Decentraleyes: A Firefox addon to prevent tracking via free CDN providers - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ <comment><USER2> I read over a bit of the source. It uses a hard coded list of CDNs and files. So it does nothing unless the the CDN and file is on this list: [https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes/blob/master/lib/ma...](https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes/blob/master/lib/mappings.js)

Edit: someone asked how this works..

1) it looks up the resource in the mapping (linked above) (matching the cdn and file path).

2) if found, it replaces it with the copy it includes: [https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes/tree/master/data/r...](https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes/tree/master/data/resources)

So for those files, requests are never made to the CDN.

If the website uses a different CDN; a lib not recognized; or a version not recognized.. then the request is still made.

<comment><USER3> I thought that CDN should send proper caching headers and browser will save cached version after first request and never hit CDN again.

<comment><USER4> still need to check if file is changed, hence 304 http status code.

<comment> mike-cardwell If the server sends an "Expires" header in the response, then the client doesn't even need to do that check. With an expires header, the server has effectively told the client that the data wont change until at least a particular date, and so the client honours that information.

Last-Modified/If-Modified-Since is an optimisation trick which exists for the situation where the person running the website hasn't bothered to explicitly define expiry periods for content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is brilliant, not only for privacy but for speed. Seeing this makes me wonder why I didn't build this yet. I've often thought that Javascript loading tags could include a hash of the desired resource and your browser can fetch them once only for a thousand page loads on a thousand websites. This is not that, but it is extra local caching and on top of that it stops most tracking by CDNs. Guess I always thought of it as something my browser should have instead of an addon.

<comment><USER6> IPFS does this by design. Everything is content-addressed so you immediately know if you've seen the resource before. This also enables chunk-level deduplication.

If course the P2P nature of the project means other people can find out exactly which of those resources you're looking at...

<comment><USER7> Only your direct peers can, and they can't tell if you got the content to increase your fitness score or because you wanted the asset for yourself. Peers are incentivized to pull as many assets as they can (which prevents torrent death) in order to build reputation.

<comment><USER8> I think this is overly optimistic; as soon as you pull down a rare asset you have leaked information, since a peer that's farming would presumably work down the list of assets ranked by some measure of popularity, and would be unlikely to bother collecting obscure content.

This sort of system helps against some sorts of snooping, but certainly not nation-state adversaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks good. I've added it to my ever growing list of privacy extensions:

      * Privacy Badger
      * Disconnect
      * CanvasBlocker

Can anyone recommend any more?

<comment><USER10> I personally use this triple combo :

HTTPS Everywhere [https://www.eff.org/https- everywhere](https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere)

uBlock Origin : [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

uMatrix : [https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix)

I have used Noscript, AdBlockPlus and Ghostery before but found they where lacking functionality, flexibility and performance. I used Privacy Badger too but if I remember well, it is based on the same engine as ABP and suffers for the same performance problems.

<comment><USER11> Ditto except _uMatrix_

What exactly does it do?

<comment><USER12> uMatrix provides a tabular view sorted by host featuring toggleable category columns e.g. Dis/Allow iframe, script etc. It's granular client side resource whitelisting.

<comment><USER6> uBlock Origin does that too, just need to turn on Advanced Mode via options.

<comment><USER13> uMatrix offers more granularity. You can choose exactly what each third-party site can do in terms of cookies, CSS, images, plugins, javascript, XHR(!), frames and media (audio, video, pdf, etc).

After years of using uMatrix (formerly HTTP Switchboard), many sites "just works" wrt Youtube, Vimeo and similar even without first-party javascript enabled.

I've considered sharing parts of my global ruleset so others can just copy- paste the sections/sites they want to whitelist without having to discover what's required themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could someone please explain what this does in a clear step-by-step way please?

Here, I'll explain what I _think_ it does so you can at least correct what I'm missing:

(1) User visits web site example.com and needs to get file foo.jpg from example.com.

(2) foo.jpg is available at some content delivery network, let's say Akamai.

(3) User's browser gets foo.jpg from Akamai.

(4) Akamai now knows the user's IP address, the Referer (example.com), and the user agent info (browser version, OS version, etc.)

So what does the Decentraleyes add-on do? I _think_ it does the following:

First, this add-on apparently cuts out the Referer when the browser asks for foo.jpg, but Akamai would still get the IP address (and the user agent info unless the user is disguising that). With the IP address you've been tracked, so does this really help?

