Stuxnet's Legacy Lives on in New Windows Bug - <AUTHOR> https://decipher.sc/stuxnets-legacy-lives-on-in-new-windows-bug <comment><USER2> It's worth reading the full technical analysis [https://windows- internals.com/printdemon-cve-2020-1048/](https://windows- internals.com/printdemon-cve-2020-1048/)

It's well written and easy to follow even for someone that doesn't know much about Windows security.

And if you didn't read it the bug comes from the fact that the Powershell command Add-PrinterPort can be used to add a printer port as a file that you don't have access to. After restarting the spooler service you can then use this port to write to that file.

<comment><USER3> This was very interesting, thanks for posting it! I will say that this is a bit misleading though:

> the bug comes from the fact that the Powershell command Add-PrinterPort can > be used ...

The bug is in the print spooler service and the Windows API to access to it. It just happens that PowerShell offers an easy way to access the Windows API, which makes it easy to illustrate the exploit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon was a fantastic chronicle of Stuxnet.

For those not interested in the whole narrative, it's still interesting to browse one or two chapters of interest.

[https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Zero-Day-Stuxnet- Digital/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Zero-Day-Stuxnet- Digital/dp/0770436196)

<comment><USER5> I just checked and happy to find that it's on Audible.

Can anyone recommend similar audiobooks on tech that are not as well known?

<comment><USER6> If you're looking for more computer security / hacking related books, I can recommend "Sandworm" (by Andy Greenberg) and "The Cuckoo's Egg" (by Cliff Stoll). Both appear to have audible versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why's it so difficult to write a print spooler?

I'm not too familar with what it does exactly. But I presume it's a queue of documents to send to a printer and some level of conversation of the data from a print document format to what the printer driver understands.

This seems like quite a crazy bug. Also today, a lot of home printers are network printers so it shouldn't even require higher privilages to send the document to the printer, right?

Or is printing in Windows a huge can of worms like its use of UTF-16?

<comment><USER8> It is indeed _possible_ to design a system that only works as a client for network printers as a pure-userland service; I believe this is what iOS has, in the form of AirPrint.

But most OS printing services cover both network and local (USB, parallel, even serial!) printing, and therefore the print daemon needs to essentially "own" ACLs on some collection of USB-devices and even "own" direct bit-banging access to a set of serial/parallel-ports, in the same sense that X11 gets to own VRAM memory-regions, or an audio daemon gets to own bit-banging access to a set of DAC controllers.

Coupled with this is the problem of supporting legacy software that expects older consumer-microcomputer OS paradigms for device access. This isn't so much of a problem on POSIX systems, where the oldest paradigm (having /var/spool as a sticky dir, where roff(1) would just write files there) was already multitenant-friendly; you just need a print daemon (CUPS) that can watch /var/spool for changes, along with its non-legacy API. I believe you can roff(1) even within Termux on Android, and it'll "just work", without special kernel support other than the generic filesystem notification-event API.

But Windows specifically inherits a print-system design all the way from DOS, and still supports software (e.g. Win9x software written for the Win32 API) that was written to expect that legacy API. I don't know too much about the Win32 print API specifically, but I'd guess that it was designed to be a forward-compatible shim on top of the DOS printing "API"—which was really just allowing the application to bang bits down the serial/parallel port through memory-mapped IO.

That's what the "LPT1", "COM", etc. devices in Windows are: _emulations_ of those same legacy memory-mapped IO channels that only make sense to access in a single-tasking OS. But, as of NT/W2K, it's actually the OS on the other end of that pipe, arbitrating data flows. So that's another thing that needs to happen in kernel-land in Windows: the emulation of an unprotected MMIO memory region within the process's address space, as a glorified syscall ABI, which just (these days) routes messages to the userspace print daemon, but back in Win9x probably _did_ do all its work in kernelspace.

<comment><USER9> Why don't we have a version of Windows without as much legacy support? Like a security hardened (or really just modern-only) version of Windows?

I suspect most people would be fine using that version of Windows, and it would have less security problems.

<comment><USER8> Much of the "point" of Windows as a platform at this point (i.e. the reason that developers stick with targeting Windows APIs, instead of re-developing their software for portability using Java or Qt or Electron or whatever-else) is backward-compatibility.

People say that a lot, but it has a very specific meaning when talking about a platform SDK: "backward compatibility" here specifically means that if you wrote version N of your software for version N of Windows, then when you're writing version N+1 of your software targeting version N+1 of Windows, you don't need to re-write any of the old code. You can just start taking advantage of the new Windows API features in the new code you write, while leaving your old code that calls legacy Windows APIs alone.

Almost all large Windows applications are written this way: a gradual sedimentary accretion of calls to whatever Windows APIs were modern at the time of writing. Even first-party software like Office still makes calls to kernel-shimmed 16-bit APIs, right alongside calls to the modern UWP APIs.

But nevertheless:

> Why don't we have a version of Windows without as much legacy support? Like > a security hardened (or really just modern-only) version of Windows?

We did get this; it was called Windows RT, which could only run software (re)developed specifically for the WinRT platform SDK.

WinRT applications are automatically sandboxed; are able to be developed in many languages, including Rust and Javascript; and, while being native code (when you use a compiled language), are also architecture-agnostic—meaning mostly that you can easily build one deliverable for the Windows Store that contains binaries for x86, ARM, and any other arch Windows Store supports, and then by downloading your app people will transparently be downloading whichever sub-package their device needs.

But, well, few developers bothered, because most major pieces of software would need to be _majorly_ rewritten to support WinRT. It was mostly used for greenfield projects by existing companies; or as a target for new Windows porting efforts (e.g. of iOS/Android software.)

Originally the incentive for using WinRT was supposed to be that only WinRT apps could be sold through the Windows Store; but since so few third-parties bit this bullet, Microsoft backed off and allowed all their biggest bigcorp partners—exactly the people they were really trying to convince—to just submit non-WinRT apps to the store. As of that moment, WinRT-the-SDK was dead in the water; basically no large project has been rewritten for it since then.

<comment><USER10> > Even first-party software like Office still makes calls to kernel-shimmed > 16-bit APIs, right alongside calls to the modern UWP APIs.

This is a bit of a misleading statement, because Win16 and Win95 had a different kernel interface than exists today: namely kernel.dll, then kernel32.dll -- those all used to be very simple traps into kernel mode. Then NT-based Windows made those and others into user-mode wrappers for the "real" syscall interface living in ntdll.dll. To prevent people from writing software that wouldn't run on 9x, and to provide flexibility to change ntdll at will, they resisted making ntdll a public, documented API for a very long time.

So basically, all Win32 apps today are written against a shim for a legacy kernel interface, any time they open a file, etc.

Regarding your description of WinRT.... You are missing that WinRT was not very capable and missing a lot of functionality. There is a bit of a problem with 21st century Microsoft in this regard. They cannot re-create their prior 1990s successes. They don't know how to write app platforms anymore, without deprecating them a short number of years later because oops, they turned out to be inadequate.. So the only way to have a decent Windows app is to write against the stuff that's been working for ~25 years and they haven't managed to break yet.

That is the reason you won't see, say, a browser rendering engine not depend on Win32. It's not because they don't have the time or ability to rewrite. (Google Chrome's Windows engineers, I don't know if you noticed this from reading their source tree or looking at their blog posts, but they are _damn good_.) It's because WinRT is missing stuff and it can't be done.

See also: Microsoft's various quests to provide a next-gen app framework. WinForms, WPF, Silverlight... They can't get anything to stick like Win32 did, and many later attempts end up with worse quality and shorter lifetimes than the earlier ones.

<comment><USER11> WinRT is more capable and has more functionality. The added permissions sandbox and tougher (battery-life focused) app cycles blinded a lot of developers. The biggest problem with the WinRT stack has never been capabilities: it's been migration paths from legacy Win32 brownfields. (Had Microsoft delivered more of WinRT earlier to older versions of Windows such as XP and 7 as stepping stones, and/or had Microsoft delivered more of the XAML Islands-style interop between Win32 HWND world and WinRT CoreWindow world there probably would have been a lot faster adoption and lot less hand wringing from developers.)

Under the hood, WinRT isn't even that different from Win32 "best practices": ignoring the sandbox and app lifecycle it's a subtly better version of COM in its own apartment.

> That is the reason you won't see, say, a browser rendering engine not depend > on Win32.

What are you even talking about? IE11's Trident rendering engine fork that became Spartan/EdgeHTML was (and sort of still is in that it will be supported for a while left) entirely WinRT native from Windows 8.1 up until New Edge/Edgmium.

Even Chromium is adopting _some_ of the WinRT libraries for rendering on Windows. For instance, by default for many versions of Chromium it uses DirectWrite (when running on Windows 10) for font rendering, and DirectWrite is the font rendering system from WinRT/UWP.

> See also: Microsoft's various quests to provide a next-gen app framework. > WinForms, WPF, Silverlight... They can't get anything to stick like Win32 > did, and many later attempts end up with worse quality and shorter lifetimes > than the earlier ones.

This also makes less sense than you think it does. WinForms is a simple .NET wrapper around Win32. It's practically the same thing.

