Eelo: conversa com criador do "Android sem Google" que protege seus dados - <AUTHOR> https://www.tudocelular.com/android/noticias/n118995/Eelo-entrevista-criador-Android-sem-google.html <comment><USER2> Acho que não se aceitam notícias aqui sem tradução em idiomas diferentes do inglês.

<comment><USER3> This looks ontopic, but this is a English speaking forum, so the submission will probably get ignored of flagged, unless it has some very interesting material that is not available in English.

Do the OP have an English version? With a little of luck it will be more popular here. (At least translate the title of the submission.)

Autotranaltion for the lazy: "Eelo: conversation with creator of "Android without Google" that protects your data" [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tudocelular.com%2Fandroid%2Fnoticias%2Fn118995%2FEelo- entrevista-criador-Android-sem-google.html)

This is probably an original interview, but I think there should be similar information available in English. Anyway, what is the difference between this and CyanogenMod/LinageOS?</comment></comment>


Coco: An interesting fork of Coffeescript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/satyr/coco <comment><USER2> Looks cool, I'll probably try it.

In the readme, it says:

       - Less keywords, punctuations and runtime errors.

Please, I know "less" is a trendy word with programmers these days, but the word you're looking for is "fewer".</comment>


Uber Rebrand - <AUTHOR> https://www.uber.design/case-studies/rebrand-2018 <comment><USER2> I'm a layperson for matters related to design. But, for me, that looks like a lot of thinking and writing... just to land on a mundane font with the company name in white on black.

Perhaps it makes sense though, again, not my wheelhouse.

<comment><USER3> What seems like a very easy thing to do is actually quite difficult. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said that "It seems that perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does a company like Uber, which tweaked it's brand only recently, have go through a rebrand all over again? I can imagine it is an extremely expensive endeavor.

I have for long appreciated the business value of design, but often struggle to understand why big companies tweak their brand in small iterations?

<comment><USER5> It's a fairly time-honored tactic to redesign a brand that has lots of negative associations built up, and I could see Dara driving this as part of the overhaul. Typically that results in a full name change though.

Having read through this, it sounds like the brand team considered more radical changes but ultimately found that the broad name recognition and generally positive associations with the stark black/white aesthetic were too strong to ditch entirely. What remained was the ability to iterate on the original brand, and that's what you got.

I agree with ditching "the bit" icon in favor of a "U" though. That logo made zero sense, and always felt like a creative team stretching to imbue an abstract mark with some sort of meaning.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that perspective, Jeremy. But I think hidden in that question was an underlying question: does changing the brand in non-radical ways change perception in people's minds?

The answer might be yes for Dara, but it seems unintuitive to me.

<comment><USER6> > does changing the brand in non-radical ways change perception in people's > minds?

It definitely does for me. I'm not an Uber user (doesn't exist in Germany), but I know the previous design system. When I looked through this page, I also had the impression that their new CEO has to do with this because it evokes more feminine qualities than the previous corporate design. I cannot exactly pin-point this; I'm just going by the feelings it evokes in me. It somehow feels warmer and more empathetic to me (to the extent that a tech giant can be perceived as warm and empathetic).

It's definitely what Uber needs right now on the design front. Let's see how much it helps them regain trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like all of this. As a system it's very cohesive and makes a lot of sense. It's fresh and at least aligns with the new image of Uber which afaik is essentially "we are totally not the old uber". I do wish they would have brought back a logo alongside the logomark. The outgoing 'chinese coin' logo was not doing anything for them but it is clear that the U is important and I think they could have done that justice by using it for more than the 'u-frame'

</comment><comment><USER8> Uber doesn't need a visual refresh, they need a values refresh. People who are choosing not to use Uber now aren't put off by the logo but by their corporate culture. Maybe, _maybe_ if they got that sorted out first, they could come up with a visual identity to support the new and improved Uber that would have some value.

<comment><USER7> It's been a while, are you sure they are still the same old Uber? Do you work there? Do you know people who work there? At some point a company needs to go through a rebrand to change their image both internally and externally.

<comment><USER9> Uber's reckless manslaughter happened just a few months ago. Nothing else is necessary to know they still need to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. One of the goals with their original rebrand to a logo was to make the brand more accessible to people in markets that don't use Latin scripts. Looks like this rebrand abandons that goal. 2\. Why do another rebrand just two years after the last one? New team, new leader, new OKR?

<comment><USER11> Uber has since then abandoned a lot of those markets that don't use Latin scripts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me, or is this page incredible bloated and slow to load?

<comment><USER13> i got 36.2 mb of resources on a page load without caching

yikes

<comment><USER6> 36.2 MB is pretty much par for the course for design showcases. This is not a news website, and not Craigslist, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't that the "Cards Against Humanity" font? [https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/51078183?wid=1400](https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/51078183?wid=1400)

I can see the "g" is different, but it's pretty close...

<comment><USER15> That's just plain Helvetica.

<comment><USER16> It looked like a medley between Futura / Century Gothic and Helvetica to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The frame design element is nice. Other than that, I find the simple branding style that a lot of companies are adopting to be very bland. I like minimalism, but there is very little to set this new branding apart from the dozens of other companies with very similar branding styles.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me, or are they slowly gravitating towards Crate & Barrel's aesthetic?

</comment><comment><USER19> Creating your own typeface seems a bit excessive. Here are the things that I would change based on my first reaction.

\- Remove the tail on the Uppercase "U"

\- Uppercase "I" and lowercase "l" are identical.

\- Rewrite the lowercase "g" as it looks like an "o" with a "j" attached.

\- The tail on the lowercase "j" is cut off prematurely.

\- The tail on the lowercase "a" should be straight instead of curved out. Will cause problems with tracking.

Would love to see the rest of the ascii chars, as typeface designers often get a bit too crazy with some of the symbols and it really makes or breaks the design.

</comment><comment><USER20> Liking the new logo, but the rest of it just seems...ok? I really hope they tone down that motion, watching it on the screen made me go "Woah", and not in a good way.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sure, their website is slow, takes a bit to load the media, and uses up your CPU -- but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an aesthetically pleasing website. Their website reminds me of a musician's website for some reason. Scrolling through the page tells you a story about the Uber brand. I especially liked the "System Icons" section and how they use a slider to let you transition between light and dark versions of the icons.

</comment><comment><USER22> Uber's customers wanted the 'U' back. More than better service, low prices, and cab availability. So they gave it to them.

[https://twitter.com/coffeeandjunk/status/1040097766331084800](https://twitter.com/coffeeandjunk/status/1040097766331084800)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm just thinking of all the windshield stickers they're gonna have to hand out...

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow, I (ready for jaded-HN criticisms...) actually think its terrible. The U and the B are too closely linked, which de-stresses the syllabic bridge, undermining the emphasis on the U, and its unique and cool "long" pronunciation. Makes me want to pronounce it like 'blubber' without the 'bl'.

</comment><comment><USER25> tl; dr: "We've found the color black resonates well with our brand...and our corporate soul."

</comment><comment><USER26> That has got to be one of the most poorly designed websites I've ever seen. I'm on a wired desktop and it's barely loading. Why are there like 5-10 physical inch gaps between sections? Why is there a full page picture at the top with no text or anything?

<comment><USER27> > Why is there a full page picture at the top with no text or anything?