Second, this add-on apparently gives you a local copy of foo.jpg if it exists (i.e., a copy of foo.jpg already cached on your own computer). Well, the first copy of foo.jpg had to have come from somewhere (either example.com or Akamai), so you've already been tracked.

NOTE: I'm not criticizing the add-on at all! I'm just trying to understand it.

<comment><USER15> It's simpler than you think.

The extension has common files (jquery etc) requested included with it, and list of CDN curls that return those files. Every time browser makes request to those urls, the extension serves the local file back.

How does that help? It speeds up browsing, since you have local version of the requested file. It also increases privacy. For example many sites are lazy and use for example google cdn for let say jQuery. Now when you visit the site, google still can track you, because you make request to them.

The only weakness with this approach is that it only works for urls known to the author. Request to unknown CDN or even known CAN, but a new file will still be made (AFAIR there is an option to block unknown files on known CDN, but that will often break many websites)

<comment><USER16> I thought one of the benefits of using something like Google CDN to serve jQuery was _meant_ to be that a person's browser was much more likely to have that in their cache than mylittlewebsite.com?

<comment><USER17> That's true, but you don't really have to let Google know which sites you visit in order to pull the jQuery library. This extension provides the files from a local cache so that you avoid the requests to a great extent and thus minimize any tracking. If mylittlewebsite.com and yourlittlewebsite.com both use Google CDN for jQuery, Google would know that you visited these two sites. With this extension, there's lesser chances of Google or another CDN getting all instances of the jQuery download requests (unless each site is using a different newer version of jQuery that's not locally cached yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd add Google Fonts to the list. It's a massive privacy leak as well.

<comment><USER19> The method this extension uses would require one to download the ~1GB font archive upon installation for that to work, since it installs all the blocked libraries in the extension itself. Perhaps it could block the 100 or so most commonly used google fonts and serve those...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The problem this solves is even worse than it sounds - there's no reason why the NSA couldn't force a CDN to silently concatenate their own analytics onto a site's JQuery. Is there a good way of signing your assets?

<comment><USER21> There is, and it's called Sub-resource integrity: [http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/](http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/)

MaxCDN's Bootstrap CDN implements it for example: <link href="[https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstra...](https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css") rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha256-7s5uDGW3AHqw6xtJmNNtr+OBRJUlgkNJEo78P4b0yRw= sha512-nNo+yCHEyn0smMxSswnf/OnX6/KwJuZTlNZBjauKhTK0c+zT+q5JOCx0UFhXQ6rJR9jg6Es8gPuD2uZcYDLqSw==" crossorigin="anonymous">

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can experienced with the code speak to how this is a 5MB addon? That smells like an order of magnitude more code than would be needed to block a fairly simple behaviour on fewer than 200 predefined URLs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool plugin, but it's quiet ironic that their test utility uses (and needs) jQuery hosted by Google to work.

Checkout the source here: [https://decentraleyes.org/test/](https://decentraleyes.org/test/)

It would be much better to serve jQuery from the decentraleyes.org domain and run the test with that.

tl;dr: It needs jQuery from Google to test if jQuery from Google can be loaded via $.ajax.

</comment><comment><USER24> A version of Firefox with the modifications in the tor firefox bundle minus the tor network would be splendid. They fix privacy and solve fingerprinting as well. On top of that you don't have to deal with a website's decision to use certain fonts anymore. Is this available somewhere as a patchset/branch for mozilla-release.hg?

</comment><comment><USER25> Does this work on localhost? Apart from the increased privacy, it sounds like this would also improve offline web development. I could be offline, and still have all the CDNJS libraries on the page load correctly.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does Privacy Badger cover these CDNs as well?

</comment><comment><USER27> So does this cache files on your local machine that are often served via CDN?

Doesn't the browser do that automatically for you?

<comment><AUTHOR> headers are still sent with referer etc information every time the resource is loaded to check for freshness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there something similar but for Chrome?

<comment><USER29> Do you have Chrome and still care about privacy ? Or maybe you are asking that for the speed enhancement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Isn't it ironic that this page itself has a google.com dependency as shown by uBlock :D

<comment><USER31> well it's the mozilla addons site - they couldn't really control that

<comment><USER30> I know, it was much more ironic when a page by mozilla which was talking about online tracking and privacy had a google tracker :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why not just strip the referer header when getting static resources from the CDNs?

<comment><USER33> You'd have to block IP address, and er...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How does it know where the local files would be?

</comment><comment><USER35> Looks interesting. Will try and post reviews.

</comment><comment><USER36> Just use Tor. Anything that doesn't function like Tor (or can guarantee such security properties) isn't worth your time.

