Facebook Says Hackers Stole Detailed Personal Data from 14M People - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-12/facebook-s-recent-hack-exposed-user-location-search-data <comment><USER2> Facebook posting: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/update-on-security- issu...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/update-on-security-issue/)

Check if you are affected here: [https://www.facebook.com/help/securitynotice](https://www.facebook.com/help/securitynotice)

(posting because it took 10+ mins to find it - many media outlets are not linking directly to it)

<comment><USER3> FB should timestamp these articles. It happened a couple of weeks ago, or is this new news?

<comment><USER4> Everybody should timestamp all articles.

People don't want to because they want their content to be "evergreen" and they think that if there's a date that's more than a year or so old, people will disregard / discount the content. So by default many blog CMSs default to not showing the date of any articles.

<comment><USER5> Facebook is not a small blog operator. They should view this as a professional communications medium.

<comment><USER6> Someone in Facebook's PR department is reading this part of the thread and saying "it's working!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm one of the unlucky 400,000 who had the most information stolen. Complete notification:

        Is my Facebook account impacted by this security issue?

        Yes. Based on what we've learned so far in our investigation, attackers accessed the following Facebook account information:

          * Name.
          * Primary email address.
          * Most recently added phone number.

        Additionally, the attackers also accessed other account information, including:

          * The following information associated with your Facebook account:
            * Username.
            * Date of birth.
            * Gender.
            * Types of the devices you've used to access Facebook.
            * The language you choose to use Facebook in.
          * If you previously added this specific information to your Facebook account, it was also accessed:
            * Relationship status.
            * Religion.
            * Hometown.
            * Current city.
            * Work.
            * Education.
            * Website.
          * The 10 most recent locations you've checked in to or been tagged in. These locations are determined by the places named in the posts, such as a landmark or restaurant, not location data from a device.
          * The 15 most recent searches you've entered into the Facebook search bar.
          * People or Pages you follow on Facebook.

        A small subset of Facebook accounts, including yours, had additional Facebook information made available to the attackers. Learn more about how this information was made available. This is specifically information that appears when viewing your own profile and includes additional information, such as:

          * Posts from your timeline.
          * Your Friends list.
          * Messenger conversation names, but not their contents.
          * If you are a Page admin, you may have also had messages to your Page made available to the attackers.
          * Groups you're a member of.

        Based on what we've learned so far in our investigation, the attackers did not gain access to certain information, such as:

          * Account passwords.
          * Payment card or credit card information.

<comment><USER8> > The 15 most recent searches you've entered into the Facebook search bar.

I can see how the attacker can use this to blackmail somebody.

<comment><USER9> I don't. Can you provide an example or two?

<comment><USER10> "single female friends who live in <town you just visited>" while you are married, for example?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is why I hate not having custom security questions from Banks. What is my fathers middle name? Well, if you have facebook and he puts it up there you can find out. I have no control over that.

I could start using fake answers but trying to remember the fake answers vs real answers is tough. Whereas when I get a custom question I have a custom answer that I will always remember. Such as _made up on the spot_ Name of the babysitter with curly finger nails. I remember that and no one can figure it out based on the internet.

<comment><USER12> I use KeePass for password management and the way I handle this is I generate a random string for each security question answer, then just include it in the Notes field of the entry.

<comment><USER13> People are social engineering a random string when talking to customer care. The attacker says "Ah, a bunch of random characters, do I have to say it?" or even worse I have had a customer service rep look at it, laugh and say never mind.

I use "batteryhorsestaple" type of passwords stored in a password manager for the security questions. Those are easy to say over the phone and more resistant to social engineering.

<comment><USER14> >The attacker says "Ah, a bunch of random characters, do I have to say it?

The vast majority of users aren't using random characters, so how would they know to say that to begin with? Are you implying they try that line, idk, 10,000 times until it (maybe) works?

<comment><USER15> Nah, it would go like this:

Support: what is your fathers middle name?

Hacker: Michael

Support: sorry that is wrong

Hacker: oh shoot, I forget I always put the incorrect information in this one... i can't remember, did I put a fake name or random characters? Or was this the one I put a bunch of words into?

Support: yeah, it looks like random characters... let's move on

<comment><USER16> Proper training, required. That person presumably is legally liable as they've breeched the providers security by giving information; and maybe given away PII.

<comment><USER17> This is the point of failure. This never comes to fruition.

"Computers are hard, and I'm just not very good with them!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Logged in today and found:

"[name], we have more information about the security incident we discovered on September 25, 2018. An unauthorized third party accessed your name, email address and phone number. We acted quickly to secure the site and took action to protect your account, and we're working closely with law enforcement to address the incident."

Ridiculous.

<comment><USER19> Why is that ridiculous?

Here are the facts:

1\. A software company had a security incident.

2\. They urgently resolved the issue.

3\. They looked into who was impacted, and sent customized notifications letting people know how they were impacted.

None of this behavior is ridiculous. It's quite responsible. What would you expect to happen differently?

<comment><USER18> Well, let's see. A feature used to view _profile_ information had a vulnerability that allowed an attacker to get my phone number. My phone number isn't even listed on my profile.

This means the credentials from the original implementation of said feature weren't locked down to only data available from your viewable profile.

While my phone number may be available elsewhere outside of FB, I only have it tied to my account as a password reset contact.

<comment><USER19> > This means the credentials from the original implementation of said feature > weren't locked down to only data available from your viewable profile.

Yeah, that's the entire security incident. So are you saying you expect software companies to never have security incidents? Now that's ridiculous.

<comment><USER20> Why is that ridiculous?

<comment><USER21> It's only possible with a very different set of tradeoffs around risk and innovation than are the norm in software. It takes NASA-grade layers of slow development processes to be 100% certain that there will never be any incidents.

Most companies, most developers, and most consumers would not be happy with the cost and speed this would result in.

In short: it's not that it's impossible. We know how to do it. It just comes with a cost attached that nobody wants to pay.

<comment><USER22> And let's keep in mind how successful NASA safety policies actually were.

Perfect safety is a pipe dream.

<comment><USER21> I mean, I'm not aware of any _software security_ incidents involving the Apollo or Shuttle systems, so the system seems to work that far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Should it not be "Hackers Stole Detailed Personal Data of 14 Million People from Facebook" ?

<comment><USER24> Exactly this. Please forgive me reposting an old comment[0]:

This sort of victim blaming is all too common in the mainstream press:

 _IRS Says More Taxpayers May Have Been Hacked_ [http://time.com/4000659/irs- taxpayer-hacked-cybercrime/](http://time.com/4000659/irs-taxpayer-hacked- cybercrime/)

It wasn't the taxpayers that were hacked - it was the IRS.

 _Hackers stole personal information from 104,000 taxpayers, IRS says_ [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal- eye/wp/2015/05/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal- eye/wp/2015/05/26/hackers-stole-personal-information-from-104000-taxpayers- irs-says/)

Hackers did not steal personal information from 104,000 taxpayers - they stole it from the IRS.

Smaller media outlets often get it right:

 _Over 700,000 People Got Screwed in Last Year 's IRS Data Breach_ [http://gizmodo.com/over-700-000-people-got-screwed-in- last-y...](http://gizmodo.com/over-700-000-people-got-screwed-in-last-years- irs-data-1761565531)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13681544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13681544)

<comment><USER25> I guess directly mentioning the user makes it sounds more personal, and click- worthy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If I type my full name on google, I can find my home and cell phone number, age, all family members, home address, my last home address, and my google + (fb and LinkedIn I changed settings so not searchable).

And it's a pain to ask them to delete the info. It's obscure and time consuming and no guarantees. That in my mind is worse than anything here. I didn't allow that info to be public, we need more privacy laws.

<comment><USER27> Sounds like a startup opportunity. For only $5, we'll file take down notices left and right for all the info that is available online about you.

<comment><USER28> already multiple players in this space but last time I checked none were very reputable or well reviewed so hey still an opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting trend I'm noticing with Facebook data controversies: 3rd parties are exploiting Facebooks connectedness to exponentially scale the # of accounts targeted by an attack.

Both Cambridge Analytica and these hackers were able to launch a successful attack on a relatively small number of accounts and through Facebook's graph like network were able to leverage the initial attack to affect more people.

Social networks mirror real life networks; they can be attacked with virus like tendencies.

</comment><comment><USER29> Regulation is coming. If data is the new oil these are the oil spills that lead to the EPA.

<comment><USER30> Spot on. Another comment here sounds like it may be suggesting mandatory bounties -- at first glance that sounds very bad for small players, but some thresholds and/or percentages of revenue make the concept more palatable. The users themselves should be able to receive some kind of equitable relief too, but it's difficult when a single user's data is worth <$100 yet the _cost_ to the user is potentially a much larger sum.

Regardless, I completely agree - that's almost surely where this is headed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If Facebook could go back in time and choose between:

a) Paying out a $1m USD bug bounty, or

b) Accepting the reputational hit from a successful exploit

I wonder which they would choose with perfect hindsight?

