A calculator that only shows the answer after you give a suitable estimate - <AUTHOR> http://qamacalculator.com/qama/ <comment><USER2> I feel somewhat silly after seeing the landing page, and realizing it's about a new physical pocket calculator (a product category I didn't think received all that much attention), I _still_ clicked the calculator in the image, thinking it might have a web simulator.

Which it doesn't, and then I thought "meh". It's truly easy to be spoilt by this clicky-shiny web thing.

<comment><USER3> and they have a patent for this one <http://www.google.com/patents/US6820800>

_An electronic calculator having means for enabling a user to input a calculation, characterized in that the calculator has a mode of operation in which the user is required to input additionally at least one estimate of the result of the calculation before the correct result of the calculation is displayed._

<comment><USER4> Has it any chance of standing in court ? I mean it's as close to patent for idea as it gets. I hope there will be movement of not buying things manufactured by companies filling silly patents. I feel it's my duty to ignore this company after reading it.

<comment><USER5> _I feel it's my duty to ignore this company after reading it_

That's nice, but you haven't any understanding of what a patent actually is. It is not an idea, any more than the title of a book is a story. It is an implementation. In the case of Qama, the clever bit is scaling the estimation tolerance with the difficulty of the calculation.

It seems that maths isn't the only area that needs education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the idea, although I think a lot of the comments here are missing the point---this is not about what _you_ might be using, now, but rather what might be useful in a classroom situation. The giveaway is that if you turn off estimate mode, a flashing light comes on... so an instructor or test proctor would be able to see it. This is exactly the sort of practice a lot of students need.

But then they lose me a bit when they say (on the scope/content page) that they don't accept rational-number estimates because there's no point. I'll tentatively agree (with reservations) for numbers greater than one, but decimal numbers are just a subset of fractions, and there are a lot of problems where an answer like "1/20" is a lot more natural than "0.05" or "5E-2".

<comment><USER7> > _if you turn off estimate mode, a flashing light comes on... so an > instructor or test proctor would be able to see it._

And somebody will find a way to disable the LED so that students can "cheat".

<comment><USER8> Also, the students for whom this thing is intended (those who would rather just get the answer) will probably study the calculator, learning how it works and probably learning ways to beat it. Then we can return to business as usual: students who "get it" and reason about the problem will continue to do so; students who just grab for answers will continue to grab for answers; and teachers will be complacent--everyone's getting their results by typing an accurate-enough estimate into the calculator, right?--until people realize what's happening, and this will become one more failed educational experiment.

Here's the first approach that occurred to me. How quickly can you type in estimates, and how accurate do they have to be? (The first thing I would do with one of these things is find that out, simply for curiosity and control over my tools.) If, say, it's "same order of magnitude of the correct answer", then you just have to guess 1, 10, 100, and so on (maybe .1, .01, etc. if the numbers are small). If it's "within a factor of 2", then you could guess 1, 4, 16, 64, and so on (or something that's easier to type; maybe guess 1 10 100 1000, 4 40 400 4000).

It may take a while to do, but if the problem is difficult and frightening, it is easier and safer to apply some brute force strategy like this--even if you had to type "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 20 30 40 50 ...". I wouldn't be surprised if the answer-grabbers got really fast at it (1e5 2e5 3e5 ... even handles many digits in more or less constant time). It would still take longer than a normal calculator, but that would be the case for people who estimated it "the right way" too.

Maybe you could put in some kind of penalty for repeated wrong guesses, but I'm skeptical. First, even the students who understand what they're doing will make some wrong guesses, and you don't want to punish them too hard; second, I suspect it would actually be hard to do that: the student can turn the calculator off and on at any time, and I think giving it some non-volatile storage of timestamps of wrong estimates would make the calculator somewhat more complex and expensive than it looks like it's supposed to be.

(Actually, I think the "problem" of "misusing" the calculator is not limited to pure answer-grabbers. I could see myself respecting the challenge and doing my estimates, then being off by a bit and making a correct estimate that was right next to it, then realizing I could just be lazy about my estimates-- truncate everything to [single digit] * 10^n, or whatever--and just make two or three guesses if necessary to cover the relatively wide range. I might possibly still enjoy the experience or the challenge of making estimates and not considering myself done until I can justify my estimate--just like I enjoy doing this stuff <http://setgame.com/set/puzzle_frame.htm> even though I can write a program to solve those puzzles, or not solve them at all--but if I was bored with the assignment and just wanted to finish it, or _annoyed_ with the people who thought such a calculator was a good idea, then there would be nothing stopping me from using perverse strategies.)

Edit: Turns out it is somewhat more complicated. The degree of tolerance depends on the perceived difficulty of the mental calculation (in particular, transcendental functions give a large room for error). <http://qamacalculator.com/qama/complicated.jsp>

That is kind of an impressive thing, actually. The way error bounds are determined might be somewhat complicated to work out, and _maybe_ even a determined answer-grabber would have to do a bit of estimating work... I dunno. Maybe you could figure out that "as long as there's a sine in the expression, then the error bound is at least this much".

OH MY GOD you would simply take any expression and put "times sin(89°)" or something in it, something close to 1. Get your answer, then use that as an estimate for the original thing. Maybe put in a ton of little transcendental- but-you-know-it's-about-1 expressions in there; maybe you can get your error bounds so wide that you need only guess once. Now maybe the programming will notice things like that, will give small error bounds for something very close to a known thing like sin 90. But then put in A * (your expression) * B, where A and B are transcendental expressions whose ratio is very close to 1, but which individually are definitely not 1, and which don't obviously cancel out. Like e and 2^-1.44.

I am, let's say, 95% confident that kids would figure out _something_ that would defeat this.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any idea how much mathematical knowledge you've deployed in coming up with ways to defeat this thing? Anyone can come up with all of that (or even part of that!) is either not part of the target audience or has learned enough that I'd be comfortable calling the experiment a success.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that this thing is a panacea. It's a tool, one of many in a well-stocked pedagogical toolkit. I think a decent teacher could make good use of it, and more importantly, I refuse to dismiss it just because the experiment _might_ fail.

<comment><USER8> Heh heh heh. I'm flattered, but really, all it takes is for one kid to come up with one strategy that works; after that, others could find out about it through word of mouth or the internet. I could imagine a kid noticing by accident that... not having access to the calculator, I can't be sure whether any specific example will work, other than the ones described on the website... but I can imagine a kid finding by accident that, while "A * B * C" fits a certain estimate, if you ask the calculator what A * B is (about 20) and put in "20 * C" and give the same estimate, it will reject it. It's likely that either he will figure some things out (trying things like putting (A * B / 20) * C, and trying that with other values of C), or he will be confused and announce it to the class, in which case someone else will probably figure things out. And this is to say nothing of a clever kid who knows math and who deliberately looks in the first place for ways to defeat the device (perhaps after the device offends him by rejecting an honest estimate).

I would warn in general against underestimating the cleverness of children, even those who appear not to understand the material of the class. From John Holt's "How Children Fail" (letter from May 10, 1958), describing some elementary school classes:

 _Children are often quite frank about the strategies they use to get answers out of a teacher. I once observed a class in which the teacher was testing her students on parts of speech. On the blackboard she had three columns, headed Noun, Adjective, and Verb. As she gave each word, she called on a child and asked in which column the word belonged.

Like most teachers, she hadn't thought enough about what she was doing to realize, first, that many of the words given could fit into more than one column and, second, that it is often the way a word is used that determines what part of speech it is.

There was a good deal of the tried-and-true strategy of guess-and-look, in which you start to say a word, all the while scrutinizing the teacher's face to see whether you are on the right track or not. With most teachers, no further strategies are needed.

This one was more poker-faced than most, so guess-and-look wasn't working very well. Still, the percentage of hits was remarkably high, especially since it was clear to me from the way the children were talking and acting that they hadn't a notion of what nouns, adjectives, and verbs were. Finally one child said, "Miss —, you shouldn't point to the answer each time." The teacher was surprised, and asked what she meant. The child said, "Well, you don't exactly point, but you kind of stand next to the answer." This was no clearer, since the teacher had been standing still. But after a while, as the class went on, I thought I saw what the girl meant. Since the teacher wrote each word down in its proper column, she was, in a way, getting herself ready to write, pointing herself at the place where she would soon be writing. From the angle of her body to the blackboard the children picked up a subtle clue to the correct answer.

This was not all. At the end of every third word, her three columns came out even, that is, there were an equal number of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. This meant that when she started off a new row, you had one chance in three of getting the right answer by a blind guess; but for the next word, you had one chance in two, and the last word was a dead giveaway to the lucky student who was asked it. Hardly any missed this opportunity, in fact, they answered so quickly that the teacher (brighter than most) caught on to their system and began keeping her columns uneven, making the strategist's job a bit harder._

He adds later:

 _Not long after the book came out I found myself being driven to a meeting by a professor of electrical engineering in the graduate school of MIT. He said that after reading the book he realized that his graduate students were using on him, and had used for the ten years and more he had been teaching there, all the evasive strategies I described in the book—mumble, guess-and-look, take a wild guess and see what happens, get the teacher to answer his own questions, etc.