<comment><USER37> How does Tor prevent cookie-based tracking?

<comment><USER36> The Tor Browser bundle clears cookies on exit. There are some plugins you can add to clear them on tab close too. As for something like CDN cookies, I'm actually not sure. But if you have cookies that are set by the CDN for their domain, then it's not trivial to link the loading page (assuming Referrer headers are stripped) to the resource being loaded because TBB uses different Tor circuits for different websites.

<comment><USER38> I think running _any_ addons or plugins within Tor Browser is a bad idea. Even if it's from a "respected" source, the risk of it somehow becoming compromised is not worth it. IIRC the bundle even advises you that addons may be risky. Considering that the purpose of Tor is to remain anonymous, one should keep in mind that _any_ addon could de-anonymize you.

<comment><USER39> > IIRC the bundle even advises you that addons may be risky.

The reason for this is that by installing various non-default addons, you're actually making your browser more unique. As a consequence, you're making it easier to link all of your Tor activity back to a single person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great. I add it. I wonder whether a fully free service is trustable or not.

Question: where do you get your info from? I'm trying to gather twitter lists into this repo to know the best sources of info. Please collaborate: [https://github.com/davidpelayo/twitter-tech- lists](https://github.com/davidpelayo/twitter-tech-lists)</comment>


Our Reaction to the FTC Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/our-reaction-to-the-ftc-lawsuit.htm

<comment><USER2> It's much too early to be certain of anything in the matter, but that T-Mobile is posting verifiable claims on their website seems like a good sign.

I hope you're right, Legere (CEO).</comment>


Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 12 to be able to render CGI level grahpics - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoftproductreviews.com/xbox/microsofts-upcoming-directx-12-said-able-render-cgi-level-grahpics-real-time/

<comment><USER2> Seems there's nothing specific in the article about which which changes to DX are supposed to enable CGI quality, or how. Is it more polys/sec for smoother models and more geometry? Maybe a more efficient shared memory architecture for GI (I'm speculating. Maybe dreaming)? We're always being promised cinema quality in games, and while we're really not all that far off from it already, we're still quite a bit behind in lighting/rendering.

<comment><USER3> And not just rendering. Animation is the biggest issue. You don't get Hollywood quality animation out of nothing. DX12 is going to provide some new features but calling it "as good as CGI" (i.e. movie-quality CGI) is just dreaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> CGI = Computer-generated Imagery

Now that's what I call a tautology :)

"Feature film quality" is probably what the author was after.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please change the link to the original article, or simply flag it to hell:

[http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/459838/DirectX_12_vs_...](http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/459838/DirectX_12_vs_DirectX_11)

Edit: Mind, even the original article is nonsensical as hell.</comment>


A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/05/a-group-is-its-own-worst-enemy.html

<comment><USER2> I'm curious: is there any site where:

1) logged in users can vote for what they like, both up and down. A profile is built identifying other users who vote like you, and so your vote influences the post prominence for those others more than for other users who have different voting patterns

2) anonymous users get post prominence based on a smattering of different group votes

Its a bit like movie recommendations. In this way, trolls will quickly be grouped with other trolls and those who consistently vote up articles they like will see post prominence from like-minded devotees, and a single board can have a wide range of subjects that end up not needing categorization because they are self-organising.

(Would this work for, say, HN?)

<comment><USER3> I think (1) roughly describes HubSki, but that's going from descriptions I've heard rather than personal experience.

<comment><USER4> It's not too far off. On Hubski, the content you see is based on who you follow (people and/or tags). Importantly, you don't just get the posts of the people you follow, but the posts they share with you. (you might be interested in following someone that doesn't post at all, if they find and share quality posts). Likewise, posts you share go to your followers. -You can share and unshare.

My thinking on Hubski has been guided by the idea that groups should form and dissolve as people wish, and that Hubski become a multitude of overlapping and ever-changing groups. As user following-relationships are color-coded (<http://hubski.com/about>), you tend to build a familiarity with a number of people that are connected with you this way.

IMO it's not just content that should be the result of choice, but also how familiar you want to get with members of the community. I'm currently doing more work to this end.

In a nutshell, I feel effort is best spent enabling users to build and break boundaries and groups as they are wont to. -It's not as important that you behave as I would like you to, if I can easily avoid you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case anyone is interested I've submitted the original paper with this title here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3003574>

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder about the implications of this WRT free speech in general. While ostensibly, free speech is a pillar democratic societies, not all forms of expression are actually allowed (think: porn or public nudity).

