Tesla's 'Full Self-Driving Capability' Falls Short of Its Name - <AUTHOR> https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/tesla-full-self-driving-capability-review-falls-short-of-its-name/ <comment><USER2> I would find it kind of satisfying if Waymo solidly won the self-driving race. It would be a triumph of solid engineering over unreliable "good-enough" solutions.

<comment><USER3> You're defining solid-engineering funny.

You need a mass amount of data to train on. How do you get that? Its an engineering or a business problem, depending how how you look at it - how do you get a ton of people driving for you?

Tesla has the better business model here. That leads to more data, which is the most important factor in training.

Now, google is orders of magnitude bigger _and_ had a huge head start, perhaps they brute force their way to the lead. But being more conservative != better engineering. You could philosophically disagree with many things Tesla is doing, but in terms of _solving self driving cars_ I think they have the better strategy that gives their engineers the data they need.

Tesla is in the real world recording every car they sell through vastly more dynamic scenario/terrain. That's smart engineering.

<comment><USER4> Is Tesla really sending all that camera data off the cars? That doesn't sound plausible.

<comment><USER5> In theory they could train the model in a distributed way on the cars themselves.

<comment><USER6> No this isn't really possible. The computation required for training is extensive compared to the computation required for simply running the system.

<comment><USER2> I disagree, federated learning is a very valid approach. The cars have a ton of computational power especially with HW3. (Although I think they don't have high precision floating point - the chips are for inference)

Federated learning is a lot like distributed training of a neural network.

The trouble with distributed training is that it's not as fast to converge as simply running more training steps. It is basically like increasing the batch size.

Also, it sounds like a general hassle for Tesla to use federated learning. I believe they need to be carefully auditing and labelling their training data for almost all their tasks. Perhaps some like depth-estimation don't require labelled data.

<comment><USER7> You could train and exchange data while charging.

"You are the product."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All of the current gen assisted/self driving tech seems like it's operating in a legal grey area like Uber. Every car manufacturer assumes people are still behind the wheel, and the government is (naively?) going along with it. "By operating this vehicle you agree to..." seems to dissolve them of any responsibility, including around quality of software, and it honestly scares the hell out of me.

I don't know what the fix is for this, the genies out of the bottle here. We won't have reliable self driving cars for years (decades?), and until then we're stuck in this horrible wild west where an off by one error can cause a pileup on the highway.

Let's stop the the assisted/self driving stuff until we have a regulatory framework that can prove the tech works in various conditions, much like seatbelts and collision testing.

<comment><USER9> We have these accidents and pileups constantly without involvement of assisted driving technology. By your logic we should disallow anything that could ever hurt anybody.

<comment><USER8> Exactly, why add another way for humans to be negligent? I would absolutely love to see mass transit replace self driving cars as the panacea to our transportation issues.

<comment><USER6> Mass transit doesn't take you to every location and cannot. Cars must exist in some form or another for access to many locations. Mass transit has not replaced all cars in any (non-city-state) country on this planet.

<comment><USER10> Cars and transit are not mutually exclusive. The more people that use mass transit, the better the experience fire people that still use cars. However we are hampered from enabling better mass transit in the US by those who refuse to let the two coexist and want to force everyone into cars.

<comment><USER7> There are indeed lots of ways of getting around. Walk, tram, bike, e-scooter, escalator, funicular, metro, schwebebahn, car, train, taxi, rickshaw, boat, bus. The best cities utilize a mix of those that work for them. Rental solutions have exploded in recent years.

You can't pick just one and say it's the best for everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems right about where I expected their real-world capabilities to be today based on their sensor setup and the state of ML for self-driving. i.e. not very good, and nowhere near the Elon hype train or timetable. The real question is how much of this can actually be fixed by software updates alone. Personally, I don't think they can even get to 99% reliability on these use cases, let alone the number of 9s required to be at least as good as the human drivers it's supposed to replace. My money is still solidly on Waymo being the frontrunner for years.

<comment><USER12> Actually 3D video and pose detection significantly improved this year in research, but it takes a few years to put it into production, and it needs to mature a little bit.

I'm sure both Tesla and Waymo are looking at those research advancements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow, this is pretty damning:

> Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control is designed to come to a complete stop > at all stoplights, even when they are green, unless the driver overrides the > system. We found several problems with this system, _including the basic > idea that it goes against normal driving practice for a car to start slowing > to a stop for a green light_. At times, it also drove through stop signs, > slammed on the brakes for yield signs even when the merge was clear, and > stopped at every exit while going around a traffic circle.

(emphasis mine)

Is that really how this feature is intended to work?

<comment><USER14> It will notify you that it is approaching a traffic control, and if you do not confirm that you want to proceed through, it will slow to a stop. Presumably the idea is this is safer than blowing through an intersection accidentally, which seems reasonable.

You do not have to confirm if there is a car in front of you or it sees other cars proceeding through the intersection.

I think it (stopping at traffic controls) works quite well for a feature that rolled out only a few months ago. The article is generally accurate, but almost all these features are still labeled "beta" and work pretty well, though certainly not perfectly. The idea is they will improve over time and eventually get there, the article kind of assumes they are all supposed to be flawless which I don't think is particularly accurate.

If you interpret "Full Self Driving" as "everything works flawlessly" it's going to be a disappointment. That's fair enough for a naive reading of the phrase, you can argue that's overselling the potential of the feature, but perfect driving at this time is not what is actually claimed.

I think on balance all these features are pretty positive and designed smartly so that the driver can understand what is happening and correct the car's actions, and it does seem like they are improving over time.

<comment><USER15> One doesn't interpret "self-driving". The definition of self driving is something that drives itself. Period. Adding "full" in front of it makes it emphatic. It's the same as saying something is "free" or "completely free".

There's no nuance here. He's lying in his marketing. Even a Musk fanboy can't argue that

I'm not saying it isn't good, it just isn't what he claims it is.

<comment><USER14> I just am not that interested in the semantics of the name. I understand your point, that's fine, I didn't name it.

The idea is that you buy an option for the car that they claim will not now but in the future allow the car to qualify as "Full Self Driving" by some definition. It is not claimed that it will do that now, it's fine to be skeptical that will ever happen to your satisfaction, but the feature has always been something that will be delivered over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I suspect some aspects of driving a car consumes a majority of a person's brain power, even if it doesn't feel like it.

Ever get into a situation where there's on-ramps and off-ramps on both sides, you've never been on that stretch of road before and there's a lot of traffic? Driver conversation stops. Driver paying attention to the audiobook or podcast playing stops. It takes all your attention.

If that's the case, then maybe we won't get true self-driving until these systems have the processing power of a human brain...

<comment><USER17> > Ever get into a situation where there's on-ramps and off-ramps on both > sides, you've never been on that stretch of road before and there's a lot of > traffic?

One advantage cars with large sensor suites have over humans is that they can see and process information from all around them. In your specific example, the car can watch both on an off ramps at the same time, isn't phased by the "newness" of the road since other cars have navigated this section of road hundreds of times before it has, and can keep tabs on cars obscured by line of sight due to the car's ability to bounce signals off of vehicles.

<comment><USER16> ok - here's a better example - skillful drivers on a highway can predict when another driver might change lanes just from the "body language" of that car. It's pretty subtle and I don't think all human drivers can recognize it, much less SOA AI.

Along the same vein, most drivers will become extra vigilant of another car that's driving in a way that's the least bit erratic, giving that car a wide berth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the summer of 2015, Elon Musk said the software upgrade Tesla was rolling out would allow the Model S to have hands-free autopilot.

5 years later and even for an extra $8k we still don't have hands-free autopilot.

</comment><comment><USER19> To be honest I just don't understand how what is shown could be legal -- Having a beta software on something that could easily kill, making the drivers/passengers other road users lab rats and beta-testers. I do admire what Musk did with SpaceX, but the 'self-driving' aspect of Tesla is just disgusting.

<comment><USER20> I don't like the way Autopilot and FSD are advertised, and they're very clear that when you buy FSD it's a promise and not a product. What you get are incremental updates and new features hopefully leading to actual FSD.

You are not a beta tester testing out pre-release software, the features you received are considered complete.

The stationary object detection problem that has caused fatalities is industry wide.

The combination of failures that lead to Walter Huang's death however aren't in my opinion.

I think GM's monitoring system is the right solution until FSD is solved, Tesla's steering wheel torque monitoring isn't enough.

<comment><USER21> > You are not a beta tester testing out pre-release software, the features you > received are considered complete.

Well, then, why are they labelled 'beta'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Meh, everyone knew they couldn't do it. The sensor array is too limited and they're leaning too much on ML.

<comment><USER5> A human could drive the car with just the sensor input so in a very real way this is not correct. I agree that Tesla still has a long way to go though.

<comment><USER23> The difference is that human can do true inference, whereas that's not really attainable even with the best in class ML models. So until we make breakthroughs in AI reasoning, we still need aides like LIDAR in order to workaround current limitations.

<comment><USER24> What does true inference mean?

<comment><USER25> If I see a motorcycle go behind a billboard and not come out, I can reason that there is a motorcycle behind a billboard. I assume that's what they mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> And all of these issues will be fixed in Tesla's over-the-air software updates eventually I imagine.

<comment><USER27> You can't ship new hardware over the air.

Tesla is never going to have a solid self driving system without LiDAR. Radar's range is limited and cameras are simply not suitable for reliable depth perception and bounding box detection.