Facebook runs a great bug bounty program, but given Facebook's size, data footprint, and profitability, perhaps it's worth increasing the rewards.

<comment><USER32> Perhaps any vulnerability reported that can lead to the compromise of user data at a scale should be automatically paid out $1M.

<comment><USER33> Are you suggesting requiring this by law?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Title says 14M people but Facebook's notice says this:

>We have now determined that attackers used access tokens to gain unauthorized access to account information from approximately 30 million Facebook accounts.

<comment><USER34> They got 30 million users' access tokens. They didn't do anything with 1 million of them but grabbed contact info from 29 million people and additional profile info from 14 million of them, according to Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So: "We collected detailed personal data on 14M people, much of it not directly given to us by those people. This created an enticing target for data thieves. Despite our obscene profits from data, we disproportionately reinvested in protection of this sensitive information. Since we lacked security and have a unique ability to hold more data in one place than anyone else, thieves got more of your data than they could have dreamed of."

Did I miss anything?

</comment><comment><USER36> So they've just participated in Facebook's exact business model, just never paid for the data. Anything really concerning here?

<comment><USER37> So much this!! Facebook's mad they didn't makes any cash off it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Facebook is just pissed that a marketing or analytics company didn't pay them.

</comment><comment><USER39> When will we start prosecuting these companies for letting user data getting hacked? If you cannot protect user data, you have no business dealing with them. At the very least, there should be monetary compensation.

<comment><USER40> We've accepted their terms on signup...

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I guess I don't really understand the frustration of some people. I do but I don't. I don't have a facebook account, or instagram, or any social media, haven't had one in many years. No one NEEDS to have one. I guess to me, if you don't want this info to be exposed, just don't have an account. Assume the worst can happen. This is not like other sites, I get that you're "trusting" them with your info, but you are willingly putting your information there, just don't.

<comment><USER42> You forget that you don't need to have a Facebook account for Facebook to create a profile for you. You just have to exist.

The same is true for many other social networks.

So while you're posting about being all smug and happy that you never signed up for one of these services, your personal data is still in their servers, ready to be exploited by both the company and hackers.

<comment><USER41> Oh yes I understand that very much, but I do what I can not to help them. The point I was making is about people who willingly put all of their info there, photos, addresses, location etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A downside to having deleted my facebook account before this security breach was reported is that I cannot find out if my data was compromised.

</comment><comment><USER44> The multi-billion dollar question is still... how many of them were EU citizens?

<comment><USER45> Why? Do you think they didn't report this breach to a supervisory authority? Even though they made it public?

<comment><USER44> That is not the only thing you can get fined for under GDPR.

<comment><USER45> I'm fairly knowledgeable in the GDPR and I'm legitimately curious what you think the fine basis would be related to this breach.

<comment><USER44> A few things made me wonder

1) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18203002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18203002)

This comment suggests that they discovered the vulnerability and spent two days working out how to fix it, whilst leaving the site live for exploitation.

2) Did they report the breach in a timely manner. That is not clear to me yet

3) Until a detailed analysis is done we don't know if there was anything negligent about this.

4) If in other investigations into Facebook it is found that Facebook were storing data they had no right to, and it transpired that they had lost some in this attack, they would be culpable because they shouldn't have had the data to lose.

So nothing specific, but lots of maybees

<comment><USER45> We don't have a lot of case law to go on but generally speaking most experts assume article 33 will be the easiest part of gdpr to conform to.

Even under the most harsh interpretations 3 days is the standard & that comes with all kinds of outs.

To the rest of your other points they largely are not at all covered by GDPR.

For instance I've never seen an interpretation of the GDPR that required a timeframe for remediation.

Further there is no requirement to allow a supervisory authority _investigatory_ power after a breach.

In any case this appears to be a Facebook acting with extreme transparency. Exactly what the regulators want. It would be weird if this lead to negative ramifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> As with any breach it is always interesting to see how the scope gets broadened day by day. Tomorrow there might be some headline like "Hackers actually took all of your location data, a timestamp of every breath you took in the last week, and 4K video of everything you looked at through your eyes for the last ten years."

<comment><USER47> And of course they make sure that the bad news comes out on a Friday. FB has the all the credibility of a greasy politician at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Never been a member, but I do receive regular notification emails from a Fb account/person I don't know, and an account I've never had anything to do with.

Yesterday after news of stolen data emerges, I received a "Facebook password reset" email sent to my gmail address. I ignore all and filter as spam, but sometimes I see them. The email headers do show the source is facebook.

Seems like Facebook allows new account sign up from unverified email addresses. That's a flaw in their policy against spam and abuse, making these hacking events worse when they happen. They need to use activation codes in the email used to sign up with.

</comment><comment><USER49> Hey it's election season. Time to refresh DB. /s

</comment><comment><USER50> I still think that facebook can be tremendously useful, even if I unfollowed everyone and have zero posts (mostly to see events, access facebook-homepages, let people find my email address or just occasionally tell someone to send me an email instead of writing on messenger) - but heck, this latest breach is a bit too much to swallow.

</comment><comment><USER51> That's one of the numerous reasons I'll never use fb as a payment or ecommerce platform when they launch these products.

<comment><USER52> I doubt other payment or ecommerce platforms are any more secure. Given its size, I assume Facebook has a lot of smart people working on security. And they still screw it up. How are smaller platforms, who can't attract or pay for the very best talent, going to do any better (other than by being smaller targets, I guess)?

<comment><USER53> Visa and MasterCard seems to handle security ok.

<comment><USER54> This requires pretty loose definitions of OK, which, I guess, works out OK for Visa and MasterCard ?

Both systems experience what on the Web we'd consider a staggering level of problems. Fraud losses just in the UK for the card payment system exceed £500M per year. They're proud of themselves for catching about 60% by value of potential fraud. That is, people _tried_ to steal over a billion pounds each year, but only get away with £500M...

They use out-dated cryptography, they straight up lie to their partners, to customers and even to the courts. I trust them about as much as some random Etsy maker.

Now, my country's laws mean when Visa screws up, my bank, regulated by those laws, has to make me whole. And I'm a middle-aged white guy, so good old- fashioned unconscious bias means when I'm screaming at a regulator about my rights they listen.

But if I didn't have those laws, if I was an elderly black lady, I can expect that I'd be told it's not the payment card company, I must have secretly travelled to Hong Kong last weekend and bought $5000 of men's watches and so I have to pay for that transaction even if I have witnesses who say I never left... after all the computer says it was my card and how could that be wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> And you know it's stolen, because they didn't pay Facebook for it the way they should have.

</comment><comment><USER56> The headline made sense to me as \- Facebook; says hackers, stole Or as \- Facebook says, hackers stole

</comment><comment><USER57> The wording of this is so off.

Hackers stole personal information stored by FACEBOOK not 'people'.

It sounds like they are creating a new way for their company to avoid responsibility, just like banks created 'identity theft'.

</comment><comment><USER58> And after that they want to put a Facebook camera in your living room?

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm among the hacked people. I'm feeling so disappointed.

<comment><USER60> Don't feel bad... everyone, everywhere has been compromised. The corporations that say they have not are either ignorant or lying.

<comment><USER52> That's where I've ended up. I just assume that anything I enter on any website or app is potentially public. I've seen no real evidence that we as technologists and tech companies are able to do better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Yep... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18095071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18095071)

</comment><comment><USER62> To me, this is less about what a devil Facebook is, but that nothing is worth the risk that comes from putting too much of your data in one place.

</comment><comment><USER63> Increase the bug bounty rewards for such things to depend on the scale so $1M-$10M bounty should be given. Otherwise face a reputation hit.

</comment><comment><USER64> > For about 14 million people the hackers accessed information such as the > last 10 places that person checked into, their current city and their 15 > most-recent searches...

I imagine such information will be very useful for fine-tuning phishing scams. E.g. something like "we saw you the other day at the Baton Rouge State Fair, and it'd be a shame if anyone saw what you did there. Send 0.5 BTC here so no one finds out."

</comment><comment><USER16> Massive GDPR fine coming soon then?

</comment><comment><USER65> This dataset seems more than usually worth procuring for the demographic data rather than the PII.

</comment><comment><USER66> A detailed tech breakdown of the hack would be great, I assume this is out of the question?

</comment><comment><USER67> What's the most sci-fi worst case scenario that could come of this?

<comment><USER68> Public collectively shrugs, sites get hacked all the time and nothing bad ever happens to them, so it's just people getting worked up over nothing.

I consider that pretty scary, at least.

<comment><USER67> Oh come on. Mass blackmail, that'd be pretty cool. Or models trained on our behaviour, subtly affecting the market to make us do silly things purely for the enjoyment of some accidental bitcoin millionaire, never detectable by governmental or human-intution anomaly-detectors because all effects are below the noise level. Something cool like this must be going on somewhere, and I want to read a (non-fiction) book about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Exactly the reason why facebook should not store any PII

</comment><comment><USER70> what are the chances that a class lawsuit will follow? not an expert on this but haven't seen it mentioned yet on this discussion.

</comment><comment><USER71> Enough to subvert a few democracies.