The way Microsoft sees it, and WPF and Silverlight (which at one point was known as WPF/E for Everywhere) were the Alpha/Beta stages of what became WinRT/UWP. Microsoft remembered (it was originally a design goal of WPF that got cut for time/effort in the Longhorn struggle) they needed to move back to COM or a COM-like space from focusing on the .NET VM space only, because they do have a lot of brownfield C/C++ and other language applications such as Office. (Here again, pretty much the history of both the reasons behind WinRT and its successes/failures are all about the brownfields of development.)

<comment><USER10> > tougher (battery-life focused) app cycles

This is ... not the whole story. The best way to be kind to the battery is to stay off the CPU when you have no useful work to do. If you are saving and restoring state at every loss and gain of focus because you might be killed by an overzealous app platform in between, you are burning more resources for nothing.

> What are you even talking about? IE11's Trident rendering engine fork that > became Spartan/EdgeHTML was

So you cite what is pretty commonly regarded as a "loser" browser engine -- so much so even Microsoft abandoned it.

> and DirectWrite is the font rendering system from WinRT/UWP.

I thought it was neither WinRT nor GDI. AFAIK a COM API in the style of DirectX.

> WinForms is a simple .NET wrapper around Win32. It's practically the same > thing.

Yes, I know, and this is why it's often more popular than WPF and its descendants. As I said, _many later attempts end up with worse quality and shorter lifetimes than the earlier ones._

<comment><USER11> > The best way to be kind to the battery is to stay off the CPU when you have > no useful work to do. If you are saving and restoring state at every loss > and gain of focus because you might be killed by an overzealous app platform > in between, you are burning more resources for nothing.

The original WinRT lifecycle never save/restored at every loss/gain of focus. It did exactly what you suggested and zeroed CPU usage at loss of focus. Best practices encouraged "save as you go", which most applications have moved to naturally as disk and network I/O got "cheaper". (Look at the history of auto- save across the decades in Office, for instance.) It forced applications to save additional restore state only at intervals _after_ usage stopped (X minutes after loss of focus with no return to focus; -Y in the "alt+tab stack" MRU list of recently accessed apps), and it tried its best to merge restore state and deep linking as concepts (the only thing that "should have been needed" when forced to save/restore while doing "save-as-you-go" was deep link state). Post-web, deep linking is a critical tool and should be a default, if you are "burning more resources" to deep link you are probably doing something wrong, and that _is_ what the platform tried to build on. At least in terms of the strictest best practices around the Windows 8 app lifecycle model, it seemed quite clear that it was very battery focused first and foremost (and yes, very tough). Windows 8 even had (and Windows 10 relaxed) very strict quotas on how much CPU, storage access, and other parts of what you could do to save/restore state towards the goal of enforcing the best practices that save/restore should be mostly deep links and other content saves done elsewhere in the application (presumably "save-as-you-go").

> So you cite what is pretty commonly regarded as a "loser" browser engine -- > so much so even Microsoft abandoned it.

Just because it "lost" doesn't mean that it _didn 't exist_ like you strongly asserted, nor does it even mean that it was technically inferior. "Worse is better" is a Unix mantra for a number of reasons, but seems to apply here quite appropriately. Microsoft didn't abandon EdgeHTML because it was technically bad, they abandoned it because it was some version of marketingly bad and/or politically bad and no one was using it.

> I thought it was neither WinRT nor GDI. AFAIK a COM API in the style of > DirectX.

This gets back to the "WinRT is just a subtly better COM" discussion and the ever so intentionally blurry space between DirectX COM and WinRT and the semantic games of who owns what. I think it's silly that more of DirectX COM doesn't have better native WinRT bindings because it's mostly just a difference of metadata at this point, but besides that DirectWrite is direct dependency in the WinRT stack, doesn't exist in non-WinRT versions of Windows, and is often considered to be a (low level) WinRT library more than a DirectX library.

Again, I think that only further serves my point that ignoring the app lifecycle and sandboxing, WinRT is a blurrier thing than the rigid box people think it is with more backward/forward compatibility with the Win32 world than both was apparent at first (especially in the Windows 8 era) and had there earlier been a more graceful path to opt in to the harder pills to swallow like the sandboxing and the app lifecycle then we'd probably have a lot fewer conversation today about whether or not WinRT was "capable" or was "missing features" from Win32.

(Yes, that also means that WinRT isn't also the extreme "clean" break from Windows Win32 legacy that people always assume it is. The walls are a lot blurrier today with more WinRT libraries than before providing direct Win32 COM access and XAML Islands, but removing app sandboxing the walls would have been a lot blurrier even in Windows 8's yesterday too.)

>> WinForms is a simple .NET wrapper around Win32. It's practically the same thing.

> Yes, I know, and this is why it's often more popular than WPF and its > descendants. As I said, many later attempts end up with worse quality and > shorter lifetimes than the earlier ones.

I feel like my point escaped you on this one. WinForms was never sold as a replacement for Win32, it was always just Win32. If it was marketed as a replacement for anything it was a replacement for previous Win32 RAD tools like VB6.

Silverlight was never marketed as a replacement for Win32. It was marketed as a replacement for Flash and Java applets (and HTML in some cases).

Two of your three examples were never meant to be Win32 replacements, so their "worse quality" (ymmv) and "shorter lifetimes" are irrelevant with respect to WinRT.

(Sure, you can bring up Windows Phone 7 where Silverlight was used as an application API stop gap in the brief period where WinRT wasn't finished but was the writing on the wall, but Silverlight was sold as a stop gap at the time and the expectation and admission was always that a "Silverlight-like" system would replace it in the next version, as it did, migration headaches aside for developing for a stop gap on the road to the next application framework.)

Also, "shorter lifetimes" is an interesting statement given that both WinForms and WPF are still supported in Windows, expected to be supported nearly perpetually, were just ported to .NET Core for many benefits and gains, and have a much increased access to WinRT libraries and XAML Islands. The future is bright for brownfield developers of WinForms and WPF. Sure, the general recommendation is still not to use either tech for greenfield work, but most companies go for "security and support" when discussing lifetimes and those horizons are still fine, there's nothing stopping greenfield work from happening in WinForms/WPF beyond "general recommendation".

Now, WPF was sold as a DirectX-based replacement for WinForms certainly. It's possible to see that as an implicit argument that it was meant to be a replacement for all of Win32, but of course WPF never entirely escaped the Win32 legacy as had been it's original predecessor's vision. I still often assert that WinRT is the fulfilling of a lot of the original WPF vision, and in that way that they are more alike than different, WinRT is a "final" version of WPF and the evolutionary tree of WPF, Silverlight (WPF/E), and WinRT a lot less choppy and/or internally discordant than a lot of people want to think. That comes down to aesthetic judgments like "worse quality"; I don't think that statement applies to the evolutionary tree like you think it does. WPF, Silverlight, and WinRT all have different niches/fitnesses in the evolutionary tree. But I also don't see Silverlight nor WinRT as "descendants" of WPF but that all three are descendants of the proto-WinRT (sometimes code- named Avalon), which was more WinRT like than not and it took a lot of evolutionary pressure to "finish".

<comment><USER10> > Post-web, deep linking is a critical tool and should be a default, if you > are "burning more resources" to deep link you are probably doing something > wrong, and that is what the platform tried to build on.

This whole statement results from shoehorning the web inappropriately into an app model and only makes sense if you have done that mental gymnastics in precisely the same way. Nobody else did so nobody built WinRT apps.

The model works best for toy apps. This fits with other aspects to conclude they shipped something which was appropriate for demos written by interns but not battle tested like decades of win32 was.

> Windows 8 even had (and Windows 10 relaxed) very strict quotas on how much > CPU, storage access, and other parts of what you could do to save/restore > state towards the goal of enforcing the best practices that save/restore > should be mostly deep links and other content saves done elsewhere in the > application (presumably "save-as-you-go").

Yes, I remember some discussion of this in Redmond. It seemed very misguided. We are not talking about a real-time OS here where you can feel good about hard deadlines. And it's quite difficult to intelligently enforce those limits without knowing what useful work the application might do legitimately for the user. It is an arrogance and a denial of realities of things like the halting problem. And, it's been a while since I looked into it, but it seemed at one point like Apple and Google did a better job letting you react to being killed through similar mechanisms.

<comment><USER11> > This whole statement results from shoehorning the web inappropriately into > an app model and only makes sense if you have done that mental gymnastics in > precisely the same way.

Where have you been? The web has been the application platform of choice for a number of users and developers for nearly a decade now. Sure, HN is full of complaints about every Electron app under the sun, but the web "won". Most user expectations on how apps function come from the web these days. Mobile app platforms are full of deep linking and other web (and post-web) concepts.

> The model works best for toy apps. This fits with other aspects to conclude > they shipped something which was appropriate for demos written by interns > but not battle tested like decades of win32 was.

This is blaming the egg for the chicken. WinRT hasn't been battle tested for decades because it hasn't yet _had_ decades. It's arrogant in its impossibility.

I have used some _great_ WinRT apps that weren't "toys", "demos", nor "written by interns". At this point you just seem to be name calling for no benefit. I get it, you haven't liked what you have seen for WinRT. You haven't given many technical reasons, and this name calling continues to not serve your argument.