<comment><USER28> Humans don't have LIDAR, they have only 2 eyes and not even radar. Yet they're able to drive pretty well, it's because they have great software to power that limited hardware.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but Tesla has a bunch of cameras not two human eyes.

Edit: I wonder if a human can learn to drive a Tesla remotely better than another human with radar and multiple camera input by representing them in some useful way.

<comment><USER30> Remote operation is not yet a viable option for safely operating vehicles on most public roads. Our cellular data networks are simply too unreliable. What happens when a construction crew accidentally cuts the backhaul fiber for the closest base station? Or when the car is driving through a tunnel?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Would keeping Autopilot 'dumb' be a good way to keep users engaged and continue training the network? While Tesla keeps and improves a far more capable version of autopilot internally? I think autopilot is a huge legal burden for Tesla, and I would imagine being careful is a high priority. Once Tesla starts marketing full self driving capability, it will open a gateway of legal troubles that they'll need to deal with once the system is fully capable and can no longer hide behind the 'beta' word. They've put out videos showing autopilot doing complex things and I think that's a pre-release version of autopilot they were using. IDK though, just wondering.

</comment><comment><USER32> Shameless self promotion, I wrote an article on this a while back: [https://jarbus.net/Tesla-and-False-Advertising-In- AI](https://jarbus.net/Tesla-and-False-Advertising-In-AI)

Elon Musk is just blatantly falsely advertising FSD by this point. He's trying to sell a technology that a) doesn't exist, and b) has no guarantees of being ready anytime soon. I wouldn't be surprised if people started demanding refunds pretty soon.

<comment><USER33> I don't think anyone takes Elon's word as final. Even if they did, when you buy a Tesla it has the FSD computer disclaimer on the purchase page, and enabling any of the features in the UI show as "beta" and have giant warnings[0] before you can enable them. Given the beta wording, plus the fact that you already are getting insane value with the promise of continuous over- the-air updates for years (2012 cars still get updates, although the exciting changes in recent updates usually deal with the new hardware old cars don't have), I don't think anyone is going to start asking for refunds.

0: [https://images.app.goo.gl/KphqD7BPbcCvDXpw8](https://images.app.goo.gl/KphqD7BPbcCvDXpw8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Who would've thought that relying on a statistical model, whose many thousands of parameters are not understand, would lead to such an erratic end product?

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't understand, why would you ever want the car to stop at a green light? Can it not reliably read the traffic light color?

<comment><USER36> I am absolutely shocked by this and am amazed that this is the first time I've heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What does HN think of the Ghost self driving product? Is it real or a scam? They claim to be able to add limited level 3 autonomous operation to most late model cars.

[https://gh.st/home](https://gh.st/home)

<comment><USER37> Highway seems simpler, but it isn't. Just different. Being able to predict the necessary time ahead with limited sensors at high speeds is as hard as predicting a high number of participants going slower in the city.

Personally I think level 3 should be banned (can't find it, but I think Volvo blogged about it years ago), because the system just cannot detect that it will fail in some seconds and give the driver enough time to react.

<comment><USER37> This well known Tesla fatality [0] illustrates my point. Unfortunately. The model built up by the system was free (enough) of contradictions and the reaction of speeding up right into that barrier was a totally correct one. From the system's "point of view". Neither sensor- nor interpretation-wise we are close enough to humans with those systems if the operating domain is not extremely limited. All general highway systems are operating in a too open environment to be safe (that is, we won't see real L3 or higher systems there in the near future). Sorry, Ghost. Ask other people who have been there.

By the way, Google's tiny slow cars driving in the valley only were exactly the strategy to limit the operational domain. Once they opened up that domain, they started to struggle again with the same problems as all others (admittedly on another level of mastering it though)...

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/24/21150546/tesla- autopilot-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/24/21150546/tesla-autopilot- fatal-crash-invesigation-huang-ntsb-hearing-live-stream)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Something about lidar being doomed to fail.</comment>


KeyMe now adds a vetted locksmith list to key copying kiosks and app - <AUTHOR> http://www.key.me/locksmiths <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone tried this search?</comment>


John Oliver is erased from Chinese internet following segment on China - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/john-oliver-is-erased-from-chinese-internet-following-segment-on-china/ <comment><USER2> Does it count as ironic that I can't watch the segment here in Australia because "the uploader has not made this available in your country"?

<comment><USER3> In NZ it says "this video is not available" but plenty of other Last Week Tonight videos are. Was this one singled out?

<comment><USER4> same with Canada. it also doesn't show any comments. almost looks censored compared to the usa view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't agree with the censorship decision, but I completely get why other countries don't like Oliver's show. He likes to denounce other countries' politics from the point of view of liberal, first world policy, which may not be in the best interest of other nations. Even though he is doing comedy for the first world market, it comes off clearly as another attempt of propaganda directed at these countries. The way China has decided to deal with this is banning, so I don't think this is a surprising development.

<comment><USER6> If I squint and ignore the fact that personalities like Oliver have been doing their ideological-driven (rightly so IMO) comedy perspective bits for years I can see how how you could naively call that "propaganda".

However, the logical side of me can't fathom how the reported events are anything remotely "propaganda". They are legitimate things that free-press nations can discuss how they like, including laughing at them.

You can't call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can't call news you don't like fake.

<comment><USER7> >You can't call things that rustle your jimmies propaganda just like you can't call news you don't like fake.

I don't think that's a great analogy. Oliver is biased and he has never pretended to be a journalist. He presents stories he cares about from a specific viewpoint. The definition of propaganda is:

>information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Seems fitting. Just because you may agree does not make it any less propaganda. Essentially any narrative which is not 100% fact based and unbiased is technically propaganda.

<comment> ctrl-j I mean... under that definition isn't all media propaganda? At that point does it just depend on whether or not you choose to use the term in a pejorative manner?

If any biased claim can be called propaganda - then it seems the word loses it's meaning.

Perhaps the word propaganda is losing it's weight over time? Do we need a specific word for state sanctioned biased media? Or perhaps one specifically for attacks on political states or policies?

<comment><USER8> The 20th century changed the meaning of the word to be more about manipulation, where as the original definition was neutral. [1] The manipulation suggested deceitfulness on the part of the party creating and distributing it.

So it's one of these things where OP can use a politically charged word, and then claim it was used in the neutral voice.

Personally, rather than have an argument about what amounts to "propaganda" in the 21st century, let's just admit that Oliver is not deceitful, yet biased.

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

<comment><USER7> Sure that's fair. He's been guilty of this part though:

>...often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

And honestly, what major news outlet today _isn't_? Is that not a huge problem with "mainstream media" (I hate that term) currently? So... still not sure he or others can escape that label.

<comment><USER9> You seem to be arguing exclusively from simple textual definitions of the term "propaganda" from the dictionary and Wikipedia. I don't think that's a fruitful approach because it fails to account for the nuances in meaning between different words and the _contrasts_ and _distinctions_ that those different terms are used to illustrate.

I think Oliver's segment is more accurately classified as an op-ed piece with some satire, it's not propaganda.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed)

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

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

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

<comment><USER7> I agree. I started with the definition and, honestly, I had no idea it was so broad. In reality most would not consider this stuff propaganda until it crosses over into seriously misleading territory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's funny here is that its completely overblown. No, its not banned at all. I can easily post the whole episode on wechat.

</comment><comment><USER11> Did they remove him from hacker news too?

<comment><USER12> I think it's safe until we mention Winnie the Pooh. Woops.

Context: in his China segment, Oliver asserts that China has banned Winnie the Pooh from the internet because it was used to mock the president. And then he (Oliver) used tons of Winnie the Pooh references.

We already are seeing a lot of partisan arguments in this thread (as one could have expected, I guess). For my part, I don't care about the politics on this topic, I'm just glad someone stands up against internet censorship. Making tons of Winnie the Pooh references is the way to go, we must prove censorship doesn't work.

<comment><USER13> It won't work, China is perfectly happy to block every external Web site as necessary. They're fine with relying solely on their internal network, they've structured things to that end as it is now. Censorship does work if you're willing to insulate your nation from external media, as they prove time and time again that they are. That's why censorship has worked in North Korea for nearly 70 years. It works if you're willing to pay whatever the consequences involved happen to be.

<comment><USER12> Or maybe not. As Oliver was mentioning, China is shifting from self focus to expansion. This is already something I thought when I saw the China sea quarrels.

If it's the case, it's not just only their population opinion that matters, but they need to have a good reputation in the world - that is, if they really want to be a part of it.

With US withdrawing from the world, China has a good opportunity. But the tyranny/autocracy archaism won't fly past their borders.

<comment><USER14> Except countries and companies will eventually cave as their trade and profits are at stake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > It's impressive to see the pace of Chinese censors.

I'm not sure that impressive is the right term here...

<comment><USER16> It is. If someone eats 100 hot dogs in 20 minutes, you might still say "That's impressive" but also feel horrified and sickened.

<comment><USER15> I see your point, and although technically correct, the writer had a lot of words to choose from.

For instance, if a nourishing lake had suddenly dried up, I'd use a different word. Perhaps devastating.

<comment><USER17> I see the word choice as more than technically correct. "Impressive" does not necessarily carry a positive connotation.

<comment><USER18> Even if it did, artistic license allows for a certain degree of irony and detachment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The "ephemeralness" of the internet is still a huge, huge problem. We've only started to scratch the surface of the issue, and between censorship, "right to be forgotten" and linkrot, it's already a complete shitshow.

We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored). Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise.