But as I later realized, these are the games that all humans play when others are sitting in judgment on them._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is an excellent idea. Calculators were just being brought into the school curriculum when I was 8 years old (to some controversy at the time!) and we were told always to use the the three E's: estimate, evaluate, evaluate. The idea being that first you guess roughly what the answer should be and then after calculating it, you check it again to make sure you havent made a keying mistake. I've always thought this a lesson well taught that I've applied to many automation tasks since.

</comment><comment><USER10>
      The tolerance - how far out one may be for the estimate to be accepted and the answer shown - must at all times appear reasonable ... The student should never feel that an estimate was unreasonably rejected, and on the other hand should not find an odd guess being accepted

The inventor had considered this question for 14 years while developing this calculator.

<comment><AUTHOR> And now with linefeeds:

        The tolerance - how far out one may be for the estimate
        to be accepted and the answer shown - must at all times
        appear reasonable... The student should never feel that
        an estimate was unreasonably rejected, and on the other
        hand should not find an odd guess being accepted.

<comment><USER11> Or with automatic line breaks: _The tolerance - how far out one may be for the estimate to be accepted and the answer shown - must at all times appear reasonable ... The student should never feel that an estimate was unreasonably rejected, and on the other hand should not find an odd guess being accepted._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> BTW, "Qama" in Hebrew means "How much" or "How many"

</comment><comment><USER13> TLDR: Requires guess before it answers ... Revolutionary ... US Patent 6820800

<comment><USER14> Does the patent cover the concept or the hardware/software?....or both?

<comment><USER11> The patent covers how the calculator decides whether an answer is "reasonable".

<comment><USER15> Instead they could ask for a range and an estimate of how likely you think that the actual answer is inside that range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of Louis Benezet's experimental elementary math education system (ca. 1930s), and Sanjoy Mahajan's Street Fighting Mathematics. What a clever idea.

</comment><comment><USER17> 3rd year university student's opinion:

The first problem to be solved is that most introductory math education is still about calculating and not about applying mathematical principles to real problems. I think that being able to estimate a solution is a valuable skill, but for many problems with a high degree of precision (lots of decimal places) or large numbers, this just becomes problematic.

I'll definitely admit that at the end of a string of transformations of complex numbers, integrations, and other things, the last thing on my mind is guessing whether my solution is close. Understanding all the steps that lead up to that point is more crucial (and worth more marks!). The only thing I worry about is whether I typed the equation into the calculator correctly to get my final result.

That being said, when students are first learning about a new 'operator', like when learning division, multiplication, logarithms, and exponents, this could be a useful tool for enhancing a student's intuition about how that operator works. But after that, I'll stick with a normal calculator.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd be there all day trying to estimate roots in my head, depending on the accuracy they'll accept for the estimate.

I think this is a great idea, though - too many times I've caught an in put error simply because the answer was an order of magnitude or two off - or I had forgotten to convert units.

</comment><comment><USER19> I can't believe someone was so proud of this idea they patented it. Then came the second WTF: it's actually a physical calculator (and an early-nineties model at that). If anything, this idea would have been neat as an app. And you shouldn't have to guess the "right-ish" answer by some margin, instead make it a social game where you get points for getting as close to the correct answer as possible. Enter your estimate, instantly get the correct solution and your points. _That_ could be fun in classrooms.

<comment><USER20> The physical calculator allows students to use this calculator in the classroom. If a student was using a smartphone on a test, how does the teacher know at cheating is not going on?

That said, this calculator does allow a no-estimation-necessary mode, _but_ entering that mode causes some LEDs along the top to blink. If the student thinks he or she can get away with it while the teacher is looking away, those LEDs actually keep flashing for a while after switching back to estimate-first mode.

I think it's a good idea! The calculator's ease of use is stopping people from thinking about what a correct answer should look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Presumably, the intended usage scenario is when the student does not have access to the answer of the problem from a different source, like the back of the book. In that case, I would submit that being given the correct answer to a calculation helps the student FAR more than being forced to estimate it.

Suppose you are studying math, and come upon a question to which you don't know the answer. Which better helps you to understand, starting from "I need to figure out how to do this" or "I need to figure out why the answer is 0.0001."?

Further, this has little to no application in the real world classroom. For tests in which calculators would simply give the student the answer, students are simply not allowed to use calculators at all. I would argue that, in an exam environment, there is effectively no margin between "a normal calculator would be cheating so you have to use paper" and "this has multiple steps such that a simple calculator will not give you the right answer without understanding." In light of the existence of pen and paper, and simple 8-digit calculators, this product addresses a problem that simply doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just what you need - a smug, obstructive calculator.

<comment><AUTHOR> For students who are learning, perhaps this _is_ what they need. What they don't need to to be given answers to everything on a plate without having to work at all.

We all know that skills unpractised are skills lost. You need to work continually and constantly on skills to keep them honed, and you need to work hard to gain new skills.

Clearly this calculator isn't suitable for every context, but neither is Python, C++, Haskell or Lisp. (Well, except for Lisp. We all know that's useful in _every_ context. 8-)

<comment><USER23> Would you want to use a computer language that only gives the answer (of a numeric integral or the number of registered users) after you give a suitable estimate?

The problem is that this is a tool that an author designed for another people to use. There is an essay from pg that says that the good languages are designed by the authors for themselves, but I can't find the link. The same idea applies to the other tools.

I'm teaching elementary calculus and linear algebra in the university, and I think that it is very important that the students get a general idea of what they are doing. (For example: The integral from 0 to 1 of e^-x is less than 1, because the area is inside a 1x1 square. If a linear equation system includes x+y+z=1000 and each variable is positive, then x=2117 is not a good answer) But an annoying tool is not the answer to this problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> This may surprise you, but I _never_ use the results of a computation without first estimating what the answer should be, estimating the errors in that estimation, and having some alternative ways of deciding how accurate the calculation is. Of course, I do work in safety critical application.

But I also deal with students, and constantly, _constantly_ struggle against their willingness to accept just any old number simply because it came from a calculator, a program, a newspaper, or wikipedia. Recently a colleague recounted how a student had been doing some work and had come up with a result. When asked "How accurate is this?" the student clearly just didn't understand the question, let alone have a clue how to answer it.

There is no single solution, there is no single way to make the lazy work harder, there is no single tool that will solve all the problems that exist in education as a whole.

But having a collection of tools, a collection of techniques, and a collection of approaches has to be a good thing.

<comment><USER24> But computers don't make mistakes, that's why we have them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I actually think this is pretty great. I like the idea that I try things my head to at least figure out if I'm in the right ballpark and, as a physics major, in the correct order of magnitude and understand underlying concepts.

I also see this being really useful at getting better at stuff like dimensional analysis.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just wondering... If you had a software calculator such that after you typed in the question, the calculator returned, say, four possible answers, you chose one, and the calculator confirmed or corrected you, would that infringe on this patent? You're not actually inputting a calculation directly so I believe not, but I know nothing about law.

Maybe I should just build one and wait for the knock.

</comment><comment><USER27> I half expected this to be a kickstarter project. I wonder if they've done any studies on this calculator.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why won't it accept my prior distribution? Sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks like MVP to me. But anyway funny concept.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is hilarious. I can imagine a snarky scale from where you're exactly right, almost exactly right...

"Hey, what do you need me for! That's the answer."

"Glad I'm here. You're off by more than 10%"

"This is not even the right order of magnitude"

"You don't even have the sign right!"

"um, what? This is...not even wrong..."</comment>


The Antivirus Era Is Over - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428166/the-antivirus-era-is-over/ <comment><USER2> I've been using computers since the 80's. I haven't used anti-virus software since the 90's. And yes, I have been using Windows until somewhere in the 00's, including Windows 95, which is about as vulnerable as it gets.

When I was using antivirus software, it never set off any alarms once. I still occasionally install and run antivirus software, it doesn't find anything, so I remove it again. I've sat in the middle of major virus outbreaks inside companies and not be affected.

I have no idea how people manage to get infected. Every time I read about some malware scare, I look at how it spreads and think to myself "but... why would you do _that_?".

In the 80s we had boot sector viruses that would bite you as soon as you inserted a disk, and disks where the only way of exchanging data. You couldn't protect against those without antivirus.

But today most malware seems self-inflicted, and only spreads through naivety, ignorance and laziness.

Sure, I could still get infected tomorrow. After 25 years of computing it's bound to happen to me at some point. But it will most likely be because I did something I shouldn't have, not because I don't have adequate anti-malware protection.

<comment><USER3> Well, you've either been very good or very lucky.

 _But today most malware seems self-inflicted, and only spreads through naivety, ignorance and laziness._

I assert that stereotypical "stupid users" were indeed the cause of most virus spreading in the 1980's and 1990's. There is still a fair amount of "stupid user" stuff happening these days, such as clicking on a link in an email to log into your bank account. (1)

However, these days, I'm also worried about exploits against browsers. If you have your system infected by just by visting a webpage, I don't consider that the user's fault.