This implies that free speech is less about the content, but about the freedom to assemble and exchange information. That is, freedom manifests itself in self-selected groups of peers, who can then moderate the content of their communities.

"Free speech" is not a guarantee for a platform for any particular message, but rather a promise (by political powers) not to suppress free private exchanges of information; while public spaces (streets, squares, airwaves) may still be moderated.

<comment><USER7> With respect to free speech and, in general, freedoms within a group, it's important to realize we're dealing with two boundaries. The first is the rules the group agrees on that are enforced. The second are your own personal boundaries that you choose.

I think the tendency is to make the enforced rules light; we like to tip the balance in the favor of more freedom as much as possible. That said, this works best if individuals make an effort to be genuinely concerned about the interests of others in the group and therefore draw much more conservative boundaries around their own behavior.

In other words, groups need lots of social restrictions on behavior to work well, but it works best when each individual has a lot of room to decide what those boundaries are. Only the egregiously bad behavior is formally addressed as a group.

Sometimes people don't realize there are two boundaries going on and rationalize rude behavior under the umbrella of freedom or free speech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kuro5hin - brings back memories. Rusty released the source code as Scoop and I hacked on its Perl for a while.

Scoop was the original code base for The Daily Kos if I remember rightly. I took a swatch at the sources but no signs, its probably been boiled down to bones now.</comment>


Cool Git Tutorial : this time from github - <AUTHOR> http://try.github.com

<comment><USER2> It doesn't work for me..</comment>


Ask HN: How you manage multiple learning projects? - <AUTHOR> Hello,<p>I am learning multiple skills. I need to manage and keep going. How do you manage? <comment><USER2> Previous discussions that might help you. There are some gems there.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13610668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13610668)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14637859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14637859)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15629309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15629309)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure what you mean. Are they things you don't want to do? It sounds like it. More info please if you want some answers.

Personally, I'm learning multiple skills, I'm doing all of them because they're exactly what I want to do. Trying to be too rational about stuff has never worked for me; I mean, I don't think making a timetable like school and doing each activity for a set time would work for me. I do whichever I feel like at the time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hobby learning is different from professional learning. For hobby learning the projects can span over several years or more. It is supposed to pleasurable, there are no deadlines, and the topics can be very distant from what one already knows.

For professional learning, it is a bit different.</comment>


The Trade of the Century: When George Soros Broke the British Pound - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/the-trade-of-the-century-when-george-soros-broke/ <comment><USER2> Politicians always like to blame speculators when their attempts to fight the market inevitably end in failure, and this instance is no different. Soros didn't "break the GBP," it was already broken and the British government's guarantee to prop it up was never sustainable in the first place.

Someone was going to a lot of make money when the British government's scheme unraveled. Soros just happened to make a lot more than anyone else. Reminds me of a good Rhett Butler quote: "Opportunists have always been held in disrepute. Especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn't take them."

<comment><USER3> You do realize that most people do not take the same opportunities because they consider them ethically and morally disgusting? That maybe we're not just a bunch of fools floundering around bumping into just enough money to survive?

I'm always amazed how opportunists think they are the only ones who thought of their schemes.

<comment><USER4> What was morally or ethically disgusting about Soros profiting greatly at the expense of the British Government?

Do you think it's morally or ethically wrong that you paid $3 for a hamburger that McDonald's only paid $2 to produce?

Opportunities and tradeoffs exist all around us. It's simply how our world works.

<comment><USER5> The thing about McDonals, a company making profits in a consensual trade is a total non-sequitur.

What I assume is disgusting is that the British Government's money actually belong to British taxpayers, who contributed it in the first place. Those taxpayers have reasonable expectations that this money will be used to indirectly benefit them or for the good of the British people at large, and not end up squandered.

Now other people correctly pointed out that the pound would have devaluated with or without Soros, so I don't think his actions where all that unethical. But as it happened so suddenly instead of the usual drawn-out game of rumors, some politicians clearly felt the burn.

<comment><USER6> It WAS a consensual trade between the British government and Soros, in effect.... the gov could have at any time earlier in the process stopped buying obviously over priced pounds, but they didn't.... yes, the gov was spending tax payers money in doing those deals, but the tax payers had selected John Major, and he was quite clear on his position in terms of monetary policy.

<comment><USER5> Yes it was, but that's nitpicking. I think you get my point: buying burgers and trying to manipulate the market are two rather different separate things.

<comment><USER7> But who was trying to manipulate the market? Soros? Well, yes, he was. The British government? They also were.