</comment><comment><USER72> "Hackers Stole" ...

Yeah. It's all their fault.

Dumb fucks.

/s

</comment><comment><USER73> The Facebook has the media by its balls.

</comment><comment><USER74> They mean that what they already sell, was stolen without being paid for?

</comment><comment><USER75> Luckily i deleted my facebook account over the summer, One less account to have to worry about now.

<comment><USER76> Thank you for letting us know.

<comment><USER75> no problem</comment></comment></comment>


Why does the Left sneer at the traditional working class? - <AUTHOR> https://unherd.com/2019/04/why-does-the-left-sneer-at-the-traditional-working-class/ <comment><USER2> Why does all this pointless opinionated political claptrap keep getting posted on Hacker News?</comment>


What are the problems faced by people who are starting to contribute to OSS - <AUTHOR> I'm starting a project to address the problems faced by noobs to opensource community.<p>I've started out with a simple readme file which explains the basic git and github workflow. Please give me feedback <comment><USER2> There will be people reading this who have never used a Terminal, or typed at a command line, or called directories anything other than "folders".

There will be people reading this who have never installed anything that wasn't from an App Store.

There will be people reading this who have never heard of source control, branches, repos, or any of the other jargon in your document.

I think the number two thing project maintainers need to do is to stop making assumptions about the background and experience level of their potential contributors; or, if they do, to admit and outline them.

I write more about this here: [http://opendesign.foundation/articles/import- designers/](http://opendesign.foundation/articles/import-designers/)

<comment><USER3> Someone described by those first 3 things probably couldn't do much on an OS project anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree with @flukus. I didn't put anything about pre-requisites because I didn't want to drive anyone away. Anybody seeing these things for the first time can just google it and learn right?

<comment><USER4> For some people, it takes quite a while to learn to be comfortable with the command line.

<comment><USER5> Some open sourcerers use Windows and Visual Studio and Sourcetree. No cmd needed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this is intended for noobs, I suggest cleaning up your example fork/branch/push/pull request.

You have the reader create a branch called add-your-name, then push that to the server. Only the next example for the pull request talks about a branch called fix-readme. This _will_ confuse novices.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to what I've started [https://github.com/Roshanjossey/first- contributions](https://github.com/Roshanjossey/first-contributions)

<comment><USER7> Seems very specific to git/github, which are popular here on HN but there is a great deal more variety out there.

I'd suggest something that doesn't deal in specific technologies but more general principles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the insight. Will checkout other tools as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd point to a few examples of pull requests which were merged into OSS projects already and explained what authors generally went through.

</comment><comment><USER7> Check out this:

[http://openhatch.org/](http://openhatch.org/)</comment>


California's New Cow Fart Regulations - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/30/californias-new-cow-fart-regulations-tot <comment><USER2> So when to we ban rice?

Also, one wonders how to measure cow farts. Sure the new algae feed reduces methane, but will farmers need methane monitors now? This seems impossible to enforce, and pretty bad for businesses.</comment>


What's New in the .NET Framework 4.5 - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/library/ms171868%28v=VS.110%29.aspx <comment><USER2> I actually think there is a lot here to get excited about. .net forms getting model bindings is quite big, as taken from MVC. Page speed performances, html5 support, web socket support.

It seems to me they are actually taking their head out the sand and realising the web is not all about Microsoft now and there is a whole world of new technology happening around them that they need to include in their products.

I have actively pulled my Silverlight projects now and am concentrating on html5, javascript and websockets since last night. Massive coincidence that this morning Silverlight is getting a bum deal in other press.

I think this is a prelim release to 5 as they want to show their commitment to becoming more engaging to html5 standards and other technology.

Also, there is a comment that this is a weak release for 2.5 years work, .net 4 had a massive amount of work done on it and this is a partial release. The library is already very concise so I would be interested to know what "massive" changes they could make right now apart from just making the library more stable.

Consider this the Windows version (in development terms) of the Leopard to Snow Leopard that Apple released.

<comment><USER3> All the html5 stuff is in there because of windows 8, pure and simple.

Also I don't know who in their right mind would chose to use classic ASP.Net anymore.

But compared to 3.5 there's nothing in here that I find exciting or that's looking particularly like it's going to make my life as a programmer better. Personally I find the more they work on MVC the more they seem to be giving in to the temptation to put 'magic' in there like the old forms, which sucks imo as it encourages new programmers to write very bad code.

<comment><USER2> We actively use asp.net "classic" as you have referred to it. It's an alternative and in by no means inferior to MVC. We are looking at implementing MVC3 but to do what we do with asp.net webforms will be a difficult task. We wrote a CMS framework for our own clients and we use quite a lot of specific .net webforms controls to do what we do.

The main reason I started moving away from silverlight and more into html and js, mvc etc was because of Windows 8 not having silverlight as part of the interface.

This is exactly what I mean by Microsoft getting it's head out the sand though, they have chosen to use the more adopted methods going forward than it's own solutions. It's a sign that Microsoft are no longer at the center of the universe.

I'm not putting down your comment on who in their right mind uses "classic" asp.net any more but I find it a little closed minded as asp.net webforms is far more tried and tested. It's a developers choice and it's not a wrong choice to use forms over mvc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to be rude toward the .NET community but I'd have to ask this because it has been bothering my mind a little bit.

Let me begin by praising the CLR and C#. Their latest features are great (both at runtime level and syntax level). But I have not seen something great (or notable) coming out from the .NET communities whether a new library, a new ORM, a new framework, a new paradigm, or even a new tool despite all these cool lambdas, task, linq, etc.

Why is that?

Coming from Java, a language/platform that is considered less superior, where there are tons of good tools like Ant, Ivy, Maven (is NuGet comparable to Maven? or still lagging?), or libraries such as JBoss Netty, JAX-RS, Spring MVC 3.0 (very close to Rails: routes, return XML/JSON depending on request, minus the ORM), JAX-WS (with annotation style programming), EJB 3.1 style programming (which helps a lot!), a few of NoSQL flavours to keep developers busy (Neo4J, Cassandra, HBase), distributed libraries such as Hadoop, I find this situation to be odd.

<comment><USER3> Two reasons imo:

1\. MS advances their product at a semi-decent rate so people just wait for MS to bring out a solution. I don't mean this as a dig, it just seems MS is more plugged into emerging trends in programming. Asp.net MVC came out within a year of Rails and Django becoming popular and lots of MVC frameworks appearing for PHP. I also had just seriously started playing with NHibernate when Linq2Sql and the Entity framework came out. Same with lambdas and all that goodness. They seem to bring stuff out just as people are saying 'hey, this is a really good idea'. I don't see that happening in Java. They get it wrong sometimes, like their over engineered SOAP solution which personally I think contributed to its downfall. Also WCF and WF are both pretty shitty.

2\. I think a lot of the other tools is because Java came out first so some of these problems were were already solved when it came to .Net, so we got nant, etc. I personally have never worked on a project where something like Maven seemed worth it comapred to some slight customisations to MSBuild which you can do in VS, so can't comment on that.

<comment><USER5> You nailed it. The other thing is that .NET devs generally aren't framework devs. They're app devs.

With that said, there are some nice frameworks that exist, but competing against the top framework vendor, Microsoft, is tough. And while most on HN won't understand this, most .NET devs are actually quite happy with what MS is doing -- and most generally feel like MS actually does listen to the dev community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Async / Await pattern looks very cool. This will make my code a lot cleaner and shorter.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/it- it/library/hh191443(v=VS.110).a...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/it- it/library/hh191443\(v=VS.110\).aspx)

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the most dramatic changes will be in writing Metro style Apps: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/br23030...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/apps/br230302%28v=VS.85%29.aspx)</comment>


Ask HN: Is this an idea worth pursuing further? - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone,
two weeks ago me and a friend were in a bar and suddendly we came up with the idea for http://www.learntoplayanything.com . By now we have put some work in it and we get a few visitors each day. (Although Google apparently hasn't indexed everything yet.)
It was all done in the spirit of "f*ck it, let's just do it and see what happens", but now we wonder if it was such an excellent idea after all.
What do you think? Is it worth to invest more time into this website? What features can you imagine that would make the site more valuable?
We are currently thinking about inserting links to guitar tabs and piano sheet music and changing the layout to something more pretty. <comment><USER3> The way I see it is that you are taking advantage of bad search results in a specific area. You are simply creating a web page that tries to match a specific video with a specific search query and monetize by putting your ads around the content (the youtube video).

If you simply built a single page with a collection of links with that text to the video of interest, you'd largely serve the same purpose for users - <USER2> engines would rank the actual video higher for that query, but unfortunately you wouldn't be inserting yourself into the middle in order to extract revenue.

Your model is negatively effected by search engines improving their ranking algorithms with respect to video content. That seems like a bad place to be.

<comment><USER4> the problem is that all that great video content is only labeled one way. You on the other hand can get traffic by letting those users who search using a different string find it.

You win by getting traffic. Google wins by getting the people the results they were looking for. And the people win by not having to do a 2nd, 3rd Google search, and everyone is happy.