Every year that goes by, the browser gets more complex (like recent support for 3-D rendering), and the attack surface increases. I'm glad that most browsers are fairly secure, but they're not perfect now, nor are they likely to be in the near future.

(1) It continues to annoy me that two of my banks will send out legitimate emails (new bill, etc.) that have clickable links in them. If the banks would stop putting links in their emails, and try to educate their users to not click on links in emails, that would reduce the problem.

<comment><USER4> _It continues to annoy me that two of my banks will send out legitimate emails (new bill, etc.) that have clickable links in them._

This a million times. It never ceases to amaze me when I see this. It shows even the banks don't understand security!

<comment><USER5> Do you mind explaining what the problem is? Are you speaking against links in any emails, or just those with sensitive information? Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anybody who's ever thought about how an antivirus product works has come to this conclusion: Antivirus will detect software that does things that are known to be bad, but not software that does things in a new way. Depending on the level of sophistication of the antivirus solution, that either means a completely black-and-white distinction between what matches what is essentially a rainbow table of MD5 signatures and what doesn't, or more complex binary analyses like what kinds of actions an application binary performs, or what IP address ranges it attempts to establish a connection to.

Now, this doesn't mean that antivirus is useless, or that the antivirus era is over--by the logic of this post, the antivirus era was over the minute it began. What it means is that antivirus is a tool that helps protect you against "stupid"/mass malware, but not a tool that gives you any kind of "complete" or "100%" protection (although every AV vendor will certainly try to convince you that their products do), and this is particularly true--today as it was 10 years ago--when it comes to malware that isn't widely distributed, or, put more fashionably, "targeted malware" and "advanced persistent threats" (hence: malware which belongs to a "family" that hasn't been caught, analyzed, and added to a binary/behavioral signature/heuristic database of some kind beforehand.)

<comment><USER7> I've had an IT consultancy for 7 years. There was a time when I would recommend a certain antivirus because I observed that it was consistently able to cleanly intercept in-the-wild badware attacks or even clean out something that already had a foothold. Eset, Prevx and even Norton had solid, effective, best-in-class products at one time or another. However, based on what I've seen over the last year or so, there's been a sea change; the badware that gets on a machine typically does what it wants, antivirus or no, the majority of the time. Detection has become much more the exception and much less the rule.

Sure, antivirus has never been 'complete' protection but, speaking from a lot of firsthand experience, some of it used to be pretty darn good compared to lately. Now even 10-15% protection from AV sounds like a stretch. Hence, in terms of the soho PC segment I've dealt with day to day, I'd say The Antivirus Era Is Over And It Has Been For Awhile.

<comment><USER6> I'm going to guess that a lot of these were the fake AV and similar rogueware. Most of these were pretty good at changing regularly to avoid naïve signature detection, and most vendors acted really slowly because it wasn't "malware." They're not really special in any way that requires a fundamental change to allow detection, though.

I'm not going to dispute that AV vendors have become complacent recently, but 10-15% is on the low side. Most families of widespread malware are detected by most solutions within a few months (yes, that slowly.) It's probably around 80-85%, but, at the same time, 90%+ of the _really_ dangerous (and especially targeted) malware is more often than not in the remaining 15-20%.

Ultimately, what this article and your comment insinuate is that you can uninstall antivirus and be "just as safe." That is not true (except in rare cases where the AV software itself is vulnerable and provides a way to escalate privileges.) I'm all for getting rid of shoddy blacklisting, but we need a replacement, such as innovations in OS security models (a la Chromium OS.)

<comment><USER7> Clarification: by my saying "10-15% protection" I mean I'm guessing that 85-90% of the time my clients' machines come across badware in the wild, their AV misses it and they are compromised. Not a hard number, but my impression over the last year.

> _"Ultimately, what this article and your comment insinuate is that you can > uninstall antivirus and be "just as safe." That is not true..."_

Agreed, but at the same time it's hard to recommend paid AV solutions that don't really work for what people perceive as 'a virus'. What I've come to do is:

* de-emphasize the importance of AV to my clients; tell them it may help but don't count on it

* recommend running the free AV of their choice

* emphasize the importance of updates

* emphasize Chrome + 'Click to run' as the primary protection approach: [http://www.pcstrikeforce.com/taking-chrome-security-next-lev...](http://www.pcstrikeforce.com/taking-chrome-security-next-level-one-setting-clicktorun-plugins/)

> _"I'm all for getting rid of shoddy blacklisting, but we need a replacement, > such as innovations in OS security models (a la Chromium OS.)"_

right on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Frankly, my computer has not had a virus in years. It has been on the web, it has downloaded stuff from dubious websites, it has installed stuff. But no viruses.

That is not to say that there is no malware any more, but the infection vectors have changed. More often than not, malware will be explicitly installed by the user. More broadly, it will trick the user into doing something that is not in his best interest.

In other words: In the current age, malware is targeting users, not computers. Now _we_ have to install virus scanners, by educating ourselves about how to spot viruses. This is a very different game from a few years ago!

<comment><USER9> How do you know?

<comment><USER8> I guess you are asking this question in reference to "my computer has not had a virus in years".

By the naïve measure of "my antivirus did not ever find a virus", which might not be 100% reliable, as the article points out. However, it _should_ identify viruses eventually, though possibly too late. But it didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The antivirus era will never be over, as evidenced by the antivirus apps for smartphones. It provides the same purpose as the TSA: it inconveniences people just enough to make them feel like something is being done to protect them. It doesn't matter how ineffective an antivirus is, as long as it pops up a message every couple days saying "your computer is protected", it has served its purpose.

Anybody who has worked consumer IT can tell you, it doesn't matter how many times a person's computer has been infected despite running kaspersky, they still absolutely depend on the messages from their av program to tell them it's all good.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if there has been a thorough test on capabilities of smartphone antivirus apps but I know there has been a lot of reports of malicious apps, basically viruses for smartphones. Protection is necessary (for majority at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Flame was signed by a trusted signer (Microsoft in this case) due to a bug that allowed code to be signed with a Microsoft key that was meant for something else.

People would like to make behavioral stuff, but it's quite difficult. Sandboxing sounds great, but it requires more processing power to run a VM, and the biggest complaint most people have about AV software right now is that it slows down the computer, so running in a VM with a behavioral model...yeah good luck. It looks great on paper, but has no been put into good use yet.

If you like to be secure, run 2 boxen, one that has no service except a logger, log everything from your main box, only log into the logger box from console when you want to look through the logs to see if something has gone awry.

FD: I work for a security company, and no, none of our products works like that. Most (all?) customers have a higher priority on useability of their network and computers than on security.

</comment><comment><USER13> You need a good antivirus program to clean up computers if discovered malware becomes widespread.(Like Stuxnet, Flashback Trojan). Since Windows Security Essentials/Defender Windows 8 I don't really think about other anti virus vendors however it is very important that all of them remain active. One antivirus company would be a dream for malware creators. Personally I think severe global penalties for creating malware/'social engineering' or a chip+software breakthrough is needed to change the current situation. Antivirus software has actually become pretty good at cleaning known attacks which is really all you can ask for at this point in the game considering how advanced malware has become.

</comment><comment><USER14> The fundamental problem is that anti-virus software operates on the principle of enumerating badness: a list of known viruses and their signatures, a list of suspicious patterns in binaries such as obfuscation techniques.

OSes should move to the opposite strategy, enumerating exactly what is allowed, and dropping anything else by default. The challenge here is that the granularity should be small enough for this to be effective, but on the other hand this gives configuration overhead for the user. For example, the firewall could enforce that only the user's preferred email application is allowed to send and receive mail. Currently the permissions in plugins and smartphone apps are too broad to be meaningful, but they're already experienced as a nuisance, so it's a difficult problem.

<comment><USER15> > OSes should move to the opposite strategy, enumerating exactly what is > allowed, and dropping anything else by default.

when they do, it results in hackers being emo about Gatekeeper or the app store or whatever.

<comment><USER16> The problem that most of the complaining is about (from what I've seen) over current sandboxing solutions is not that you need to enumerate what your application can do. Rather, it's that the OS makers decide that certain functionalities are not allowed by apps (running downloaded code, etc) and just don't allow them. I think a lot of people would prefer that all functionalities be available, but each one need to be specifically allowed by the user.

That being said, that makes life harder for the user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What do you think about sandboxing,is it possible to think of each process as a separate virtual machine in order for them to be "rootkitproof"?

<comment><USER18> this has been done by a company called Advanced Computer Research in the 1990s - it has been proven to be working very well, so well that it was taken off the market (with force / criminal means). Officially the company was sold to an US conglomerate and immediately all products were taken off the market.

It was - in difference to the snake oil antivirus software sold commercially otherwise since then - also able to protect against unknown threats by creating a security focused virtual machine inside the PC and a sandbox around applications. This was the first VM available for PCs (1995)

The only links still visible that I could quickly find are: <http://www.securityfocus.com/tools/803> [http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023714/http://www.acrmain...](http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023714/http://www.acrmain.com/index.html)

<comment><USER19> That sounds very conspiratorial. What evidence do you have that it was taken off the market via force / criminal means?