Why do you find one morally repugnant and not the other?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting that the loss to the Bank of England is attributed almost entirely to Soros. If you accept that the fixed rate was unsustainable then even without Soros the Bank of England would have been forced to defend an untenable position, and eventually would have lost enough to give up. It's reasonable to assume that the acceptable losses for the Bank of England would have been similar whether they were sustained in one day or over the period of weeks or months.

Soros' brilliance was to see the inevitable and take almost the entire opportunity for himself.

<comment><USER9> The big question is whether the Bank of England would have sold so much GBP if this was allowed to happen gradually rather than overnight. The real problem is still political incompetence, but there's no guarantee that the losses of the British taxpayers would have been equally large if Soros's fund had not made such a spectacular short which sparked a political pissing match.

<comment><USER8> Definitely. It's plausible that without Soros the losses would have been much smaller. On the other hand, it is possible that a slower burn would have enabled political inaction and therefore more losses!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain to me what the effects of China's artificial devaluation of the yuan vs the dollar are? I understand that they are doing this to make themselves more competitive as an export economy, but can they really keep it up? I mean, to maintain this valuation, they have to constantly sell yuan and buy dollars, but they can't do that forever, right?

So when the yuan finally increases in value, will the dollar's value crash?

<comment><USER11> Maybe the dollar's value will crash relative to the Yuan. If you make a bet like George Soros that the Yuan is going to rise in value, what would that bet look like?

One of the problems with the bet is that you are betting in the opposite direction from Soros. China can just print more Yuan, and suddenly Yuan decrease in value. Add to this the ridiculous levels of pointless internal investments, seemingly done to inflate China's GDP. And finally, there are severe problems with Chinese equity markets that make it scary to bet on Yuan against USD.

I think at some point in the future, China will stop having an export economy, because advances in manufacturing technology and automation will obviate the need for cheap labor. And at some other point, China will start investing sensibly in internal matters. I have no idea how to translate this into USD or CNY, but if I were in China, I would want the transition to happen gradually. A gradual transition avoids destroying the manufacturing sector overnight.

<comment><USER12> I don't know if this is related directly, but seeing as Soros is in on the largest gold mining company in the world and other gold companies related etf's[0], doesn't that speak somewhat to the type of bet he's making in this landscape?

[0]: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/hedgefunds- filings...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/15/hedgefunds-filings-gold- idUSL1N0O127W20140515)

<comment><USER13> Note that this follows a massive reduction of Soros' gold investments last year: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-19/gold-bear-bets- reac...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-19/gold-bear-bets-reach-record- as-soros-cuts-holdings-commodities.html)

Looks like he's simply playing the markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bank of England thought they could achieve the Impossible Trinity [1] and failed:

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity)

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how much money soros fans lost when they tried to do the same in the previous years, trying to speculate on the end of the euro.

I love the paragraph saying "there was no way the sterling would go up". Those are really the kind of reasonning you can do 20 years later. You never know that there really "is no chance".

<comment><USER16> I personally lost a little over 9 months salary. The missus was not pleased :-)

To be honest, the entire gambit rested on the results of the Greek election [1]. If Tsiparis (Syriza) had of won then everyone who shorted would have made a killing as they pledged to cease any repayments.

Exit polls had them _possibly_ winning at 7pm with the possibility lessened by 05.% at 8pm. As it happened, the result was 26.9% to Syrizas and the winners (ND/DISY) with 29.7%; the markets already started climbing that evening and within a few days the majority of short positions were untenable incurring substantial losses.

Most media outlets agreed that a Tsiparis win would have resulted in a Greece exit from the Eurozone with the currency plummeting. Foreign Affairs stated that _...the election determined whether Greece would exit the eurozone and decide the fate of the entire postwar European project._ [2]

The entire issue came down to just 170,475 votes (>2% of the voting population).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_legislative_election,_Jun...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_legislative_election,_June_2012)

[2][http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137710/stathis-n- kaly...](http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137710/stathis-n- kalyvas/greece-votes-itself-in-the-foot)

<comment><USER17> > The missus was not pleased :-)

She should have been just as 'not pleased' had your bet paid off. Going on the assumption that one should not bet such sums without full consent of one's partner...

<comment><USER16> Nothing you have stated there is untrue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In some ways, this was a comparatively cheap way for the UK to discover that fixed exchange rates between economies must force the pressure into current account deficits instead; such as has happened to Portugal/Ireland/Greece/Spain. Falling out of ERM kept the UK out of the Euro, which was beneficial in the long run.