There is a very long tail to Google search. If you don't rank in #1 position for "guitar lessons" you can rank for #1 position for "guitar lessons using sweet home alabama song"

Sure it's not as profitable, with "guitar lessons using sweet home alabama song" you might get 30-40 hits a month, instead of 5000, but that's all you, and a few thousand such queries, will mean 80-100K users coming to your site every month with zero marketing on your part.

Aiming for that long tail is a great way to build up your traffic and site in the early days, until you start ranking higher for those more desirable phrases.

That's what I'm aiming for in this stage with <http://styleguidance.com> hit up the long tail, build up traffic, content and reputation, and eventually Google will throw a bone our way, and decide...hey there is this great style and fashion Q&A site, that has all the answers for the style category, why don't I give their results preference over those generic blogs to get my users better answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> it's a good idea, and has some decent traffic #s(i.e. "sweet home alabama guitar lesson" 14,800 searches/month) but it seems to be a little bit competitive. Go exact searching for "sweet home alabama guitar lesson" and you get 185,000 sites.

I think "sweet home alabama guitar tutorial" is a much better fit. Only 53,700 hits, and none are really an exact match for the search on page 1(which is probably true for all other searches). And that still gets you 6,600 searches a month.

So update your titles to be [SONG TITLE] guitar tutorial.

And you should be able to hit some decent traffic numbers with that.

<comment><USER4> also, this will be a SEO play for you, so I suggest finding a domain that has guitar tutorial(s) in the url. Having that will help you biiiig time when it comes to ranking high for results

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea. Not sure about making money from it, but definitely see it as useful.

typo on home page... "Also contact us if you want to contribute by helping uns organizing the links."

Can you add more specific information to your search results lists? For me right now, this page... <http://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day> returns 20 results that all are "Boulevard of Broken Dreams " - would be more useful if there was some additional info to differentiate.

On this page: [http://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day...](http://www.learntoplayanything.com/component/tag/green%20day?start=20) Which is the third page, the paginated link to page 1 actually goes back to the third page. The link to page 1 on all paginated results pages seems to link to the current page instead of page 1.

<comment><USER6> Another typo: "recommend us to your firends"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a good aggregation idea for learning - why not find a few content providers/creators that could serialize a process for learning - so pieces of a song, or basic chords for guitar. Get some content made by people looking to raise their recognition, and customize it for the site. I'll bet you could get free contributions, or even mechanical turk it for different languages. Ad- supported is definitely the model right now, but what about taking requests and getting people to "donate" for specific content providers to produce requests - you may have a runaway hit for people that can tab/teach/play. Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you included guitar tabs and perhaps allowed users to upload custom tabs (so that people can improve on publicly available ones), it'd be absolutely great. I'd use it on a weekly basis at least, if not daily.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. I regularly visit guitar tab sites like ultimate-guitar.com. Most of these sites are loaded with ads and have terrible design.

I'd love to visit one that has a clean design with correct tabs and videos without all of the cruft. This site seems like a great idea if you can manage to load it with plenty of content without running into legal issues (I've seen many tab sites get shut down).

<comment><USER10> Can you please e-mail me at email@example.com. We are almost ready to show service like you hare looking for, so I am interested in your opinion on it. I will provide you with the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you are hoping to turn this into some kind of business or money-generating thing, it's not. You are creating very little long-term value, as the others have noted, it seems mainly an SEO play.

I do like the basic idea though, If you really wanted to make it good, you'd have to create much better navigation/browsing/finding options (that's the only value you're adding), and you'd have to seed it with 10000s of videos, and you'd have to add something, like forums or reviews something, that increases the value for users.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pretty cool idea. It would be a more open competitor to Apple's GarageBand music teaching features. I think your idea of adding more value to the site would be a good one. Apple has quality and integration with a nice music creation software. Perhaps you could include more information from lyric sites and guitar tabs and sheet music as you noted.

</comment><comment><USER13> clickable link: <http://www.learntoplayanything.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> I like it.

Clicking on the logo should bring you back to the homepage.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a guitarist this is a very painful spot for me and good instruction is worth a lot. If you can figure out a model that connects people like me with quality content efficiently then you win.

</comment><comment><USER16> ask Adrian Holovaty what he thinks. maybe even get him to contribute. he's clearly a good hacker, plus, a good guitarist. rare mix. may be smart to leverage it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for your input! Those comments are very interesting and we have a lot to think about now. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I, for one, like the idea and can see myself using it in the future.</comment>


Is There a Link Between Mental Health and Gun Violence? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/almost-link-mental-health-gun-violence

<comment><USER2> Violent crime is, to some degree, a defining characteristic of mental instability. Is it not? Should it be?

<comment><USER3> Are you suggesting that if someone commits a violent crime they must have some kind of mental illness? And that we just haven't defined "prepared to commit an act of violence" as a mental illness.

<comment><USER2> I'm suggesting that these are commonly held beliefs, not that I hold them personally. More so, I was looking for input on the subject, as my personal experience in this area is virtually nonexistent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's like asking if there's a link between IQ and computer usage. The answer is unsurprising, a study establishing it is appropriate insofar as proving the objective basis for the answer, but the interesting question is why someone would actually fund such a project.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the article?

> When Swanson first analyzed the ostensible connection between violence and > mental illness, looking at more than ten thousand individuals (both mentally > ill and healthy) during the course of one year, he found that serious mental > illness alone was a risk factor for violence—from minor incidents, like > shoving, to armed assault—in only four per cent of cases. That is, if you > took all of the incidents of violence reported among the people in the > survey, mental illness alone could explain only four per cent of the > incidents. When Swanson broke the samples down by demographics, he found > that the occurrence of violence was more closely associated with whether > someone was male, poor, and abusing either alcohol or drugs—and that those > three factors alone could predict violent behavior with or without any sign > of mental illness. If someone fit all three of those categories, the > likelihood of them committing a violent act was high, even if they weren't > also mentally ill. If someone fit none, then mental illness was highly > unlikely to be predictive of violence. "That study debunked two myths," > Swanson said. "One: people with mental illness are all dangerous. Well, the > vast majority are not. And the other myth: that there's no connection at > all. There is one. It's quite small, but it's not completely nonexistent."

<comment><USER5> Thank you so much for the synopsis and illustrating one of the points of scientific studies: Even if answers are a foregone conclusion surprising results do occur. Even confirming the foregone conclusion has value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How many mentally healthy people have been perpetrators of school shootings? My guess would be not many...

<comment><USER3> > But if you look at people like Jaylen Fryberg, Mason Campbell, or Karl > Pierson, you see no formal diagnosis of mental illness, and often, no actual > signs of instability, either.

From the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doe we need a scientific study?

Guns don't kill people.

People kill people.

Knives seem to be doing a good job lately.

<comment><USER8> > Doe we need a scientific study?

Uh, yes?</comment></comment>


How CloudFlare's injected preloader accidentally locks up WebKit - <AUTHOR> http://www.saurik.com/id/14 <comment><USER2> awesome, i think that is exactly the bug i noticed on my cloudflare powered website as well but had not the experience to track it down like you have. well done. thank you for the nice understandable write-up.

you are the man.

</comment><comment><USER3> An insightful investigation, and a lesson to be learned about 'smart' CDNs. I appreciate the effort you put into this, and your skills to be able to dive in and understand the cause of the issue.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hello Saurik, I'm the author of much of the code related to the problem you were experiencing on CloudFlare. We met a while ago at Velocity. I'm a huge fan of your work on Cydia, I really enjoyed reading your write-up, and I admire the penetrating approach you took to debugging this particular issue. Your diagnosis is accurate, and we are preparing a solution for the problem even as I write this.

There are a few points that I would like to respond to:

 _While [preloader] maybe a nifty feature in some contexts, in the case of ModMyi the list of files seems to be a bunch of content for ModMyi's main website... the result being that millions of users of Cydia are wasting bandwidth and limited cache space downloading a number of files from ModMyi that are both a) large (as they are designed for desktop browsers) and b) useless._

I'm afraid that this is a case of a one-size-fits-all solution not fitting anyone perfectly. Our current preloader implementation is most effective on medium-small-scale sites, and many medium- to large-scale sites experience the same problem you describe. We are working to update the feature to be "more intelligent" about what assets it loads, and where. Currently the list of pre- load-able assets is a global one, but we hope to make it a list that is consumed on a per-page basis, where the assets loaded are relevant to pages most-often visited from whatever the current page is.

 _While you can also get around this using standard HTML5 messages, these would affect the normal operation of the website CloudFlare is serving (something CloudFlare should be going to lengths to avoid)._

This is an aside, but I should point out that some of our features (many of which were requested by customers) include some that create significant, intentional side-effects. Our image lazy loading feature, for instance, has layout implications. Many of our partner applications embed widgets and manipulate the page in other ways.

 _However, as we can see here, CloudFlare is making dynamic code changes to websites, and is using new features such as HTML5 message channels and local storage: features that might not even be implemented correctly in the browser, and which you may be actively avoiding for your own website due to the results of your testing process._

The surface area for failure related to the features that we work on and deploy is tremendous, particularly in the arena of document manipulation. One bad code push, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of websites could quite literally stop functioning, even if you can still technically get to them.