That confused me a little, I thought this was an homonym company related to plants or ecology. It didn't help that the rest of the images never loaded on the first try.</comment></comment>


Cognitive enhancement through real-time fMRI neurofeedback - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154615000625 <comment><USER2> Perhaps this could be used to suppress subvocalization during reading:

(1) Look at a lot of people reading the same text, divide in to subvocalizing and non-subvocalizing group.

(2) Find difference in neuronal activation patterns.

(3) Let subvocalizer read the text and apply electro shocks if the fMRI shows the typical patterns for a subvocalizer. Perhaps the cortex will self-organize to turn off the subvocalization.

</comment><comment><USER3> full text: [http://sci-hub.io/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.05.001](http://sci- hub.io/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.05.001)

</comment><comment><USER4> Given fMRI's nature as a secondary measurement of brain activity, I'd have expected this kind of research to focus on EEG, which, as a direct measurement of brain electrical activity, should have much lower latency. I'd think that latency would be pretty crucial for neurofeedback.

</comment><comment> max-a Anecdotal evidence about neurofeedback, especially TAGSync, always made me curious but this stuff seems to expensice to try. I am glad we are progressing at methods and evidence, maybe one day more people will be able to try it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please forgive my ignorance but: what does this mean in English? Does it mean you can gain better control over your cognitive functions by realizing what activities activate them or are the results something different entirely?

</comment><comment><USER6> I am sorta curious about how they measured "cognitive enhancement", just because what changes in what activities could tell us something about how the brain is divided.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to use pre-launch email signups strategy? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working full time on my startup SpotHero since September.  We put up a splash page to collect email addresses as the application is being built out.<p>I've collected a couple hundred email signups with my startup http://spothero.com Currently, the "confirmation for an email submission" is on the website and they do not get a follow up email.  What is appropriate to send out before it becomes "spam"?  There are a ton of things I can do with the email signup list, but I don't want to put people off. <comment><USER2> If you're talking about the 'legal considerations' of when it becomes spam, if they "opted-in", you can send them whatever you feel like as long as you have an unsubscribe at the bottom along with your physical address.

CANN-Spam regulations can be found here with more info --> [http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act- complia...](http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance- guide-business)

That said, you don't want everyone unsubscribing so you need to focus on making sure your emails are not "perceived" as spam. Perception > Reality.

Basic [very basic] tips. \--Make the emails useful (give people inside tips on places to park, ways to avoid fines, hidden parking gems of the week) \--Don't make the emails all about you. They signed up for your list because they think you can help them with some sort of problem. Help them solve part of their problem in a small way, prove you're an expert and then when you launch you can let them know that you can solve a much bigger portion of their problem \--Segment your list. Find out who's opening up & clicking through your emails and who isn't. Send the people who are opening & clicking more email. Send those who aren't less. There's a lot of talk about sending too often or not sending enough, but that's a bunch of crap. Fuel the fully interested customers with more content. Don't harass those customers who are partially interested with daily emails. Segment, segment, segment. \--Make your news Newsworthy. When you do have something to say, make sure it's worth saying. Just sending something because you think it's newsworthy, doesn't mean it is. Make sure it's something you would actually want to know about the company. Your list's attention is precious. Don't abuse it. \--Have a personality. Get someone to read the next word. That's the name of the game with email/content/copy writing in general. get someone to read the next word, then the next one, then the next one. Personality helps with that. There are people who sign up to groupon and don't even care about the offers, but they'll read every email because they're entertaining.

Hope that helps. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you seen launchrock.com? It might help with growing your list.

On you question, I suggest monthly updates until you have something live. But if you post your list ("ton of things") of ideas, we could comment on them specifically.

By the way, I like your business concept. Except I'd remove the Chicago- specificity from the tag line, as I would assume you can probably scale this quickly. If you need to start with Chicago, put that in secondary text on the front page.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the mention. If anyone on HN wants an invite, just email us at hello [at] launchrock [dot] com and mention that you heard about it from Hacker News.

Advice wise, we've found that the pages work really well, and not just for us, but it does require for you to spend some time thinking about the design, your messaging, and more importantly, how you'll get people there in the first place. It's kind of an amplifier of sorts.

Anyway, we'll have some great data to share, but we're just trying to get to/through SXSW right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think a monthly "update" email would be bad. Actually it would probably keep people interested so they know a little about what is going on behind the scenes and keep them reminded about the company.

<comment><USER4> Keep a blog and update often. Our Posterous blog for LaunchRock has been amazing for keeping people engaged.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. The blog has definitely been instrumental in driving traffic to our website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great idea! Best of luck!</comment>


Swifter Than a Bird Flies: An Account of Riding the First Passenger Train - <AUTHOR> https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/08/26/fanny-kemble-railroad/ <comment><USER2> The 21st century has transformed rail again. We'll look back in another 10 years and realize what a difference high-speed rail made to a nation's infrastructure.

The first 12,000 miles are done. Another 12,000 to go...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- speed_rail_in_China](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. 15 September 1830 - the day the industrial revolution got out of beta.

There had been steam engines for a century, and there were earlier steam locomotives, but they were demos and one-offs. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway had about a dozen similar locomotives. They had stations, signals, double-track line, carriages, schedules, and tickets. For the first time, all the necessary parts were in place and running in paid service.

Suddenly, there was technology.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Rocket (the machine in this account) is at London's Science Museum, South Kensington, in the same large room/hall as a jet-powered Rover car, an Apple I and a Cray I and a very early form of an ECG machine (no I don't know why either - seemed to be running out of space on the ground floor).

Interestingly Manchester's Science Museum which is run by the same group is built around the World's first train station from which the Rocket served passengers to and from Liverpool.</comment>


Generate Product Sales Using Pinterest - <AUTHOR> http://topicblend.com/sell-using-pinterest/ Pinterest is becoming more and more influential in helping affiliate marketers and vendors with selling products, but many people don't actually know how to use the image bookmarking tool in there advantage. So for those who want to get a boost and generate more sales here's how. <comment><USER2> Title of that article should have been "Generate product sale in any social wesite or app" because everything on that article can be used in any site that involves liking and posting.</comment>


Understanding extinction – humanity has destroyed half the life on Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/oct-19-2019-understanding-the-anthropocene-extinction-regenerating-cartilage-and-more-1.5324707/understanding-extinction-humanity-has-destroyed-half-the-life-on-earth-1.5324721 <comment><USER2> We are still transitioning from a phase where we believed that nature was an infinite pool of resources for humanity to exploit (and a place dump waste) to the coming stage where we are ultimately forced to assume a humbler attitude, and work together with the environment in order to achieve sustainability in the long term.

There is no rational doubt that this is the case on a general level, what is still in dispute is which of our darlings that have to go. Oil? Wars? Nuclear energy? Cities? Cars? Food factories? Meat for supper every day of the week? Clothes fashion?

Maybe (probably) all of these to some extent, and then some. The question is how.

</comment><comment><USER3> "humanity" covers a lot of ground. It would be interesting to decompose that term and expand our understanding of "extinction" to encompass what we might now call genocide or population replacement. Countless human groups / civilizations have been destroyed by others. The story isn't complete until we take our own status as animals into consideration as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whoopsie Daisy

</comment><comment><USER5> Holy Thanos!</comment>


Report a Bug - <AUTHOR> http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/09/07/help-the-community-report-browser-bugs/

<comment><USER2> This article is kind of confused; it's talking about two separate things.