> at one point like Apple [...] did a better job letting you react to being > killed through similar mechanisms.

Apple has basically the exact same quotas early WinRT tried to place on apps, Apple just has a lot more clout when it tells developers "Our Way or the highway".

Which again, continues to prove my point that if Microsoft hadn't tried to "force" developers to do the right thing, and instead offer more carrots and fewer sticks people would have a better idea of what WinRT actually is rather than just name calling at it because it forced them to learn new things and then was "mean" by requiring sandboxes and app lifecycles that actually tried to be user friendly, you know just like Apple was already doing with iOS years before WinRT released.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm still in awe of stuxnet:

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated- piece-o...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-of- software-ever-written-1?share=1)

Almost certainly an NSA product.

<comment><USER4> It was a multinational effort (US, Israel, Germany), mostly lead by the NSA.

<comment><USER13> This must be the first time I've ever seen Germany implicated in this. I consider it 100 times more likely that the UK was involved than Germany.

<comment><USER14> I personally believe the German government was aware, but did not directly participate in a meaningful way. However a German corporation played a huge role.

Siemens engineers deployed a PCS 7 lab environment at the Idaho National Laboratory, where research in to exploits was conducted. Coincidently one of the methods Stuxnet used to stay hidden was demonstrated at the KEMA Control Systems Conference in Idaho Falls.

Separately, Siemens engineers built a replica of the Iranian system at Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center in Israel using P-1 centrifuges the US obtained from Libya's nuclear program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a recent take on the geopolitical effects of Stuxnet and many other cyber attacks, I can recommend _The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics_ by Dr. Ben Buchanan.

I found it to be a fascinating account of international cyber attacks with a clear, well-argued thesis.

[https://www.amazon.com/Hacker-State-Attacks-Normal- Geopoliti...](https://www.amazon.com/Hacker-State-Attacks-Normal- Geopolitics/dp/0674987551)

</comment><comment><USER16> Stuxnet is a masterpiece in terms of achieving goals while attacking hard to hit, network isolated facilities.

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

It would be very interesting to see the next Stuxnet class viruses, sponsored by major companies/countries. I'm fairly sure there are some already running in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER17> See also on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23178247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23178247)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure I recall the "Generic / Text-Only" printer driver from Windows 3.0 days.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't Alex Ionescu also the chap working on ReactOS, a clone of Windows?

</comment><comment><USER20> TL;DR; there was a local privilege escalation bug in Print Spooler (fixed yesterday). The article calls it "Stuxnet's Legacy" because Stuxnet hit the same component. But Stuxnet bug was a remote code execution (10 years ago).

<comment><USER21> TL;DR; There are undisclosed unpatched CVEs pending for Windows Print Spooler services.

From the article: "The [researchers] also said that they had found and disclosed some other bugs in the same are that have not yet been patched "so there's definitely still some dragons hiding.""</comment></comment>


What Happens to Your Body When You're Burnt Out - <AUTHOR> https://www.domino.com/content/how-stress-affects-the-body/ <comment><AUTHOR> After having dealt with major burn out over the last couple years, I can really relate to this article so I thought I would share.</comment>


I Support AIM - ezequiel-garzon https://isupportaim.com <comment><AUTHOR> Not going to lie, I thought they were talking about AOL Instant Messenger when I first saw the link.</comment>


Theranos might be on life support - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/17/theranos-might-be-on-life-support/ <comment><USER2> If they truly have only $200M cash on hand, no revenue, 220 employees, and nothing set aside for liabilities, then they aren't on life support they are already dead.

Leases on their existing buildings, salary and benefits for 220, capital costs for their 'mini lab', and legal fees to defend their current lawsuit load? The Walgreen's suit alone is asking $140M.

I can't imagine any bank, VC, or even hedge fund going near this. Theranos has to successfully defend all of their lawsuits, execute perfectly on their minilab, and develop enough credibility to actually bring their ideas to market. Any one of those things goes wrong and blam! all that money goes up in smoke.

What I think doesn't matter of course, but I think they would be better off rolling it up, selling off what they can, payout out what they can to their creditors and leaving this chapter behind them. As someone who watched Webvan and Pets.com crash, this one is up there.

<comment><USER3> The honest question is - how are they able to retain the 220 employees? I'd assume are very talented scientists, engineers, etc. Given this story has been going on for more than a year (or two), how do they keep people around?

<comment><USER4> I know someone who works there and despite his high level of talent and unusual skillset is having problems finding another position because of the black mark the "Theranos" brand is having on his resume. He's been looking for more than a year. :-/

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, he's probably not helping his cause by hanging around at this point. I'm sure he has his reasons - family, mortgage etc - but a lot of recruiters likely treat those who remained despite the damning revelations very differently to those who jumped as soon as the writing was on the wall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is Elizabeth Holmes not in jail? She lied blatantly about their blood- testing medical equipments which can potentially kill people with wrong testing results, and delayed treatments. One of her employees committed suicide, partially because of the pressure she put on him. Why is she not in jail?

<comment><USER7> Genuinely curious. What law do you think she personally broke?

Lying to the media/public, though largely unethical, doesn't strike me as being illegal.

Piling back-breaking stress on an employee also doesn't strike me as illegal.

<comment><USER8> > She lied blatantly about their blood-testing medical equipments which can > potentially kill people with wrong testing results,

I think is the only one which is actually crime and which she has already been punished for.

<comment><USER9> Exactly how was she punished? Are you talking about her ban from running a blood testing lab? I don't consider that a punishment, more like a rap in the knuckles. Consider that real people were hurt by her/Theranos's actions, people who were misdiagnosed and as a result given wrong medications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Might" be? They've been on life support since 2015, they just didn't want to believe it (or anyone else to realize it). As the lawsuits have piled up, the sanctions have mounted and partners (Walgreens) have pulled out, there hasn't been a single bright spot in the past two years.

Just browse the first few pages of this search: [https://www.google.com/search?q=theranos+lawsuit](https://www.google.com/search?q=theranos+lawsuit)

</comment><comment><USER11> "Just 200m"! These guys and the VC s are operating in a different realm from any bootstrapped company that don't aim to "exit". This makes me think that sadly bootstrapping high tech in the silicon valley is nearly impossible in this century.

<comment><USER12> I wondered why Holmes had never been forced out by investors or banks as a precondition of getting more support, but this explains why she's still there - they _can 't_, because she has majority share power and Theranos still has oceans of cash and no need to go begging to anyone. There's simply no way to stop her or force her out aside from long-shot minority shareholder lawsuits (although I think there's at least one of those ongoing), and it'll take years or decades for all the lawsuits to finish appeals and to spend the cash down with a skeleton crew.

Indeed, given how her reputation is radioactive, why would she _ever_ leave Theranos anytime soon? No one is going to hire her for anything anywhere else; she can continue drawing a CEO salary/benefits and keep playing CEO and a sense of self-worth; she gets Theranos to pay her legal bills (which may not be trivial by the end); and can mess around with an enormous fortune of $200m however she likes; and who knows, may even succeed in a pivot to something else - hope springs eternal.

(I wonder how much cash Magic Leap has left.)

<comment><USER13> > No one is going to hire her for anything anywhere else;

Yes they will. She'll pop back up in a few years. Maybe in a hedge fund, VC/PE firm or something, but she will. For an example of this see Kaavya Viswanathan.

She's in the club now and she's towing the line, it's hard to get kicked out of the club when you're towing the line.

<comment><USER14> Sadly you are probably right as I do think her actions at least border on the criminal. But there are plenty of bolt holes largely out of the public eye for well-connected people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm sorry for the employees that lost their jobs because of the shady practices from management. Other than that, I hope they close doors soon. Putting people at risk for the sake of making a few bucks has no justification.

<comment><USER16> I think one positive caveat from all the very public bad press about the company is that it's pretty reasonable to think that employees had nothing to do with the demise of the company and being let go / fired can easily be seen as the company's fault rather than the employee's.

I hope that works in the favor of the people being let go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I suspect $200 million could fund a great deal of life support.

<comment><USER18> under normal circumstances, absolutely, but considering the number of lawsuits they are battling, that war-chest could dwindle rapidly.

<comment><USER19> Lawsuits that go to trial are slow, tho - especially those in Delaware. They're likely looking at years++

What I'm curious about is since the value of civil claims against Theranos is now greater than their cash balance what chance do plantiffs have on an asset freeze or forcing administration

I initially thought the lawsuits were about individual parties suing to gain seniority on debt structuring in bankruptcy but it makes more sense that enough parties got together and sued to force bankruptcy so that 20-30c in the dollar could be obtained as opposed to 0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'll be interested to see where Holmes ends up after all this. My bet is that she joins a hedge fund, VC firm, or PE firm after the dust settles. Only question to me is which ones wouldn't find the Theranos backstory to be a disqualification.

<comment><USER21> Oh, she'll be fine. For CEOs it's "fail big, gamble bigger". Only the little people have to carry the burden of responsibility for their work and track record.

<comment><USER20> Oh, I'm not worried about her well-being. I'm mostly curious to see which PE/VC/Hedge firms genuinely DGAF about public perception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> """Might"""

Give me a break, Theranos is the biggest disgraceful excuse of a company that I've ever even heard of, and I've been reading this dumb board for 5+ years now.

