians to manage the data in the database and keep it clean. It was pretty wild, and when I've suggested this at other places I got blank stares.

</comment><comment><USER6> In my country we call it Information Science. I always thought it's the same in English though.

<comment><USER7> The two terms are not wholly synonyms, even though they are closely related. The discipline is often called Library and Information Science or LIS for short.

I personally call it Documentation because I like Otlet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> And please don't break space for scrolling...</comment>


Ask HN: Drawbacks of Solid project by Tim Berners-Lee? - <AUTHOR> Solid is a new interesting project backed by famous Tim Berners-Lee. Project is focusing on giving control back to Internet users. Everyone can have his own "container" named POD for data, but data is also interconnected fe. your POD host your images but if someone comments it he hosts his comments, so it seems like a good way of having control but from technical point of view it's not great (one could assume everyone starts to cache data anyway on his side breaking Solid principles).
I like main concept of a project, but I'm also courious of any known drawbacks. If performance issue is not a real problem it seems like nice way to have more control where your data is and how it's processed.
Description from project website: "Solid is an exciting new project led by Prof. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, taking place at MIT. The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy."
Sources:
https://solid.mit.edu/
https://solid.inrupt.com/how-it-works <comment><USER2> As a guy who was working a lot on improving Android OS privacy. I see several problems here:

\- First and the main. How persuade user to buy your solution. Buy is not about money. Buy is to replace existent free solutions. Solid should have substantial user base. Only in this case big players will take Solid into account. E.g. there are a lot of private Android forks and stores. They have no traction. Privacy is a feature. This feature is not very important for current customers.

\- Second, it is hard to manage permissions for data access by hands. User should judge is access reasonable for this application. It is complex even in Android case, where every user works with hundred of applications. In web case it is more complex. You will contact hundred of services during visit of single page (CDN, javascript hosting, video hosting, ads serving etc). User will just push "Allow" button on every access request.

\- Third, every current technology was created for sharing (or surveillance, if you prefer). Data is leaking through provied permissions. E.g.you give application access to photos, it has access to location. Location is stored in photo's EXIF header.

\- It is hard to persuade user to buy something. Here buy is about money. 3d party developers prefer to give free applications. They monetize showing ads

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well I signed up for it. However, I am not really sure what I am supposed to do with it.

<comment><USER4> just guessing. host you site with fotos feeds etc on jamstack and enrich html with some solid and rdf tags. rehost on storage with solid enriched http2 jamstack host as soon as available. modify github for windows to work with you solid useflow against gitlab and lfs. use some cdn hosted web workers mean while. i have not read solid stuff. so take with spoon of salt.

<comment><USER4> solid server i will use will route normal web into ipfs. i like buzzwords.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Airbeam – Create, maintain, publish web and mobile UIs – without coding - <AUTHOR> https://airbeam.io/phh.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I'm Nicu, one of the co-founders of Airbeam.

We're happy to announce Airbeam Beta. My co-founder and I have been working on Airbeam for several months and we're super excited to finally show it to you.

Airbeam is a visual tool aimed for building web & mobile UIs embracing the medium in which the product is built — thus integrating both designing and building into the product development process.

Traditional UI design tools are isolated from the actual capabilities and constraints of the platforms that product teams are building for. We think too much time is spent creating disposable designs and replicating them in code. Airbeam helps designers and developers iterate faster in the actual medium, as opposed to iterating high-fidelity simulations that end up being rebuilt during development. We think it's time to move on to a more efficient way of building web & mobile applications.

Airbeam is still in its early stage, but we want to share with you the first step of its development journey — which allows Sketch designs upload, dynamic layouts, React/ Vue/React-Native code generation and export to Codesandbox and Expo.

The next step, which will be live in the following months, involves capabilities related to building from scratch — drag & drop, support for ant design components, publish to npm & git . If you're as excited as we are, stay tuned — we'll keep you posted.