<comment><USER18> first hand experience

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/19714/cohens- pro...](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/19714/cohens-problem)

[http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/14735/how- antivi...](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/14735/how-antivirus- companies-create-virus-defnitions-for-new-outbreaks)

</comment><comment><USER21> I have not used an antivirus in years, I use a firewall which allows me to control behavior of every process with allow/deny rule creation. It's blocked java exploits and trojans on my system that were not yet in antivirus databases. Antivirus is cool for a monthly just in case checkup and for scanning suspect files before executing.</comment>


Show HN: MoviePass Locations – Map of Locations That Work with MoviePass - <AUTHOR> https://www.moviepasslocations.com <comment><AUTHOR> MoviePass [0] is a $10 a month service that lets you see one movie per day in theaters. The only way to find which locations it works with is to install the app, pay $10 to signup, and wait until you receive the card in the mail. I was able to pull locations from their api, so people can search.

[0] [https://www.moviepass.com/](https://www.moviepass.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is great, thanks.

Is it updated regularly?

Now if only the app would work for actually buying tickets...

<comment><AUTHOR> It was updated last night, and I'll be automating the process over the next few days to make sure it's always up to date.</comment></comment>


The Mechanical Muse - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-mechanical-muse <comment><USER2> Here are the programs that took part in a 2011 Polish contest of automatic poetry: [http://turniej.wolnelektury.pl/poezja/](http://turniej.wolnelektury.pl/poezja/)

Centonista won the contest; Triphthong has been broken since the upgrade of Ruby to 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER3> See Gwern's automated poet: [https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2)</comment>


Microsoft's days numbered: The Computer Industry Comes With Built-In Term Limits - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/technology/18digi.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

<comment><USER2> Eh. MS is still immensely profitable, as is IBM. I don't see that changing in the short term & they'll probably see it coming in the long term & adapt. As did IBM. Who knows, they might even be happier off if they lose the ability to fuck with other people but get to keep the money.

</comment><comment><USER3> Easy target, eh? Slow news day?</comment>


Ask HN: Chase Server Error Gives Everyone a $0 Balance - <AUTHOR>

My roommate screamed at the top of his lungs 35 minutes ago, "My account is empty!!" After which I heard the door slam and his car speed off to what I assumed was the bank.
He comes home 20 minutes later (we're lucky to be close to a chase bank) and tells me, "I ran in and started yelling for help! The guy tells me that they just had a problem with the server and that it's happening to everyone!" Clearly these errors can come with extreme reactions, so it left me wondering, did anyone else notice this?
Maybe this is a good opportunity to discuss if any other banks have made similar errors before, and if so, how frequently. <comment><USER2> My PNC bank accounts show a $0 balance around once a week. They do maintenance late at night, usually on Sundays after midnight. Shortly after logins are re- enabled, there's still a period of time when there's no maintenance message but my accounts show $0 balance with no transaction history. If I was less technically literate I might think my balance had been wiped out I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is it that almost all banking errors I read of are about lim balance->0 and not the other way around?</comment>


HTML5 & JavaScript == Super Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.unicodegirl.com/html5-and-javascript.html

<comment><USER2> I agree JS is making progress and could be used on the back-end with things like NodeJS, Meteor, Firebase - mind blowing!</comment>


Starting Forth - <AUTHOR> http://home.iae.nl/users/mhx/sf.html

<comment><USER2> The sequel, _Thinking Forth_ (<http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/>) is available free online, in PDF form. (After going out of print, it was scanned and OCR'd with the author's blessing...quite a compliment.) It's less about how to program with Forth, and more about things Forth taught Leo Brodie about designing programs for maintainability, (re)factoring, and the like.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first summer job while at University was with a small company in the west of England, Micross (<http://www.microssautomation.com/index.php>), writing industrial laundry control software, in Forth, targeting Windows NT. We used the MPE Forth system (<http://www.mpeforth.com/>), which was highly extensible - when you needed to add more of the Win32 API, you'd edit various files that shipped with the package and recompile the entire thing :)

The company had standardized on Forth throughout their operation, so regardless of the hardware you were using, anything from a PIC-based counting system to the Windows servers, you only needed to know one language to understand the code. Clever stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have never used Forth but it seems like a really language. It combines very high level constructs with the ability to be embedded in systems that barely have an operating system.

Now, if they could solve the problem that every Forth system is customized by the Forth programmer and so the entire language lacks standards, it would be amazing. Also, if you could add enough syntactic sugar to make it look sort-of like C or perl, you would have "the next big thing".

<comment><USER5> Take a look at <http://factorcode.org/> \- it's very Forth-like, but has a lot of modern constructs. It's very active and the (core) libraries are quite stable.

<comment><USER6> I've been toying with Factor for about a week. It's been an enjoyable experience, as both the language itself and the included development environment are extremely well designed.

Having never played with Forth-like languages before, I'm finding writing even the simplest algorithms strains my mind -- in a good way, though. It's mind expanding in the same way Lisp was the first time.

I doubt that Factor is the next big thing, but I think that for smart people it's one of the most fascinating things around right now. Zed Shaw, for example, is a big fan:

<http://blog.cusec.net/2009/01/16/zed-shaw-on-factor/>

<comment><USER5> Yeah - Forth and Forth-likes encourage an extremely modular, concise, expressive form of coding... When you add macros it gets some of that meta- programming feel that comes with Lisp.

All that said - I've never found it 100% natural, but (perhaps paradoxically) on the other hand I'm usually pleased with the results.

<comment><USER6> No kidding! Take a look at this code I wrote for adding a node onto a binary tree:

[http://img301.imageshack.us/my.php?image=addtobinarytreescre...](http://img301.imageshack.us/my.php?image=addtobinarytreescreenshjq2.png)

It is shown compared to the analogous code in C++ and Lisp.

My Factor version could probably be improved. In fact, I just now realized that I could have factored out the two final calls to <node> into a single call.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"The Stand" by Stephen King - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand <comment><USER2> Not sure how this is applicable. Really good book, but the super flu in the book had a fatality rate of 99.4%, and wiped out the entire world's population in like 2 or 3 weeks.

<comment><USER3> Wildly overrated, IMO terrible book. I know this will enrage the King fanbois. It's more than 800 pages of occasionally interesting vignettes mired in tedious narrative, and after all that investment in slogging through it, King basically gives up and delivers the worst sort of deus ex machina ending ( _nukes_ magically apprear and...something...the check cashed...and we're done here...).</comment></comment>


Google Grapples with Fallout After Employee Slams Diversity Efforts - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/07/542020041/google-grapples-with-fallout-after-employee-slams-diversity-efforts?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170807 <comment><USER2> The irony here is the fallout from this memo is exactly what the author was trying to fight against. Most negative reactions I have seen to the memo attempt to shame the author without engaging in any sort of rational counter or discourse. Whether or not the author is "right" is entirely up for debate, but I believe they should be able to at least question the current situation and get logical feedback as to why they are "right" or "wrong" rather than emotionally-based feedback about how horrible of a person they are.

<comment><USER3> > Most negative reactions I have seen to the memo attempt to shame the author > without engaging in any sort of rational counter or discourse.

Likely because it's the same old pseudoscientific Gish Gallop of claims that've been addressed a thousand times before.

[https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers- manifesto-1e3773ed1788)

<comment><USER4> IMO, Zunger's dismissive and "corrosive" response does nothing, but reinforces the original author's point about the majority's oppressive censorship.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/08/07/googles-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/08/07/googles- diversity-rumpus-the-fun-thing-is-hes-right-about-the-cause-of-the-gender- disparity/#44a84b052b41)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I don't grasp how, in response to a text lamenting a lack of psychological safety and fear of being shamed into silence, a response which essentially states "what you said was stupid, you should never have talked about it and this will have negative consequences for your career" can be considered appropriate, let alone as having a positive impact in any meaningful way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would encourage everyone here to actually go ahead and read the manifesto/letter. I did and was surprised by its tone, given the type of headline this situation is attracting.

I think the author makes some very calm and reasoned points and is attempting to start a discussion where he is open to being wrong.

I do NOT agree with all of the points he makes, but I think he is expressing his views in what is largely a respectful manner that is not, for the most part, racist or sexist in the way you might expect.

If he's wrong, and he IS wrong on some points, the proper reaction is to engage on these points because other people are thinking them too.

Encouraging diversity and inclusion means convincing and educating people at the margin like this guy, not virtue signaling and slamming them for not toeing the line.

<comment><USER7> Can confirm, the headlines/summary articles are generally sensationalist/clickbaity. The actual document is more evenhanded than breathless journalists would have you believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The uproar and its virality within Google first are so weird. From what I skimmed, that post was ultra mild and the author went out of his way to qualify everything.