That people aren't 100% dismissive of Theranos is absolutely mind-boggling. The level of corruption, incompetence, and just the poor organization of it all.

Other commenters have also noted that if they aren't doing well on cash, they're pretty much dead anyways.

I want Theranos to crash and burn as loud as humanly possible, so that people might pay attention for two seconds and look at what happens when you refuse to give a shit about the ethics and competence behind your business/startup.

Now, I suspect a lot of Theranos employees at this point are probably just waiting on that last check, but there's probably some poor souls on that list who really wanted to achieve something, and now they're more or less fucked from having to be associated with Theranos. It will be harder for them to find a new job with that black mark, I'm sure poor severance will make it hard for them to bootstrap their own ideas. They are backed into a corner, because of Theranos.

Life in an unethical business can be nasty, brutish and short.

<comment><USER23> Just out of curiosity, did you reach to this conclusion based on what you read in the news about Theranos or do you have some other extra information? I have no relation whatsoever to Theranos and I am genuinely wondering how someone can have such a strong opinion on a company that they read about in news, which we all know never tells the full story.

<comment><USER24> I am guessing that the strong feelings may be to do with the outcomes of the company's bungling. After all, we are talking about people lives being in the balance here.

The constant sugar coating, avoiding, or plastering over of defective methodologies and processes can elicit these sorts of feelings - especially if the person suspects, or knows of issues that should be brought to light.

Its different say, in the case of a soda manufacturer changing the recipe for their best selling beverage. The faux outrage there is probably an overreaction. But if it is a car/aircraft manufacturer that knowingly builds vehicles with a known defect that can cost human lives? Well, then, I think the outrage is justified. I think Theranos falls into the second category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So who are the main investors? Seems like a prime opportunity to name and shame.

</comment><comment><USER26> Only two hundred thousand thousand dollars? Yes you can't possibly run a business on that.

</comment><comment><USER27> Theranos was still alive?</comment>


Ask HN: Is Swift mature enough for server-side use? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking of using a new language in the backend for my next project. It will essentially be a backend that serves a rest-api. I'm thinking of either going with Go or Swift.<p>Have anyone experience using Swift, maybe with something like https://perfect.org, for this purpose? <comment><USER2> Swift (tooling) isn't even mature enough yet when I use Xcode...</comment>


Monkey-patch madness in JS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getjaco.com/most-ridiculous-monkey-patches-weve-seen/ <comment><USER2> One method could be writing ES5 define property for the methods you depend on, to make sure they are not modified.

<comment><USER3> Interesting idea! You could configure it to be non writable.

Unfortunately there is a big downside - as a third party plugin you're not really allowed to destructively change the hosted environment.</comment></comment>


HTPC – Intel Atom Media Center Inside a CD Player [DIY] - <AUTHOR> http://english.kalingasblog.com/2009/10/17/htpc-intel-atom-media-center-inside-a-cd-player/ <comment><USER2> This really isn't _that_ interesting. It's a case mod using a large set top style CD player as a case, who cares.</comment>


Shame: Sony raised prices on Whitney Houston's music 30 minutes after her death - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/13/whitney-houston-digital-music-price-hike/

<comment><USER2> It's distasteful, yeah. But I can't imagine having enough energy to get very worked up over an utterly-unnecessary-to-survival product's price varying by a couple of dollars in response to demand variance. Let's get a million other issues in the world solved first.</comment>


How about STEW as an acronym for Y Combinator Startup News? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> How about STEW ? STartup nEWs. It sounds delicious, it's easy to type, and it's easy to say! Toss in one gradient somewhere, and we're all set!

Or STEWY, to get the Y in there?

Plus, it's from a place called Y Combinator, and a STEW combines many ingredients...

"I read about it on Stew last night." "Was it good?" "Yes."

</comment><comment><USER2> I like news.yc

<comment><USER3> That's what we call it internally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> my bookmark is labeled "YCN"</comment>


Secrets of the Magus: Ricky Jay does closeup magic that flouts reality (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/04/05/secrets-of-the-magus <comment><USER2> Ricky Jay is amazing. I went to a screening of the recent documentary about him, Deceptive Practice[1], which he attended and subsequently answered questions---enjoyed it immensely.

His incredible 52 Assistants show is on youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jljt5Ml28FU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jljt5Ml28FU)

[1] [http://www.rickyjaymovie.com/](http://www.rickyjaymovie.com/)

<comment><USER3> Deceptive Practice is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

<comment><USER4> [http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Deceptive-Practice-The- Mysterie...](http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Deceptive-Practice-The-Mysteries- and-Mentors-of-Ricky-Jay/70270768)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favourite Ricky Jay quote:

"magic consists of taking more pains than anyone will possibly consider worth it"

Or sane perhaps. Kind of says it all

Edit: quote from memory of a TV show some years ago - can't find it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's a Penn & Teller quote [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts- culture/Teller-Reveals-Hi...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts- culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women" is absolutely worth picking up if you fancy esoterica.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reading through this whole article was really interesting. The mention in the article of mathematician and magician Persi Diaconis prompted me to search previous Hacker News threads about him. Quite a while ago, another participant posted a link to an article from 2011 in the _Chronicle of Higher Education_ about Diaconis, titled "The Magical Mind of Persi Diaconis,"[1] which didn't gain much karma or discussion at the time of submission but is also an interesting read. Different conjurers can have very different personal styles and techniques, each to fit their own personalities, and the best conjurers admire the work of other conjurers.

[1] [http://chronicle.com/article/The-Magical-Mind-of- Persi/12940...](http://chronicle.com/article/The-Magical-Mind-of- Persi/129404/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Magic is really cool. I have been getting into the Dynamo show and watched all the David Blaine specials, and after watching a lot of it, I started to get the idea behind a lot of the hand tricks, but there are definitely some tricks that have me completely baffled to this day.

I just came across the show, carbonaro effect, where the magician uses everyday stores to play tricks on unsuspecting people. I like this shows concept because its less about how he did the trick and more about how easy it is too fool people into believing in otherworldly events or products.

[http://www.trutv.com/shows/the-carbonaro- effect/index.html](http://www.trutv.com/shows/the-carbonaro-effect/index.html)

<comment><USER9> Most of the TV stuff is not the same thing though. I know people who have had paid work as 'audience' for those. You put a trained actor in normal clothes and people watching on TV will swear blind that they could not have faked their reaction.

<comment><USER10> Just assume that everyone 'from the audience' who participates in any kind of magic is a shill. No matter if it is on TV, at a party, in a restaurant, or in the street.

<comment><USER9> Not always. I got invited from the audience when I was a kid for a stage magic show.

The guy was doing a trick where he wrote on a ping pong ball, gave it to me to look at, destroyed it and then made it reappear.

While I was looking at it I marked it with my thumbnail.

When it reappeared he asked me to verify that it was the same, but it didn't have the nail-mark on it, so I told him that it definitely wasn't, and how I knew.

I was 12 and my parents were furious with me about it.

For some reason they never ever took me to a magic show again.

<comment><USER10> Furious? They should have been proud!

I want to believe that a better magician would have noticed and reproduced the mark.

<comment><USER9> _" Furious? They should have been proud!"_

Heh, I could probably talk to a shrink for several days solid about that.

In their view at the time I ruined it for everyone and wasted the money of the entire audience and possibly ruined the career of the poor magician too and if I had any kind of feeling for others I would have played along and just lied. It was socially unacceptable behaviour, apparently. I found the whole thing completely bewildering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Classic article, and Ricky Jay is the real deal. But the first two tricks mentioned can be explained by the use of confederates: Gregory Mosher for the first and "Mort" in the second.

<comment><USER12> I thought the Mort bit might have been revealed to be that he planted 52 cards in obscure locations around the room and directed his firing of cards to locations known to have particular cards. (E.g., down the table for hearts, behind him for clubs, etc.) He apparently does have an incredible memory.

That said, the story said he did it the length of the table, which implies a more natural specificity which could either confirm a confederate, or else was retrospectively embellished.

(Imagine a version of the story where he turns and fires the cards into a bookshelf and instructs someone to open a particular book.)

But the confederate is a much simpler explanation. It's just whether the coordination and trust in a confederate to keep the secret to the grave can be greater than the cost of the setup and the potential for early revelation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The saddest part of that whole story came at the end when the library of magic-related literature and artifacts Ricky Jay helped amass and curate fell into the hands of David Copperfield.

Not sure what the tech world equivalent of that would be--maybe a nouveau riche Tinder founder acquiring all the original artifacts of historic computing in the Computer History Museum, moving them to Branson, Missouri, and putting them backstage of a Yakov Smirnoff dinner theatre show.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love card and coin magic. Good old purist stuff without gimmicks or trick decks. Sleight of hand is simply pure talent. Even the description of the poker trip had me cracking a smile.

</comment><comment><USER14> Boy, I had no idea he was a magician. I always just thought he was a stage actor that David Mamet liked to collaborate with. Today I learned!

</comment><comment><USER15> I saw Ricky Jay at the Magic Castle several years back doing closeup magic and his was the only show that stuck in my memory.