It is certainly true that many of our users are not comfortable with this idea, and those users often disable most of our "smart" optimizations. At the end of the day, CloudFlare will always strive to be a great CDN, and we do not require any "smart" optimizations to be enabled in exchange for usage of our service.

If I may offer another perspective on the topic, one of the things that I love about working at CloudFlare is that we are actively exploring many areas of web optimization that have previously been avoided because they were considered harmful, invasive, and/or overly-ambitious. And to be completely frank, many of the features we are exploring ARE negative in one or more of those ways. However, that doesn't stop us from trying to come up with ways to make the features in question work on arbitrary websites across arbitrary devices and network connections. We aspire to break away from the pre- conceived notions of what a CDN can be, and we have found that our users appreciate us more for taking that approach. As someone who is well known for poking around outside the boundaries of conventional hackery, I hope you can appreciate how sometimes things can break in the process :) I don't personally think it means we should stop trying (nor do I think it precludes us implementing processes to avoid breakage wherever possible).

<comment><USER2> thanks for the insight. i like the way how Cloudflare works and goes their own path. well done. keep up the good work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great write-up, thanks.</comment>


Transistor Clock - <AUTHOR> http://www.transistorclock.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks like a very modern design inspired by integrated circuits -- the clock is made out of a large number of almost identical sub-circuits. This probably makes debugging very easy, but also means that design has much more parts than required.

One example is binary to 7 segment decode, which takes entire top of the clock. In this clock, they first fully decode the signal to 10 wires, then amplify it, invert it, and encode it again to 7 segments. That's a lot of diodes, transistor and resistors!

We can look at how this was done commercially -- for example in this SN7454 datasheet from 1974, page 6 of [http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/sdls111/sdls111.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/sdls111/sdls111.pdf), they go from 4-bit binary directly into segment driver. This is already fewer parts that this clock has, and in practice, one could reduce the part count even further, for example by grabbing both inverse and direct output of flip- flops.

And one can get even smaller if they want to go dynamic indications. Here is a clock with a much smaller part count: [http://lovqvist.net/DTL/old%20dtl- clock.html](http://lovqvist.net/DTL/old%20dtl-clock.html) . Of course, that one would be much harder to debug...

</comment><comment><USER3> When you look at the cost of this ($199), you start to appreciate microprocessors and moore's law from the cost per transistor on a chip.

<comment><USER4> First, I think this is a pretty cool site and I'm happy to see someone creating this sort of geeky "techno-art."

As for price, it is clearly not component cost driven. Size for sure, but not price. The "TTL" clock is only $164 (not big discount), the Surface Mount one is $64 which is a bigger delta.

You can buy all the component parts for the transistor clock for about $20 from bulk suppliers. The most expensive part are the displays.

It would be fun to try different designs to see if you could minimize components and improve accuracy.

[1] [http://www.kabtronics.com/orderpage/index.html](http://www.kabtronics.com/orderpage/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory mention of "The Clock", a veritable piece of artwork soldered from hundreds of individual diodes and transistors. The bare uninsulated component wires form part of the artwork.

[https://techno-logic-art.com/clock.htm](https://techno-logic- art.com/clock.htm)

Picture inside it's own frame : [https://techno-logic- art.com/images4/fc1.jpg](https://techno-logic-art.com/images4/fc1.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Ok, that is super cool.

<comment><USER6> Although unpractical in many ways, and coolness factor aside, that building style made sense in the old days when power supplies didn't break and capacitors didn't leak, so there was very little chance of having to change a faulty part even after years of use. I still have some NOS capacitors from the 70s whose manufacturer is gone since ages, and they still exhibit higher capacitance than advertised and lower ESR than any new cheap Chinese counterparts which sometimes die within one year of use or less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My brother-in-law has this in his kitchen. It's huge and, apparently, takes a very long time to assemble / solder.</comment>


A new book about Nietzsche: tethering philosophy to the mess of daily experience - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/nietzsches-guide-to-better-living/568375/ <comment><USER2> It was partly the fault of the original baity title, but what a trainwreck the bulk of this thread turned out to be. If ever there were an occasion to dust off pg's old phrase, "the middlebrow dismissal", here we have it.

Discussions celebrating one's own and mutual ignorance, with people shooting whatever cheap shots pop up about a great thinker, writer, and soul, make me cringe to be part of HN.

There is a morbid interest in seeing how internet discussions, viewed as a whole, behave like a physiological process—perhaps a digestive organ, turning waste of one kind into waste of another.

<comment><USER3> Aw I didn't think it was so bad. It's not a philosophy site. (I just read through it, having been promised an entertaining 'trainwreck'.) I've seen much worse. And he's one of the most flamebaity of philosophers. Makes me curious - what's the biggest 'trainwreck' you remember?

<comment><USER2> It's a fair question, but one mercy of this job is that they sink into oblivion fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many of Nietzsche's ideas are almost entirely antithetical to the cultural sensibilities of HN so the discussion that you're going to get on here is not going to be that great.

This piece presents an exceptionally shallow introduction and survey of Nietzsche's body of thought. If you get into reading Nietzsche with the intent of learning how to live better you're going to have an impossible time.

If you're interested in reading Nietzsche I'd recommend first reading more philosophy and history (the things Nietzsche studied) in order to get some context for the things he says. It's pretty much impossible to understand what he's talking about unless you have that knowledge since his works are (in large part) a critical analysis of the nature and evolution of the modes of human thought and behavior.

<comment><USER5> > _Many of Nietzsche 's ideas are almost entirely antithetical to the cultural > sensibilities of HN so the discussion that you're going to get on here is > not going to be that great._

Would be interested to hear your thoughts on:

1\. What is/are the cultural sensibilities of HN?

2\. Which ideas are antithetical to them?

My guess is that whatever your answer to item 1 above, you'll be downvoted and hated by those who disagree (I think HN spans a vast array of viewpoints personally), so maybe it's best not to answer. It is a sincere question tho.

<comment><USER4> To give you an idea of what I mean, check out section 232 of Beyond Good and Evil.

I won't post an excerpt here because it will just get me banned.

<comment><USER6> Meh. Everyone is fucked up in some way, usually in a way that's a product of their times (classic example: Jefferson and slavery).

Always seemed to me that critical thinking is partly about sorting the good shit from the bad; to put it another way, this is why it's important to not trust authority just because it's authority. Evaluate each thing on its own merits (as best as your capabilities the situation allows) and go from there.

<comment><USER4> As a general principle I agree though I would go a step further and encourage more humility when a particular concept evokes a visceral emotional response. That could be a sign that it the product of the times you yourself are living in.

I take issue with Nietzsche's skepticism and derision of democracy but I'm willing to entertain his arguments and perspective. Carl Jung put forth a theory in his _Psychological Types_ that Nietzsche's particular views on democracy were a reaction to his particular historical circumstances which makes sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That is quite a nice read and basic TL;DR on atleast some of what Nietzsche wrote in his books. People should read them more.

<comment><USER8> Nobody is at a loss having read none of them. I say this as a person that has read some of them (probably majority of them, too)

<comment><USER9> I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra when I was pretty depressed. It gave me some hope and induced changes in me. It helped me to shake up my thoughts and look at myself in a new angle, if nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just finished reading Irvin Yalom's "When Nietzsche wept", and though it probably didn't give a fair view of Nietzsche philosophy, it was great anyway :) Probably make it much nicer than it actually is.

<comment><USER11> Sidenote, but Yalom's book on group therapy is insightful in a variety of social settings: [https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Practice-Group- Psychotherapy-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Practice-Group- Psychotherapy-Irvin/dp/0465092845)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've read two books by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre that deal with many of the issues Nietzsche was interested in and point out some flaws in Nietzsche's arguments. They are _After Virtue_ and _Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity_. MacIntyre thinks that Nietzsche got a lot right, but overlooked some things and made some assumptions that put him down the wrong path. If you're going to use Nietzsche as a guide for how to live it's worth reading some criticism of him as well.

<comment><USER13> MacIntyre is very good. But I wouldn't so much say that he points out flaws in Nietzsche's arguments, as argues that Nietzsche is not the appropriate answer to the problem of modern thought as he sees it. But very few people agree with MacIntyre's 'problem': that because we have inherited the remnants of pre- modern moral and political thought, while rejecting the metaphysical beliefs with gave them their original coherence, we must either turn back (to Aristotelianism), or give up on moral philosophy.

There are three obvious problems with this: (1) the historical story is only partially true; (2) it is not at all difficult to rework pre-modern beliefs within a modern and secular framework; (3) this whole argument depends on a very particular view of what 'moral philosophy' is and can be.

IMO the best introduction to Nietzsche is Christopher Janaway's 'Beyond Selflessness', though it concentrates on the Genealogy of Morality. It's also worth reading Walter Kaufmann's 'Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist' \- the book that originally rehabilitated Nietzsche's image in the English-speaking world in the 1950s. Before that, Nietzsche was either ignored, or thought of as proto-fascistic (Nietzsche's sister, who controlled Nietzsche's papers after he fell into insanity, famously had an important role in this. Hitler helped her open a Nietzsche archive).