1) __Report bugs. __Yes, do that... do that a lot. Everyone benefits, and it doesn't take you a lot of time.

2) __Exhaustively test every bug report you submit. __I don't know about this one. When I submit a bug report, I'm usually in the middle of doing something (often, work), and if I followed their steps for every bug I reported, it would take between 15 minutes and and hour just for the report. Who has that kind of time? Asking users to do something like this will just put them off from submitting reports, which you don't want to do. On the other hand, submitting useless bug reports - which may not even be bugs - will waste the developer's time.

If the goal of this article is to maximize both bug report quality and number of reports submitted, I don't think this article does a good job of describing that maxima.</comment>


Tell HN: DropBox spamming? - <AUTHOR>

Received just now ...

  > X-Envelope-From: email@example.com
  > <redacted>
  > Received: from mailman-2.dropboxmail.com ([<redacted>])
  >         by <redacted> with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
  >         (envelope-from <email@example.com>)
  >         id <redacted>
  >         for <redacted>; Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:16:10 +0100
  > Received: from mailman-2.dropboxmail.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
  >         by mailman-2.dropboxmail.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id <redacted>
  >         for <redacted>; Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:16:06 +0000 (UTC)
  > From: Dropbox <firstname.lastname@example.com>
  > To: <redacted>
  > Subject: <redacted> invited you to Dropbox
  > Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:16:06 +0000
  > Reply-To: <redacted>@hotmail.com
  >
  > ...
  >
  > <redacted> wants you to try Dropbox! Dropbox lets you bring all your
  > photos, docs and videos with you anywhere and share them easily.
  >
  > Get started here: http://www.dropbox.com/link/<redacted>
  >
  > - The Dropbox Team
 <comment><USER2> As far as I know, your friend actually invited you so he/she could get some extra space. They don't do it automatically, you need to put your friend's email there or import your contacts from your webmail.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just an invite from a friend, if you refer someone you get extra space added to your account

<comment><USER4> AKA Spam-by-proxy...

<comment><USER3> that might be true, but you could also say it for every other internet application.. facebook (share with friends) etc

<comment><USER4> Indeed, and I do :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Move Over GPS, Here Comes the Smartphone  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/technology/08gps.html <comment><USER2> I found this article very confusing. GPS is being used in at least three different ways: a separate device that uses the GPS to help you navigate, the function in your phone that uses the Global Positioning System to navigate, and the Global Positioning System.

To someone who doesn't refer to the separate device as a GPS, but calls it a SatNav, reading this was an exercise in increasing frustration, each time having to stop and unpick the meaning of the acronym.

Hacker lesson to learn: Sometimes when you're explaining things you'll use the same term in different contexts to mean different things. Sometimes your listener will be unfamiliar with the nuances of the different contexts, hear the same word, and get confused. I think that lost me the potential for funding in one pitch I did.

So, the real question, do these "Smart Phones" that they're talking about have a GPS chipset that lets them find their position using the GPS satellites, or are they using cell-phone-based location awareness?

</comment><comment><USER3> TomTom seems to be taking the safer approach (with an iPhone app etc.) while Garmin seems to be taking a riskier approach (by adding cell phone functionality to their navigation device).

It will be interesting to see which approach does better or if both approaches fail.</comment>


Show HN: Simple PRNG Passes Dieharder and PractRand - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/dosyrng <comment><AUTHOR> On GitHub: [https://github.com/crislin2046/dosyrng](https://github.com/crislin2046/dosyrng)

And an even simpler version (built with just base64 and xor): [https://github.com/crislin2046/tarobox](https://github.com/crislin2046/tarobox) which I

haven't tested with SMHasher or PractRand.</comment>


Indian runaway train takes 1,000 passengers on engineless journey - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/08/carriages-detach-from-train-engine-in-india-and-roll-away-at-speed <comment><USER2> "I want to get off Mr Bone's Wild Ride!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Luckily it was an Indian train, so it couldn't have been very fast :D</comment>


How LSD binds to the brain, and why trips last so long - <AUTHOR> http://europe.newsweek.com/first-look-lsd-binding-neurons-offers-insights-hallucinogenic-effects-548665 <comment><USER2> Source study published in Cell, "Crystal Structure of an LSD-Bound Human Serotonin Receptor"

HTML [http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)31749-4](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(16\)31749-4)

PDF [http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(16)31749-4.pdf](http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674\(16\)31749-4.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really interesting, but only solves one of the many puzzles of LSD. I hope we'll someday learn how LSD's presence in these receptors can sometimes alter consciousness so profoundly.

<comment><USER4> Isn't this just really the general puzzle of how neurotransmitters work in the first place? We know their effects, in the broadest strokes (e.g. dopamine == reward), but we don't know precisely how they create those effects.</comment></comment>


The real difference between liberals and conservatives - <AUTHOR> http://ted.org/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

<comment><AUTHOR> And I have to admit to not always following my own advice. Apologies to any I've offended.</comment>


Disqus cracked – Security flaw reveals users' e-mail addresses - <AUTHOR> http://cornucopia-en.cornubot.se/2013/12/flash-disqus-cracked-security-flaw.html <comment><USER2> If a political organisation was revealing the identities behind anonymous speech on a jewish forum, the world would be up in arms. If the identities on a gay board was published, Obama himself would be apologising. Now the identities of thousands of people commenting on politics in Sweden was revealed, and it's OK because "they" are the bad guys, says the extreme left organisation Researchgruppen.

The slippery slope is

<comment><USER3> Being born into a jewish family isn't a choice. Being gay isn't a choice.

Being politically affiliated with hate speech IS a choice.

That is some straight up false equivalency bullshit.

<comment><USER4> The British probably thought those behind the movement that ultimately resulted in the United States were engaging in hate speech. Be careful not to use a tinted lens to evaluate the world. We all do it. I am not critical of your statement. I am merely pointing out that dissenting points of view throughout history have often met with push-back. Very often, years later, those responsible for the "hate speech" were recognized as being at the root of positive world-changing developments. Imagine the people who dared to engage in "hate speech" against the flat earth and geocentric dogma, voting rights, slavery, etc.

I am disagreeing with you on one point. Being Jewish is a choice, just like being Christian is a choice. I was born into a family, like most, with generations of religious belief. I, however, am an atheist. You don't have to be a Jew. You can have jewish culture in your life, respect it and enjoy it. That does not mean you have no choice but to also be religious. That part is a choice. Just as it is for anyone from any other religion.

<comment><USER5> > Being Jewish is a choice

Do you think that proponents of Neo-Nazism (etc) really care about the distinction between "born into a Jewish family" and "is a member of the Jewish religion?" I'm not saying that there isn't a distinction, but people engaged in hate usually aren't too interested in nuance.

<comment><USER4> Probably not. But that's not what I was arguing. Right?

For every example we care to provide there's probably a deviant group more than willing to discriminate against that population and even want to kill them. I think the history of genocides more than proves that point.

Please don't be offended. Jews don't really have a monopoly on being hated or being murdered en-masse. Many argue --quite convincingly-- that the Jewish genocide was modeled after the Armenian genocide of 1914/15 (the Nazi's copied some of the methods the Turks used on their Armenian population).