<comment><USER20> _> We need a distributed and censorship-resistant conservancy system, because the Wayback Machine can only do so much (and it can trivially be censored). Unfortunately, it's not a money-making enterprise._

Color me skeptical, but it seems like such a system would eventually need to seek out a business model and would turn into mugshotsonline.us writ large. Or "toxic yelp reviews of dubious origin" but for humans instead of businesses. And with all the perverse incentives.

Censorship is bad, but profit-motivated society-wide forever-grudges against people in no significant position of power is also bad.

<comment><USER21> Once I got doxxed by bloggers from one end of the political spectrum who thought I was a blogger from the opposite end (we have similar names, but the doxxers put out all of my info). Even after I got my info taken down, someone archived it and the archives got passed around on Twitter, prolonging the mess. Even now all that stuff shows up if you google my name.

Should you care about what happened to me? I can't really argue for it. But I can say that the dangers the above comment lists are real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Hurting the feelings of..." is the blanket whine for anything deemed unacceptable. Not going to play well in the free, democratic, mature thinking world.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Ministry of Truth has no record of one "John Oliver"[1] [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole)

<comment><USER24> George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair,) was a lifelong avowed socialist. However, the Memory Hole was an observation squarely aimed at the behavior of the Far Left. Beware of those who push a narrative against the facts.

<comment><USER5> George Orwell was against all kinds of authoritarianism. A large portion of the left has always disavowed authoritarianism as well, so there is no conflict here.

<comment><USER25> In fact libertarians were originally socialists, railing against capitalism as a tool of the state, back when the state used to break up eg strikes with violence. See Oscar Wilde for instance, "Man's soul under socialism."

<comment><USER26> The word still carries that connotation in some places. The Center of Libertarian Culture, in my EU country, is left-wing anarchist.

<comment><USER27> I know anarchism isn't the same as libertarianism, but in that vein, there is a legendary post from the ancap subreddit about one naïve American's confusion hanging out with Greek anarchists.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3ucp8y/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3ucp8y/i_was_beat_up_by_left_anarchists_in_greece/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is John Oliver any more important than all the other things that China has banned?

Or is this just something that happens to be popular which creates outrage even when it's not nearly as bad as other things that China censors?

<comment><USER29> The interesting thing is that because John Oliver is not really a big deal, the Chinese government shouldn't waste its time silencing him.

And yet they did!

<comment> rm_-rf_slash In a way his segment is a big deal.

The Chinese can censor anything they like. During the Arab Spring, which inspired Chinese protests and at the time was sometimes referred to as the "Jasmine revolution", the word "jasmine" was effectively banned from the Chinese internet. From the rice itself to the Disney character, "jasmine" disappeared overnight.

The implication of such a strict censorship system is that any uncensored content is endorsed by the Communist Party. So if anybody says anything that China doesn't like, into the censorship bin it goes.

This comment would probably get censored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> That's entirely predictable given that was explicitly John Oliver's objective. The real question now is when will this experiment implode? Isn't there a theory that totalitarian states must inevitably collapse?

<comment><USER31> All states must inevitably collapse.

<comment><USER32> There's no law of the universe about this, other than the sun exploding and heat death.

One of the plausible catastrophic end states for humanity is an ultra-stable technocratic totalitarian global state, enabled by pervasive super high tech surveillance and censorship. It's one of the 'great filter' possibilities for why sentient beings never colonise the galaxy - they're all trapped in bureaucratic self serving versions of 1984 where the state only exists to maintain the state. Democracies and other forms of goveenment are never stable, the only stable state is bureaucratic autocracy, and falling into one only ever has to happen once and you're done.

This is what China is building, and the model they are exporting to the world.

<comment><USER33> I would disagree with your assertion there that bureaucracies are terminal. Historically, military dictatorships tend to overthrow bureaucracies, while democracies overthrow military dictatorships and bureaucracies subsume democracies. Each of these transitions can be understood thermodynamically; each transition results in a lower energy state for the problems facing them at the time:

Bureaucracies lack military response time. Dictatorships lack economic stability. Democracies lack efficiency. Each of these are actually each model's strength, but over time becomes fatal.

<comment><USER32> I think that's arguable, but anyway a global totalitarian state with 100% communications channel surveillance linked to super-advanced AI analysis engines doesn't need a military. All they need is a detention force to send anyone with seditious tendencies or too low on their Citizenship Points[1] for organ harvesting[2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Battle Chess - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess <comment><USER2> I assume this is being posted largely due to the duck story:

> An apocryphal story of the development was the invention of "The Duck" (an > example of Parkinson's law of triviality): The producers of the game were > known to demand changes to the game, presumably to make their mark on the > finished product. To this end, one animator added a small duck around the > queen piece, but made sure that the sprite would be easily removable. Come > review, the producers, predictably, okayed everything but asked for the duck > to be removed.

I've heard (do not recall where) that this might not be true to reality, but it is amusing nonetheless.

<comment><USER3> It's suspiciously similar to the "hairy arms" of Disney lore:

> So the story goes that probably a long while ago - probably in the '30s or > '40s - they had a lead animators, but they also had creative directors. And > when the lead animators would make concept designs, meaning, like, character > development, they'd be so proud of these characters. And they would go to > their art directors, and their art directors would change something > constantly even though they thought it was their best work.

> So what they realized after working with these art directors - that what > they hated the most was anything added to the character, especially hair on > the arms 'cause this is, you know, '30s and '40s. Things had to look very > slick. So what they did was to distract the art directors from making other > changes, they would automatically put hair on the arms of each character.

[https://www.npr.org/2014/11/17/364760847/whats-with-all- of-t...](https://www.npr.org/2014/11/17/364760847/whats-with-all-of-the-hairy- arms-in-graphic-design)

Though both stories could be true, it's also possible that somebody familiar with the Disney story created another narrative based on it. I'm not even sure that the Disney version is real, but I'd give it a higher likelihood.

<comment><USER4> Heh, my supervisor from a postdoc liked to call that a "shit magnet". Put something egregious in an article so the reviewers have something to complain about.

It sounds ethically dubious but if you think about it, it also makes some sense -- reviewers are engaged specifically to find problems in your work -- so if they don't find problems, they feel like they are not doing their job. So it's not in their interests to _ever_ say, "this is fine, nothing to change." A shit magnet thus is not just to distract, but to legitimately give reviewers an "out" while saving face.

<comment><USER5> Happens in all different contexts. If you've ever had to take a car over the pits to get it re-registered or get a defect notice removed, you might have been given the advice to take out one of the tail-light globes. Then the inspectors feel useful because they have something to write down, it's trivial for you to 'fix', and everyone's happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember playing this as a kid. I barely knew how to play chess, but just loved the intricate animations when a kill happened.

<comment><USER7> I played Battle Chess 4000 back then.

That was on a 386 computer without sound card, but BC4000 could play digitized sound through the PC speaker! Amazing stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone remember Archon and ArchonII for the Commodore 64? It was a game that looked like chess, but the figures had to fight a real duel in an arena. The Pawns had just a club, there where dragons that could spit fire, etc. Much closer to an action game than to real chess. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun paying it. [https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Archon](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Archon)

<comment><USER9> Yes! I had Archon II as a kid and loved it. I remember that playing against the AI was a very different game than playing against another person, as the AI could do things during the fights with perfect aim and split-second reflexes that made it very overpowered with certain units that another human had a hard time using well. But it's strategy wasn't as good, so I could outplay it on the board enough to get a win, especially after I figured out which units I could use effectively against the AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the only place I'll ever get to post this... in undergrad, I took a teaching seminar in which we had 5 minutes to present on any topic. I chose to present on Battle Chess, and somehow framed it as a conspiracy theory involving Hiroshi Yamauchi (founder of Nintendo) and Bill Gates... now I'm tempted to go dig that up.

EDIT: Damn it, I found it! Enjoy: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ACvnjrThPNVQAOteI0okg5kSoTG...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ACvnjrThPNVQAOteI0okg5kSoTGqjz_s/view?usp=sharing)

Any time the green square is on a slide, I am currently telling accurate history.

<comment><USER11> You gotta share this with us! Dont leave us high and dry.

<comment><USER10> It is done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I loved this as a kid, and remember when we got a new computer (a 286?) and it was "too fast" to run Battle Chess [not sure how that was, but memory].

So, a few years ago I looked for it online - found an exe that I tried to run with WIne on my Mac, but could not get it to run.

Would love it if there was some way to still play!

<comment><USER13> > it was "too fast" to run Battle Chess [not sure how that was, but memory]

The Clipper database program ran a check on startup to see how fast the CPU was (it ran some code and timed how long it took). "Modern" CPUs are fast enough that the runtime of the function is effectively zero, so when it gets used as the denominator of a division a bit later on in the startup the program crashes on a divide by zero.

[http://computer-programming- forum.com/19-clipper/2cd478f1fcf...](http://computer-programming- forum.com/19-clipper/2cd478f1fcf154cb.htm)

<comment><USER5> Same thing happened in Screamer 2 (the racing game). Worked fine up to a certain CPU speed but crashed on anything faster than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A fun thing about this game was that every possible kill combination had a different animation. If you don't have any other plans for the next 9 minutes of your life, you can watch them all here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSnAiXKU7h8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSnAiXKU7h8)

<comment><USER15> It looks like they had a problem with the king takes queen animation. This video [1] includes that animation.

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

<comment><USER16> What's the problem?

<comment><USER17> Well, if the queen would take the king, the queen was able to get the king basically naked. Which I suppose is some kind of problem in the USA.