</comment><comment><USER16> I saw him once in havard sq. about 15 years ago. Great show in a tiny venue. Wish I could remember it better than I do!

</comment><comment><USER17> Have i missed something ? Is there any special reason for this to appear on hn ?

<comment><USER9> Yes, you have and it is a very special reason. But revealing it would ruin the magic, sorry.</comment></comment>


Students demand Plato, Descartes and other white philos. dropped from curriculum - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/students-demand-plato-descartes-and-other-white-philosophers-be-dropped-from-curriculum <comment><USER2> That's both hilarious and truly stupid.

You don't solve the problem by eliminating sources, you solve the problem by _adding_ sources.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you want email parsing API for free? - <AUTHOR> AirHelp.com helps passengers get compensation for delayed flights. We've combined deterministic programming (RegExp, XPaths, etc.) with some fancy NLP stuff to build travel email parsers that perform equally well as Google's proprietary parsers. Now we're thinking about allowing anyone to use our parsing API to power their own projects, for free. In exchange we'd like to inform email recipients, that have been delayed, that they deserve compensation.<p>Would you use it? <comment><USER2> No. Although the email parser as a service idea is nice, it has a couple of major downsides.

For starters, it's now a GDPR world: I want to avoid the risk of breaches on your side affecting mine. Secondly, today you want to send nice compensation emails, tomorrow (under pressure from your board) you start mining the emails for competitive research and increased monetisation. I wouldn't want to put the reputation of my service on the line for this.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. It sounds like a really nice idea but I can't have you e-mailing my customers, that'd just be embarrassing. I would also need to really understand your security posture.

I couldn't use it for my app as all its functionality needs to work in an airgapped environment. But in any case, I would consider offering a paid tier where you don't use it to send marketing messages.

I also believe that using it in the way you propose could cause you to run foul of GDPR because there isn't a way to separate the marketing message from the app functionality but I don't have a well formed version of that idea yet.</comment>


Flickr, I'm disappointed. The truth about the free terabyte. - <AUTHOR> http://griselda.posthaven.com/flickr-im-disappointed

<comment><USER2> The pricing changes might not be great (I won't attempt to evaluate them -- I'm not a Flickr customer nor in the target market whatsoever), but the 300MB cap claim is silly. You say it yourself: it's only been a few hours since they made this announcement at all, and they _just_ removed that cap from the terms of service. They'll get to removing the technical restriction soon, I'm sure.

C'mon guys. I'm as big a fan of rage-fueled blog posts as anyone else, but can't we give them even a _little_ breather before breaking out the pitchforks and torches?

</comment><comment><USER3> That's an old, cached message. There is no 300mb limit anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> This message was from just two hours ago. But why make big announcement and then make changes? Should be other way around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Large scale deploys are hard. Give them some time for the dust to settle before over-reacting.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just disappointing when larger companies that are supposed to be experienced with marketing announcements have messy executions, it just affects the service image/credibility. Well, at least it's good for start-ups to learn from them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Despite the wrong execution on the process of rolling out the changes, the 1TB free is real.

So, can Flickr be considered as a _reliable_ backup solution for my photographs?

<comment><AUTHOR> The 1TB is definitely real. They had unlimited storage before for pro users. The fine print was confusing (i.e. max 300mb uploads per month). But I guess consumers now favour an actual measurable number (1TB) than unlimited. Flickr is a social community, not sure how reliable it is a backup solution. Good question though. Recently in the news they accidentally had some user's private photos as public :S</comment></comment>


Google quietly dumps Oracle MySQL for MariaDB - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/google-quietly-dumps-oracle-mysql-for-mariadb-7000020670/

<comment><USER2> ZDNet quietly rewords Register article:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/12/google_mariadb_mysql...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/12/google_mariadb_mysql_migration)</comment>


RockMelt For iPad - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/10/rockmelt-for-ipad-a-browser-built-for-touch-that-turns-the-web-into-a-feed-so-content-comes-to-you/

<comment><USER2> How is this different to to Flipboard? This seems like their main competitor and I haven't seen anything yet that looks like an improvement over it.

>> "Go back 25 years to the flashing DOS prompt. That wasn't accessible to someone like me. What Windows and Mac did was make it computing accessible to wanna-be nerds like me. But today, h t t p colon slash slash is not natural. It seems like something ripe for disruption."

What a pointless soundbite. No one _real_ has typed h t t p colon slash slash in about 10 years. Google and others before it solved that problem long ago.

<comment><USER3> _What a pointless soundbite. No one real has typed h t t p colon slash slash in about 10 years._

After Google decided to covertly introduce their own proprietary SPDY-protocol and to undermine standard HTTP, W3C and IETF "in the name of user- friendlessness" and Chrome started assuming that any non-canonical server-name (ie in a URL like "test-server/testapp/page") is a Google-search, I find myself manually prepending URLs like that with <http://> _all the time_.

Granted. I'm not a normal user. It's not a normal internet use-case.

But browser-design as of late has made it increasingly needed to be specified. Someone, somewhere sat down and decided that this was a direction they wanted to go.

The URL-bar has always been a referentially transparent addressing-function. IMO making it not so is a very bad move, and it's sole purpose was to secretly promote yet another invasive Google-product into becoming a web-standard without involving anyone else for input.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps, but what RockMelt is proposing is even less referentially transparent. My point is that the "problem" the quote proposes is not ripe for disruption as it has already been disrupted by search long ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the issue that will always plague this is that firstly, when stuff is filtered through an app (ie not from the "source") there's a paranoia that something is being somehow missed.

Secondly, I _like_ sifting through different sites (if they're built nicely), it adds variety - browsing is part of the experience of consuming content.

Also, there's an organisational overhead for setting up feeds. If you can just click on sites and explore, it's a different experience to adding feeds and refreshing. Consider it the comparison to doing your food shopping with a vague idea of what you want, and meticulously planning your groceries on-line and having it delivered. The latter is far more efficient, but the former is kinda fun in its own way and more entropic (which people enjoy in their lives).

I might be completely wrong, of course.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me or is techcrunch's video player the worst thing ever? It starts automatically and when I play pause to stop it , a spinning wheel appears like it's buffering but the video keeps playing...wtf...

</comment><comment><USER6> great. more cat fotos.</comment>


Is it OK to spy on your children's online activities? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/16/children-activities-online-spying#show-all

<comment><AUTHOR> Additional information: [http://gigaom.com/2013/08/07/snooping-on-your-kids- if-the-ns...](http://gigaom.com/2013/08/07/snooping-on-your-kids-if-the-nsas- tools-were-available-i-probably-would-have-used-them/)</comment>


Your Startup Shouldn't Kill You - <AUTHOR> http://adii.me/2011/06/startups-shouldnt-kill-you/

<comment><USER2> _If he dies, he dies._

Screw it, I'm 37 and haven't come close to accomplishing the goals I have for myself... at this point in my life, I don't care if I have to work 168 hours a week, work until my eyeballs bleed, and sacrifice some superficial pleasures for a while... it's now or never, damnit. I'm going to hustle my ass off until I either achieve my goals, die trying, or collapse into a dwibbering, drooling heap who lies in the floor muttering about the giant pink apricot tree aliens who are zapping my brain through my cable box.

I understand that this approach isn't for everyone, and more power to everybody who chooses their own path... but for some of us, the sacrifice can be justified (at the moment, anyway).

</comment><comment><USER3> be sure to take your vitamins!</comment>


Add a Telnet server to your iOS app for field debugging and logging - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/swisspol/GCDTelnetServer# <comment><USER2> Because it looks like this actually is _telnet_ as opposed to ssh, let's make one thing clear:

In telnet, everything is sent unencrypted. Even passwords. Especially passwords. Telnet does not encrypt passwords. Passwords are sent in the clear. Anyone snooping your traffic could read all of your passwords if you send them over a telnet session.

I hope that was just enough verbiage to make certain at least one person gets the message.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this is Telnet, not SSH and you certainly wouldn't want to ship it enabled by default: it should be enabled on Debug builds only or have some explicit switch for testers, etc...

The primary use of this library is for development and field debugging and for that it can be very valuable: you can connect to your app (while it's running of course) from pretty much any computer. There are also some use cases in production that expose no security risks (apps are sandboxed after all and far from every app deals with password or sensitive data).

<comment> tough-crowd To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm: "Security holes find a way", I mean life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't wait for a massive security hole from some app using this..

<comment><AUTHOR> iOS apps are heavily sandboxed, have non-executable memory pages, can't even run in the background, this library doesn't implement a shell at all, etc... so what would be a "massive" security hole here?

Of course, it could be used poorly, like a number of other libraries (not validating HTTPS certs anyone?), and introduce a security issue which would only have an effect in apps that deal with sensitive data _and_ transmit said data using this Telnet library.

IMO it's no different from running, say, an HTTP web server from an iOS app which a number do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this is great! I am going to use this to create a debugging version of my Mac app, for the times when I am at a loss for what is going on, I can have the user install this version and then give me their IP address and I can have a better way of seeing whats up. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing a really useful debugging tool. It's kind of funny how much flack you are getting for posting this, when I read the subject line, I knew it was intended only for development use.

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure! It's certainly been very _useful_ to me to have Telnet capabilities into an iOS app, and same for coworkers I introduced this feature to.