<comment><USER14> > it is not at all difficult to rework pre-modern beliefs within a modern and > secular framework;

I don't know that I agree with you here. Are you arguing we can root morality in objectivity?

<comment><USER13> No, I don't believe that. My point is two things. Just as a matter of fact, most modern (Western) moral and political thought is at least influenced by, and in many cases a conscious secular reworking of, Judeo-Christian beliefs. That is true of a lot of the so-called 'greats', and is true of our political culture more generally. In that sense, we can tranpose pre-modern beliefs into a modern framework, because we have.

The other point is that I don't think there is some kind of special philosophical condition of coherence characteristic of pre-modern, or specifically Aristotelian, philosophy, which has now been irretrievably lost. MacIntyre only thinks that because he _is_ an Aristoelian.

I personally think the search for an 'objective' basis for morality is philosophically wrongheaded, and that the belief that morality either is objective or entirely meaningless is complete nonsense.

<comment><USER12> I like the way you're framing this. Are there any works of moral philosophy that you would recommend?

<comment><USER13> Raymond Geuss, _Philosophy and Real Politics_

Hans Sluga, _Politics and the Search for the Common Good_

Both are very sceptical of the attempt to formulate a general theory of how the world should be in the abstract. They have a different take on political theory.

Geuss also recently wrote a brilliant series of intellectual portraits of ten or so figures from the history of moral/political thought, which is extraordinarily incisive, but also very accessible. It's called _Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno_.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, those all look interesting. I will check them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > his real allegiance lay with the Dionysian, as his life and work went on to > attest

I've argued this before but my personal opinion was Nietzsche was primarily concerned with challenging orthodoxy. He felt that people submit to moral authority without really considering why a particular set of principles are favored or from where that authority comes. As such he often played the devil's advocate trying his level best to show that the out-of-favor principles had some real advantages.

He often laments that people will misunderstand him and I think this is what he meant. He was working at a higher level of abstraction and knew people would focus on his examples rather than his higher meaning. I don't think he was aligned with the Dionysian as much as he was trying to defend it well enough to show that the Apollonian was no more objectively valid.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do you really want Nietzsche to be your guide in this subject?

<comment><USER17> Your question suggests a dismissal of N's work.

Is that dismissal based on an serious engagement with his work? I'd be interested in seeing an argument why one should not let N be a guide. It would be nice (and unexpected) if that argument was informed by an actual reading of N's main works.

<comment><USER18> I just read it as a joke about how his own life ended. Not something many people want to emulate for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I haven't studied Nietzsche, but this post took me to one of his central themes:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality)

I realized that due to my life experiences, I see the world through the slave morality. Basically that there is a lot of subjectivity when it comes to good and evil, that the world isn't so black and white. For example land developers might see growth as a completely noble endeavor, whereas environmentalists might see the sin of destroying mother nature. I'm pretty solidly in that second group about a great many things.

So just to throw an idea out there - I wonder if today's conservatives follow the master morality, whereas today's liberals follow the slave morality. Note that this wasn't always true - for example republicans used to be the party of Lincoln (liberators of slaves) and southern democrats used to be slave masters. But I'm asking about today. Is this completely off base or is it an insight that could be used to find some common ground?

</comment><comment><USER20> I love these freaky minds !

</comment><comment><USER21> I rediscovered the classic "wear sunscreen" column/commencement speech recently and I was reminded of this quote:

"Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth."

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich- su...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-sunscreen- column-column.html)

<comment><USER22> > Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European > countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options > that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We > continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all > readers with our award-winning journalism.

Do you know another source for this column?

<comment><USER23> If you use pocket, you can add it and read it through there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> After reading both to some extent (but Schopenhauer in great depth), IMHO Nietzsche is just wanna-be Schopenhauer. He even admits this in an essay dedicated to Schopenhauer IIRC!

He was a weird person, just like the article portraits him to be. He might have been unstable mentally, to say the least.

Not sure if he was in a position to tell others how to live.

He kinda reminds me of Weininger; I mentally group them together as "awkward philosophers with some insane ideas masquerading as deep thoughts" even though he was technically a philologist.

<comment><USER24> "There is a false saying: "How can someone who can't save himself save others?" Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?" (Nietzsche)

ref: [https://academyofideas.com/2017/02/nietzsche-psychology- beco...](https://academyofideas.com/2017/02/nietzsche-psychology-become-who- you-are/)

<comment> wu-ikkyu >Supposing I have the key to your chains

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. How do you _know_ you have the key?

<comment><USER25> You don't. You try the key on the lock, and if it doesn't work you keep looking for another key. Nietzsche is saying "I FOUND A KEY! Anyone care to try it in their lock?"

Eh, that might be a bit more euphemistic than I meant to be, but the point is there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Another ad article for some book interpreting Nietzsche's ramblings.

<comment><USER27> Is your issue primarily with the ads or Nietzsche's "ramblings"?

<comment><USER26> Mainly with the "ad", because that article is about the book, not the actual interpretation that might be insightful (or not) in some way.

Besides, much of Nietzsche's late work was indeed rambling, the guy was severely depressed, even mad at the end. It doesn't discredit his entire work, but that fact must be kept in mind dealing with it. His (even crazier) sister publicized some of his works that never were intended by him to reach public. But they did, and then Nazis happened. So, the issue is also that it's an another interpretation of Nietzsche's work.</comment></comment></comment>


Why won't guys grow up? Sexual economics (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/why-wont-guys-grow-up-sexual-economics/article5172942/ <comment><USER2> This 2012 article starts off with a claim:

> The old-fashioned custom known as "dating" (as in: guy calls up girl and > asks her out next Friday, takes her to a movie and a meal, picks up the > cheque, takes her home, kisses her goodnight and, if he's lucky, gets to > third base) is something their grandparents did. Today, people just hook up.

Did the author get this from watching old TV shows? Because if you read, say, the Feynman stories about picking up women in the 1950s, you don't get the same opinion.

> "Today's young man faces a sex life that probably would have exceeded the > most optimistic imagination of most men throughout history," Roy Baumeister > says in his book Is There Anything Good About Men?

It's like the 1960s sexual revolution, and the era between The Pill and AIDS, when most VDs could easily be treated, didn't even happen.

Consider this scene from the 1969 "Alice's Restaurant" movie - [https://youtu.be/sP05C_agI3k?t=1316](https://youtu.be/sP05C_agI3k?t=1316) (note: shows a topless and purportedly underage woman), where the self- described 'teenybopper' lists the number of people she's had sex with, and how she want to sleep with Arlo - someone she's just met.

And I think there's a discussion in Heinlein's "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" describing how the people of some era (1960s?-1980s?) feel as comfortable giving a blowjob as previous generations might have shaken hands. Heinlein was a proponent of sexual liberation and free love, but surely his writings give an indication of what what's underneath the sanitized sexual history of the US.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dunno, I've seen a lot of adolescent-minded 20 somethings not getting laid a whole bunch.

In some cases, guys don't grow up not because sex is so readily available, but in some cases (especially due to society's pressures and feminist social development) because they've given up and retreated to a digital lifestyle.

Interesting article, and maybe true on the whole, but I have seen a lot of first hand anecdotal evidence that suggests young college aged males are having a lot _less_ sex.

<comment><USER4> I think the "market" may be getting more efficient with Tinder etc, and is tending to few-winners-take-all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An important point:

In a world of free sex and abundant resources, for a man, it totally pays off to learn the art of seduction than other arts (productive stuff like STEM, economics etc....real stuff with economic value). Women are easy to get with the right amount of time, right words and actions. Education, moral values, caring nature etc. have almost ZERO appeal in attracting most vapid women in today's world.

So why would most men (who don't have economic worries...or are just dumb) put any effort in their most productive years learning important skills?

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

This article also misses the observation that men are a spectrum of attractive to unattractive (whatever attractiveness means to women).

With that in mind, attractive men can quickly log on to a dating app, message a 100 women and some of those women will respond positively (leading to sex).

For unattractive guys, most girls don't respond (so no sex for them).

Today's dating world is so fucked up that most of my male peers have absolutely no interest in dealing with female emotional concerns. They end up in "open relationships" which women agree to be in (because they have been told it's ok) and then suffer heartbreak....whereas the other guys (who don't get sex) just sit at home playing video games.

Even women don't want to "settle" until 30s by which they don't have any sexual appeal to men.

Marriage just doesn't have any appeal. What's the point of getting married? What does a woman bring to the table that they can't get themselves (except emotional turmoil)? There's no reason to get tied in a legal commitment that if broken, would be extremely expensive and scarring.

Why won't guys grow up? They have grown up. Women are the kids expecting a man to marry them if they are not bringing anything to the table except declining sexuality and years of partying and baggage and still expecting men to take their legal burden.

Source: 27 yr old male in SF city.

<comment><USER6> > vapid women in today's world.