I played this game as a kid, and I loved the sounds and especially the visuals. It taught me chess, and it enforced me to explore how to beat the computer with different moves (because I wanted to see all the moves, or a specific move). So it was fun to explore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I remember when the Boston Science Museum had this in their little off-in-the- corner computer room.

In a following year they had removed it "for being too bloody//violent". I'm sure many parents at the time were happy about that. I'm sure some of those children who remember that are now parents, and I wonder what they think.

<comment><USER19> I've wondered that as well. I know so many friends who are now parents that grew up with Doom or Duke Nukem and choose to shelter their children from absolutely everything. Since I don't have children I'm not allowed to talk about parenting though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I learnt far too much chess theory trying to take the king with a pawn, which was the last animation I had not seen.

IIRC they grab the crown with their pike and it somehow ends up on their head.

<comment><USER21> How could you take a king with a pawn? Does the game allow it?

<comment><USER22> The piece that moves before checkmate takes the king.

<comment><USER21> Ah that makes sense, like a finale animation after the game has ended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Brings up memories of a whole different time : when you would visit friends and family and be exposed to something completely new.

I remember this for Battle Chess. But also for Teletext. And Windows 1.0 ( or was 2.0 ? ).

</comment><comment><USER22> > Battle Chess was the first title developed and published by Interplay > Entertainment themselves after ending their relationship with Electronic > Arts, besides Neuromancer.

So... the second?

<comment><USER23> Mediagenic published Neuromancer, so Battle Chess _is_ the first one published by Interplay themselves. But I'm not sure why the sentence brings Neuromancer up at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Demo game: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qKcZwPb7C3k](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qKcZwPb7C3k)

All death animations (Amiga): [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iSnAiXKU7h8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iSnAiXKU7h8)

</comment><comment><USER25> Archive has several versions available to play using in browser emulators. [https://archive.org/details/battle_chess_1988](https://archive.org/details/battle_chess_1988)

</comment><comment><USER26> I recall thoroughly enjoying the little fights, sans one: the rook eating the queen always made me uneasy. Not being able to play batttle chess on more advanced hardware was my first exposure to software becoming obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER27> I fondly remember this game has having great animations, plus it could be beaten :P which was a plus, more modern Chess games were really hard to beat

<comment><USER28> As a moderately bad chess player, I would love to see chess AIs get better at playing bad chess — that is, in being bad at chess in the same way that the average human who knows all the rules and plays a few games of chess every year is.

I find that most chess programs on the lowest difficulty settings seem to play in a way that's bad but unrealistic — like they're playing their normal good chess but randomly making a deliberately terrible move every now and then.

<comment><USER29> Try using an early net of LCZero. You used to be able to adjust how many "rollouts" it plays with, and what generation net to play against. Since it's a neural net, it has the "intuition" of a 1000 elo player, or 1500, etc. I.e. it does not play expert then blunder. Hopefully they get the play.lczero.org website back up and running sometime. I didn't have too much success getting the other links to work... [https://blog.lczero.org/2018/11/where-to-play- leela-online.h...](https://blog.lczero.org/2018/11/where-to-play-leela- online.html)

Let me know if you find an easy way to play "human" level LCZero AIs.

Edit: Main project website: [https://lczero.org/](https://lczero.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> re: strange chess variants

I scooped up a handful of Knightmare Chess decks when I saw 'em really cheap. Still haven't tried, but the idea of a chess variant with physical cards that Do Things to the game, sounded very interesting

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

<comment><USER31> I came up with a great chess variant ages ago, and finally got around to making a computer version of it last week.

Implied Chess:

Rule 1: Chess

Rule 2: You can't capture normally

Rule 3: Any piece threatened by two enemy pieces is captured (except kings)

Rule 4: The player who just moved captures first

Rule 5: No En Passant (it just doesn't make sense)

Rule 6: Check and checkmate are normal

[http://noisyowl.com/chess/](http://noisyowl.com/chess/)

<comment><USER32> That's quite fun (especially chain-capturing!), can't beat Alpha Beta 3 yet. Any reasons for Rule 6?

<comment><USER31> Thanks!

Check and checkmate are normal because it's just way too hard to checkmate the king with dual threats.

I can't beat Alpha Beta 3 yet either. If anyone starts beating 4 I'll put some effort into optimizing the search so it can go deeper. Going 10 ply deep is pretty standard for a chess engine, so it's pretty embarrassing for humanity that nobody is beating the 3-ply setting. I think this game actually favors computers over humans more than regular chess does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I learned to play chess with the help of this game on an Atari ST.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have a lot of nostalgic memories about Battle Chess. If someone released a version of this game for iOS/Android, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER35> Battle Chess was one of the biggest reasons I fantasized about owning an Amiga, along with Populous and Sim City. :)

</comment><comment><USER36> Used to love this game... would love a refresh with modern models and animation.

<comment><USER37> It would certainly run in a web page. It would be fantastic to interest children in chess. I'm in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Fond memories playing this at my granddads house!

</comment><comment> alex-ant Remember playing this on 286</comment>


Honeywell says it will soon launch the world's most powerful quantum computer - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/03/honeywell-says-it-will-soon-launch-the-worlds-most-powerful-quantum-computer/ <comment><USER2> Here is the actual paper:

[https://www.honeywell.com/content/dam/honeywell/files/Beta_1...](https://www.honeywell.com/content/dam/honeywell/files/Beta_10_Quantum_3_3_2020.pdf)

This is all very interesting. I work for another division of Honeywell (not this quantum group) and about 4 years ago designed a "cryogenic device" for a "Honeywell customer"; I won't go into specifics but I figured it had something to do with QC, but they took the design and never responded back.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is hype. "World's most powerful" is beyond questionable. They're using IBM's measure of "quantum volume" which is a nice way to boil down a hugely complicated system to a single number where management can agree "the numbers got bigger!" But I have yet to see anything directly connecting it to any sensible notion of computational power.

How about "Honeywell announces impending launch of their quantum computing effort"

<comment><USER4> As someone who understands little about quantum computing, why is quantum volume not a good measure?

I'd be thankful to better understand better what parts of the complicated system is lost in the measure.

<comment><USER5> "Quantum volume" is all about how large of a random circuit can be implemented.

[https://qiskit.org/textbook/ch-quantum-hardware/measuring- qu...](https://qiskit.org/textbook/ch-quantum-hardware/measuring-quantum- volume.html#Introduction)

Random circuits are really only good for proving that you are in fact operating a quantum computer, since you can test the results, and random quantum circuits can not be efficiently simulated by classical computers. So quantum volume is not a totally meaningless metric, but it doesn't necessarily indicate any capability for real problems that people would like to use quantum computers on: factoring, solving discrete logs, general search problems, or simulating quantum physics systems.

<comment> o-__-o Ahh the Cray performance problem realized all over again (how do you reliably test something that cannot be classically tested)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it the same Honeywell who did products like industrial limit switchs and so? When you go to there homepage now, there is something like "industrie", but you can't find a real product. Do they just things like consulting now? Strange website ..

<comment><USER7> From the article:

> Honeywell has long built the kind of complex control systems that power many > of the world's largest industrial sites.

So I guess it is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most powerful probably isn't saying much.

<comment><USER9> Probably means consumes the most power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Was just reading about Multics, they had a hand in it. Did anyone ever port it to the PC or Virtual box?

<comment><USER11> Porting is unfeasible; Multics relies on hardware features not available. An emulator for the original hardware can be found at: [http://ringzero.wikidot.com/](http://ringzero.wikidot.com/) Information about Multics at: [https://multicians.org/](https://multicians.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> But... Can it factor the number 15? My watch can. My doorbell can. My car can. Can their quantum computer do that?

<comment><USER13> That's like asking if a stapler can dispense tape. QC is not and never was intended to be for general purpose computing. It's a tool for specific use cases where classical computing falls apart very quickly, like the traveling salesman problem.

<comment><USER14> Problems like TSP are terrible examples because we have an excellent and affordable approximation for lots of them. A working general quantum computer (if anybody builds one) will be an expensive way to slightly improve those results. It's the gold-plated HDMI cable of quantum computer applications.

Factoring isn't like dispensing tape, it has one of the few applications (breaking conventional asymmetric cryptography) for which an expensive but working general quantum computer gives you a clear benefit (with Shor's algorithm) over just buying a lot of ordinary computers.

And all these press release "breakthrough" machines can't do it because it's hard. They're at best a stalling tactic, to buy more time/money to solve the hard problems and at worst they're essentially a con.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good for moneywell. I'm sure it will be as good as everything else they make.

</comment><comment><USER16> Did you hear that Honeywell is going to merge with Fairchild? The new company is going to be called Fairwell Honeychild.

<comment><USER17> [http://www.cs.utah.edu/~bnnewton/humor/mergers.htm](http://www.cs.utah.edu/~bnnewton/humor/mergers.htm)</comment></comment>


Bitcoin Tipping Bot for HN - <AUTHOR>

We're in the midst of putting together a simple Bitcoin tipping bot for HN.
It would allow you to tip posters and commenters in the HN community with a simple text command.
Is it something you would use? <comment><USER2> Please do not deploy this unless you do it in a way that does not leave a trace.

In other words, if you do this in such a way that people who don't care about this _can't even tell that it's going on_ , that's fine. If you have to interact with the HN interface, e.g., by leaving comments, that will become incredibly annoying.