<comment><USER19> >Falling out of ERM kept the UK out of the Euro, which was beneficial in the long run.

Perhaps. That's certainly conventional wisdom, but we have no way of knowing what the political or economical landscape would have been if the UK stayed in the ERM and was now in the Eurozone. 20+ years is a long time.

<comment><USER20> Were it not for Brown, we might have joined the Euro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So what is the play today? The US is backed into a corner. Interest rates are near zero (Fed fund rate) and they're buying $75Billion in bonds a month to keep interest rates low. That was $85B and was supposed to taper, but as soon as they dropped a little bit mortgage rates rose and home sales dropped again - the housing market is at another peak with the low interest rates with nowhere to go but down. They keep hoping to get some inflation going by pushing on that rope and it's just not happening. All the money is going into stocks. If we do get significant inflation they'll have to raise rates and destroy the housing market (worse than last time). So we're on the brink. It's hard to short stocks when they're rising so fast - one who could time this thing could make Soros' gain look like lunch money. What is the play?

<comment><USER22> One thing to remember is that the Soros bet was available because the currency was pegged. Everyone (in the west) has learned that to be a bad thing, in part because of this particular bet.

The US has not pegged their currency. They've made other currency policy decisions under the hope that the US currency can handle the debasement (and so far they have proven true).

Remember that when you short a currency, you also are taking a position about all the other currencies in the world. So rather than say you don't like US dollars you need to say, I prefer X to US dollars and think they aren't currently trading at the right ratio (and if you are shorting you have to account for a very expensive transaction cost).

So rather than asking what the play against the US dollar is, ask which currency you prefer. The international markets do this everyday and so far they haven't found a very compelling alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why is it that taking advantage of loopholes and incompetent bureaucracy to take things from innocent people is monstrous if you do it on a small scale, but heroic on a national scale?

<comment><USER2> Why is it no one ever puts the blame on the incompetent bureaucracies that are actually responsible for losing their countries' money?

<comment><USER23> Don't you think there's plenty of blame for everybody? If I leave my keys in the ignition with the window down and my car gets stolen, it's my own fault for being careless, but that doesn't mean the thief is innocent.

<comment><USER24> There was neither a thief nor a theft. The equivalent would be if you declared you would attempt to fix the price of all Camrys. You buy a huge number of them to prop up the price. Some third party thinks this is stupid, borrows some Camrys and sells them for dollars. Eventually you run out of money and the price falls. There is no theft- it was simply a bad position for you to take in the first place.

Baring any ethics, should governments be immune from loses in open markets? Who would participate?

<comment><USER25> An elite few wealthy politicians decided how millions of people's money would act in the global economy. They made a bad call, obviously. But Soros and company weren't forced to "go for the jugular." They could have effectively "taught the British government a lesson" by making a few hundred million dollars and leaving the currency in tact, rather than completely decimating it. It's just greed. And the fact that so few people can see that is alarming.

<comment><USER7> But see, a few hundred million would not have taught them any lesson. They would have accepted that as the price of maintaining the pound in the range that the ERM said it needed to be in, _and continued to do so_. It was only when the losses became unacceptable that the politicians stopped acting foolishly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "As it turns out, Margaret Thatcher was right: the UK had no business trying to artificially prop up its currency in an era when a handful of hedge funds could assemble more capital in a few hours than the Bank of England had at its disposal."

Unfortunately, power-lust and ideology usually trump reason when politicians are involved.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm interested to hear people's reactions to the article and the Soros trade.

I'd also like to know what the HN crowd thinks about opinions like this recent New Yorker article that asks how hedge funds "get away" with charging such high fees without producing superior returns:

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/05/ho...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/05/how- hedge-funds-get-away-with-it.html)

<comment><USER28> I believe the 20% cut that the manager make is after they clear a benchmark like the S&P 500 to ensure they get paid when they produce a superior return compared to what an index fund could deliver.

<comment><USER29> This is not a very meaningful hurdle, though.

For example, let me pitch you on the Patio11 Hedgehog Fund. It uses complicated financial alchemy to produce market-beating returns, and you only pay if we beat the market. The fund has never lost money. Care to invest $10 million? You pay 2% per year and 20% of returns above the S&P 500.

Hypothetically suppose the S&P is up 10% next year. I deliver 20% returns. Alchemy, what can I say. You make $1.6 million, I make $0.4 million (from you), and since I did this in parallel with 100 other people life is pretty grand for me.