I think most of what you said is pretty on point except for this - I'm not one to say that everyone is equally astute on the whole but I don't think it's fair to call most women vapid any more than it would be for them to call people who read hacker news 'losers' (because geeks made being a geek/nerd cool).

<comment><USER5> The reason I brought it up is because of the irony of their demands.

Most women want men who have it all figured out (aka grown up men) but themselves don't realize how imperfect they are. They'd rather spend hours on pinterest looking at hair ties of different colors than on something that gets their student loans out, career planning, family planning etc.

So many women are vapid but want a guy who makes six figures, is six feet tall, knows how to build a car from ground up and can has some cool artistic side and yet can fight drug overlords....I mean...these are such divergent qualities and skills...it's pretty funny when one hears it out loud.

If they expect an amazing guy with everything figured out (aka worked his socks off his entire life exploring different things and learning how to deal with shit), they better be amazing too.

EDIT: To answer you: I agree...so many men who don't take care of themselves want a hot supermodel with a degree in physics. It's just so divergent. Many men suffer from the same dichotomy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "...it turns out that, wherever women have more autonomy, people have more sex."</comment>


The SR-71's predecessor used cesium-laced fuel to create radar-absorbing exhaust - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29787/the-sr-71-blackbirds-predecessor-created-plasma-stealth-by-burning-cesium-laced-fuel <comment><USER2> > It's also not clear from the available records how much [cesium] was > necessary per gallon of [jet fuel]

Come on, you lazy reporter! Go find a jet engine and some cesium and a radar reflectometer and make a graph of reflectance vs. cesium content.

Presumably, some engineer at Lockheed in the late 50s got exactly that assignment, with a budget. There would be a notebook with a table of numbers and a hand-drawn graph. Those would be amazing to see.

<comment><USER3> I would love to see some kind of web database of old engineering notebooks like this, surely there are enough now kicking around in boxes of "grandad's junk".

<comment><USER4> Some cool ones here: [https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/fairchild/](https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/fairchild/)

Would be cool to see some old notebooks from Bell Labs tho like Ritchie or Thompson. I just found some old AT&T training manuals on Perl, TCP/IP, Bash, C and Unix internals, they are really cool.

<comment><USER5> Along the same lines, my bedside-book for the last few months has been Engineering and Operations in the Bell System[1].

It is... from another time. Both the quality of the engineering and the quality of the documentation simply don't happen anymore outside of very narrow niches.

And then you look at the Death Star now, and their core competency is lobbying. Priorities certainly have changed.

[1] [https://www.worldcat.org/title/engineering-and-operations- in...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/engineering-and-operations-in-the-bell- system/oclc/11756737)

<comment><USER6> Engineering_and_Operations_in_the_Bell_System_2ed_1984.pdf (47MB): [http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/communications/westernEle...](http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/communications/westernElectric/books/Engineering_and_Operations_in_the_Bell_System_2ed_1984.pdf)

Also at (previews faster): [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_westernEleEngineeringa...](https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_westernEleEngineeringandOperationsintheBellSystem2_49741719)

<comment><USER4> Great find! Found some new bed time reading :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you haven't read it, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich is a pretty fun read into the U2, A-12 Oxcart, SR-71, Sea Shadow and other craft. And has a lot of good stories from pilots.

But the ultimate SR-71 book would be Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet.

<comment><USER8> The sr-71 gets all the glory but go look at some of the aircraft that lost competitions. The convair kingfish that lost to the 71 was decades ahead. It lost for a number of reasons, some valid, some not. The f-22 competitor was super interesting as well.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the YF-23 wins a lot of cool points on looks alone[1], and it was faster and stealthier than the F-22. Taking the -22 was probably the right choice given that it was lower risk and absurdly better than anything it's likely to encounter in its operational life.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-23_top_view.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Funny, the way i remember it happening: both YF-22s were lost do to mishaps, the YF-23 was faster, stealthier, and just as maneuverable without the vectored thrust. The AF wanted the -23, but the chairman of the senate armed services committee was from Georgia, where Lockheed promised to build the -22. and the history got rewritten.

Source: Dad was part of the YF-23 program at northrop and lost his gog when the project was shitcanned. yes, still bitter almost 30 years later.

<comment><USER11> > the way i remember it happening: both YF-22s were lost do to mishaps

Seems they're museums pieces now and look relatively unscathed. [0][1]

> The two YF-23 prototypes were museum exhibits as of 2010

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-23_PAV-2_%22Spider%22_Static.jpg)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23#/media/File:YF-23_in_the_restoration_area_of_the_usaf_museum.jpg)

<comment><USER12> > both YF-22s were lost

> The two YF-23 prototypes were museum exhibits

The 22's were lost, the 23's were museum exhibits, not the same planes.

<comment><USER11> My bad, my brain read it as "the 23s were lost". Sleep deprivation at its best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My experience with cesium is that everyone thinks its radioactive. It isn't-- like many common elements there is a radioactive isotope, but that is not what would have been used here.

I speculate this worked by the highly reactive cesium ionizing the air. Similar things have been done with doping rocket fuels with metals to stimulate lightning strikes.

Presumably most of the cesium would end up reacted very quickly, I don't know what the products would be but plenty of obvious candidates like cesium carbonate appear to be non-toxic.

<comment><USER14> Well, you are correct in just some cases. Caesium has only one stable isotope, so beside the actual Caesium and Caesium-133 everything else has ß-decay. Unless you are burning 100% refined Caesium, there is always a chance that you are also burning its radioactive isotopes.

<comment><USER13> All the isotopes of Cs other than 133 exist only in negligible amounts in nature. So sure, perhaps there would be a trace amount of something else-- but that is true of anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would love to know the thinking behind this method.

Off the top of my head: They are adding Cesium ("screw the environment, I have to escape my pursuer") to the engine in order to leave a plasmonic plume. The plasma, which occurs because the electrons in Cesium are stripped off in the heat of the engine, absorbs microwaves (ie, radar) because of the expected cyclotron physics of a free-electron gas.

However as an electronic countermeasure, I do not see the point. The plasmonic plume will absorb the microwaves where the rest of the plane will continue to reflect it. To my thinking, the is exactly what you do not want to do: You've reduced the microwave signal where the plane is not present, and done nothing to the signal where the plane is present. So you've improved the signal-to- noise for the enemy, which are providing guidance for anti-aircraft missiles.

Considering how many years this program went on for, my thinking must be wrong. Maybe anti-aircraft missiles of the era did not intercept from oblique angles (which takes serious computation and sensors) but could only hit from behind (where the plume would attenuate a signal)?

<comment><USER16> For these kinds of radars, there won't really be any signal against the sky and, lets be honest here, nothing is going to be looking at the SR-71 from a top down aspect. In a tail chase situation though, a missile would have to fly straight at the exhaust which would give the aircraft some cover.

There's a bit of reading between the lines that needs to be done here though. The aircraft is already shaped to deflect radar waves from a tail or nose on aspect but the part that's very hard to 'stealth' is the insides of the engines, especially from the rear aspect. Turbine blades and all the other geometry inside tends to act like a radar disco-ball and leaves even many modern aircraft vulnerable. By making the exhaust radar absorbent you fix this issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know it's toxic but from a technical aspect, that is really cool. I remember reading that the Apache Helicopter (I think?) can redirect it's exhaust internally temporarily to become invisible to heat seekers. Some of these technologies are super fun to read about.

<comment><USER3> The Comanche vented its turbine exhaust into the wash from the tail rotor, iirc, to make it harder to spot. It also used a 5-blade rotor instead of the traditional 2-blade rotor in order to make it quieter. There's a bunch of cool things we could do to make helicopters more stealthy if we cared enough.

<comment><USER18> There is some stealth helicopter model that is secret and was used in the operation to kill Osama, it may be a heavily modified UH-60.

<comment><USER19> My recollection is that the contemporary reporting was pretty specific about what it was: an existing chopper with stealth tech grafted on. Something about that (the weight or shape) reduced lift and led to a crash landing during the mission.

Some Google around NYTimes would probably turn up the details.

<comment><USER20> The story I heard at the time was that it was a combination of the stealth helicopters having lousy low-hover performance, and that during training they'd mocked a nearby solid wall up with a chain-link fence, which led to picking a poor landing zone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We need to give a proper credit to the Soviet physicist Petr Ufimtsev ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Ufimtsev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Ufimtsev)) who's published papers in 60's on reflection of electromagnetic waves were read by Lockheed Martin engineers and that started the stealth program.

<comment><USER22> > _He gained permission to publish his research results internationally > because they were considered to be of no significant military or economic > value._

A decision I'm sure the Soviet Union would quickly come to regret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's one hell of a "chemtrail"!