We would love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to also ask questions or suggest improvements.</comment>


Show HN: DuckDuckGo Images Search API – Written in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/deepanprabhu/duckduckgo-images-api <comment><USER2> Is this scraping or accessing the actual API? I know DDG has some limitations to what it will give throught its official api with how it partially licenses its search results.</comment>


The Invention of the Beach Read - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-invention-of-the-beach-read <comment><USER2> My in-laws recently downsized to a townhouse and needed to get rid of some books, so I ended up with about 20 Jack Reacher (and similar) books. I grab one whenever we head out on vacation.

They're great, because there's no need to read them in order, or remember previous plots. They're good enough to keep my attention but not so great I can't put them down when it's time to do something else.

I don't know how they thread that needle so well, but they do. I expect when AI write the first decent book, this is what it will look like.</comment>


Three Ways Agile Has Gone Astray - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ard_adam/three-ways-agile-has-gone-astray-165acf3fd3c0 <comment><USER2> The weakness with this article is that it compares passion programming with running a profitable software business.

You run sprints because the output has to be planned and tracked as there are people dependent on knowing the schedule (marketing, sales, support).

Everyone needs write permissions because we can't wait for Gary to get back to accept the pull request.

Open source has no need for estimation because open source projects have limitless contributors and thus limitless man hours. No one is even required to contribute anything at all! The fact it took you a year means nothing as long as the source gets the pull request. This is totally untrue when that year is a salaried worker.

This article compares apples and oranges and should be shamed for it. Try running a profitable software business with no planning, no write perms, and no estimation. No, you're aren't valve.</comment>


Bayer stock plunges after jury awards man $289M in Roundup cancer trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/13/bayer-stock-plunges-after-jury-decides-roundup-gave-one-man-terminal-cancer/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.1214681)

"Overall, our review did not find support in the epidemiologic literature for a causal association between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or multiple myeloma."

I'm a natural products scientist and I have looked as closely as I can and I really don't find much reliable data supporting the assertion that glyphosate causes cancer. I avoided using it for quite some time, but I do use it now. I have to live by logic and not hysteria. Many pesticides are bad and dangerous, but glyphosate is as close to a magic bullet that only kills plants that I can find.

<comment><USER3> > _really don 't find much data supporting the assertion that glyphosate > causes cancer._

I'm far from an expert, but this being in the news has piqued my interest as well, and I haven't seen much that confirms it either:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5705608/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5705608/)

People hate Monsanto, and populism is rife, so the decision wasn't shocking. Amazing that Monsanto managed to sell to Bayer with these lawsuits on the horizon.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing that article, I hadn't seen it.

There are plenty of reasons to support hating Monsanto. I do as well. Generic versions of Roundup are available from generic type suppliers now and that is where I buy mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm very confused as to whether or not roundup(glycophosphate) is actually bad for humans. It seems that the vast majority of studies point towards "no", with that one lone WHO study saying "likely".

<comment><USER5> Even stranger is that one WHO report was the IARC meta study that manipulated the data to reach that conclusion. Somehow people have latched onto a few monsanto studies, misinterpreted them to assure themselves that glyphosate is a problem, but have relied on a clearly flawed study to serve as a foundation for their beliefs. It seems that once a paranoid/conspiracy meme gains traction, it takes enormous resources to combat. The US is still having problems with anti-vaxxers despite the fact that vaccines are about the surest thing we have in medical science.

<comment><USER6> I have a running hypothesis on human behavior: people form self-serving opinions first and foremost, then scrounge around for the supporting evidence afterwards.

It is so hard for adults to admit they are wrong. Even harder if someone has been advocating for their own side at length. To change opinions, they need to have some acceptable exit strategy (e.g. "company A doesn't make vaccines with dangerous component X anymore, vaccines are safe now thank goodness!").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This study linked the water ph as a factor in kidney cancer. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945589/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945589/)</comment>


Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down critical story - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/reporter-google-successfully-pressured-me-to-take-down-critical-story/ <comment><USER2> > Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google > spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the > meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been > subject to a non-disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes.