How could you do it without leaving comments? Easy. People who care enough could leave their public BTC address in their profile and install a browser extension that allows for your tip trigger mechanism to be something other than comments. The browser extension could indicate which users can or cannot receive a tip based on a cached scrape of their profile indicating whether or not they have a public BTC address.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations! You've been tipped .001 BTC! For more information and to sign up for our newsletter, see btc.example.net!

<comment><USER4> Maybe like a $1 equivalent worth of btc minimum? Not sure I'd mind some spam if I was getting some value for each piece.

<comment><USER5> The rest of us don't need your spam being visible here, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love Bitcoin. It is great for the free market, the voluntary market. However, I am against this idea because HN is our fun, not our job. Some things does not pay with money. Have a look at this: [http://www.voxeu.org/article/blood-money-doesn-t-pay-new- evi...](http://www.voxeu.org/article/blood-money-doesn-t-pay-new-evidence- incentives-blood-donation)

And have a look at this nice thread: [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/25615/offering- actua...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/25615/offering-actual-money- as-a-bounty)

At that point (Dec 2012) I thought Stack Overflow should accept bitcoins as bounty, but I was convinced that it isn't a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure if I would use it to be honest, I barely have money for myself, it seems it would be foolish to give it away to other people, even for an outstanding post.

The only occasion I could think of where I would consider it would be if a respected HN user was in some kind of trouble and only short term money could help - living in the UK a transfer to the US is slow and expensive - but the circumstances would need to be exceptional.

<comment><AUTHOR> understood

<comment><USER7> Don't take my comment to be against the idea, it's great to be honest, I'm simply not the target market - however there are quite a few more wealthy, entrepreneur and silicon valley types on here who wouldn't miss a few hundred dollars in tipping.

The idea is definitely a good niche and if I simply had more disposable income I would use it - don't let me refusal discredit it in any way.

<comment><USER8>
      > ... who wouldn't miss a few hundred dollars in tipping.

There's nothing preventing you from buying $1 worth of bitcoins (say, 0.01 BTC) and tipping 0.00001 BTC each time.

<comment><USER7> I did not know you could do that, I always assumed it was full bitcoins, in that case I rescind my original answer due to ignorance.

Thanks. :)

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin would be pretty useless if you couldn't break it up into smaller pieces, especially at the current prices. =) It is divisible up to 0.00000001 _(8 decimal places)_ and the total number that can exist is 21 million _(which hasn't been reached yet)_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please don't spam comments from a bot.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's an interesting idea. People do get paid in this economy for saying purportedly clever and insightful things (newspaper columnists) and this is an effort at upgrading that particular economic niche. Bitcoins are well suited for micropayments, but it's not entirely clear that this idea is viable.

I also share mmastrac's concerns about comment spam. At most, this should communicate out-of-band somehow, using the HNSearch API: <https://www.hnsearch.com/api>

</comment><comment><USER12> I actually began writing something similar, but realised how spammy it would become, and canned the idea. The one on Reddit relies a lot on private messaging — which HN doesn't have.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm a big reader, not a big commenter here at HN. I imagine those who do comment or make posts do so for the intrinsic value. They are recognized for their efforts by their karma. People here help others because it's the right thing to do, and mutually beneficial to all.

When you add money to the equation, then people's reasons and actions tend to change. I don't want to see people competing for extrinsic things here. I would like the sanctity of HN to remain as it is.

<comment><USER14> "the sanctity of HN"

<comment><USER13> sanctity: Ultimate importance and inviolability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love the idea of sharing knowledge and insights for the benefit of the community. I think it's sad to put money in the equation. Upvotes are a nice and simple way to say "thanks, you've been valuable to me", more so than a tip that will be way below the value most of the times anyway.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hi, I've been thinking recently about something similar, as a way to "tip" people for good posts but more not just limited to HN, like a widget people could embed into their site that people could click to tip.

Give me a tweet if you'd like to bounce some ideas - @jklp :)

<comment><USER17> <http://flattr.com>

<comment><USER16> Doh, ok next idea then

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hacker News doesn't need to be like Reddit. =)

</comment><comment><USER19> Would reddit be more receptive to this?

<comment><USER20> reddit already has one.

<comment><USER9> Here it is : <http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcointip>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> spend my bitcoins? no.

nevertheless, i'm curious how this would work. a command line utility you connect to your wallet, which looks for addresses in user profile "about" sections?

i'm not sure what "bot" signifies then.

<comment><AUTHOR> you'd prefer to sit in your armchair and stroke them gently?

<comment><USER21> yes :)

at least until i need a house or something expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> yes, please. :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Absolutely

</comment><comment><USER23> yes

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, as long as the bot replied ONLY if the tip didn't go through.</comment>


Server Density scores Angel funding and rolls out 'app store for sysadmins' - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/05/24/server-density-scores-angel-funding-and-rolls-out-app-store-for-sysadmins/ <comment><USER2> So excited about this. We're thrilled to be involved (and really happy this is now public so we can start talking about it!). I'm going to be writing more on the Distilled site about the whole experience and why we're getting involved / how we plan to help.

It's a crazy-smart team at SD and I'm very excited about what's coming next. It's our first investment and I'm also really looking forward to learning loads from our co-investors over the coming months and years.</comment>


Summary of ZFS on Linux for Debian - <AUTHOR> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.file-systems.zfs.user/18418 <comment><USER3> I use ZFS on Linux for my file server. One of the nicest things about it is that the caching algos actually work - they're resilient to scans, so I can, for instance, have an intensively used database file that remains in RAM, even while & after doing a linear scan over a large number of files (eg during rsync). With the standard Linux page replacement algos, linear reads will flush the stuff you're actually using out of the page cache.

The fact that the caching algos are so good at keeping things in memory is why everyone gets hung up on using ECC RAM with it.

<comment><USER4> This is not the reason why people recommend ECC. ZFS is so good at detecting corruption (CKSUM errors) that when it happens it is hard to tell what caused it: faulty RAM corrupting data before being written to disk or after being read from disk, or data corrupted on disk? ECC simply helps reduce a good chunk of corruption errors caused by faulty RAM. That said, in my experience there are a few tell-tale signs that RAM is the issue: when you see CKSUM errors poping up infrequently, and not being attributed to consistently the same drive(s).

<comment><USER5> I haven't had any issues _so far_ using four drives mirrored on ZFS, but the ECC issue certainly worries me.

I'd love to run ECC RAM, but I'd have to buy a much more expensive processor, a much more expensive mainboard, and all of my RAM would have to be swapped for moderately more expensive replacements. And DDR3+ is not cheap.

I'm curious though, if ECC consists of a ninth parity bit, is there any reason why a memory controller can't be designed that would, worst case, use every other (identical) stick just to get parity bit(s), as a BIOS configurable option? Sure it'd halve your RAM, or you'd pay a lot more in RAM costs, but not having to buy Xeon processors and mainboards, and getting to reuse your existing RAM, would be worth buying an extra stick of RAM in my opinion.

It seems as processes keep getting smaller, and RAM sizes keep getting larger, that the effects of cosmic radiation are just going to keep getting worse. If we can't get desktop CPUs and mainboards to just switch to ECC, surely this would at least be a better-than-nothing option.

<comment><USER6> I went ECC a couple months ago and managed to find some parts that didn't break the bank, mostly because I held back and stayed a generation behind: GA-6UASL3, E3-1230V2. There are other sacrifices: the motherboard is rather no-frills, and the memory bandwidth isn't that great.

Besides price, another issue against server hardware is that it's generally designed for a server case and therefore doesn't play well with enthusiast cases. The board I got is a little odd in that it uses a layout more typical of consumer boards, though the socket placement is still not ideal.

<comment><USER7> One of the reasons I went with AMD processors and mobo chipsets for my non- laptop system (and recommend them for anyone who's not concerned about performance per watt) is because AMD doesn't segment the market by processor features.

You choose based on power budget, thermal budget, and presence of on-die graphics. Regardless of how you choose, all processors in a given generation (back to _at least_ the Phenom series and associated mobo chipsets) have ECC support, virtualization support, and whatever other fancy features were slapped in in that generation.

<comment><USER8> Most MB vendors (other than ASUS) disable ECC for non-server cpu's... Also, it's Unbuffered ECC, not Registered ECC for those looking, and unsure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Installing / on ZFS is fairly easy on most major Linux distributions, but Debian has been the main exception due to its initramfs generator lacking ZFS support. I am cautiously optimistic that will change.

If not, then this issue should go away when I publish ZFS support patches for syslinux later this year. syslinux is capable of generating initramfs archives on the fly, so adding ZFS support to it should largely eliminate the need for distribution-specific initramfs generators.

<comment><USER10> I am not a particularly good Linux user ( I have to look up most commands/ where things are) and I had no problem getting ZFS set up on Debian. I'm worried now that you say this, because I feel I may have messed something up.

<comment><USER11> He's talking about the root partition being on ZFS, not just setting up an array.

<comment><USER12> Don't most people just use a /boot partition anyway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting that the Debian people feel that ZoL is not a derivative work.

I remember a thread where RMS claimed to Bruno Haible that clisp was a derivative work of readline, since it had _optional_ readline support.

I always thought that position was untenable, but since Haible was open to licensing clisp under GPL anyway, there wasn't a whole lot of pushback.

<comment><USER9> In that case, readline was not a loadable module. A comparison that does use loadable modules is the FSF's GCC project. The FSF resisted implementing support for loadable modules in GCC for a long time under the belief that it would allow the use of GPL-incompatible modules. It was not until LLVM made it a moot point because GCC itself could be replaced entirely non-copyleft code that GCC gained support for this. Linux kernel module support analogously permits loading modules that are under GPL-incompatible licenses.