Now just between HN and me, my strategy is simple: I buy the S&P 500 as an index _but I use 2X leverage_.

What would have happened if the market went down 5% next year? Well, we would have lost 10%. That certainly sucks, and you need to make your $1 million back. Which is great, because I am now accepting new money on the Patio11 Chinchilla Fund. It uses complicated financial alchemy to produce market- beating returns, and you only pay if we beat the market. The fund has never lost money.

<comment><USER22> Well to be fair, it's also not the real hurdle than any investor in Hedge funds use. It's more of a marketing term than anything else (and often funds don't target the S&P as their benchmark, but something else closer to their trade category).

Almost all investors in hedge funds will want to see the portfolio of all previous funds you've managed as well as how much of your own money you have in the fund, how much leverage you are doing, alpha, beta, risk adjusted metrics etc.

That said, the Hedge Fund industry is going through a consolidation. Lots of small funds were essentially S&P indexes with leverage/hedges and execution ability. The rise of ETFs, the decrease in execution costs, and the creation of a true history of performance has made those funds pretty obviously useless and they are (rightly, I believe) dying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A pretty good documentary from the BBC about Black Wednesday. Shows more from the government side and the mistakes they made than Soros part but still gives you a good understanding of what happened. [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_oET45GzMI](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_oET45GzMI)

</comment><comment><USER31> Yet again, Thatcher showed her intelligence and foresight by opposing the ERM. There's a reason many people in Britain referred to it as the Eternal Recession Mechanism.

It is a shame bordering on a national disgrace that so many people don't know of actions like that, or indeed, her being one of the biggest proponents of lean-burn technology that would yield several times the fuel efficiency of modern cars but has since been all but abandoned[1]. She saw climate change as a future issue before any other politician, but was unable to act given the conditions of the time. Instead, she is best remembered for the collapse of the coal industry, something that was inevitable in any case, but she simply refused to subsidise it to keep it staggering along for another couple of years.

Not only this, but she was responsible for Britain winning one of the few post-WW2 wars fought by the West against anything close to an equally well equipped foreign power.

[1][http://iaindale.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/margaret-thatcher- cli...](http://iaindale.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/margaret-thatcher-climate- change.html) [http://conceptual-reflections.w43w.com/1036/unleaded- paintin...](http://conceptual-reflections.w43w.com/1036/unleaded-painting-a- false-picture/)

<comment><USER22> Without getting into the pluses/minuses of Thatcher's leadership, saying that she "simply refused to subsidise" the coal industry papers over a lot of very anti union activities.

You can argue for or against these activities, but the reason she is despised so widely has nothing to do with subsidies and everything to do with criminalizing non-violent Union protests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here is the take away. "As it turns out, Margaret Thatcher was right..."

</comment><comment><USER33> It's interesting timing to post this, since the New Yorker explored the data available on hedge funds' returns just yesterday, and found them lacking...

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/05/ho...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/05/how- hedge-funds-get-away-with-it.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> I am really curious what would have happened if the British Government bought DM as well during this period (and maybe not disclose it?) Then they would exit the ERM, and the pound would fall and they would exchange all their money back to sterling and would be rich... :/ I know my logic has a mistake in it... it can't be that simple :P

<comment><USER35> The British Government had DMs, that's what they sold trying to keep their currency at fixed rate. You say they should have kept Deutschmarks to sell them later for what? For depreciated sterling pounds? It doesn't make sense, the only thing that a government has plenty of is its own currency. Governments are "rich" in their own printed stamps, the challenge is to keep those stamps valuable. That's what the British Government was trying to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> One aspect in stories of this kind always seems to be somebody trying to artificially inflating the value of some stock (or currency) by buying lots and lots of it. In this case, the bank of England. (I've read the same thing about Indonesia, and the Barings Bank incident).

That seems so silly - I mean here are these supposedly highly trained financial experts, and all they can do is try the most primitive stock manipulation imaginable?

What would have happened if the Bank of England wouldn't have tried to artificially inflate the pound by buying lots of it? Would it have had the same cost to the tax payer? Obviously there would have been a cost because of the devalued pound (less buying power for foreign goods), so perhaps the question is did it even make any difference? Either they lose because of the diminished buying power, or they lose directly because of the buying spree of the Bank of England?

<comment><USER37> The thing is that you only see the failures. Propping up a currency like that works fine until it doesn't.