I think some people like to be all high and mighty about security issues and derive pleasure from pointing out (often adamantly) what they see as flaws while often these are expected and well understood side-effects, and in no way "real" security issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What useful thing does this provide that the XCode debugger doesn't?

<comment><USER7> It works remotely on customer's phones.

I mean, I get the utility, but it seems like a massive security hole.</comment></comment>


100-year-old negatives discovered in Antarctic (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/27/on-ice-100-year-old-negative-discovered-in-antarctic-ice <comment><USER2> Actual source: [http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/27/on- ice-100-y...](http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/12/27/on-ice-100-year- old-negative-discovered-in-antarctic-ice)

If you'd like to see the images as large as they are (warning: SWF): [http://www.nzaht.org/assets/gallery6/flash/slideshow.swf?r=8...](http://www.nzaht.org/assets/gallery6/flash/slideshow.swf?r=8279&xmlFileName=gallery_24&index=1&webroot=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nzaht.org%2F&playOnLoad=true)

<comment><USER3> Wow, what's with the awful low resolution scans? As public domain historical material, I thought they'd want to offer them at the best resolution possible.

<comment><USER4> I guess they were resized for the flash widget:

[http://www.nzaht.org/](http://www.nzaht.org/)

From the press release about the images:

 _Background to the conservation process

The photographs found in Captain Scott's expedition base at Cape Evans, Antarctica required specialist conservation treatment. The Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZ) engaged Photographic Conservator Mark Strange to undertake the painstaking task of separating, cleaning (including removing mould) and consolidating the cellulose nitrate image layers. Twenty-two separate sheets were revealed and sent to New Zealand Micrographic Services for scanning using a Lanovia pre-press scanner. The digital scans were converted to digital positives._

So it at least sounds like they would have captured most of the available detail.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I shouldn't have said scans. What I meant was why are they only serving these crappy low-resolution images to the public, rather than making the originals available. I hope this was inadvertent rather than deliberate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Uploaded all of the images in the highest quality to imgur: [http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8](http://imgur.com/a/zlGL8)

Also added descriptions that I found in [http://www.nzaht.org//content/plugins/gallery6/xml/gallery_2...](http://www.nzaht.org//content/plugins/gallery6/xml/gallery_24.xml?x=1402031857015)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, appreciated, can't believe they wrapped them in flash on primary site?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's it: I'm going to go find Douglas Mawson's camera! All joking put aside, it's a really amazing, but sad, story. However, it would appear that his camera and film are still out there. [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-mawson- trek/ro...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-mawson-trek/roberts- text)

</comment><comment><USER8> How many of our photos from today will be view able in 100 years? I worry we are entering into the start of a digital black hole as far as our history. We've done a wonderful job in ensuring that we can digitize everything, but not so good with reformatting it all as the march of technology moves on. Film and Silver prints, are quite durable comparatively.

<comment><USER9> Digital data is easy to copy around as long as you keep up with it, but people don't realize that most media will definitely not last 100 years stuck in a closet. Especially those CD backups you burned in 2005. You might have trouble getting even 10 years out of those. Even your hard drives will crap out sooner or later. Keeping data in a name-brand cloud service might be the best low- maintenance solution for now, as long as you move it if they ever go out of business. But what if the person with the password gets hit by a bus?

When I die, all my pictures and thoughts and work will be lost on my personal laptop. It isn't encrypted, but my family wouldn't know how to get past the OS password. The age of perusing the belongings of dead people is past, for better or worse.

And how about letters? We have tons of letters from famous people pre-2000, but now their thoughts and communications will be lost locked up on email servers unless either party goes out of their way to save them. Privacy is good, but losing data of historical value is unfortunate.

<comment><USER10> I actually put a lot of thought into these issues. [http://mrgris.com/blog/2013-03-27-survivorship-in-the- digita...](http://mrgris.com/blog/2013-03-27-survivorship-in-the-digital- age/). My solution is way too complex for a lay-person, though.

<comment><USER11> > My solution is way too complex for _practical use_ , though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amusing how modern the guy in the last image looks - demonstrates the (partly) cyclical nature of fashion.

<comment><USER11> I guess there are only so many ways to arrange a piece of cloth with some holes in it.

<comment><USER13> Also the beard. He'd look like a weirdo in the 80s or 90s, but fit in just fine right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of the photos from the ill-fated arctic balloon expedition in 1897 to the North Pole. Those negatives were found after 30 years and restorated in the 1930s.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e's_Arctic_Ba...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3%A9e's_Arctic_Balloon_Expedition_of_1897) .

</comment><comment><USER15> I definitely saw a bunch of these at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Tarlton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Tarlton) acquarium in Auckland back in January.

</comment><comment><USER16> Are there better quality images anywhere? On the Antartic Heritage Trust site it's just a crappy Flash slide show. Would be nice to see high res JPEGs.

<comment><USER2> In my comment ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855893)) I linked to the SWF file by itself, but it seems like even the images in that are low-res.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Aw darn, I read 'natives' at first. Photos turning out not nearly as exciting as I had expected..

</comment><comment><USER18> Old news: 100-Year-Old Negatives Discovered in Block of Ice in Antarctica

Posted by katie hosmer on December 30, 2013 at 10:00am

<comment><USER19> Your post would have been better if it read:

Old news:

Negatives Discovered in Block of Ice in Antarctica Posted by katie hosmer on December 30, 1913 at 10:00am

<comment><USER18> What I get down-voted because this was posted on HN 6 months ago and I was just letting everyone know?

Maybe I should start posting news stories that Steve Jobs has just passed away.

C'mon HN.

<comment><USER20> you could have linked the original and done us a service instead of just bitching.

That said your comment on it's own is not that out of line. However as a user with no prior karma (-4) you are not really adding to the conversation.

I would start with more constructive posts and comments and then feel free to post certain neutral ones like this later.

<comment><USER21> What does the karma have to do with the post content?

I agree about the link though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Objective-Smalltalk - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mpw/Objective-Smalltalk <comment><USER2> Are there any smalltalk fans out here that can point out to the unenlightened the "interesting" aspects of Smalltalk? It seems to have quite the following.

<comment><USER3> Pros: Smalltalk is a very simple object oriented language, dynamically typed and GCed, it has closures (used everywhere!). It has NO keywords at all, and a very simple syntax. Smalltalk is very readable. It also has amazing IDEs/debuggers. It's very easy to learn. And it was born in 1972, just like me!

Cons: aging technology with very little traction, no fast VM (compared to JVM), no multithreading...

I switched to Java in 1996 because the future of Smalltalk was cloudy. I'd switch back to Smalltalk if it could run with the same performance as Java.

It's a really amazing language.

<comment><USER4> _no fast VM (compared to JVM), no multithreading_

Back in 1996 Smalltalk VMs were still outperforming Java VMs on real workloads, in large part due to not having multithreading. (Makes GC simpler and faster.) Also, there were multithreaded Smalltalks around.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Java had no JIT in 1996... But it had corporate traction, and good marketing ("it's an internet technology!"). Nowadays, I choose the language I want to work with, but I don't switch back to Stk because of speed.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I got to play with VisualWorks at the university that time, but then Java took over the enterprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's next? "Functional lambda calculus"?

<comment><USER7> Creator here. Yes, the name is half joke, half serious. Gotta have some fun :-)

At one point I was going to call it just "Objective-", but that seemed like going a bit too far.

<comment><USER4> I would have called it Objective. That way, when the press asks, "What is your objective?" you just show them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> StepTalk is another Smalltalk-ObjectiveC legacy framework, originally meant for Smalltalk-like scripting of ObjectiveC apps/tools. It was built for GNUstep but worked on early versions of Cocoa as well: [https://github.com/stiivi/StepTalk](https://github.com/stiivi/StepTalk). It is no longer maintained, therefore it might need a little bit of refreshment.

It is light-weight SmallTalk interpreter on top of ObjectiveC objects. See the examples for better idea of what it does: [https://github.com/Stiivi/StepTalk/tree/master/Examples](https://github.com/Stiivi/StepTalk/tree/master/Examples)

<comment><USER7> Hi Stefan!

StepTalk was and is definitely a great addition, and I think the more we have of these the more likely it is that we will finally get to program in something better than we have now.

Maybe it's an idea whose time has finally come :-)

<comment><USER8> Thanks Marcel. Nice work with Objective Smalltalk too.

Irony is that at that time the Smalltalk people didn't see the advantages of frameworks like StepTalk. I got a few "Why don't you just use Smalltalk?" questions on ESUG conference in 2003 – on one hand they were not happy that Smalltalk use was a bit declining (or at least not thriving, compared to other languages/environments), but didn't wanted to see a compromise solution. Only the pure Smalltalk way was the proper way.

> Maybe it's an idea whose time has finally come :-)

... where web == one large distributed Smalltalk image? I'm all for that! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The given example for HOM is a bit unfair. From their docs:

       for ( NSView *aView in [[self view] subviews] ) {
          [aView setNeedsDisplay];
       }

They use this as an example to show that Objective-C is bad. However you can rewrite that with:

       [self.view.subviews makeObjectsPerformSelector:@selector(setNeedsDisplay)];

That being said: I think that Objective-C could move faster as a language. We have seen Apple to speed up the development of Objective-C during the last few years and I think that Apple will move even faster in the future.