In the US, at least, in non-deviant circles, I believe you can be a person and not someone "born into an <X> family". In that context whatever you push in front of people as what defines you is up to you. Believe it or not, as an atheist I have a number of good friends who are Born Again Christians. Every single one of them is a great person. Each one of them chooses to define themselves by their religion differently. One in particular will smash you in the face with it every chance he gets. Not surprisingly he has suffered greatly with employment because, well, this isn't something you wear on your forehead and pester people with at work. The other guys are just guys who happen to privately be BAC's. He is a militant BAC. Choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In all our worry about NSA taps, the simple fact is that gravatar and now disqus allows anyone NSA, your health insurance company, groups who dislike your group, etc., to track your blog comments, help desk comments, any comment you make around the net.

Your comments to gay rights groups, anti-gay rights groups, cancer support groups, aids support groups, abortion groups, democratic politics, tea party groups, gun rights groups, doctors offices, anyone using wordpress as a front end group.

Anyone can do this with a simple search engine they create, and apparently we don't care because gravatar was setup by a silicon valley favorite and is now owned by Wordpress who was informed of this years ago and refused to consider it a privacy leak. And anyway we like them cutsie cartoon avatars.

Anyone can do this with a search engine that maps pages to md5 hashes and vice versa and either a rainbow table of email addresses, or even easier, a list of your customer's email addresses, because let's see if any of our customers have health problems they didn't disclose.

<comment><USER7> Any comments you make under your email address are attributable to that email address. Duh. The _whole point_ of gravatar and disqus is to make it clear that your comments on a bunch of different sites are from the same person.

If you don't want a particular comment associated with your name or email, why would you ever fill in that name or email when commenting?

<comment><USER6> If I go to comment at a wordpress site it says this:

"Email (required) (Address never made public)"

MD5 leaks of my email address into web pages is in fact making my address public.

Hey lmm, duh, when you make a comment under a different name but with the same email address that you think is anonymous at your local hiv testing site, you may not expect that your insurance company can track that down because wordpress has been leaking your md5 address all over the place.

<comment><USER8> No it doesn't. You need to know the email address up front in order to generate the hash.

<comment><USER9> But the point is that you can easily brute force that, especially if you have a list of people that you suspect may be making such comments and their email addresses.

Saying that your email is kept private by taking its MD5 sum is like expecting than an unsalted MD5 sum for a password hash in a publicly accessible password database will be secure for people with weak, brute-forcible passwords like "1234". You are providing a little bit of obfuscation, but no real security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that md5 hashes of email addresses can be brute forced is nothing new. This has been pointed out for years, concerning services like gravatar. The only thing which is important, is that Expressen/Researchgruppen believes that they have the right to exploit Disqus' service in order to "make the news".

<comment><USER11> Why don't/shouldn't they?!

Theres a security problem with Disqus.

Apparently it (genereal technique) is "old news"

Apparently Disqus doesn't care enough to fix it.

Demonstrating the attack may be the only way to get them to care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anything requiring third-party cookies, _AND_ requesting an e-mail address not only stinks of spam-oriented advertising revenue, but also total disregard for user security. Even more telling were the options to sign in with services like Facebook Oauth.

So from the beginning, I think it was always obvious that Disqus had no interest beyond the bare minimum in casually protecting user privacy. This prompted me to avoid ever providing Disqus with any kind of serious e-mail address. Looks like my instincts served me well.

<comment><USER13> You think Disqus is selling your email address to spammers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't get it, if your email address is so private then why you share it with 3rd parties? Also, why would your email address be so private if the spam filters are so efficient nowadays, what's the harm in having a public email address? Please enlighten me.

<comment><USER15> > I don't get it, if your email address is so private then why you share it > with 3rd parties?

How would you use it otherwise? My backyard is private, but I share it with a few 3rd parties. That doesn't mean i intent to share my backyard with the entire world.

There is an element of trust with particular 3rd parties that is being violated. Why is that so hard to understand?

<comment><USER16> The address of your backyard is not private.

<comment><USER17> Analogies are terrible. "Imagine X is like Y. Ok, but what about aspect Z of Y? Oh, that doesn't apply to X."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article is a bit miss leading. The so called security flaw does not reveal the e-mail address directly, but a MD5 hash of it. Sure it _can_ be cracked, but it doesn't mean that it _will_ get cracked.

<comment><USER11> Actually, yeah, it will be cracked, by _someone_.

And E-Mail-addresses aren't passwords; trying a few hundred variations for each firstname for each lastname is perfectly feasible and should crack a nice percentage of these hashes.

<comment><USER19> My email is firstname.lastname@example.com (I have a few of these at different companies). I'm fairly confident this isn't going to be cracked any time soon by random MD5 hashing.

(of course, my real name can be extrapolated from my HN username)

<comment><USER20> The rainbow table would just need to include alphanumeric letters + '@' for up to 30 letters. I think your emails are in nearly every rainbow table in existence.

<comment><USER21> Just the 1-10 character lowercase alphanumeric rainbow table from freerainbowtables.com is 297 GB. Of course, you can generate rainbow tables with various parameters and tradeoffs so it's not trivial to compare them.

Still, I don't think I've ever had a rainbow table that contained plaintexts longer than 12 characters. Are 30+ length tables common these days?

<comment><USER20> EDIT: "nearly any _email_ rainbow table", i.e. 1-10 characters cross joined with all domains for a given tld.

You're correct that brute force with an entropy of 3 per bit would still be too big for rainbow table usage (like 10^15 PB too big).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> MD5 hashes of emails is very common practice for Gravatar etc. - although it's fairly sucky, I'm assuming this is in the API specifically for things like showing Gravatar images.

I reported a username -> plaintext email vuln to Disqus earlier this year and they were very prompt in patching it, I wouldn't criticize them for this at all as this a very common issue across most blog comment systems.

Would be nice to change how Gravatar works, but it's fairly fundamental. I think if you want your email to be private you should probably be registering temporary ones or using the + aliases like gmail offers to avoid these kinds of hash-cracking attacks.

<comment><USER23> Another solution would be for these services to use something with a greater work factor than MD5. When a typical user can brute force MD5s at a rate of 8.5 billion per second with AMD HD7970 graphics card then it's time to use a different hashing algorithm. Something like scrypt or bcrypt with a larger work factor would make these attacks much harder and more expensive, while leaving the fundamentals of the system the same.

[http://hashcat.net/oclhashcat/](http://hashcat.net/oclhashcat/) [https://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html](https://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Y'all seem to be forgetting that this isn't random ascii string bruteforcing: you start with a list of known email addresses collected from other places or bought from spammers, then you hash all those, and you see which ones match.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another reason to not use your real name or email address when commenting across the web.

<comment><USER26> Or you know just be a decent person and not post things you wouldn't say in person yourself.

<comment><USER27> Yeah - people have never been persecuted for who they are in person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Get 150 million e-mail addresses from Adobe hack. Match vs Disqus users. Profit.

<comment><USER29> Even better, you can be certain a great number of users reuse their password

<comment><USER28> True. A percentage of the union of Adobe and Disqus users will use the same password for both services.

<comment><USER30> But if they haven't changed their password after the Adobe hack then they're already boned, aren't they? How doe the Disqus vuln add to that?

<comment><USER28> You don't want to try 150 million Adobe logins on Disqus. You want to identify which ones to test first.

<comment><USER30> Maybe I'm being dense this morning... if I were in the Adobe 150M, some criminals would _already have_ my email address, right? How does getting Disqus's hash of it help them out?

<comment><USER29> Not being dense at all, it's a valid point, but crossing both leaks helps them find out quickly which logins and password combos to try at disqus, and which accounts will be compromised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Surely any hashing would be susceptible?