Note that I am not associated with the Debian project and therefore I was not involved in the discussion referenced here.

<comment><USER14> Another one I've been wondering about recently is the inverse— loading at runtime a GPL module into an otherwise BSD codebase.

ROS (robot operating system) runs into this with nodelets, which are shared objects that are loaded into a nodelet manager. Is it a GPL violation to supply a launchfile which specs the loading of BSD and GPL nodelets into a single running process?

<comment><USER15> BSD and GPL are actually compatible and can be distributed together. It's my understanding that the advertising clause is the bit that makes them incompatible, and that regular BSD and GPL code can be bundled and distributed together.

What else I got from the OP thread is that if you do this (lets just assume the two licenses are incompatible) then you are not the violator, since you haven't distributed these as one binary package, but the users might be (only if they go on to redistribute the pre-built confabulation of binaries/processes as one package, or even just in uploading them together to, say, a hosting provider.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you are looking at playing around with ZFS on Linux, be sure to check out Aaron Toponce's awesome series of articles, entitled "Install ZFS on Debian GNU/Linux" [1]. I have also done a two part screencast about using ZFS on Linux [2], part two will be released later today.

[1] [https://pthree.org/2012/04/17/install-zfs-on-debian- gnulinux...](https://pthree.org/2012/04/17/install-zfs-on-debian-gnulinux/)

[2] [https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/35-zfs-on-linux- part-1-of...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/35-zfs-on-linux-part-1-of-2)

</comment><comment><USER17> Why doesn't Oracle just change ZFS to dual-license GPL/CDDL, and scrap btrfs?

My experiences with ZFS have been quite good, and with btrfs quite bad.

<comment><USER18> Because Oracle wants you to buy Solaris if you do serious business.

<comment><USER19> I guess the question remains, why do they keep developing btrfs ? (do they?)

<comment><USER9> Sun received dozens if not hundreds of patents for techniques used in ZFS and since Oracle purchased Sun, it now has those patents. btrfs uses many of the ideas that ZFS uses, so it is highly unlikely that btrfs does not infringe on at least some of those patents. People who use ZFS have a patent grant through the CDDL, but people who use btrfs have no such protection from the GPLv2.

So far, I am not aware of anyone who has gotten any legally binding assurance from Oracle that shipping btrfs will not be a problem. I am also not aware of anyone in the btrfs community asking Oracle to do something about it. If btrfs takes off, the ZFS patent portofilo could ensure that Oracle is the only company that can legally distribute btrfs. Consequently, Oracle's legal department would likely be able to have a field day with any company distributing btrfs. In the meantime, their competition will have to develop workarounds and Oracle would be ahead because they will have a better filesystem than they would have had they been upfront about this issue.

What Oracle might or might not do with the ZFS patent portfolio in the future is speculation, but the fact is that Oracle appears to have reserved the option to use it in future lawsuits.

<comment><USER20> > What Oracle might or might not do with the ZFS patent portfolio in the > future is speculation,

This whole post blows straight through "speculation" and into "unpaid marketing for Oracle" in the worst possible way.

<comment><USER21> I don't think that's fair at all.

I don't like Oracle, I think they're one of the most evil companies in existence. But that doesn't automatically make anyone who attempts to explain Oracle's behavior a shill or "unpaid marketing for Oracle".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So it sounds like they are okay with binary kernel modules, just not built-in to the base kernel. FreeBSD manages to do ZFS as a kernel module (plus another module for Open Solaris abstractions) quite successfully. Although it has somewhat of an ugly ZFS-on-root shim loader for booting from a ZFS partition, it does certainly get the job done.

Here's hoping Debian can develop something similar so that users can create and boot from a ZFS partition during their installer.

> CCDL is an Open Source License that is DFSG compliant

I don't mean to nitpick, but if you're going to discuss the legalities of a license, at least spell it correctly. It's not CCDL, it's CDDL, or Common Development and Distribution License.

</comment><comment><USER22> ZFS on Linux is very good!

<comment><USER23> But is it, performance-wise? How will ZFS compare to btrfs?

<comment><USER24> At this point in time, they still can't be compared, because btrfs is still not [considered] production-ready, and subject to significant changes (also performance-related).

This is especially important because on use cases where performance differences are significant, that is, not on general desktop usage, the maturity of the FS is funamental, and btrfs is discouraged right now.

<comment><USER25> There are many situations where performance is important, and durability is... not. For example, ephemeral CoreOS cloud instances running Docker containers: they use lots of copy-on-write layers, but they don't actually need to persist any state across reboots (the layers may as well be stored in volatile memory.) Btrfs is perfectly "production-ready" for this _particular_ use-case, so a [current] performance comparison would be pretty useful.

<comment><USER9> I am working on ZFS support for CoreOS. A snapshot of my WIP proof of concept was posted by my employer yesterday:

[https://github.com/ClusterHQ/flocker/blob/zfs-on-coreos- tuto...](https://github.com/ClusterHQ/flocker/blob/zfs-on-coreos- tutorial-667/docs/experimental/zfs-on-coreos.rst)

CoreOS uses btrfs as its rootfs. I imagine that the CoreOS developers managed to avoid issues like ENOSPC by virtue of not writing to their rootfs very much. I did not have that luxury since I compiled a Gentoo GNU userland on top of it during the course of development. I encountered numerous ENOSPC errors on btrfs when developing the ZFS port to CoreOS and even hit ENOSPC errors when trying to correct the btrfs ENOSPC errors with `btrfs balance /`. I would not consider btrfs ready for production use, but your mileage will vary.

<comment><USER7> When were you hitting these ENOSPC errors, and what kernel were you using when you hit them?

      $ df -h .
      Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
      /dev/dm-1        42G   41G  280M 100% /home
      $ btrfs fi df .
      Data, single: total=40.48GiB, used=40.21GiB
      System, single: total=4.00MiB, used=12.00KiB
      Metadata, single: total=1.01GiB, used=649.18MiB
      $ uname -r
      3.15.2-hardened

As you can see, I've been working with a pretty much full btrfs volume. It used to be _TERRIBLE_ to deal with btrfs in such a situation, but I haven't had an ENOSPC issue in ages.

<comment><USER9> The Gentoo Prefix boootstrap on a developer image:

[https://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo- alt/prefix/bootstrap.x...](https://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo- alt/prefix/bootstrap.xml)

CoreOS uses Linux 3.15.y.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Debian maintainers vote to ship ZFSonLinux in Debian

I don't believe that's what the linked post is saying. I may be missing additional context that's posted elsewhere, but at least what I read in _this_ thread is: 1) the Debian ftpmasters rejected the binary ZFS module upload; and 2) the Debian ZFS-on-Linux team met at Debconf 14 and agreed on this summary/response, arguing why it should be accepted.

But has that response itself been accepted? Where is the mentioned vote? The only other post I see in the linked thread is from Lucas Nussbaum (Debian project leader), which sounds inconclusive,

 _I think that adding an actual question to our legal counsel would help focus their work. ... I 'll wait for comments or ACK from ftpmasters before forwarding your mail to SFLC._

<comment><USER9> You are correct. There is no sign of a vote. That inaccuracy aside, the outline of the general understanding of the licensing situation is a step in the right direction. The email itself suggests that there was tentative agreement over this at DebConf 14, which is promising.

<comment><USER26> My read was that there was agreement at DebConf 14 among the ZFS-on-Linux maintainers specifically, not necessarily that they'd gotten buy-in from the wider Debian community. It's somewhat unclear though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I stopped using ZFS when I learn that using non ECC memory was dangerous and could corrupt sane data.

<comment><USER28> I'm confused by this statement, using 'non ECC' memory _is_ dangerous and _does_ corrupt otherwise sane data. Using or not using ZFS doesn't change this danger.

<comment><USER27> Other FS won't try to correct sane data on HDD but corrupted when loaded in memory.

<comment><USER29> ZFS does not do this. Your assumptions about what other FSs do is inaccurate.

Consider: you load data from ext4 into RAM, it gets corrupted. You change some bytes, then save it. Corrupted data is then written to the disk. Could be anything inside the allocation unit size, which is 4K generally - <USER2> insubstantial.

ZFS's worst case behavior is exactly the same: it can't protect you from corruption in RAM after checksum validation if you then ask it to save that data to disk.

There is no difference: if you do not have ECC RAM, you are vulnerable to bitflips corrupting your data - and they will have been.

ZFS won't corrupt data which gets altered in memory due to a bitflip but is only ever read. It _can 't_ \- because in-memory bitflips can't be detected. Even if at some point during checksum validation there was a mismatch, the restore is done from checksum protected parity/mirror image data. And if the restore block were corrupted, the checksum won't match and ZFS will rebuild the block correctly next time.

If you do not have ECC RAM, _every_ filesystem will potentially corrupt your data. ZFS is _more_ resilient then pretty much all of them even in this case.

<comment><USER30> The worst case with ZFS and ram corruption is that you can lose your ENTIRE Zpool. As there are no zfs recovery tools available this means your data is as good as gone or a minimum 15k spend to get it re-assembled.

This makes it far more risky to run ZFS with non server grade parts.

<comment><USER9> It is possible for this to happen with other filesystems too. The only thing is that when it happens with another filesystem, it is not news.