<comment><USER9> It may appear that way on the surface, but that's because it follows a typical pseudo-scientific formula of citing some a few specific results as evidence to give the argument an air of credibility, and then drawing broad and profound conclusions that are at best vaguely related to the evidence. He basically went from "there are biological differences between men and women that affect their preferences" (okay, I can maybe buy that) straight to "women may not be as good a fit as men for these roles" and "Google should consider ending all of its diversity efforts". The evidence he cited (some of which is research that's been debunked) doesn't even come CLOSE to justifying his conclusions.

The reason there's such an uproar within Google is that the place is full of people with extensive training in mathematics and logic, who can easily spot when you submit a "proof" that is missing about 10,000 steps between the low level lemmas and the top level claims. Combine this with the fact that the claims are questioning the right of 1/3 of the company to exist there, and of course the reaction is going to be incredibly visceral. I honestly don't know how anyone could read more than a paragraph of that document without their bullshit detector exploding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "...After Employee __Slams __Diversity Efforts " doesn't seem to be an impartial headline to me.

<comment><USER11> How do you mean? Aside from being the literal headline of the NPR article and thus being right for HN, what would you suggest?

<comment><USER10> My comment was WRT the NPR headline itself.

<comment><USER12> What would you suggest? From what I've seen that seems like a pretty apt description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a classic example of why we shouldn't feed the trolls. I am not sure why this letter is getting so much publicity. This view point can be had any day on reddit. Even in places like /r/technology you'll find plenty of people throwing out these ideas.

I find it rather boring and cliche.

<comment><USER14> You may find it boring, but there are many people who's daily lives are affected by this type of behavior. Having it displayed so broadly at a company viewed as progressive as Google validates what marginalized people in these groups have been saying for years but keeps getting dismissed.</comment></comment>


US Senate passes sweeping tax overhaul bill - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42205181 <comment><USER2> For those who didn't watch the proceedings, [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQAYbwpU8AELZa0.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQAYbwpU8AELZa0.jpg) was one of the actual pages of the bill, quite literally handwritten scribbled margin notes.

<comment><USER3> Source?

<comment><USER4> S/he gave you a source. If you don't think it's adequate you should say why. PBS has a good reputation for veracity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The law making process is so clearly broken. I see this as a contributing factor to the long gradual decline of the role of the USA in the world. The reemergence of China should be engendering a positive spirit of lifting the game, not a money grabbing exercise.

If you can't make evidence based laws for the people then society will be warped into some dysfunctional dystopian end game.

<comment><USER2> To a large extent, the broken parts of US politics stem from the lack of actual written rules. Many things that should be codified are actually "gentlemen's agreements", where people agree to act in good faith. Today's show on the Senate floor was the logical conclusion of an entire political party deciding to break every aspect of that unstated agreement,

<comment><USER6> Oh right and Obamacare didn't do the exact same thing? What goes around..

<comment><USER4> Please stop repeating that obvious canard. It's insulting to your fellow HNers to repeat known counterfactual claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think Mitch McConnell will go down as a historically terrible senator. He has an absolutely single-minded focus on winning legislative "victories" without any consideration of the actual merits of what he's corralling votes for or agaisnt.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like a prosecutor that focuses on convictions and personal record and not on truth and justice. This, the lack of pursuing truth and justice, is what is eroding our society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Republicans have been so skilled at digital jerrymandering that we have digital technology delivering us a single party state. Only mass voter outrage will be enough to overcome a decade of very effective data driven jerrymandering.

<comment><USER10> It's actually spelled "gerrymandering".

You might have learned that by now if you weren't so busy spreading dumb conspiracy theories on the internet.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/15/federal-court- invali...](https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/15/federal-court-invalidates- part-texas-congressional-map/)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north-c...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north- carolina-gerrymandering/527592/)

[https://www.salon.com/2016/11/22/unconstitutional- gerrymande...](https://www.salon.com/2016/11/22/unconstitutional-gerrymander- federal-court-strikes-down-wisconsins-gop-drawn-redistricting/)

Are you really that ignorant or are you complicit with these crimes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know it takes 100°C for water to boil, but how much does the US need?

Keep in mind, Trump is not the source of the problem, he is one of the (reinforcing) symptoms of a host of underlying systemic societal issues.

</comment><comment><USER7> What a horrible process. You don't get good legislation written by ramming it through without time to evaluate the consequences of the law.

<comment><USER12> "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy."

<comment><USER13> A comment about a bill that took almost a year to draft and which was passed under regular order. And now hypocrites who used that quote to attack Pelosi are supporting this abominable bill, which was passed without any kind of analysis and without even the slightest pretense that anyone voting for it had read it.

<comment><USER12> The legislative process is always a mess. No matter how much we pretend (in one direction, because double standards), no significant law passes without essentially indefensible actions "behind the scenes". We may feel that one bill is super-duper and the other one is terrible, but we shouldn't let that blind us to the inevitably shabby nature of the process. Likewise, selectively noticing that nature for the purpose of criticizing particular bills makes for unconvincing political argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the problems of US is the fact that protesting is virtually impossible. Unless there are 1,000,000 people in the streets of DC for two weeks, no one will care. Protesting in your city has little impact on the federal level. Also The general lack of public spaces makes it hard. And the fact that the police cracks down pretty hard on things after the first display of some sort of "disobedience". Look at the photos from protests in like France. Shit on fire, people throwing shit, but the police doesn't shoot them.

Dystopian police state here we come. Fuck I hope at least there will be a real NeoTokyo in the future.

<comment><USER15> This bill doesn't fundamentally change very much besides the corporate tax rate, so the explosive reaction seems unnecessary. You aren't going to get a million people in the street because their tax bill went up, or down, several hundred dollars, which is what this amounts to for most people.

<comment><USER13> It changes a lot more than that. Although we don't know precisely what, because the House and Senate bills need to be reconciled (or the House will just pass the Senate bill) and the Senate bill was literally written on the floor tonight. Nobody has done a serious analysis of its effects. What we do know suggests that it will increase the uninsured rate substantially, increase the deficit dramatically, and trigger automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs.

<comment><USER15> _increase the uninsured rate substantially_

If people choose to drop insurance because they aren't mandated to buy it, then it is on them

 _increase the deficit dramatically_

certainly true

 _trigger automatic cuts to Medicare_

This is the only reason I'm replying, because there is no way that it will happen. No one wants cuts, and it would be political poison. Claiming it is fear mongering (not you, but the people using it to attack the bill).

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP_dYbWW4AA0-8h.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DP_dYbWW4AA0-8h.jpg)

<comment><USER13> Mitch McConnell's word is worth nothing. Republicans are already talking about "entitlement reform", aka cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Any hope that the GOP will avoid a particular course of action because it's "political suicide" should be dead and buried after the last year.

As for the uninsured rate, eliminating the mandate will not only cause people to voluntarily drop insurance but also involuntarily push people out of insurance due to the resulting increase in premiums. That's what happens when you kick out one of the legs of a three-legged stool.

<comment><USER15> Republicans may well attempt to cut/reform entitlements, but it won't be because of the tax bill triggering mandatory cuts. That is the fear mongering piece.

The effect of eliminating the mandate is unclear. People paying the fine to not have insurance will surely stop. People who have insurance now, should keep it. But it the insurance is so worthless to them that think it isn't worth having, hopefully it will motivate smarter fix than simply mandating it. Poor people will still continue to get their insurance paid for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a temp immigrant in US, who is equally frustrated with the Trump hating democrat supporters, the Hillary-hating Trump supporters and the neutrals.

Based on what I know from my own small sample set of data, makes me believe that the the Trump vote base is strong, and considerable in number, and is super happy with this tax overhaul.

They see it as "Trump kept his promise", by simplifying the tax code, reducing taxes on his vote base, increasing taxes on the tax bracket that trump voters considered to be something like "free money mongers" and of course, its going to affect the democrat strongholds.

What I find funny, is that many Trump haters are still starting a conversation by presuming that majority of the country hates this tax reform (its probably the top 10 most populous cities of US and California). I think people need to go out of democrat stronghold areas and get some real feedback.

I'm curious to see how this sweeping tax overhaul works out in the long run

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm terribly surprised that McCain went along with this legislative process. No one had time to read the bill - or even have the bill itself - when the votes were cast. Just makes no sense.

What kind of country behaves that way?

<comment><USER11> A failed one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the US doesn't have enough accountability for its leaders. These guys just come in, serve the lobbyists and keep renewing their terms. They say one thing and do another.

Is there any consequence of this directly to the congress people? Not really, cuz come election time, they'll lie through their teeth to get votes, all the while forgetting that they are the ones who did the damage in the first place.

They should either ban lobbying or have penalties for congresspeople who lie to their electorates. As it stands, I can't see that happening.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's sickening how large corporations make more and more money but pay almost no taxes because (through the money) they have so much influence on politics.

<comment><USER15> One of the main reasons large corporations pay no tax is that they hide the money in other countries with lower corporate tax rates. You can argue that it is a race to the bottom, or ineffective for other reasons, but the lower corporate tax rate is an attempt to deal with the issue, and get a cut of that money, albeit at a lower rate.