So Google is releasing news to news outlets and asks for NDAs? Then they threaten to sue for NDA violations. I read it as Google is using NDAs to control and force only positive "news" articles. If article is painting them in a positive light, let it slide, if it is not, threaten to sue. Did I misunderstand it? Cause that sounds pretty sneaky.

> But an entity as powerful as Google doesn't have to issue ultimatums. It can > just nudge organizations and get them to act as it wants."

Very true. These systems of incentives and constraints is what Chomsky and Herman's book Manufacturing Consent is about. Highly recommended reading. Though in this case (if I read it correctly) it is not really that subtle but more of a clearcut Politburo-style "news" control.

<comment><USER3> > Did I misunderstand it?

Yes. You seem to assume this was some kind of press release. It was not: Google was previewing a new unreleased feature to one of their big clients, and that feature preview was under NDA. It just happens that this big client was Forbes, a news website. Forbes then failed to uphold the NDA internally and ended up publishing an article about this, breaking the agreement. Google PR noticed and reminded them of the NDA, and the editor in charge of the article at Forbes agreed and took down the article.

So evil.

<comment><USER4> Google PR confirmed, to a reporter, on record. Not covered by nda.

Once you publicly disclose, the nda makes no sense.

<comment><USER5> "Google PR confirmed, to a reporter, on record. Not covered by nda. "

Sorry, but no.

Pretty much all nda's in the world would disagree with you.

Heck, let's just take the first search result for "nda sample" and look at it: [http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/sample- confidentialit...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/sample- confidentiality-agreement-nda-33343.html)

Stare at clause 2, and you will see that situation would still be covered by NDA.

In basically all NDA's, it's about who does it, not about how it's done.

(We're assuming #1's requirements were met, as most NDA's also say that. AFAICT, the other people in the room believe #1 was met. Pretty much every presentation by Google ever is stamped Google Confidential and Proprietary)

<comment><USER4> i'm not a lawyer and not interested in becoming a lawyer.

Ok, i see your point. I'll go ahead and stipulate that the reporter was a super villain, and google was lilly white in their intentions.

Google was very lucky their lawyers were not the brain dead morons that went on record with a reporter about confidential information. There are plenty of articles speculating about how +1 would affect search rankings in 2011, which gives quite a bit of room in 2(a).

Google was in a position of immense power, and their clown-car approach _happened_ to work out for them. Seriously guys, the trick to fire is banging the rocks together.

Do not go on record with a reporter about confidential information. it's PR 101. Just don't do it. Ever.

 _edit_

This is condescending and harsh. I'm going to leave it, rather than delete it, because i think big G's PR department should have known better. But maybe take the words with some salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Story says Forbes and Google had signed an NDA prior to meeting with Google, unbeknownst to reporter. Reporter published confidential details and Forbes unpublished reporter's story, which reporter is unhappy about.

Reporter appears to be deeply naive about the ramifications of Forbes violating an NDA.

Reporter also thinks their axe to grind is against Google, when in fact it is against Forbes if anyone, for being a "news" org that signs NDAs.

<comment><USER7> You need to read the whole article. The information was released outside of the meeting or the NDA.

> Google's e-mail doesn't mention a key part of Hill's story: that she > confirmed the information with Google's press shop. If I'd been in Hill's > shoes, I would have taken that as a signal that I was free to report the > information.

<comment><USER8> > _If I 'd been in Hill's shoes, I would have taken that as a signal that I > was free to report the information_

And you would have been wrong. Unless the NDA was nontradirioanlly drafted, this is still an agent of Google's telling an agent of Forbes confidential information. (This is why it is important to consult with lawyers when such contracts are involved.)

I agree, however, that much of the blame rests with Forbes' lack of internal controls.

<comment><USER9> I've worked for companies in the journalism space. Calling up legal to see if we had an NDA with a company before reporting on them was not exactly a part of the routine for the reporters. If this reporter had no reason to suspect NDA -- and the way in which press inquiries were responded to certainly wouldn't give that impression -- then it's not on the reporter.