<comment><USER30> It becomes the news as there are no recovery tools available for ZFS as there are with most other file systems. Meaning that the possibility of losing ALL data due to ram corruption becomes a real threat.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Almost like time travel: sitting down at an 1842 Pleyel piano for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/opengoldberg/kimiko-ishizaka-plays-chopin-on-an-1832-pleyel/posts/1199388

<comment><USER2> I hope support for this comes together!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - me too! So far Kimiko's supporters have gotten the job done, a fact for which she is eternally grateful.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Lint for HTTP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vfaronov/httpolice <comment><USER2> This is beautiful! I need integrate this into our pre-production environments like yesterday! I have long wanted something like this; some of our internal APIs abuse HTTP response codes and one of our mobile app sends an invalid User-Agent string. Pointing folks at the relevant standards passages and trying to explain what they're doing wrong, and why it affects other real- world applications seems to get acknowledgement, but often no change because by the time we've caught it, it is out in the wild.

The report format is beautiful too — I love that hovering highlights the relevant portions of the request, and _thank you_ for the explain link; I loathe linters that offer no rationale.

Also, I love that the example taught me something too; I did not know some of these.

Also, very interesting that one of your examples is the Pragma header. I did not know that it was defined for requests only (and your explain link explains its rationale clearly enough that I now agree with it). I just implemented an OAuth client, and _that_ standard _requires_ it on responses:

> _The authorization server MUST include the HTTP "Cache-Control" response > header field [RFC2616] with a value of "no-store" in any response containing > tokens, credentials, or other sensitive information, as well as the "Pragma" > response header field [RFC2616] with a value of "no-cache"._

The very RFC it cites even notes that this is unspecified!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'm very glad to read this.

> I need integrate this into our pre-production environments like yesterday!

Please feel free to share your experiences. The integration story here clearly needs more work, and it would be quite helpful to know where to focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how hard it'd be to add support for SAZ files? [1]

As a Windows web dev, Fiddler [2] is pretty much invaluable, especially if I'm dealing with black-box services (I'm looking at you, Cisco).

1: [http://fiddler.wikidot.com/saz-files](http://fiddler.wikidot.com/saz- files)

2: [http://www.telerik.com/fiddler](http://www.telerik.com/fiddler)

<comment><USER4> Maybe kick telerik to support .har in Fiddler? Seems like it's the de-facto standard that browsers implement; would be good to have one thing that works for all.

<comment><USER3> Aha! Thanks for that. I checked and it seems to support "export" of HAR 1.1 and 1.2.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. I just checked and HAR 1.2 seems to work pretty well. A small nuisance is that Fiddler synthesizes bodies with debug information on CONNECT requests and responses, but I'll work around that in the next release.

But experience with Web browsers shows that there's a lot that can go wrong with HAR, so if you notice any other problems, feel free to submit an issue on GitHub so I can look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The inclusion of the explanations is fantastic. This is a wonderful tool, and a _very_ useful one.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great.

I'm curious to know if anyone has tested it against popular web frameworks yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> I ran some of the tests for a few of Django's more popular API and CMS frameworks, instrumented with HTTPolice. I found a few minor bugs, but nothing interesting enough to report. Like, one of them responds to an OPTIONS request with 200 (OK) but forgets to list OPTIONS itself in the Allow header -- cosmetic stuff like that.

I hope to try it on Eve [1] soon-ish.

[1] [http://python-eve.org/](http://python-eve.org/)

<comment><USER6> Excellent. Any chance you're referring to Django Rest Framework?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, DRF was one of those. But I don't remember whether I ran the whole test suite or only some subset of it that I could (quickly) get to run at all :) My goal was to get a sense of what it would look like on a realistic project, not so much to test DRF itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Spectacular project - nice work.</comment>


A farewell to email - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/768483/ <comment><USER2> I thought this was an interesting read. To me, it's kind of sad to see the direction that email has gone. And that direction is right into the hands of Google/Gmail. They have managed to take such a huge marketshare of email users that it's frightening to me. The smaller providers and even home/self hosting mail servers are getting shoved out of the way, and often spam prevention is the excuse. People end up just giving up and going with Google.

I had hoped things would be different.</comment>


You can't block just 3rd party cookies in Chrome on Android. Don't Be Evil. - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2392971?hl=en-GB

<comment><AUTHOR> Threads discussing this: [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/7A3DQvic...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/7A3DQvicUHs/qcGcxwaAzGYJ)

[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=18363](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=18363)

This should be a bigger deal than it is! An android user gets tracked from site to site and there is nothing they can do about it if they want to use Chrome.

In iOS, 3rd party cookies are blocked by default and all browsers have to honor those settings according to Apple's developer contract; so Chrome on iOS cannot get away with it.

At least Google should provide it as an option like on the desktop.</comment>


NSA backed filesystem - nsafs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/freedomtools/nsafs <comment><USER2> "What could possibly be more secure than the National Security Agency?" lol.</comment>


Sandsifter: find undocumented instructions and bugs on x86 CPU - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/sandsifter <comment><USER2> This is great. That a program can learn about and exploit the CPU on which it is running from unprivileged userspace reminds me of the notion in Charlie Stross' Accelerando of running a timing attack against the universe to learn about the virtual machine in which we are being simulated.

<comment><USER3> I'd never heard of Charlie Stross or his _Accelerando_ book. Thanks for mentioning that, it looks right up my hard-sci-fi alley.

<comment><USER4> Then definitely also check out the Quantum Thief trilogy, by Hannu Rajaniemi.

<comment><USER5> Amusingly, the cover of The Quantum Thief (at least on iBooks) has the following quote:

> "The best first SF novel I've read in years. Hard to admit, but I think he's > better at this stuff than I am." -Charles Stross

<comment><USER6> I remain completely unmoved by HR's output. But I'm most definitely in the minority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl'dr of the slides:

        Found on one processor... instruction
        Single malformed instruction in ring 3 locks
        Tested on 2 Windows kernels, 3 Linux kernels
        Kernel debugging, serial I/O, interrupt analysis seem to confirm
        Unfortunately, not finished with responsible disclosure
        No details available [yet] on chip, vendor, or instructions

He's found a new f00f bug, winter 2017 is going to be interesting :)

<comment><USER8> Observation: the length of the censored "XXX hardware bug" text on the slides matches neither Intel, AMD nor Transmeta. Unlikely to be VIA too.

Either it's deception or perhaps some obscure low-end embedded vendor.

edit: for the curious, it's "(redacted) hardware bugs" :)

<comment><USER9> You mean the black bar on the PDF? That just says "(redacted)".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20/intel_chip_customiz...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20/intel_chip_customization/)

"Everybody hates the golden screwdriver upgrade approach, where a feature is either hidden or activated through software, but the truth of the matter is that chip makers have been doing this sort of thing for decades – and charging extra for it."

""We are moving rapidly in the direction of realizing that people want unique things and they are going to want them in silicon. In some cases, it will be done in software," said Waxman."

Also, Github says "several million" undocumented instructions.. is that right? I don't know much about assembly but that number sounds absurdly high.

<comment><USER11> >> "several million" undocumented instructions.. is that right?

Bear in mind that doesnt really mean that there are several million operations / opcode mnemonics which are undocumented but each distinct instructions.

It is more likely they are "loose" decodings of other instructions, where changing a single bit of the opcode still causes the CPU to decode the same instruction.

Toy example: If I encode my (imaginary ISA) 8bit instruction for "ADD EAX EBX" as 0101_X000 where X is "don't care" then regardless of whether the core gets 0101_0000 or 0101_1000 , it will still execute the ADD instruction.

Now imagine your instructions can be upto 16 bytes long, and you see how loose decoding can lead to a lot of instructions which are undocumented, but that the processor is perfectly happy to execute.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. The scale is still hard to wrap my head around but I see what you're saying.

Could this tool find hardware backdoors?

<comment><USER12> > Could this tool find hardware backdoors?

Only very crude ones. A competently implemented hardwre backdoor would probably be data-dependent. For instance, it might trigger when REP CPUID is called with four specific 64-bit values in R8, R9, R10, and R11 -- and if that were the case, there would be absolutely no way to discover it by searching.

<comment><USER13> There's also the fascinating variant where a control line charges a capacitor over time to activate backdoor behavior. Triggering it would look like a bunch of nonsense instructions that just so happen to keep that control line energized long enough for the capacitor to cross some activation voltage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is highly interesting. I assume a lot of those are going to be debug and instructions to help the binning process. Some of these might even unlock access to parts of the CPUs we aren't supposed to have access too, opening the doors to custom microcode (unlikely that anyone outside the CPU OEM can do that though) but may allow us to disable "security features" such as the Management Engine. This is a really interesting approach and i would love to see the results ported to other hardware/vendors. The same could potentially be done with GPUs, ARM-CPUs, etc.

<comment><USER12> Separate research has been done on microcode. The general consensus is that Intel's microcode binaries are encrypted, and are secured with a RSA2048-SHA256 signature.

[http://inertiawar.com/microcode/](http://inertiawar.com/microcode/)

<comment><USER15> I am surprised private keys have never leaked.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't be surprised if those keys are in a HSM, so they _can 't_ be leaked. That'd be the safe way of handling it, and it's well within Intel's resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's a link to the slides [pdf]: [https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/sandsifter/raw/master/refere...](https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/sandsifter/raw/master/references/domas_breaking_the_x86_isa.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER17> Also from the same author [https://sites.google.com/site/xxcantorxdustxx/visual- re](https://sites.google.com/site/xxcantorxdustxx/visual-re)

<comment><USER18> That looks fun, but the site doesn't seem to have any downloads available?

<comment><USER17> There was a demo around somewhere. Not hard to find.