<comment><USER7> Right, I used an example from real code rather than a made up example. The difference is that makeObjectsPerformSelector: doesn't handle non void returns, only handles limited argument numbers and types (and needs a separate version of the core method for each).

        #( 1 2 3 4 5 ) collect + 5

This also works with HOM, as does -ifResponds, -async etc.

<comment><USER9> Objective.st has a very clean syntax. But this can also be done with Objective-C:

      [[@[@1, @2, @3] valueForKeyPath:@"@sum.self"] integerValue] + 5

This can be improved:

      @implementation NSArray (Private)
      - (NSInteger)collect {
        return [[self valueForKeyPath:@"@sum.self"] integerValue];
      }
      @end

And then you can write:

      [[@[@1, @2, @3] collect] + 5;

I know: HOM is a more abstract/generic thing. If it was built in the language you could just use it as is without reinventing the wheel all the time... I just want to point out that Objective-C can be made look nice as well :)

<comment><USER7> Yes, I first implemented HOM in Objective-C, back in 1997 or so...

However, collect + 5 doesn't first sum and then add 5 to the sum, it distributes the +5 to every element, and any other message you care to send.

<comment><USER9> Omg are you marcel weiher?

How can I do you something good? Beer? Candy? :) Back in the days I read your paper and obviously I forgot what "collect" means...

If you are Marcel then you are one of my heros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a long time Smalltalk lover, I can only UP this project ! I'll have no use for it immediately, but it's good to know where it can be found.

</comment><comment><USER10> F-Script is another project that brings Smalltalk syntax (with extensions) to OS X. It has active forks and some neat array processing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Project Etoile offers something similar, Pragmatic Smalltalk

[http://etoileos.com/etoile/features/languagekit/](http://etoileos.com/etoile/features/languagekit/)

<comment><USER8> Etoile is great project with many interesting concepts. I always wished that Apple would somehow get inspired by the LanguageKit. I guess that AppleScript was good enough...

I miss the talks of pre-Etoile days on #gnustep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting.

I had a quick look, but I don't see any mention about memory management. Because it must have _fully deterministic realtime aware architecture_ to replace or complement Objective-C, and memory management strategy is one of the most important stuff. If it's based on typical (non-deterministic) GC, then it won't be that much interesting anymore.

Also, I think using `<-` instead of `:=` would be better for a new Smalltalk dialect. With proper editor support, the arrow sign will look far better then colon-equal sign.

<comment><USER7> " _deterministic_ [..] architecture"

Yes, important point and one of the fundamental design consideration.

Objective-Smalltalk uses the underlying ObjC runtime, so reference counting it is. No GC, unless you run it on Apple's deprecated GC or GNUStep with Boehm. Your choice.

The "<-" character pair is actually supported, Unicode left arrow would also be nice. As a matter of fact, assignment is not a built-in operator as with Smalltalk, but a family of dataflow connectors that includes constraints.

The right-arrow "->" is also supported for architectural connection, such as when connecting the IN and OUT ports of a flow-based system or up-/downstream composite scheme handlers:

       (ref:file:{env:HOME}/Sites -> (MPWCopyOnWriteScheme memoryCache) -> (MPWSchemeHttpServer serverOnPort:8081)) start:nil.

This creates a web-server with the "Sites" directory of your home directory, via an in-memory cache.

<comment><USER11> Oh it's getting even more interesting!

Do you have any plan to add hygienic macro and coroutines? AFAIK, coroutines were always supported in traditional Smalltalk, but if you're based on objc runtime, it may not possible. So I am asking this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As an iOS programmer and long time Objective-C fan, I like the direction it is going. How is the memory management done? Since ARC is basically done by the compiler I wonder if that can be leveraged?

<comment><USER7> Yes, either ARC or something comparable is planned. Alas, significant parts of ARC are implemented in the ObjC frontend clang rather than the LLVM backend, so that will be a bit of work.

Fortunately, there are other ways of achieving largely the same effect, and in the end it's just ASMOP.

<comment><USER12> ASMOP - isn't that the solution to everything ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So Objective-C with an unpolluted syntax. That could be nice!

<comment><USER4> _So Objective-C with an unpolluted syntax._

Otherwise known as Smalltalk.

<comment><USER14> But then you give up the memory safety brought by C!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> what makes me skeptical is this "Generic raw pointers are not supported". The goal of C type languages are to offer performance not ease of use. So if that means loss of performance kinda defends the purpose. And if I want ease of use I rather use Pharo . But I support the effort, and I am certainly very interested to see what will come out of this :)

<comment><USER5> The thing is that it is possible to have both, like the Pascal branch of languages proves.

Or if Apple had kept investing into Dylan, for example.

<comment><USER16> > The thing is that it is possible to have both, like the Pascal branch of > languages proves.

Do you recommend any particular languages for this purpose, nowadays?

<comment><USER5> It is a bit hard to recommend any besides Ada.

Thanks to Ada Core, the issue with Ada compilers costing a small fortune is no nonlonger true. Given its support for Ada compiler in GCC.

At least in Europe, Ada seems to be having an increase in usage, specially in areas where human lifes are at risk. I don't have a real measure for that, just by watching how Ada presence has been growing at FOSDEM.

For remaining Modula, Oberon and Pascal dialects, there is no industry support any longer, except a few niche places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fantastic! The only question is, will Apple be able to evolve Objective-C faster than this can be made into a production ready tool?

<comment><USER7> Alas, Apple can't really evolve Objective-C in the direction of simplicity at this point due to backwards compatibility concerns, and the complexity of (a) 2 language syntaxes and (b) the history of some unfortunate decisions leaves little room in the syntax for some of the more interesting enhancements.

I did not take this step lightly, being an old Objective-C hacker myself (did my own implementation on an Amiga with Aztec C in 1987...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. Does this support/run on/with alternative platforms like gnustep, or does it require os x for development and only target ios/osx? Would it be feasible to port?

</comment><comment><USER19> See the last time this was discussed on Hacker News: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6917740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6917740)

<comment><USER20> This is pretty unhelpful as this (your) submission wasn't discussed at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it dynamic language like Smalltalk-80?</comment>


Political correctness hits new high: Huck Finn to be bowdlerized in new edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/05/does-one-word-change-huckleberry-finn

<comment><USER2> _You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it, the editors may rewrite it._

Editors, please restore the original title. This one has gratuitous editorial spin. In the very first paragraph of the OP, the explanation for the change is given that it makes it easier for students to understand and absorb the book, which is a very different thing than changing the book just to avoid offending people.

I don't agree with the rationale, but we should not editorialize the title to the point of misrepresenting the content of the OP and by introducing an emotionally loaded term.

p.s. The other comments I've seen so far are all commenting on the artificial title, not the content of the post itself. Isn't that why we don't want to editorialize titles?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think the term "political correctness" or the word "bowdlerize" is the gratuitous editorial spin? If it's the latter you're wrong, this is _exactly_ what bowdlerization means. In fact I mistakenly used "censored" at first, than I changed the title. If you read the discussion here (and elsewhere), you'll see that the reason Alan Gribben made the change is mainly that he saw people were uncomfortable in his public readings in Alabama. His audience understood and absorbed the book alright, they just found this word objectionable.

However, if you take issue with my labeling this as PC, this might be debatable. On the one hand you have sensibilities, etc, on the other respect for an author's text. If you read Paul Butler's (in my opinion quite flawed) comments in the discussion, you'll see that he doesn't actually object to the usage of the work "nigger", he just doesn't like it when it is appropriated by people other than African-Americans. This is a common approach, which I tend to agree _for now_. To try to use the current situation to change Twains's work is indefensible.

<comment><USER2> The OP has a title, "Does One Word Change 'Huckleberry Finn'?" This title completely changes the tone of the original title.

Titles matter, they establish a direction and context for what is to follow. Retitling something on HN has even greater effect; Some people (like myself) may be very interested in the literary impact of a single word change but may be tired of rehashing the same social debates over again. I might have skipped this post entiurely were it not for my surprise that the times would use a title like this.

Other people might be very interested in your title but be disappointed that the content doesn't match the title very well. Your title could apply to any of a few dozen recent posts in the news about this bowdlerizing.

My suggestion is that it would have been better to post the original title and include a comment with your feelings.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. I am feeling very strongly about this, so, granted, the title may have had a bit more impact than warranted. However, I disagree with you in the following points:

1) You don't have to use the same title as the news topic. I don't understand your sprise that NYT would use such a title. The correct usage is to use quotation marks if the title is used verbatim.

2) The main point of the OP is not to delve into literary theory on the relationship between the "text" and the novel, etc., which is of academic interest (though I find that very interesting as well, having worked on stylometry for my thesis). The issue is exactly to "rehash the same social debates over again," you may be tired of these, and that's OK; but evidently they are utmost significance to a lot of non-academician people (have a look at user comments in the debate)

3) I still don't quite see why the "content doesn't match the title very well", since you haven't made it very clear which part of the title you found misleading. The word "bowdlerize" comes up in most of the comment pieces and in user comments, too, so this is _clearly_ bowdlerization.