<comment><USER8> > _If this reporter had no reason to suspect NDA -- and the way in which press > inquiries were responded to certainly wouldn 't give that impression -- then > it's not on the reporter_

She still violated an agreement her employer signed. If Google decided to pursue this, it would probably result in censure for Forbes. They, in turn, would seek to exploit the reporter's employment contract. Given the number of unknowns, it is difficult to speculate. She acted reasonably, given what she knew, though her reaction with full information betrays naïveté. TL; DR Forbes asking her to take down the article was perfectly reasonable. Her continuing to discuss it now that she knows it contained confidential information is not.

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is no one taking about the actual content of the critical story? Allegedly, Google was penalising sites that did not feature the +1 button?

<comment><USER11> Well the point of the story is building off the narrative that Google is using its power to suppress negative stories/think tank reports about Google.

The article doesn't really give context on what information the story that got pulled had, and just that headline of "penalising" sites that didn't add the feature is hard to judge properly without knowing exactly what was said. I can certainly imagine Google trying to sell how big Google+ was going to be, and how adding the +1 button would drive users to Forbes for engagement and conversations. In such a theoretical argument, missing out on this engagement would set Forbes lower on the search results, effectively penalizing them. To me, this would be very different than an explicit punishing of sites that did not adopt the feature, which is obviously an abuse of power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "It would be a shame if anything bad were to happen to your website traffic. By the way, if you say anything about this conversation we'll sue you."

— Godfather Google when promoting their +1

WHY the hell is this not a bigger deal? This is extortion.

</comment><comment><USER13> Using search rankings as a cudgel to force others to promote their social network and to silence discussion of this is sufficient for me to want them broken up.

Its easy to see that this could be misused to much worse effect. Personally I intend to migrate my domain, my email away from google.

</comment><comment><USER14> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15145176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15145176)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's funny how this, at the moment, is behind the news "Google: it is time to return to not being evil" by 4 positions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, after reading the comments here, it strikes me how Google can do no evil in a lot of people's minds.

<comment><USER17> HN would cheer Hitler on as a come-from-nothing entrepreneur as long as Penemünde would launch new rockets and gadgets, and there was a good PR-Team selling it.

The best way to avoid evil is not to look on manufactured news, but on actual power, and strife towards distributed powercenters, struggling with one another. Always, without ifs and buts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The comments on this article make me absolutely certain that Google has a large PR team patrolling HN.

HN may be fairly right-wing but there is an implausible amount of apologetics for one of the world's largest and most powerful companies engaging in plainly coercive behaviour.

<comment><USER19> This violates the HN guideline which asks you to refrain from insinuations about astroturfing or shillage: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

On the internet, people are far too quick do this because they can't imagine that views which seem (to them) so wrong and dumb could possibly be coming from others in good faith. But the truth is that the opinion diversity of the community wildly exceeds intuitive estimates. The null hypothesis, therefore, when it feels like astroturfing simply must be going on, is that you're underestimating the good faith of others. It's super tempting to reach for the stick (PR! astroturf! shill! how much are they paying you!) but we know from experience that this degrades discussion quickly, and therefore the temptation needs resisting—hence that guideline. Real astroturfing exists, of course, but it's a quite different species than this common astroturfy warbler. If you're worried about it, we can investigate, but you need to email us rather than post comments about it.

In this case Occam is even more active than usual because there's a particularly obvious explanation for what you're seeing: the tendency of the community to respond with objections to whatever gets posted. If the article were slanted the opposite way, so would the comments be, not because different 'astroturfers' would show up but because the people most motivated to comment are the ones who see something to pick holes in. Then others show up to pick holes in the way the first round of holes was picked—invariably leading with "I can't believe this community is so X", not realizing that they're motivated by just the same thing as their predecessors. This dynamic is a problem in its own right but for different reasons.

Btw your assessment of HN as 'right wing' has the same cognitive bias—underestimating the diversity of the community—embedded in it. It's clear (painfully clear, at least to me!) that the opposite wing sees HN just the opposite way and has just as ready a supply of examples to point to. An anarcho-anti-capitalist story has spent the last several hours on the front page, etc.

<comment><USER20> > they can't imagine that views which seem (to them) so wrong and dumb could > possibly be coming from others in good faith.