Even a slower or more "secure" hash wouldn't help much, because I can take your starting known email address and find comments you have made. i.e. I can start with "email@example.com", slowly hash that to 901e54d1 and then search google for 901e54d1 to find comments you've made.

Speed isn't a big deal if I'm interested in attacking specific subsets of emails. (Which could still be a "large" set in a real world sense.)

As long as the hashing algorithm is known then it would be weak to finding comments made by known authors. If the hashing algorithm is unknown then it falls under security by obscurity.

So is there any way to implement a decentralised pseudonymous but ID-based system where the ID is tied to email but cannot be generated from email (or rather is generated from email but with some added entropy that prevents going in either direction in the future.).

<comment><USER30> In general, what you're asking about is called a "salted hash". I don't understand enough about Disqus's system to say it would definitely have prevented this vulnerability.

<comment><USER15> A salted hash only slows down brute-force attacks and dictionary attacks. The salt is still stored with the hash, so you could still eventually match the email address with the hash. Instead of hashing each email address once and comparing it with all of your collected hashes, you'd have to hash each email address using every salt until you found a match.

<comment><USER30> Sure since they're using MD5 then a salt wouldn't solve their problem, especially if the salt were also part of the url. And let's not pretend that the url itself is somehow secret: there are many ways to collect those, particularly if specific users are targeted. _Usually_ when people are this boneheaded about hashes they're trying to save storage space, but I can't imagine that storing a separate random identifier would add significantly to Disqus's storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Researchgruppen seems to be in violation of the Disqus terms of service by harvesting personal information and also disclosing this in other mediums.

<comment><USER32> So what? I doubt they're bothered if Disqus bans them from using their service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Glad I use separate e-mail addresses for signing up to sites and for personal correspondence.

</comment><comment><USER29> So, what would suffice to maintain anonymity AND the ability to send the user email notifications?

I'm guessing Hashing (not MD5 though) + Salting + throwing away the salt and bruteforcing it every time you need the plain email (you will lose the option to mass mail your users)

Even then the whole concept of anonymity AND email bound account seems kind of silly. Even if the user uses a secondary email address just for this, he still has to trust the email provider (and if he uses a throwaway, what is the point of collecting it anyway?)

This crack is proof that services that provide a fake sense of anonymity can do a lot of harm.

</comment><comment><USER34> Old olllddd news, almost every Wordpress blog uses Gravatar, same issue...

<comment><USER35> So why do you feel compelled to post when you know what you are saying is old news? You just adds to the noise and make it off putting for anyone else to post that actually knows about this event including your obvious point.

<comment><USER36> Now I'm confused.. why do you feel compelled to reply? You just add to the noise.

<comment><USER37> Men = Ego.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why MD5 the email addresses? If you just need a unique id for a user, why not use a GUID or something that isn't traceable from public information?

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice. Glad I decided against using Disqus for my site.

</comment><comment><USER40> Where does one get the dataset of email id's of Adobe users ?

</comment><comment><USER41> Yawn. A rainbow table can be used to determine str in MD5(str). News at 11…

<comment><USER11> The news is that Disqus is relying on that.

<comment><USER41> So does Automattic with gravatars (on nearly 20% of the internet, no less), and pray tell how many other companies that use md5(email) as a unique ID for a reason or another. Duh! What were they thinking!

<comment><USER11> I don't know what they were thinking. It's wrong, they shouldn't violate their users privacy like that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


URGENT URGENT PLZ READ B4 OTHERS VERY URGENT NO TIME WASTERS - <AUTHOR> http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=499980&start=0&tstart=0 <comment><USER2> To paraphrase Rob Pike, if you want Slashdot, you know where to find it.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

While it's amusing, it's not the type of content I expect to see at the top of the list at this site.

Has the reddit/digg over-popularity effect kicked in here, too?

Maybe we need the ability to down-vote submissions.

<comment><USER4> I, for one, welcome our new geek humor overlords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This might be a practical joke. Not an especially good one, but it's so over the top that I have a sneaking suspicion someone is having a laugh about all the indignity this post has generated.

</comment><comment><USER6> Haha, this is great. I got sucked in and read the whole thing, the best post was on page 13...

"HERE IS THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION. RUN THESE SIMPLE SQL STATEMENTS, AND ALL WILL BE OK: SQL truncate table OUTFITTER; SQL truncate table ORDER_DETAILS; SQL truncate table STYLE_COLLS; Then run the query again and post the results."

hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it's not an outsourced Oracle employee who is not even aware of what company he works for.

</comment><comment><USER8> Its definitely a prank. Anyway he is now on Tom Kytes' blog. <http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-not-to-ask-question.html>

Another internet legend is born.

</comment><comment><USER9> Jesus.

<comment><USER10> No, Jesus wouldn't be so cruel :P

<comment><USER9> I'm guessing juwo downmodded us?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> just for laughs :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, downvoted again. I guess nobody found this link funny.

In the future I'll try to stick to articles about Paul Graham ;)</comment></comment>


How I discovered I have the brain of a psychopath - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-discovered-i-have-the-brain-of-a-psychopath

<comment><USER2> Two possibilities here: (1) this adds fuel to the neuroskeptic fire, or (2) the author is a high-functioning psychopath.

I've often wondered if there are such things. There are high-functioning schizophrenics, manics, autistics, just about anything else. Why not psychopaths? In the psychopath case being high-functioning would mean you've kind of intellectualized empathy, learned to empathize and regulate your behavior via other compensatory neural pathways.

Our image of the psychopath comes from the axe murderer or the con man in a suit who charismatically takes charge of a company, wrecks it, and makes off with everyone's retirement savings (assuming he/she does not land in prison). But in the same sense our image of the schizophrenic comes from the guy babbling at invisible monsters at your local street corner. There are people all around who have abnormal neurophysiology who have managed to deal with it without it terribly harming their lives or the lives of others.</comment>


Ask YC: What do you use to stress test your app/db? - <AUTHOR>

I am particularly interested in making database read/write requests through the web app.<p>My app is in Python(Pylons), the datastore is an ODBMS based on ZopeDB, server and client(me) are running Linux. <comment><USER2> The grinder <http://grinder.sourceforge.net/> (write your scripts in jython) for unit and nightly runs and for large scale testing on partners hardware HP (formerly mercury) Load Runner [https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_conten...](https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-126-17%5E8_4000_100__)

<comment><USER3> How much does Load Runner cost? Thousands of $$?

<comment><USER2> Yep, ridiculously expensive, grinder is good enough. In the enterprisey space where my day job is, load runner has a certain reputation (despite whether it deserves it or not). We found with the open source or cheaper tools (IBM rational tools included) under really high loads logging, measurements and the tools themselves got flaky. When you've got extremely limited time and hard deadlines in a hardware lab, time is the most precious commodity, so the cost can be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ab is a quick and dirty way: <http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/ab.html>

You can send it particular URLs that do your desired DB read/write requests.

For more in depth testing, I've heard HttpUnit is good (<http://httpunit.sourceforge.net/>), though I don't have much experience with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using Pythonpaste's webserver - does this only work on apache? httpunit looks interesting...

<comment><USER5> No, it's just HTTP. It just happens to come with apache, that's all.