</comment><comment><USER24> For those in NYC, there is an A-12 on display on the deck of the Intrepid. 100% worth the visit

</comment><comment><USER25> If you're curious about the development of Oxcart as well as Area-51, check out Amy Jacobson's Area 51 book[1]. Appears like a solid detail of Skunkworks and spy plane history.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas- Military/...](https://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas- Military/dp/0316202304/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=Area+51+Amy+jacobson&qid=1568341816&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr1)

</comment><comment><USER26> > Though there is no indication that A-50 used a radioactive cesium isotope, > the compound is toxic and it's unclear how hazardous the complete mixture > may have been

<comment><USER14> I think, adding anything radioactive to jetfuel even with decay halflifes of some days would leave a detectable trail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's a fantastic recent special on the history channel about the Skunk Works, Kelly Johnson, and the development of the SR-71

Secrets in the Sky: The Untold Story of Skunk Works: [https://www.history.com/specials/secrets-in-the-sky-the- unto...](https://www.history.com/specials/secrets-in-the-sky-the-untold-story- of-skunk-works)

</comment><comment><USER28> my favorite A-12 read:

[https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other- strang...](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange- places/bluefire-main/bluefire/the-hunt-for-928/)

that whole site is full of awesome accounts of his adventures out west.

<comment><USER29> My favorite A12 talk:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdxpqqsHl8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdxpqqsHl8)

Frank Murray's talk is full of great facts, insight, yarns and stuff. Still as sharp as a tack.

There are lots of other interviews with A12 and SR71 and other interesting planes on youtube.

Be warned: an HNer could lose days browsing there ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've heard chem trail conspiracy theories, it seems that there is a hint of truth in them, but still ridiculous. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory)

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't caesium kind of hugely expensive?

<comment><USER32> The original source of this additive (or the raw materials for it) was a waste product from detergent manufacture. When that method of detergent production was discontinued, they needed to set up an alternative source, which no doubt raised the cost, but everything about the A12 / SR71 was hugely expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> )

<comment><USER34> You raise an excellent point.

<comment><USER35> That though, was a mere footnote

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Great

</comment><comment><USER37> Not really related to the article, but this short speed story with SR-71 Pilot is so fun!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILop3Kn3JO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILop3Kn3JO8)

</comment><comment><USER38> Of course, because nothing matters more than getting the advantage.

Same line of thinking that results in depleted uranium tank shells.

<comment><USER39> > Same line of thinking that results in depleted uranium tank shells.

Yeah, since neither was particularly toxic, and both offered significant performance gains over the alternatives. (Uranium is extremely dense, self- sharpens on impact instead of mushrooming, and catches fire after penetration giving you an incendiary payload for free. Supposedly, nothing else comes close for tank rounds)

<comment><USER40> Uranium is... not nice stuff. I wouldn't classify it as "not particularly toxic". [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2819790/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2819790/)

<comment><USER41> True, but the alternative is tungsten, which is not much better in terms of toxicity:

[https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp186.pdf](https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp186.pdf)

The problem here is that armor piercing rounds need to be made of heavy metals in order to work and heavy metals are generally toxic. Even lead, which old fashioned bullets and shells are made of is toxic.

<comment><USER40> Uranium is more likely to distribute that toxicity in a convenient dust cloud, though. Tungsten and lead for the most part stay in one piece on impact.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WWDC2014 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/wwdc

<comment><USER2> What do you get for the ticket fee? Do they give away free things like Google I/O? Will you build lasting networks of app developers? I wouldn't blame anyone for going just for the experience but I probably can't afford it for that alone.

<comment><USER3> What you used to get (so you have a basis of comparison): 1\. Attend the sessions well before the videos come out. 2\. Q&A after a session. 3\. The only way to see the keynote. 4\. Cheap jacket (backpacks, too, as I recall).

What you get now: 1\. Session vids come out same day or very soon after. 2\. No more Q&A. 3\. Keynote is live streamed. 4\. Same cheap jacket, just a different number (representing the year) on the back.

What you've always had, and will continue to get: 1\. Access to the labs. Good if you have a problem that can't be answered in any other manner. 2\. Networking with other devs over lunch and after-conference events.

If you don't need the labs, and aren't going to be all that social, save yourself $1600.

(EDIT: don't know who's downvoting you for asking a reasonable question. Have an upvote to offset it.)

<comment><USER4> Seems pretty simple, actually. Apple has stripped away anything away that might not be the best incentive to go to WWDC (both from your perspective as well as the perspective of Apple who only have limited spaces). The talks and keynote should never be a reason to go there since we have the technology to spread that to everyone without any loss in the process. Also, no silly valuable presents to reward participating for no reason in particular.

So only go if you have substantial and important questions to ask to help you solve some problem – and, as always (and unavoidably) with any conference, for networking. The cost is there to further encourage you not to waste that opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally a lottery. Hope this works out better for everyone. See you there... Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER6> Approximately a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7522433).

<comment><USER7> So it is. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious to see what new stuff Apple has to offer.

I'm not entirely sure why pretty much every piece of Apple marketing these days involve short, staccato sentences of incomplete "sentences", but it's really annoying.

In addition, text as images ,_,

</comment><comment><USER9> I went ahead and booked a hotel with a reasonable cancellation policy, which is probably a good idea if you want to end up close to the event.

<comment><USER10> For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees. I've looked at doing that for conventions in the past where I wasn't 100% certain I was going to go, but somehow managed to get into a good hotel for cheap with the housing block.

EDIT: An example of how to deal with this. Say you can't go, but know someone who can. Coordinate with the individual to contact the hotel. Tell the hotel reservation manager that you're wanting to transfer the reservation to another name/CC. Have the second person contact them (likely need your reservation # that you originally got) and give the hotel the info (like CC, name, address). You can contact the hotel afterwards to confirm that the transfer has occurred and that you're no longer on the hook for the room.

This is also a useful trick for getting out of leases early. They transfer the lease to the new person's name and you don't have to break it.

<comment><USER11> "For some places you may be able to transfer that room to someone else without having to pay any cancellation fees."

Perhaps when the actual lottery occurs we could have a thread to do that.

<comment><USER10> That'd be a good idea. I've never (and won't again, not an Apple dev) attended one of these, are there official forums? Housing block for the hotels near the conference? If there's an official housing block it maybe easier, there should be a group managing it that you can contact directly. If you need a room, get put on a waitlist, if you have a room they'll offer it to those on the waitlist. Official forums or very popular industry forums would be great places to host this discussion because it'd have the greatest chance of reaching the audience that needs the rooms. (And HN would likely count as a popular enough forum, but with no subforum concept it'd last a day or two and then fall off the front page.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> iWatch is coming. My bet is on it.

They will showcase the platform to develop apps for the iWatch.

<comment><USER13> Since phones have clocks on them isn't a watch really just a fashion accessory now? What makes it more likely than any other wearable computer? I guess I'm just not sure if watches are a big enough market for Apple. They seem kind of niche now because I bet if you polled people who have iPhones there's only a small percentage that want to bling the brand on their wrist like that.

My parents for example both have iPhones, but neither of them would wear a watch unless it really had some extra special usefulness. What is the killer feature? I feel like the Pebble has proven that the killer feature is not that obvious because a lot of Pebble users say they stopped wearing it.

<comment><USER14> I wear a Fitbit. I feel like I was incepted in to wearing a watch - I never wore one before. I thought I was buying a device that tracked my daily fitness but what I ended up with was a watch that has to be recharged weekly and tells my friends how lazy I've been.

I imagine Apple will take a similar life-data approach, especially with the rumors around Healthbook ([http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/17/this-is-healthbook- apples-firs...](http://9to5mac.com/2014/03/17/this-is-healthbook-apples-first- major-step-into-health-fitness-tracking/)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 12" Retina MacBook Air pretty please?</comment>


Re-Ask HN: How to start Antivirus business (different timing) - <AUTHOR>

from scratch?
I mean, software/tech aside, how does one get virus signatures?
Is there some repository, paid or free?
Your anecdotal experiences would be very interesting as well, in case anyone here runs some AV business.
<comment></comment><comment>---
Re-asking this again. Previous "thread" with the only but very interesting commet:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570255 </comment><comment><USER2> FWIIW, I have to scratch my head and wonder _why_ you would want to start an AV company. The market seems to me to be saturated and has become a commodity... there are lots of free non-enterprise versions and the enterprise market is going to be extremely hard for a new, unproven company to break into.

WRT signatures and databases, I would start by digging into ClamAV <http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/about/> to see how they generate their signatures. I expect there is a lot of information that would help answer your questions on the mailing lists as well. <http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/ml/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response.

Not that I'm going to start AV company at the moment, but I'm genuinely interested.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to the previous "thread":

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5570255></comment>


Ask HN: Did Toronto produce more tech jobs than SF, Seattle and DC in 2017? - <AUTHOR> Source: https://www.economist.com/business/2018/12/22/indian-technology-talent-is-flocking-to-canada<p>"[Toronto] added more tech jobs in 2017 than the San Francisco Bay area, Seattle and Washington, dc, combined. " <comment><USER2> I find this impossible to believe. They at least need to cite some statistics and sources. My expectation would have been at least Seattle and SF would each beat any city in Canada (because they have rapid growth in tech), and perhaps even DC. To beat all 3 together seems extremely unlikely. If Toronto was doing that well, you'd hear about it more.</comment>