When asked about the motivations and perspective of a smuggler, Quark explained[1], "No one involved in an extra-legal activity thinks of himself as nefarious."

Bad faith would apply to a "PR team" involved in some sort of premeditated, intentional fraud. That isn't necessary, and I don't believe I've seen that type of accusation. I'm sure _both_ the posts from various known Google- employees _and_ a hypothetical "PR team" are acting in good faith. Is there even any significant difference in what a random "true believing" engineer and a PR agent would say?

Google probably hasn't ordered a team of PR specialist to post on HN, but self-motivated employees defending their business may be functionally similar.

[1] DS9 s06e25 "The Sound of Her Voice"

<comment><USER19> To me it seems like you're changing the meaning of these terms. HN has lots of users who work for lots of different companies and of course they're free to (and do) share their genuine opinions just like anyone else does. That isn't astroturfing nor shilling nor PR. Is the effect the same? I doubt it, but that's just a point of theoretical interest.

Do people make accusations of actual fraud (astroturfing, shillage)? You bet, all the time. That's why we added a site guideline saying not to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The woman who could 'draw' music - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170522-daphne-oram-pioneered-electronic-music <comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow. I am days away from finishing a PhD thesis on sketching sound and music [1], and Daphne Oram figures highly into my background research. A friend of mine built an iPhone app that emulates Oram's system [2].

Another notable figure in the world of drawing music is Norman McLaren, who literally painted or drew directly on the soundtrack portion of his animated films. The soundtrack for his film _Neighbors_ [3], which won an academy award in 1952, was produced this way. Theres a short documentary on his process here [4].

On the more avant-garde side, Iannis Xenakis had designed a computer-based system called the UPIC in the late 1970s in which you could directly draw waveforms and then direct their frequencies over time by drawing into a graphics tablet. He used this to compose his piece _Mycenae Alpha_ [5].

This page [6] has a really great run-down of optical synthesis in general, which includes a number of individuals and systems involved in directly drawing sound and music. Some of the visual sound designs used in these systems are quite striking, for instance the variophone [7] or Yankovsky's painted soundtracks [8].

[1] Demo of my research software here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj5e82nPHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj5e82nPHQ)

[2] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oramics/id454505541?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oramics/id454505541?mt=8)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-o9dYwro_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-o9dYwro_Q)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0vgZv_JWfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0vgZv_JWfM)

[5] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yztoaNakKok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yztoaNakKok)

[6] [http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels_historical.html](http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels_historical.html)

[7] [http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels/historical/vario3.jpg](http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels/historical/vario3.jpg)

[8] [http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels/historical/painted_soundtrac...](http://www.umatic.nl/tonewheels/historical/painted_soundtrack.jpg)

<comment><USER2> In the McLaren video you linked, the uploader edited out his music and put in some other track. Here's the link to his film with the original score:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_aSowDUUaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_aSowDUUaY)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good catch- its really worth watching the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As adults we get locked into modal thinking - breaking those modes is not something we (usually) do naturally.

As children those modes aren't so deeply grooved so coming up with arbitrary models of the world makes for a lot of eye-opening exploratory activity.

I recently went to an exhibit on the Reggio Emilia approach (famous for pioneering this method 70 years ago) and one of the videos on display was an activity involving the children drawing sound [1] - I hadn't thought to look at the world this way but for these kids (and a bit of guided prompting) it came very naturally. Things like painting the sound of water rushing over stones[2] - at first glance don't parse - but if you tilt your head a bit you can 'see' it.

[1] [http://www.acousticecologyaustralia.org/symposium2003/procee...](http://www.acousticecologyaustralia.org/symposium2003/proceedings/papers/hDilkes.pdf) [2] [http://imgur.com/a/RAOmy](http://imgur.com/a/RAOmy)

</comment><comment><USER4> Previous Daphne Oram submissions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=daphne%20oram&sort=byDate&date...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=daphne%20oram&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER5> There was a year long exhibition of her Oram synth machine in 2013. Here's a good mini-doc on it and Daphne:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ08diPUv6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ08diPUv6A)

Not entirely unknown fortunately.