<comment><USER4> Right. Here's a simple example:

ab -n 10000 -c 25 <http://your.com/your.py>

10000 hits, with 25 concurrent requests. You can keep cranking up -c n and see what happens. This is also useful for testing your network capability, e.g. simultaneous connections, from a fast remote network.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I am using Siege which does this and a bit.. If i am going to learn anything new then httpunit it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm working on a hosted load testing solution for this type of problem. Specifically, it will let you run full transactions against a web front-end. You record a script with your web browser and then upload it, and run a mass of virtual users executing those steps.

If you want an update when it's ready, shoot me an email. On gmail, I'm ebeland.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use autobench (<http://www.xenoclast.org/autobench/>)

<comment><AUTHOR> Autobengh is a wrapper around httpperf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I let the masses use it an see, which scripts and queries use the most resources.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use ab for simple things and siege for more involved benchmarking. I write my own functionality tests in Perl with WWW::Mechanize for monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER10> JMeter. I have an ant task that does it automatically.

<comment><USER11> I like JMeter too. I've just started using it and I've been very happy with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Throw it up and wait for the email complaints from customers :)

<comment><USER13> This actually works in many cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> httperf, ftp://ftp.hpl.hp.com/pub/httperf/httperf-0.9.0.tar.gz

</comment><comment><USER15> Tsung (<http://tsung.erlang-projects.org/>) - an Erlang-based performance testing tool.

</comment><comment><USER16> siege

</comment><comment><USER17> Apache JMeter and ApacheBench.</comment>


IBM Builds Its Own SimCity Game - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5530375/ibm-builds-its-own-simcity-game

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link. I will waiting for this game to come out.</comment>


Python tools for local continuous integration - <AUTHOR> http://dabapps.com/blog/python-tools-local-continuous-integration/

<comment><USER2> Wish I had this kind of tool for my C/C++ projects.</comment>


Are America's Best Days Behind Us? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2056610,00.html

<comment><AUTHOR> While I think this article raises some interesting points on the future of America, as a hacker with entrepreneurial aspirations I have some reservations. With all of the innovation and opportunities brought up and discussed on HN what do you all think?</comment>


Far Right Activist Charles Johnson Has Sued Twitter Over His Suspension - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/far-right-activist-charles-johnson-has-sued-twitter-over?utm_term=.dnN6nlJoe#.uuQ2Vd69G <comment><AUTHOR> It's starting to look like its the year silicon valley gets sued.</comment>


Japan ninja student gets top marks for writing essay in invisible ink - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49996166 <comment><USER2> </comment>


Pattern: Service Mesh - <AUTHOR> http://philcalcado.com/2017/08/03/pattern_service_mesh.html <comment><USER2> I think it's worth noting that the control plane and management plane are two very different things, and it'll be interesting to see how they break out.

There's a bunch of sidecars in the control plane that are competing for visibility right now. Envoy has probably had the most visibility around here. Linkerd and traefik also exist.

The management plane is less well defined. Istio is super-new on the open source side, and Turbine Labs is a SaaS version. I'm honestly not aware of any others here.

Most of the goodies you want don't really get unlocked until you have a management plane in place, so the focus on the sidecar is kind of baffling, imho.

</comment><comment><USER3> current service mesh users - do you prefer having these capabilities as features of container orchestration platform or do you see value in having choice over the service mesh for your use? how did you pick the service mesh you use currently?

</comment><comment><USER4> Service Bus much?

</comment><comment><USER5> _sigh_ old wine in new bottle much? Back in the good old days at Yahoo we used to have something very similar called ProxyIO.</comment>


There have been 7 million attempts to download Flash from iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/189279/iphone_users_want_flash_by_millions_adobe_says.html

<comment><USER2> So 4 million attempts since last June.

How many of that 4 million is from the same 1% of iphone users? (And 1% percentile of intelligence, recall the "facebook login" incident)

Can anyone using an iphone let me know how people even get to the adobe page? If all you need to do is click the blue box to get there you can write off 90% of those hits.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "plugin" missing icon on Safari doesn't link to anything.

So people actually have to search for Flash or go to Adobe's site directly. Or if the website use something like swfobject, click on the link it provides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The question is, how many of those downloads were forced by the website being viewed. And how many of them were from people who just wanted to do X, and would they blame the phone or the website for not making it possible?

</comment><comment><USER4> there have been 7 million people who tried chatroullete...

craploads of people != !idiots</comment>


A 28-Year-Old Allegedly Stole 130 Million Card Numbers; 'Get Rich or Die Tryin' - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125053669921337753.html

<comment><USER2> > Federal investigators say Mr. Gonzalez is a high-school graduate and self- > taught programmer

Taught himself everything but ethics eh?

</comment><comment><USER3> From the Wired article:

      That undercover operation, known as "Operation Firewall," led to the arrest of 28 members of the site in October 2004. After the site went down, Gonzalez changed his nick to "Segvec" and moved to Miami where he allegedly resumed his life of crime under the nose of authorities who were in pursuit of "Segvec," while being ignorant of the fact that he was their old informant.

Incredible... like something out of a movie!

<comment><USER4> So he was a snitch? ouch! he is really gonna hate prison :-(

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More on Wired:

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/tjx-hacker- charged-...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/tjx-hacker-charged-with- heartland/)</comment>


Reddit user explains aging vs cancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/kb39j/scumbag_telomeres/c2iutkf <comment><USER2> Just to be finicky, cancer is not in fact worthy of being called the "inevitable killer of mammals," through might be accurate in calling it the inevitable killer of mice, as said beasts are little cancer factories.

In humans, supercentenarians (110+) don't tend to die of cancer - in fact your odds of dying from cancer appear to decline precipitously past the 80s and 90s. I'd wager we won't know definitively why this is the case before there are good general cancer therapies in circulation, though.

The condition that presently acts as a final full stop to catch everyone lucky enough to miss out on all of the other fun little fatal surprises at the decaying end of life is called senile cardiac TTR amyloidosis. Some description:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/12/an-interview- with...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/12/an-interview-with-the- supercentenarian-research-foundation-chairman.php)

The short of it is "gunk clogs the tubes" but the long of it is much more involved - and like many things found in aging it has a rare youthful variant probably caused by unlucky genes. I note that the SENS Foundation puts some funding towards work on the narrow range of promising therapies for this condition:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/09/sens- foundation-f...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/09/sens-foundation- funds-research-into-a-therapy-for-ttr-amyloidosis.php)

<comment><USER3> I read Long For This World and both gunk and cancer were on Aubrey De Grey's list of 7 Deadly Killers (or whatever it was). The impression I came away with from that book was gunk was a plausible target for future technological remedy but cancer presented a much more difficult problem (for reasons explained in the book.)

The careful qualifications to your case above seem to catch this objection, but based on my reading that book, I would gather that supercenternarians dying of gunk not cancer aren't necessarily immune from cancer. They may just be lucky in that gunk, at this period in history, got to them first.

If it isn't luck but something else, there's also the problem of extrapolating a therapy from that. De Vere's solution to cancer was replacing every cell in the body every 7 or 8 years to circumvent the effects of telemerase ( or something like that, I'm not a gerontologist obviously.) It would be interesting if these supercenternarians's bodies were doing something like this, but it would be more interesting if it led to a more practical therapy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for linking to this interesting discussion on Reddit. Their discussion lacks a few key points.

First, inflammation is an important cause of cellular (and DNA) damage. The standard weapon used by your innate immune system is super-oxide, a free radical! Avoiding chronic infections is likely to be an important key to longevity, especially for those prone to inflammation.