My intent is not to continue pointless back&forth but to understand the (potential) problem.

<comment><USER2> Well, perhaps you can explain why you changed the title. What did you find unsatisfactory about it? Was it that you wanted to attract more clicks? Did you want to express a personal opinion? Did you think it did a poor job of introducing the text?

<comment><AUTHOR> I sense an unwarranted hostility in your comments, which puzzle me.

There's no rule that by default story titles have be used verbatim, only that they should not be changed gratuitously. In fact, if you look at past submissions to HN, you see that many times the title was changed by the submitter. I see no problem in having titles reflect personal opinion; of course, this should not be overdone.

NYT, being a newspaper has to impose limits on their titles, so as to serve the common denominator. when posting to HN, I'm not bound by the same rules as NYT. In this particular case NYT's title is too weak, as evidenced by the commentators, i.e. quite everyone agrees this is bowdlerizing Twain's text.

P.S. Thinking of hand crafting submission titles to attract more clicks, i.e. karma whoring, is laughable, I'm too old to waste my precious time on such tricks :-)

<comment><USER2> I'm going to let you go now. If you're feeling hostility, I suggest that the very best thing is to just walk away and forget about it. It's a title. Of a submission. To a rather ephemeral web site. There is absolutely zero emotional investment on my part. I have certain opinions about what is or isn't positive for HN the site, but at no time would I ever consider them more important than your personal enjoyment and security.

<comment><AUTHOR> :-) I think you are taking things a bit too seriously. What I meant was your comments (i.e. your immediate call for the editors to change the title, rather than asking the submitter to do it, and the others) seem to address the whole title change issue "from the height of an unwritten book". You're right, when this impedance mismatch occurs in newsgroups it's best to let it go.

That being said, I found our small discussion less than satisfactory. Obviously you have been on HN much longer than I am (more than three times as long), so I respect your intuition about HN etiquette. However, in this case you seemed to have certain assumptions about my intentions (more clicks, etc.) to editorialize the title and you never discussed why you think the new title is so misleading for the story.

As for the idea of bowdlerizing Twain, the idea is generating such a backlash (e.g. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/l07twain.html>, Google returns 25K hits from past month for "twain bowdlerize") that I think they are going to backpedal on this one. I hope.

<comment><USER2> I aso hope that they backpedal, and do so swiftly. For a very long time I loved a children's librarian from Bermuda. She taught me a great deal about liberty and censorship. She strongly believed that some books should not be carried in a children's library. She also strongly believed that books should not be revised: Either they were fit for the library or not.

I haven't asked her, but I suspect that she is fine with the original, and if she wasn't, she wouldn't be fine with the revision either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fabulous. I sure hope I'll soon be able to get versions of all my favourite hip-hop records with the word "nigger" similarly replaced, because it really spoils my enjoyment of the music.

</comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't censorship just help retain the derogatory aura, (for some) of a word which in itself merely comes from the latin word for black?

<comment><USER2> I hope you appreciate that the expression "Nigger merely comes from the latin word for black" is as factually true as the expression "Cocksucker merely describes a person as one who performs an act many people find mutually pleasant."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yet somehow we don't have editors replacing the word "cocksucker" with, say, "sexual performer".

Non-US readers may not fully appreciate the stigma associated with the word "nigger". It has complex usage rules, incomparable to other racially derogatory words such as "goon" or "chink" (I don't think that anyone really uses "injun" anymore).

I think Mark Bauerlein's comment is sport on, to a student in his class who got offended by the word he said:

"Listen, you're in college now, and that's going to put pressure on you. In many courses you'll have to face some awful facts of history, and to handle them well you can't let them offend you so much."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> " _Political correctness hits new high_ ". Surely you meant new _low_?

<comment><AUTHOR> :-) Interesting. In the sense that PC is increasing, this is a new high, but of, course it's a new low for our institutions.

What I find interesting is that there's a small group of words in English that are their own antonyms, e.g. sanction, oversight, and cleave (this is may favorite). Also fun are phrases that have come to mean the exact opposite over the centuries, e.g. "I DOUBT some foul play", "[I'll kill anyone] who LETS me [pass]" from _Hamlet_.

<comment><USER6> "Awful and artificial".</comment></comment></comment>


Has SVGWeb really brought SVG to IE? - <AUTHOR> For many years, anyone who used SVG scoffed at IE's lack of support. Last year, Google announced a project to bring SVG to IE6,7,8 and many looked forward to the promises. But a year later, svg still lacks basic support for internal and external CSS. Nonfunctional within iframes. Still riddled with enigmatic hacks which only fail in certain contexts.<p>If you have had any measure of success with svgweb please post. Frustrations also welcome. <comment><USER2> Don't politicize your titles. Flagged. Review the HN Guidelines for further info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies, revised title.

<comment><USER2> Unflagged and upvoted, thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you use a a tool to organize your startup? - <AUTHOR> Do you use a tool/app/document/etc. to organize the process of validating your idea, estimating market size, confirming product/market fit, etc.? If so, what? How satisfied are you with it?<p>If not, why not? <comment><USER2> It used to be possible to do this with Google Trends, but they removed the number of searches and the y-axis is along the lines of 100% popularity now.

Otherwise I just compare to competitor products to see if the market is sizeable. I've done analysis before with a cofounder and things like keyword popularity also helps, but in the end it doesn't really do knowing that there's a huge market for "jobs for teens" sites unless you want to make a product for that.</comment>


Ask HN: Adding lots of initial content to a user-generated-content website - <AUTHOR>

My website is a one-man operation, and, since it relies on having an initial critical mass of content for it to be useful and "sticky" for visitors, I'm wondering if you guys know of established, effective, ways to add a lot of content.
For example, can you get a bunch of college students and pay them to generate content for your website?
Are there established channels for doing so, or do I have to find these people myself?
Any other ideas?
(BTW, if there is no website offering this sort of service, maybe there is a business model there, since I can see lots of startups needing this) <comment><USER2> Amazon Mechanical Turk. Easy to setup and fairly cheap. You can have people do anything you want. I've seen tasks like take a picture of yourself holding up a sign that says "I love <some website>.com" or to write a review of a product on a website.

You can also give offer to give out 'bonuses' to motivate people to generate really good content.

<comment><USER3> Seconded, but beware of filling up a site with a tide of poorly-written crap, a la 'I love hackernews.com because he hunts bugs and doesn't afraid of anything on hackernews.com!'

It would help if we knew what the site was or what sort of content it needed. Like a lot of other HN readers, I'm usually happy to throw in 30 or 60 minutes of effort on adding to something that looks like it will be useful once it reaches critical mass.

<comment><AUTHOR> The site is <http://soundkey.com>, and it aims to be something like flickr for sounds. So, the content it needs is audio (recorded directly on the website, or uploaded by the user) for any sound that the user feels they want to share.

It could be pronunciation of names, places, difficult words, etc, but it also can be just about any sound you think is interesting or want to share with others (since the website gives you a unique "soundkey" that you can post on facebook, twitter, etc.

<comment><USER2> Since the users can record the sound on your site I think this is a good candidate for using mechanical turk. You can review the work users submit and accept (thus paying them) or reject (deny them pay). Obviously if you deny a lot of people, you will have a reputation of not paying people, but I think if you give people very clear guidelines and review what people submit it will work.

You can also add filters like only allow people with approval ratings of greater than 90% to try and ensure you get good workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've used contests to generate content. Give some type of reward for participation, randomly selecting X winners. As long as you find the right balance between potential prize and work required you'll get the desired effect. If your site has any type of rating system for the content, those ratings could be used as a multiple for contest entries. Just try to make sure people aren't gaming the system to increase their own ratings.

With that said, in my experience the problem is that the vast majority of people that visit for the contest will not visit for the content. That will be your next challenge.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you reading this week? - <AUTHOR> With which book are you making your week meaningful? <comment><USER2> I'm always reading multiple books at any given time, but earlier today I spent a modest amount of time with _Mastery_ by Robert Greene.

Haven't been reading much the past week or two since I've been heads down studying to take the AWS Certified Solution Architect exam soon. Once that's behind me, I'll do more reading again... I want to pick up and finish _Think DSP_ by Alan Downey, and make some progress in _Readings in Cognitive Science_. I also need to finish _Foundation 's Edge_ by Asimov.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Metaphors we live by" is one I've just started reading, very interesting, here's a review by Peter Norvig [https://norvig.com/mwlb.html](https://norvig.com/mwlb.html)</comment>


Ask HN: I got Raspberry Pi. Now what can I do with it? - <AUTHOR>

My Raspberry Pi arrived yesterday. I tested out the Raspbian and Archlinux on it and it's pretty cool. So what all can/should I do with it now? <comment><USER2> There's a new book by Pragmatic (I personally like many of their books), it might be helpful.

<http://pragprog.com/book/msraspi/raspberry-pi> "Raspberry Pi: A Quick-Start Guide gives you everything you need to get the Raspberry Pi up and running and doing cool stuff." - their website.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll use mine to display stats and metrics on a tv in the office, but that's pretty boring.

Probably the most cost-effective way to do so however.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been wondering the same thing. Best idea so far is to run a buildbot on it, but that seems like a waste of its abilities.</comment>