<comment><USER20> But if private citizens were able to park their income offshore I am fairly sure the response wouldn't be to lower income taxes.

<comment><USER15> It is a matter of complexity, and quantity. Wealthy private citizens do park money offshore via trusts and other mechanisms. It wouldn't be a good trade- off to lower tax rates to lure it back, because it is at such a smaller scale than the corporate parking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The pendulum swings back and forth. It's not the end of the earth, it's not going to bring utopia.

Can we please use Hacker News for technical issues?

<comment><USER22> Hacker News should focus on important issues, which are not always technical. The Senates's tax overhaul is an important issue. The outrageous behavior of the Republican Senators to get the bill passes is an important issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This will go down in history as one of the most grotesque things to ever have happened in American politics. And that's saying a lot, there is some stiff competition for sure.

</comment><comment><USER23> Annnnd they pulled the AMT repeal.

<comment><USER24> Gotta tax those rich people

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Minor upside: it still has to go through reconciliation and this Congress has proven itself expert in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But yeah, this is an economic dumpster fire.

</comment><comment><USER25> This bill is rural state senators and large corporations robbing middle class in industrialized areas.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't know why anyone is worried about this - the worse the corruption and give away to the 0.01% the bigger the blowback. The end result is the 0.01% are going to pay far more than if they had been reasonable.

<comment><USER27> The standard operating procedure when American oligarchs feel threatened is war and racial/ethnic/religious division to distract the rubes. So probably quite a few people should be worried.

I like your optimism though.

<comment><USER26> This sort of thing has been used for the last 40 years and its effectiveness is drawing to an end. Nobody believes anything the oligarchs say anymore.

You can only pull on a rubber band for so long before it eventually breaks and smacks you in the face. The band is now very, very tight. The next economic downturn risks unleashing something that no amount of money can control.

<comment><USER28> > Nobody believes anything the oligarchs say anymore.

And yet Donald Trump was elected president.

<comment><USER4> The fact that people put a game show host of his ilk in that office _is_ the death of the institutional canary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have been watching comments on NYTimes and Fox News and what surprised was not a single person (out of couple of thousands) actually estimated their tax bill and compared.

There is one calculator out here (which might not be accurate because of changes): [https://www.calcxml.com/calculators/trump-tax-reform- calcula...](https://www.calcxml.com/calculators/trump-tax-reform-calculator)

I used it to arrive at following numbers. If this tax calculator is right then there is indeed ~$10K tax cut for everyone in middle class and above:

$750K->$236,950 to $212,060

350K->$81,595 to $72,060

250K->$47,701 to $38,900

150K->$17,778 to $9900

50K->$548 to 0

On the other hand this NYTimes analysis says that lower and middle class cuts are tiny but people with $1M or more just get huge cut: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/17/us/politics/s...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/17/us/politics/senate- tax-plan-analysis.html)

Also, according to above analysis poor people will be taxed more than before after 10 years!

So overall at this point I think computing impact remains very hazy given all kind of conflicting information. But one thing for sure, rich people are the major winner here given much higher cuts + no or less death tax. Warren Buffet had said that common strategy they used during Bush era was to give $400 one time check to everyone so they are happy while sneaking in millions of dollars of recurring tax cuts for the rich in form of capital gains.

I wish US had Swiss style public referendums where people can demand to vote on legislation and overthrow any legislation they wished.

<comment><USER30> Those numbers you posted are probably inaccurate. The true numbers really depend on whether you itemize your deductions, and how much. This particular tax bill substantially raises taxes for people who itemize, in particular states with high local taxes like California.

I don't know about Fox News but The NY Times had a good analysis of this: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/28/upshot/what-t...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/28/upshot/what- the-tax-bill-would-look-like-for-25000-middle-class-families.html)

Obviously many families and individuals will see their taxes go up.

<comment><USER29> I assumed standard family (married filed jointly, 2 kids, standard deduction).

<comment><USER12> Yeah somehow I don't see itemized deductions as a "middle class" thing. Even less so with the standard deduction increase.

<comment><USER30> About 1/3 of households itemize deductions, including myself. I live in a two bedroom condo with two kids, I consider myself "middle class." Itemizing deductions is much more common in high tax ("Blue") states due to the state/local tax deduction. This tax "cut" is targeted to raise taxes on blue states by eliminating that.

The standard deduction increase is a bit of a trick, since they removed the personal deduction. So it's not a "doubling" of the standard deduction, but an increase of a few thousand. It is not enough to cover the removal of other deductions for many middle/upper-middle class families.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sam Altman Is Bullish on Biotech Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/y-combinator-sam-altman-interview-on-investing-in-biotech-startups/ <comment><USER2> Biotech is certainly exciting on the cost front as technology progresses, however, there is an even easier win which is bringing price transparency to supplies and reagents.

We've worked with every YC biotech company (except Ginkgo) and the savings is massive verse paying list price. Startups are unable to negotiate competitive prices from large distributors due to their limit budgets so we've been pooling their purchasing power.

Recently, we've started doing analytics ([http://labspend.com/](http://labspend.com/)) for labs on supplies/chemicals and see huge differences even in universities that spend 10+ million per a year.

Here is an example from four universities located in the midwest of the USA for a commonly used chemical reagent called acetonitrile.

List price for this item is currently at $1335.49 ([http://www1.fishersci.com/ecomm/servlet/fsproductdetail_1065...](http://www1.fishersci.com/ecomm/servlet/fsproductdetail_10652_679239__-1_0)) and here is what university labs are paying $399.31, $239.16, $220.54, $156.10 - image: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7671582/chemical- pricing...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7671582/chemical-pricing.png) ).

We commonly see 10x savings, but even in this example 5x can be quite significant in the budget of a start up.

<comment><USER3> Interesting! So are store.p212121.com or lapspend.com aka offers.p212121.com hooked to the same backend? Can I buy from labspend.com? Since universities buy through their labs do they see divergent prices even within the same institution? How do you provide cheaper prices - do you buy in bulk and then redistribute or do you simply get lower prices bc you move large volumes via pooling? I think you are onto something really cool here. I imagine a future where perhaps Stanford would do all their buying through you since you could pool the volume of multiple large research institutions. Btw how do you process payments? Also the more info boxes on labspend.com don't seem to be working.

<comment><USER2> We started by offering an e-commerce solution although we are adding products like crazy there's 30+ million chemicals/products in science. This is another reason we built out labspend which has a different backend. We are seeing labs paying different amounts at the same school. Stanford we are able to find 10-20% savings at times, but there are in a good place compared to start ups.

Sorry about the Lean More buttons not working and will get those up to date soon. Feel free to shoot me email if you have a specific question (firstname.lastname@example.com).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know it's a bit OT as these companies are more established, but what listed stocks show some promise in BioTech that are worth watching? (Both big and small)

<comment><USER5> I won't make any specific recommendations, but you can learn more by following these journalists:

\- Adam Feuerstein: [http://www.thestreet.com/author/1352996/AdamFeuerstein/all.h...](http://www.thestreet.com/author/1352996/AdamFeuerstein/all.html) (and the rest of The Street's biotech coverage: [http://www.thestreet.com/headlines-and- perspectives/biotech/](http://www.thestreet.com/headlines-and- perspectives/biotech/))

\- Matthew Herper: [https://twitter.com/matthewherper](https://twitter.com/matthewherper)

<comment><USER4> Ta! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any news from the YC-backed Immunity Project? Seems like nothing new on their blog or Twitter feed since 2014: [https://www.immunityproject.org](https://www.immunityproject.org)

<comment><USER7> Sh*t takes time.

<comment><USER6> Well, critics warned it was a scam and crowdsourcing funding was a way to bypass legit medical processes and review. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but a year's silence doesn't look great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (Disclaimer/shameless advertisement: I am a co-founder of a project in the problem domain. We are currently in seed stage, fundraising mode, and are going to have a look at the U.S. east/west coast soon).

I am quite happy to see YC to jump on the SynBio train. While other specialized accelerators such as _IndieBio_ [1] have been first in this fairly unclaimed industry sector, I expect their involvement to trigger a cascade in professional investment that will help the bulk of us to get more money. In contrary to software (and for a multitude of reasons), biotech investments have recovered at a much slower pace since the 2008 crash.

If I get around to make a solid write up, I would like to compare the wet/hardware biotech startup accelerator experience. As in software, biotech tools have made a great improvement and became cheaper by orders of magnitude. However, the development workflow is still different, and many things such a reproducibility, lab environment, specialized talent are not as easy to come by in a lean and fast accelerator program. 3 month to MVP is a true challenge - we were quite lucky that we made it [2].

Biotech can be far more complicated as software on the business side of things, and going lean is often not really an option (think production standards, ISO/cGMP). A 1:1 copy of the software accelerator model is definitely not enough.