Second, while "aging" is a natural mechanism by which your body defends against cancer, "aging" quickly is not the ideal way to prevent cancer.

Your cells will stop dividing when they have reached their Hayflick limit. This limit is not exactly caused by telomeres, but rather the lack of telomerase (a protein that lengthens telomeres). Active telomerase is necessary for a cell to become cancerous.

So the cell has its own built in mechanism to determine when it has divided too many times, as well as when it has accumulated DNA damage from external sources like UV or oxides. Your cells have "aged" when they have accumulated too much DNA damage! So aging, in this sense, is not a good way to prevent cancer. The aged body is filled with tumors that are near metastasis, and undergoes drastic changes (eg. reduction in hormones) to prevent cancer formation.

The only real way to prevent cancer is to stop cell division. This, of course, is not ideal. How would we grow to become an adult without cell division? How would we heal damaged tissue? The answer is actually in the growth pathways of mammals.

It turns out that dwarfs (little people) have very low cancer rates. See for example: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=defective-g...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=defective- growth-gene-in-dwarfism)

These people lack a gene (in a pathway) that is necessary for cancer to form. Knocking out genes in growth pathways in mice drastically reduces their cancer rates (the mice are also small). Want to prevent cancer? Stop growing!

This is completely unrealistic, of course. However, populations with limited activity in their growth pathways will be less prone to cancer. This extends to short people too, not just dwarfs.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't dwarfs have less cancer simply because they have fewer cells that can become cancerous?

<comment><USER6> Those dwarfs seem to get even less cancer than you would expect given the reduced number of cells.

Also, on a related note, there's Peto's Paradox about why cancer rates are similar across species despite vastly different sizes (mice, humans, whales).

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the- mere-e...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the-mere- existence-of-whales/)

Paper behind paywall: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000152)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If this idea is true, people who appear/feel younger in their old age should be more prone to get cancer. A testable proposition.

<comment><USER8> My understanding is that we all have cancer cells in our body — the problem becomes when they get triggered. There may be something in the immune system that has something to do with this. What depresses me with this subject is that it seems like the more we know about it the more we understand how much more we really need to learn. Also as I get older I keep coming across more members of my peer group (and people I know who are older) who get some form of cancer. It seems like we've made some progress in my lifetime, but it's too slow for my tastes. In my dream of dreams someone would come up with a silver bullet.

<comment><USER4> We all have tumors in our bodies, not cancer. Cancer is when the tumor metastasizes, and begins to grow out of control.

Perhaps instead of hoping for a silver bullet to cure cancer, determine when/if your body is full of tumors, and do everything you can to prevent them from accumulating any more DNA damage.

<comment><USER9> I think one of us may be confused about the definition of metastasis. From (<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metastasis>) it appears that metastasis typically happens _after_ a cancerous tumor has been around for a while, when some cancerous cells escape the tumor and start dividing elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the things he mentions is to not stress. How do you do this? I'm not a worry wart or anything, but sometimes it seems like I can't help my body's natural response to certain situations.

<comment><USER11> I think he means to just try to avoid stress. The way I do this is--

A) Avoid situations which I know will be stressful. Not all situations that are stressful are harmful in the long run, though. For me, meeting people is stressful, but it pays itself off as if you're lucky enough to come off as likable you may have new friends, which will reduce your stress. People who socialize have been shown to live longer and be happier, according to Richard Restak in his book "Think Smart."

B) If you're troubled by something stressful (which has already occurred), I find it best to locate the exact thing that is stressing you and why it's stressing you. If it's an exam coming up, I try talking it over with people and venting. This has helped me a lot. I'll recant Think Smart again, where Dr. Restak recommends asking yourself these questions:

"Am I going to allow this experience to determine the course of the rest of my life? Or am I going to take control of my life? What can I learn from this experience?"

He goes on to say:

"Mentally reformulating things in this way will increase your feeling of control and protect your brain from stress-induced damage. This is important, since loss of a sense of control is the main contributor to the stress response. No matter how stressful the situation, if you retain control of your attitudes and responses this along will lessen your stress--even if you can't affect the situation responsible for the stress."

Couple quotes:

"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." -Michel de Montaigne (useful for stressful situations)

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it. This you have the power to revoke." -Marcus Aurelius (had to remind myself of this today)

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I subscribe to the Disposable Soma theory of aging. [http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/1758/Theories-Biological- Agi...](http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/1758/Theories-Biological-Aging- Disposable-Soma.html) [1]

In this scheme cancer is just one example of the balance between somatic maintenance and reproduction rate.

[1] _The disposable soma theory of aging predicts that species and cohorts in a population expecting, on average, to have high survival and low reproductive rates should invest more heavily in protecting their somas than species and populations that expect a short lifespan and to reproduce rapidly_

</comment><comment><USER13> Any discussion on cancer is very incomplete without an acknowledgement that pre-civilization cancer was much more rare, and in some hunter-gatherer societies almost unknown. Good Calories Bad Calories has a good discussion of this and other health issues in some remote areas. Some members of those societies lived into old age, and some members of our society get cancer at young ages. Along these lines, I would be very interested in reading about cancer rates of animals in natural environments. One must assume that the talk of mice getting cancer is referring to lab mice.

<comment><AUTHOR> In pre-civilization, how would they have known that someone had cancer?

<comment><USER13> A better question (and maybe the one you are asking) is how would we know if someone outside of civilisation actually had cancer. You have to draw on various sources of evidence. It is possible to see evidence of health issues in skeletons, the most obvious example pertinent to this discussion might be something like bone cancer. The most convincing evidence on the issue is observational. It comes from people from civilization documenting populations that are hunter-gatherers or pastoralist and sometimes partly subsistence agriculturalists. As mentioned, there is a discussion of this type of evidence in GCBC by Gary Taubes. Doctors from civilisation would go to the frontier, deal with disease in the frontier populations, and note an extraordinary lack of disease in the native populations. The best documented groups are various groups in Africa, the Inuit, and some Pacific islanders like the Kitavans. Finding a case of cancer in an Inuit was worthy of publication in a journal. In the case of the Kitavans a researcher actually went there specifically to study their health. There was not a single overweight individual that had lived on the island their whole life. There were (a few) ~100 year old individuals without any sign of disease. They could recount the _one_ time in their populations recent history that it appeared that someone from the island had cancer. People there (that don't die from accidents) presumably die from infections, not from cancer and other degenerative diseases.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really interesting, thanks for sharing that. I always assumed that before modern medicine identified cancer, people thought that they were dying of other diseases & what not when in reality they had cancer. Is there any way that scientists can figure out if people from centuries ago died from cancer (excluding bone cancer)?

<comment><USER13> It is all a very vague science to try to look back in time. Centuries is not that long ago, and one can try to assume that remote indigenous populations are still similar. Lets assume we are talking thousands if not tens of thousands of years ago. There are a lot of things that scientists can try to interpret from skeletal and other bone remains, only some of them that would be a _direct_ link to cancer. This is a good overview of some of the science that goes on for that in a context that is relevant to the discussion at hand: [http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology- at-origins-of.html)

Personally I am convinced that cancer is just one of many _degenerative_ health issues. If you follow that line of reasoning, than the frequency of degenerative issues in skeletal remains are likely related to the frequency of cancer and any other degenerative health issue. As one example, if you simply see caries (cavities) in the remains of the teeth, that would also mean cancer was more likely to occur. (very healthy indigenous cultures have almost no cavities). Obviously this is very loose logic, and certain groups are more likely to have certain issues that are more or less likely to show up in skeletal remains, but I believe the general principle is sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the natural question is - what can one practically do to try to postpone DNA damage as much as possible?