There is a similar --but less featured-- open source project. [https://github.com/wapiflapi/veles](https://github.com/wapiflapi/veles)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Christopher Domas does some very cool work. His System Management Mode exploit a few years back was quite nice. It will be interesting to see which processor it is that he found the ring 3 hard lockup instruction in...

<comment><USER20> He works for spooks - Battelle Memorial Institute, a long-time NSA/CIA contractor. One of the places that hires officially retired spies.

<comment><USER21> and therefore.... ?

<comment><USER8> Therefore there is suspicion that spooks may have been using that for years and revealed it once they've had enough for some reason. I'm not familiar with any proven case of such situation, but people speculate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ...isn't the usability of the tool limited because it's running in userspace, which has fewer privileges in terms of what instructions can be ran?

<comment><USER23> I was wondering this myself until I read the pdf:

> For effective results, the injector should be able to identify instructions > in more privileged rings, even if it cannot actually execute those > instructions.

>This approach allows the injector to detect even privileged instructions: whereas a non-existing instruction will throw a #UD exception, a privileged instruction will throw a #GP exception if the executing process does not have the necessary permissions for the instruction. By observing the type of exception thrown, the injector can differentiate between instructions that don't exist, versus those that exist but are restricted to more privileged rings. Thus, even from ring 3, the injector can effectively explore the instruction space of ring 0, the hypervisor, and system management mode.

<comment><USER24> So basically the same as throwing a 403 instead of 404 for authenticated resources in HTTP :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lot of weird stuff done happening nowadays in CPUs.

There's a lot of mystery in microcode (equivalent to the CPU firmware), the "system management mode" aka protection ring -2, and the infamous management engine.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what dbe0, dbe1, and df{c0-c7} do? They are present and undocumented in all of Intel, AMD and VIA's variations (see p4-p5 of the paper).

</comment><comment><USER26> For what it's worth, the size-prefixed jcc/call binutils bug had already been fixed a couple of years ago: [https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18386](https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18386)

</comment><comment><USER27> The slides mention an 'apicall' opcode 0ffff0; searching the web turns up nothing but these same slides. Does anyone know anything about it?

<comment><USER28> It seems to be a MS antivirus bug: [http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/60434/hacking/microsoft-...](http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/60434/hacking/microsoft- windows-defender-flaw.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Regarding the ring 3 hard lockup he didn't disclose yet: isn't that the recent kaby lake/skylake error, released about a month ago?

</comment><comment><USER30> Chip vendors do the same in the course of validation, and technically even before any silicon has been fabricated, using simulators.

</comment><comment><USER31> No instructions there to disable the IME?

<comment><USER32> If anything, I'd expect such a flag to hide behind MSRs ([http://wiki.osdev.org/Model_Specific_Registers](http://wiki.osdev.org/Model_Specific_Registers))

That's a mostly unused namespace of 2^32 64bit registers. To hide things even better, it would also be possible to change behavior based on officially unrelated registers (eg. MSR $x only acts as IME-switch if the calling address also ends in $y and esi is $z)

<comment><USER33> They could also be multiplexed (MSR $x is address/command, MSR $y is data). Or require a sequence of operations (write this magic sequence of numbers to MSR $z). Or memory-mapped/IO-mapped (with the mapping enabled/disabled by MSR or PCI registers). Or be locked by the BIOS during the boot sequence.

But IMO, it probably can't be disabled at all. The "disabling" would be to change the program it runs to a program which does nothing. So there wouldn't be a "disable IME" bit; there would be bits to either make its memory visible to the main CPU cores, or to read/write to its memory, and it's possible that these bits are accessible only from the IME side, or from SMM.

<comment><USER34> The easiest ways to access them is to rewrite that section of the BIOS directly, such as [https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it- work%3F](https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/wiki/How-does-it-work%3F) which literally overwrites them with nops

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> found another that is QEMU-specific.

[https://github.com/unicorn- engine/unicorn/issues/364](https://github.com/unicorn- engine/unicorn/issues/364)

<comment><USER35> It is more about modifying executable code space and not making it stick. Good enough for fooling AV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> wow... anyone have a link to the video of his talk?

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this basically a CPU fuzzer?

<comment><USER38> The subtitle at the very top of both the page and the README…

> _The x86 processor fuzzer_

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Out of curiosity, are there any toy compiler projects out there that try and make use of the incedental instructions? Could you possibly expect to see a with while performance boost (I'm thinking it would be unlikely...)

</comment><comment><USER40> Someone built a fuzzer for cpus</comment>


Ask HN: Newly realized "hacker". Cry for help - <AUTHOR> I'm a software developer... or so I think... then I realized recently that in truth, I am actually a hacker who has been trying to find an outlet for creative problem solving, and not finding it in my chosen career.
Tl;dr. What do I do with this realization? I'm losing my sanity, and having aneurysms on a daily basis: over the overlording by management; over the smell of big client money controlling everyone's words and actions, instead of having the hard conversations of how to build something correctly... the first time; over the paradigm mongering; over the complexity and inefficiency from head to toe, from dev team, product lifecycle, or business... Are there jobs that people with a hackers mentality are more well suited for? Is there some role or position I should be looking for? Or should I be looking for the right kind of company or team? Am I simply barking up the wrong industry? Where do I go, what do I do? Help.
Please see my original post below. It didn't fit within the 2k character limit, but it gives more context to my question. <comment><USER2> You might find embedded systems development more up your alley. The hardware is always broken in some way and you often have to get very creative to work around those deficiencies. Especially when there's an ASIC involved.

You'll get to experience a whole different class of aneurysms ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> but how do i get into it? Where do I find those jobs? What do they want to see on a resume? What koalafications?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dude, come to Silicon Valley. Whatever kind of development style, methodology, personality type, will make you happy, you'll find it here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 3 years ago I participated in a software boot camp. As a satcom operator in the Army, I thought it was a natural prgoression. After the boot cam, I plopped myself in a chair at a start up and that "That's it. I've done it."

It wasn't long after that when I thought to myself, "That's it?" Work became boredom, a slog, fighting with IDE's, and IDE managed references, fighting with merge conflicts, 3-4 hour sprint planning, philosophical debates about paradigms and methodologies... corporate personality surveys?? Software developers were supposed to be people who learn and solve problems, and do both of those things as efficiently as possible... or so I thought?

Today, it's been 3 years since that feeling began to sink in. I'm now in my 5th contracted position, and having been on 7 or 8 different projects and 9 or 10 different teams, I am getting this sinking feeling that this is simply the nature of software development: Complexity for the sake of the ego of the architect, unintelligible code bases, inefficiency of process, inefficiencies of SOFTWARE process, horribly written code, business needs superseding the purview of a scrum team (without which, why even bother with scrum? Isn't the point to keep the business out of telling a software team to do its job?)

Luckily, while I was at the boot camp, I recalled my time in the military, communications systems, command line. All this time that I've been payed to sit in a chair, and not accomplish much else, I've been at home, delving into any and every subject I can possibly imagine. I've become a bit of a bash fanatic, I always have some form of linux on hand, whether one of my phones, my raspi, my personal laptop, or a vm on my work pc. I'm constantly building tools to automate stupid processes I'm required to do at work, and expanding my vimrc.

This last week, I started digging into assembly and optimization patterns in C, and I came accross an article, I'm sure many of you have read.

[http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of- mel.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html)

If not, I highly recommend it. It's an entertaining read. This naturally took me to the home page of this particular site. Curious, I started clicking through page after page, and I began to identify with some of what this website was saying. I remember picking up a book at a store called Hacking: The Art of Exploitation (2nd edition) I remember it clearly with its yellow on black text, and its stark appearance. I remember it because the chapter headings were written with hexidecimal, which I thought was very hackerish of the author. And I read the preface where he asks you to combine 1,3,4, and 6 using only the basic mathematical operators to equal 24, and I pondered this question the entire trip home, which was a 2 hour drive from the city I was visiting. This website made me realize, maybe I'm a hacker... trying to be a corporate software developer.

Tl;dr. What do I do with this realization? I'm losing my sanity, and having aneurysms on a daily basis: over the overlording by management; over the smell of big client money controlling everyone's words and actions, instead of having the hard conversations of how to build something correctly... the first time; over the paradigm mongering; over the complexity and inefficiency from head to toe, from dev team, product lifecycle, or business...

Are there jobs that people with a hackers mentality are more well suited for? Is there some role or position I should be looking for? Or should I be looking for the right kind of company or team? Am I simply barking up the wrong industry? Where do I go, what do I do? Help.</comment>


Xobni on being acquired by Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.xobni.com/post/54534193175/oohay <comment><USER2> And a FAQ for the acquisition: [https://support.xobni.com/entries/21914995](https://support.xobni.com/entries/21914995)</comment>


What is the point of wearing gloves? - <AUTHOR> What is the point of wearing gloves? If I touch a contaminated surface and then my face I'll get Corona whether or not I am wearing gloves the entire time. I could swap gloves every few minutes, but hand washing every few minutes is much easier. Yet it appears that glove wearing is recommended and common. Why is that? <comment><USER2> For myself, it's easier to remember not to touch my face when wearing gloves.

The degree to which the following are effective is speculation: Skin generates oils that collect dirt, including viruses; gloves do not. Skin is likely more porous than glove material. If skin gets cut (e.g., I have a torn cuticle) it takes longer to heal than replacing a glove.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, the point is not touching your face, with or without gloves if you're out. The gloves will hold the first contact, if you ditch them later you cannot get contaminated.</comment>