[1] [http://indie.bio](http://indie.bio) [2] [http://sothicbio.science](http://sothicbio.science)

</comment><comment><USER5> Prior discussion on YC + biotech: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997722)

<comment><USER9> I'm still wondering what YC's value proposition is in this space: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998739)

<comment><USER10> Gotta agree with this. If YC is serious about biotech, we should expect them to start bringing domain experts into the fold soon - doctors, surgeons, eminent researchers, possibly folks with high level experience in regulation etc. I imagine we'll start seeing this soon.

<comment><USER11> They recently added Anne Wojcicki (23andMe) as a part-time partner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Makes sense to me. I was talking to a trader the other day and I asked if he bought when Hilary's comments drove the prices down. Seems he turned a pretty penny for his firm.

The technology required is becoming more accessible, the research and break throughs certainly aren't going to stop, I guess the big question really becomes, which companies? Unless there's a bubble, because the profits don't materialize (in which case progress would slow only to pick up again down the road I figure).

Of course, you could probably buy a fund which tracks that particular segment of the market.</comment>


Making Gains In Reddit Engineering - <AUTHOR> https://redditblog.com/2020/07/06/making-gains-%f0%9f%92%aa-in-reddit-engineering/ <comment><USER2> Are any of the mentioned projects open-source?

Do you have any articles about the software that reduced logs by 96%?</comment>


How Will You Measure Your Life? - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr?

<comment><USER2> Although it didn't get much discussion, this was posted two days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1520923></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to list skills on my resumé? - <AUTHOR> I have technical skills (e.g., programming languages, frameworks, platforms, etc), and I have non-technical skills (e.g., product management, leadership, communication, etc).
How do I list these skills on my resumé in a poignant, informative, yet to-the-point way?
Previously I had just gone with some sort of comma-delimited list, but there has to be a better/more creative way than that right? <comment><USER2> The best and most concise way to list your skills is in the context of your job descriptions. Anybody can SAY that they have some skill, but if you can SHOW then it becomes much more convincing. Here's an example.

SAY

Skills: Java, Salesforce, Communication

SHOW

XYZ Corp | Software Engineer | 2013-Present

\- Created recommendation system using Java lib FOO that increased user engagement by 23%.

\- Revamped Salesforce integration with Product ABC for 40% more leads and 65% higher conversion rate.

\- Implemented daily standups to improve project stakeholders visibility into project progress.

<comment><USER3> I've read thousands of CV's, and completely agree with this. Just mentioning you've got leadership skills doesn't say much, but if you show you've lead a tricky project/situation, it starts making sense. Same for tech skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I listed buzzword-type skills (i.e. JAVA, Devops, MySQL etc.) used in each job/project listed. i.e.

" Software Developer at Google (January 2017 - Present)

I worked on the gmail frontend team. Designed and coded a new attachment upload UI bla bla bla. Skills used: Javascript, Angular.js, CSS3.

Software Developer at Apple (March 2014 - December 2016)

I developed a new app which integrated bla bla bla.. Skills used: Objective-C, iOS, JAVA, API integrations. "

This way you can use the job description to emphasise what it was you achieved in those job and not mention what tech-stack you used. The skills there are just to let the employer or recruiter know in what context you have used certain technologies and how much experience you have in them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Totally agree with Dyeye - as much as possible show don't tell by outlining actual concrete things you have designed. I see that you listed Product Management as a skill - here are some more PM specific resume tips: [https://www.productschool.com/blog/jobs-cat/4-tips-write- res...](https://www.productschool.com/blog/jobs-cat/4-tips-write-resume- product-manager-recruiter- notice/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=forum&utm_campaign=)

</comment><comment><USER6> My favorite I saw on a resume was power bars, something like:

      Skills:
        Language A  [-][-][-][-][-]
        Language B  [-][-][ ][ ][ ]
        Framework C [-][-][-][-][ ]

        Product Management  [-][-][-][-][ ]
        Technical Comms     [-][-][-][-][-]
        Leadership          [-][-][ ][ ][ ]

<comment><USER7> I run an IT department in my startup and hiring devs on a regular basis. This shown above is the most confusing and pretty much meaningless way for me to judge your skills. As mentioned in one of the comments above: I want to see in which job and which projects and when the last time you used those skills. Show me examples of the use.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much is the recent improvement in Firefox Quantum due to Rust? - <AUTHOR> What kind of role did Rust play at making Firefox fast, if any at all? <comment><USER2> The CSS engine was completely rewritten in Rust and now heavily utilizes parallelism, which Rust certainly did help with. I'd say, this was only about 1/4 of the performance increase going from 56 to 57, though. (Based on my perception, having run Nightly as daily driver and being aware of when which bigger change got merged.)

The rest of the performance work was untied from Rust, as far as I'm aware.

Upcoming somewhen after 57 is also WebRender / Quantum Render, which should give a significant boost to FPS. Basically, if you've ever wondered why your gaming PC can render out giant space warfares at 120 FPS, but your browser starts stuttering when that super cool menu animates itself, WebRender is going to fix that in principle.

So, there's still going to be other problems, like JavaScript performance just not being on par with compiled code, but it should bring us a lot closer to the FPS that you'd expect.

(To throw in some technical terms, in case you want to research: Browsers so far used Immediate Mode to draw things, whereas WebRender and video games use Retained Mode.)

And WebRender was architectured as part of Servo, so is also written in Rust, but I can't tell you, if Rust really benefitted work here, or if it just happens to be written in Rust.

This illustrates the sort of difference we're looking at with WebRender: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hYIRQRiws)

(Mind, though, that the video is more than a year old now. Firefox 57 should also already perform a lot better than what is shown in the video. Then again, WebRender is VSync-capped in the video...)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's an interesting question. Also do the Firefox engineers have any data/feedback regarding Rust?

Was it easier to write code for the replaces parts with Rust? If yes in what way?

Any data/metrics regarding bug counts on Rust vs C++ for the replaced components?

<comment><USER2> > Any data/metrics regarding bug counts on Rust vs C++ for the replaced > components?

Here's a funny one for the multimedia decoder: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/07/shipping-rust-in- firefox/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/07/shipping-rust-in-firefox/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very little right now, given that so few systems are built with it. And then, after more are converted, it will still be difficult to judge how much is a result of the language itself, and how much is a result of improved algorithms, gpu leveraging, and system design.

Rust itself is more about preventing bugs and security problems than improving performance.

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation)

<comment><USER5> These things are related, though. A comment by Manish, who works on Stylo: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6pgdxn/stylo_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6pgdxn/stylo_servo_in_firefox_is_ready_for_community/dkpejgb/)

So yes, it's not like just writing it in Rust will make things faster. It's that Rust makes it easier to do "improved algorithms, gpu leveraging, and system design" in the first place.

That also said, its true that there's a lot more to 57's speed than just the Rust work; the UI work also plays a huge part for example, given their focus on user percepted speed related issues.

<comment><USER6> For compute-heavy domains I am interested (SAT Solvers), the "Rust Tax" doesn't seem too different from the "Managed Language Tax".</comment></comment></comment>


Flickr Related Tag Browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/#/ <comment><USER2> It's erm... nice looking. That's about it.</comment>


Show HN: HTML5 online animation editor that exports to SVG and SMIL - <AUTHOR> http://animatron.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks great. I've also been exploring path rendering and timeline playback in the browser, see here:

[http://mattdesl.github.io/path- illustrator/demo/advanced.htm...](http://mattdesl.github.io/path- illustrator/demo/advanced.html) (path rendering)

[https://github.com/mattdesl/keytime](https://github.com/mattdesl/keytime) (generic timeline)

IMHO the best thing for these tools to do is give more control to the developer. Things like JSON export, custom plugins, etc. This way we can use the timeline and UI tools to drive canvas, WebGL, and even generic animations like audio volume or gravity in a game.

Otherwise you risk the tools "fading away" as the landscape changes, and running into the same limitations as Dreamweaver/Macaw/EdgeAnimate.

<comment><USER3> wow, I really like your demos! especially the timeline based. really cool and inspiring.

anyway you are right about giving more control to developers, we are working on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very impressed with your work. As a user I encountered 2 minor issues: 1. to dismiss the video tutorial I (mis)clicked "anywhere" I should have had to click on a "Got it!" button. 2. to export my small animation I clicked on the Gear icon, which let me choose "HTML5/GIF/Video", and then I was puzzled as to how to proceed (didn't really think about that "PUBLISH" next to the gear as a button). Would it be possible to add a "PUBLISH" link within the gear popup?

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the compliment and the suggestions! I can see how the publishing UI is kind of confusing - we'll figure out how to simplify it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first time I looked, I got the scientist standing in front of test tubes animation. Which has bubbles floating up at about 4fps on my iPad Air. Reloading showed other animations that moved at much more pleasing framerates; you might wanna get rid of that one!

On that first load I also had some framerate stuttering on the sample animations at the bottom I tried, and all of them had the loading circle flicker like crazy. Then it crashed Mobile Safari.

Looks cool though, I may try poking at it soon when I have some free time. I haven't really done much animation since I left Hollywood.