<comment><USER15> 3rd paragraph: "If you have a healthy diet low in sugar, high in antioxidants, in theory you can reduce DNA damage, keeping your DNA looking younger", etc...

Eat your leafy greens.

<comment><USER16> With respect to antioxidants, there had been mounting evidence recently that antioxidants could paradoxically increase cancer risk. The evidence so far is that there are cellular pathways that spool up in the presence of oxidants and can cause cells to undergo cell death. Antioxidants can hinder these pathways from firing and instead, allow cells to linger around longer than they should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That is nice explanation. As our ancestors used to say - Clarity is an evidence. ^_^

There is another simple point - who on earth will ever publish a study which proves that the whole ready food and fast food industry makes us sick, that the whole idea of office work (and driving a car!) is deeply wrong and that just vegetarian diet and regular exercise, e.g. agriculture work, and community of our equals is what we need because it defines what we are? ^_^

Of course, the study that shows that common sense has some sense will never be widely pushed through media. First, who will give you money to prove things that everyone knew but forgot? And corporations, who need to push more crap to get more profit, will stop it on very early stage, because that is the best strategy for them.

So, yes, diet, exercise and proper state of the mind (avoidance of stress, attachments, passions) _together_ makes us healthy and younger, but people knew this for aeons without any Wikipedia articles. ^_^

</comment><comment><USER18> It sounds like we have enough information in understanding the problems of aging and cancer that we're at a point where solving these problems is possible.

</comment><comment><USER19> I keep thinking something I heard in a yoga class: "The pain that is to come is to be avoided."

</comment><comment><USER20> Unfair title--the redditor himself says that while his hypothesis is scientific and has some cellular evidence, it is still a more or less unproven principle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point - I would edit it, but it's locked down now. I didn't intend to mislead HN readers with this title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Additional ideas to consider:

1\. Human stem cells will reproduce indefinitely without aging in a controlled environment.

2\. Some turtles live 200 years, do they have a different DNA aging and cancer management program?

3\. I thought aging was due to the polymerase having run out of buffer telomere junk data, cuts into the in-use data DNA files that are responsible for managing the refreshing of your body. src <http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/cancer/animations.html></comment>


Rambler retracts lawsuit against Nginx (Russian) - <AUTHOR> https://lenta.ru/news/2019/12/16/rm/ <comment><USER2> "It seems that someone has already adapted to the system from police searches, or simply to support NGINX!" [https://pari-match.club/](https://pari- match.club/) [https://monosnap.com/direct/JM4VGPga3PaV7Z4pQEdQgiMEIwi0ub](https://monosnap.com/direct/JM4VGPga3PaV7Z4pQEdQgiMEIwi0ub)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google Translate link: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Flenta.ru%2Fnews%2F2019%2F12%2F16%2Frm%2F)

</comment><comment> java-man All verbs in the article are in future tense. "will ask to stop the lawsuit" etc.</comment>


How do I search files on a Mac? - <AUTHOR> I know this question might sound dumb but what happened to regular search on Mac? I have an mp4 file called "8 min Abs workout" in my Videos folder and the finder just doesn't show it in the results even if I search word for word. Same thing for Alfred, the app just searches web by default.<p>What are your suggestions? Maybe I should use a certain app for that? <comment><USER2> I gave up on Finder finding things years ago. Set up your own local "cloud" the moment you have more files than you can personally remember accurately.

Run your data life the way a corporation would. After 10 years of compute, you surely have a corporation's worth of data, and probably 10 partially and/or randomly updated and forgotten versions of a lot of it.

It'll just keep growing and frizzing out if you don't maintain it. Just like the rusty panels under your station wagon...

<comment><USER3> Can you expand on your answer, please? What do you mean by a "local cloud"? How will that improve search?

<comment><USER2> I'm no salesman, so ymmv, but I use Nextcloud, and a network hard drive for all my media. My backups are literally taken from only those 2 points. Everything is in its place, or easy enough to get there when it isn't.

Edit added: Everything is where I expect it to be from the start. And I even have a Misc directory tree for new things I haven't classified yet. As for apps, I keep a file listing what I install, but don't bother backing them up. Fresh software smells better. If my desktop fries, meh, get a new one and install everything on that list and then get back to the cloud. All my systems share the same data, so no duplicates outside of the backup.

This doesn't help your current issue, but it'll make sure it never happens again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does the find command work on the Mac terminal?

On Linux, you could just run:

      sudo find ~/ -type f -name "*8 min Abs workout*"

And it would give you the full path, once you have that you could use the _open_ command.

<comment><AUTHOR> This command does work but doesn't lead to any meaningful results (at least in my case when I don't remember the exact file name)

<comment><USER4> Updated my comment to include asterisks around the filename, which could help if you only know part of it

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think Terminal on a Mac needs somewhat a different command since the above-mentioned command won't execute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> try with CMD + Space

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume you're suggesting to bring up a Finder, which really doesn't fix the problem after I search in the Finder.</comment></comment>


Grad Student Accidently Discovers Ultra-efficient White-Light LED  - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003669.html <comment><USER2> Old article. 2005. Quantum dot LEDs. Original Vanderbilt article is here [http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/stories/quantumdotled....](http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/stories/quantumdotled.html)

(I hope it bypasses their abomination of a web interface, but if not you'll have to learn to navigate to the main part of the article.)

<comment><USER3> Indeed, this is old, I remember reading about it when I was doing research on quantum dots when I was still doing physics at university. I wonder if it's actually been used in practice though, as use of "fake white" LEDs is still abundant. Was it too expensive? Inefficient in power or production?

A lot of cool new breakthroughs seem to come out and then nothing is ever heard of them again, and I often find myself wondering "whatever happened to that?"

<comment><USER4> I think this happens to everyone. How about a website that tracks down old (2 years or more) "Breakthrough technology" articles and gives updates on what's going on?

I know I'd browse such a site. actually isn't this what worldchanging.com should be doing?</comment></comment></comment>


Static analyzer - Python - <AUTHOR> which is the best static analyzer in python? <comment><USER2> Your question is impossible to answer as you haven't specified what you want to do with the parsed Python code. Different projects have different abilities.

All other things being equal, the "best" is the one which involves the least amount of work to install. In that case, the best one is Python's built-in parser:

      >>> import ast
      >>> ast.dump(ast.parse("x = 3"))
      "Module(body=[Assign(targets=[Name(id='x', ctx=Store())], value=Num(n=3))])"

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, i wanna say "Static analyzer"

<comment><USER2> That clarification doesn't help. What do you want from the analysis?

Which ones have you looked and why don't they work for you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean under this "static parser" thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, i wanna say "Static analyzer"</comment></comment>


How to learn anything you need about medium in 7 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Xrysomalloysa/how-to-learn-anything-you-need-about-medium-in-7-minutes-c25e9ebe30fc <comment><USER2> This article is perfectly representative of _Medium_ content.

<comment><USER3> Apparently the author (based on the username and author name) has started submitting their own medium posts to HN: their entire public activity has be 3 submissions they authored, and no comments.</comment></comment>