</comment><comment><USER6> She seems like a kindred spirit with Kandinsky. Both tried to connect the audio and the visual arts, and both were mystical about the fundamental humanness of their respective art forms.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't forget the man who could 'see' music, by looking at grooves in a vinyl record: [http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/362661/vinyl-vision-meet-the- man-...](http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/362661/vinyl-vision-meet-the-man-who-can- identify-a-record-by-its-grooves.htm)

</comment><comment><USER8> The woman who 'painted' music:

"Unraveling Bolero" by Anne Adams - [http://imgur.com/a/wkwKZ](http://imgur.com/a/wkwKZ) (photograph of work)

\---

> "In this podcast, a story about obsession, creativity, and a strange > symmetry between a biologist and a composer that revolves around one > famously repetitive piece of music.

> "Anne Adams was a brilliant biologist. But when her son Alex was in a bad > car accident, she decided to stay home to help him recover. And then, rather > suddenly, she decided to quit science altogether and become a full-time > artist. After that, her husband Robert Adams tells us, she just painted and > painted and painted. First houses and buildings, then a series of paintings > involving strawberries, and then ... "Bolero."

> At some point, Anne became obsessed with Maurice Ravel's famous composition > and decided to put an elaborate visual rendition of the song to canvas. She > called it "Unraveling Bolero." But at the time, she had no idea that both > she and Ravel would themselves unravel shortly after their experiences with > this odd piece of music."

Radiolab - Unraveling Bolero (S14E01) [http://www.radiolab.org/story/217340-unraveling- bolero/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/217340-unraveling-bolero/)

\---

> "Most neurological lesion studies emphasize performance deficits that result > from focal brain injury. Here, we describe striking gains of function in a > patient with primary progressive aphasia, a degenerative disease of the > human language network. During the decade before her language deficits > arose, Anne Adams (AA), a lifelong scientist, developed an intense drive to > produce visual art. Paintings from AA's artistic peak revealed her capacity > to create expressive transmodal art, such as renderings of music in paint, > which may have reflected an increased subjective relatedness among internal > perceptual and conceptual images. AA became fascinated with Maurice Ravel, > the French composer who also suffered from a progressive aphasia, and > painted his best-known work, 'Boléro', by translating its musical elements > into visual form. Later paintings, achieved when AA was nearly mute, moved > towards increasing photographic realism, perhaps because visual > representations came to dominate AA's mental landscape during this phase of > her illness. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that, despite severe > degeneration of left inferior frontal-insular, temporal and striatal > regions, AA showed increased grey matter volume and hyperperfusion in right > posterior neocortical areas implicated in heteromodal and polysensory > integration. The findings suggest that structural and functional > enhancements in non-dominant posterior neocortex may give rise to specific > forms of visual creativity that can be liberated by dominant inferior > frontal cortex injury."

Seeley, W. W. et al. Unravelling Boléro: progressive aphasia, transmodal creativity and the right posterior neocortex. Brain 131, 39–49 (2007). [https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awm270](https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awm270)

(note- edited for formatting)</comment>


Is AOL buying Techcrunch? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/TechCrunch/Is-AOL-acquiring-TechCrunch-How-much-are-they-paying-for-it

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary of Om Malik story from September 27: * AOL is on the verge of acquiring TechCrunch. * The deal is at a sensitive stage and might fall apart yet, but I don't think so. * Sources familiar with both entities says that the announcement is likely to come onstage at Disrupt, TechCrunch's flagship conference currently underway in San Francisco. * AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is likely to make an appearance at the conference, and perhaps that's when the announcement is likely to be made. * AOL in the past had acquired Weblogs Inc., the blogging company behind popular sites such as Engadget. Those blogs have helped AOL compensate for steep loss of traffic. The service has been in the market to buy a technology blog, and is rumored to have been linked with other technology blogs.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The link to Om Malik's post: <http://gigaom.com/2010/09/27/aol-close-to- buying-techcrunch/></comment>