<comment><USER7> It happens for Mobile Safari for the last stable version of Player, unfortunately. But we have one newer version behind the back, which supposed to work much faster there, it's just a bit less stable to be deployed now. So yes, please don't forget about us :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to CanIUse.com [1], SMIL is supported by all modern browsers except IE and Opera Mini. I guess the idea is to provide an animated GIF or video fallback for those browsers?

[1] [http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg-smil](http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg-smil)

<comment><USER9> IE is probably waiting for Web Animations 1.0 and SVG 2 to be finalized first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note: you have trailing text at the end of the first hover box on the starter kit: [http://cl.ly/image/0P1i0k0A1T3P/note.png](http://cl.ly/image/0P1i0k0A1T3P/note.png)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for bringing it to our attention - yeah, we noticed it the other day. It'll be corrected very soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Notification about not being to save someone else's scene keeps popping up after I hit Dismiss. I know I can't save but annoying nonetheless. Otherwise feels quite polished and impressive overall.

<comment><USER5> Fair point, and thanks for the kind words!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Woah. These run almost as fast as Macromedia used to run on a Pentium 1! Maybe just 20 more years and browsers will finally catch up to 1995 technology.

In all seriousness, it really is too slow - the landing page animations play in about 2fps and the editor itself needs half a second to light up a button when I hover it. I'm running firefox 32.0.1 on Linux with integrated intel video, if it matters. Sadly your time might be better spent improving firefox/chromium so that the next generation will have a platform on which to implement your idea.

<comment><USER3> unfortunately firefox is really slow these days. try it in chrome or safari, it's night and day difference in speed

<comment><USER13> Looks great on Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The product looks good but the signup has some issues.

1) When I register, it immediately takes me to the login page

2) When I try to login, it kept saying "Bad email or password"

3) So then I try to register again and it says email is already used

4) Finally check email and click activation link _then_ signin works

Either add a message after signup saying activation is required or say activation is required instead of "bad username/password" on signin attempts.

<comment><USER3> thanks for feedback!

we do show a message right after the registration saying that email has been sent and you need to click there to confirm.

either it was not shown for whatever reason or you did not notice it or something like that.

anyway, we will rethink the process, so that things like that won't happen. thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As an alternative, try Google Web Designer (free), Mixeek (free) or Sencha Animator ($199).

</comment><comment><USER16> I really, really enjoyed browsing other user animation - especially this individuals: [http://animatron.com/users/wps](http://animatron.com/users/wps)

</comment><comment><USER17> This looks great, I would like to try it. Can I import graphics I have already created, for example in Inkscape? I would like to use existing assets I already have.

<comment><USER5> Sure, you can import jpeg / png images as well as SVGs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://i.imgur.com/qfeS0MD.png](http://i.imgur.com/qfeS0MD.png) I can't read anything.

<comment><USER3> thanks, fixing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome! Is it possible to animate single points or curves? Couldn't work out how it's done without moving the whole shape.

<comment><USER3> not yet, it's coming

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to initiate an animation based on a button event (clicking another object). Am I missing that feature?

<comment><USER3> until recently we had JS scripting support in the editor, i.e. you could write logic in JS and attach it to various UI elements etc. we disabled it about one month ago because of major JS API overhaul.

we will enable it back in about one month or so and you will be able to do that and many other things in a clip.

sorry about that

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> To site author(s): Just FYI, the landing page is blank until you accept cookies.

<comment><USER5> Yes, we do need cookies enabled to display the page properly - we're putting a notification message there so at least there will be some explanation for visitors who see nothing but a blank screen initially, it's definitely disconcerting otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Newbie to this scene , how would this compare to GreenSock animation ?

<comment><USER3> greensock is a JS library, you need to code animations, while Animatron is authoring tool, i.e. you create animations visually without coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like it. Excellent work guys.

Going to poke around more this weekend.

<comment><USER3> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It is done in GWT ?

<comment><USER3> there are some details if you are interested [http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2014/04/17/animatron- html5-an...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2014/04/17/animatron- html5-animation-editor-inspired-by-middle-school-homework-assignment/)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for the link. So the player is written in JS and the editor in Java- GWT, what are the motivations about this choice ?

<comment><USER3> the player is relatively small piece of JS code and most of the time there is only one developer working on it. on the other hand the editor is quite large application and the team is 9 developers. developing this kind of app in Java with the help of excellent java tools is just much easier and maintainable than in JS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> looks like they are using svg-edit.

<comment><USER9> Nope, all drawing tools and SVG SMIL animation export are custom made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like this a lot. Obviously a lot of work and research went into this. Congratulations for the directed effort and the amazing results.

On top of that, I'd like to thank you for helping rid the internet of HTML+CSS+JS. I can't wait for this madness to go away. This triple of hell is woefully inadequate (abstraction-level wise) for a programmer to communicate to a computer what they want an animation to do.

Moreover, this is a contribution to the animation field, which is an incredibly powerful way to communicate ideas, stifled only by the barrier of entry of the existing tools. Any new tool that lowers that barrier deserves praise.

In other words, nice going!

<comment><USER5> Thanks so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've always viewed "first ever" or "best ever" or really any superlative claim with huge prejudice. As in, that's quite a claim to be making without providing evidence.

On the plus side, I couldn't find that claim anywhere on the site.

My point and suggestion being, try to avoid making claims like that if you can't or don't support them. Perhaps I'm a rare pragmatic fuddy-duddy, but pure marketing hype really turns me off of a product/service.

<comment><USER28> How could they prove that they're the first? That implies they could prove the non-existence of something.

<comment><USER27> That's definitely a good point, but my personal reaction in that case would be to not make that claim. Such claims feel insincere to me and I'd rather hear "an excellent tool for creating animations and exporting them to SVG and SMIL" or something similar. I'm not saying I'm a marketing guru by any means, though. Just trying to give my honest feedback as one of the target audience.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Soda Player, a "modern" player app - <AUTHOR> https://www.sodaplayer.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey team, it'd be nice if the landing page actually explained what the software is, not just the benefits of it. Is it an embeddable video player (and if so what am I being asked to download) or is it a desktop video player (and if so how is it different from VLC?).

Mostly I just found the landing page confusing. It took a bit to see that the page wasn't scrolled down you just have half a screenshot, "video player that loves the internet" doesn't really tell me anything, and nope, that play button doesn't do anything either that's just part of the logo. =/

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points (you're not the first trying to scroll up, we will fix that).

Maybe we made the mistake on focusing too much on the app itself and not enough on the website :)</comment></comment>


Do Users Scroll? – People Don't Scroll - <AUTHOR> https://www.peopledontscroll.com/ <comment><USER2> This website does >100 requests and weighs 1.1MB compressed. What a waste of bandwidth and resources.

<comment><USER3> I would imaging this is kind of intentional?

<comment><USER2> Why? Here's a <1k site that accomplishes the same thing: [https://reinefjord.github.io/peopledontscroll- lite/](https://reinefjord.github.io/peopledontscroll-lite/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People love to scroll. Don't annoy them by using fixed headers: [http://zichy.de/public/siufh.html](http://zichy.de/public/siufh.html).

<comment><USER5> This bookmarklet has changed my browsing experience for the better: [https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky- headers/](https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/)

<comment><USER6> Wonderful! It seems there is an arms race between marketers and designer on one side and users on the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They don't when the page wants to load 8 different external scripts, 5 different tracking beacons, 13 things automatically blocked by uBlock Origin, and then even when you enable all scripts it still just says "Yes they do."

<comment><USER8> I didn't realize that the page actually did anything at all for just this reason. Thanks for taking one for the team...also why was this in a script in the first place? Shouldn't it just be text?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Theres a great article on UXMyths discussing the myth that users don't scroll: [http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont- scroll](http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll)

</comment><comment><USER10> Well this was confusing. I wouldn't consider my monitor to be particularly large or high res (Apple 27, 2560 x 1440) and I didn't have to scroll to see the 'Yes they do' message

</comment><comment><USER11> there's no need to scroll, all the noscript errors fit on one page.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's pretty easy to miss the joke when on a portrait monitor...

</comment><comment><USER13> But what about mobile devices that have no visible scroll bars?

<comment><USER14> I think "frustrated scroll" might be a pretty common move when presented with what looks like a broken page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Charlie don't scroll!

<comment><USER13> I'm going to give you an up-vote purely for the bastardised film ref. :D

(Now watch us both get voted down to invisibility!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Betteridge's law, despite the cute little thing at the bottom.

I actually closed the window the first time, because it looked like the site had just failed. Then I suspected a self-referential joke and there it was. So a funny once, otherwise no.</comment>


Here Comes Philae Powered by an RTX2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpushack.com/2014/11/12/here-comes-philae-powered-by-an-rtx2010/

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't heard of these RTX microcontrollers. Programming them seems quite interesting![1]

[1](pdf): [http://soton.mpeforth.com/flag/jfar/vol6/no1/article1.pdf](http://soton.mpeforth.com/flag/jfar/vol6/no1/article1.pdf)</comment>