Not buying up pounds would have meant dropping out of the ERM immediately. In the short term that would have saved money. In the long term, depends on your view of how similar or different the UK and German economies are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Free markets always win. The markets have a very good history of correcting themselves and it just happens to be that corrections are always rough to most people, and highly profitable to a few. Ex. the 2009 housing bubble in the US. A few people made a ton of money of this. Same with gold coming off its all time highs.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you see an online service whose online security is terrible, do you (a) notify the company (b) hack them and privately inform them off the exploit or (c) hack them, steal all the data, sell it on the open market and make a million pounds, simultaneously disadvantaging millions of average customers?

<comment><USER2> LOL, I can just imagine the scene now:

INTERIOR, HER MAJESTY'S TREASURY OFFICE

 _PHONE RINGS_

SOROS: Hi, my name is George Soros, I'm a hedge fund manager and international speculator. I noticed that you're trying to prop up the British pound, but rather than try to profit from this, I figured I'd just call and give you guys the heads up that it's not going to work.

TREASURY OFFICIAL: Oh my God, you're right! We'll issue a public statement right away, admitting that we've been wrong and that we're putting an immediate end to the policy. Thanks so much for the warning, kind sir!

<comment><USER40> "In light of this development, we're starting a Fiscal Policy Bug Bounty program...."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So this is basically the worst case scenario of activist monetary policy by governments, right?

<comment><USER42> Wrong. Worst case scenario, they'd double down and keep fighting the market until the country was completely bankrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't know that much about finance, so can somebody explain to me why I never hear anybody censuring Soros over this? I only hear congratulations for bamboozling the incompetent British government.

He made billions at the expense of an entire country.

I'm not saying it was illegal, and maybe people like Soros are needed to help deter governments from artificially manipulating their currency like the British did. However, when it comes down to it, he benefited by executing a bet meant to enrich himself, compound the problems of the pound, and diminish the wealth of a nation. It seems like a plainly immoral thing to me.

<comment><USER44> He played the game according to the rules. You can't fault a winner when he wins on a even playing field.

<comment><USER43> Using these kind of game metaphors just shallowly rationalizes something of far more importance, IMO. Legal or not, a country was worse off because of his direct and deliberate actions.

<comment><USER24> "a country was worse off because of his direct and deliberate actions"

The country was worse off because its fiscal policy, determined via politics, amounted to a completely untenable long term position. An epic disaster was the only possible conclusion.

<comment><USER45> Well I'm glad someone made the entire country pay for the Chancellor of the Exchequer's decisions.

<comment> guard-of-terra Didn't you, I don't know, elect them? Who is there to blame?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> That's a previous century.

This century's trade of the century so far might be John Paulson shorting various mortgage securities during the financial crisis.

</comment><comment><USER47> So it seems that everyone knew the pound was mis-valued, the only thing stopping them from just revaluing was politics and the egos of politicians.

They were a bleeding man in water and Soros was a shark; I don't praise or like him for what he did but he was not the main cause, he just acts as you would have expected him to.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hardly the trade of the 1900's. In fact Soros has had much better deals. Also, on the notion that the pound was inherintly broken, one should probably checkout adam curtis mayfair set.

</comment><comment><USER49> Funny that he now uses profits derived from the incompetence of one government to purchase elections in another.

</comment><comment><USER50> | 2.78 DM to 3.13 GBP.

I think they mean between 2.78 and 3.13 DM per GBP.

</comment><comment><USER51> world finance is brutal</comment>


Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce - <AUTHOR> http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2016/10/31/2003658243 <comment><USER2> Well, ok. Reading the data here, Apple and Asus shipped about the same number of notebooks last year at 17m. This year, Asus is expected to hold the line at around 17m, while Apple shipments are predicted dropping to 13m.

I would say two things about this:

1) Except for the MacBook, it has been a year without new Apple notebooks until last week's announcement. Most of the Mac product line has been pretty crusty all year, so I imagine a lot of people have been waiting.

2) Asus ships some sub-$300 notebooks. Apple's start at $1000.

Given all that, I wouldn't say this comparison is particularly revealing.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a sign of commodification coming to notebooks, as happened years ago with desktops. People are no longer upgrading so frequently and no longer feel the need to go for a top-of-the-line model when they do. If sub-$300 notebooks are outselling $1000+ notebooks I'd say that's a very revealing development.

<comment> amiga-workbench Its already happened, there is crud like the HP Stream on sale for a tiny amount of money and most of the market is stagnant with cancerous 1366x768 TN panels and truly mediocre hardware.

<comment><USER4> Or as average/low income non-elitists call it: my affordable computer that works just fine for what I do.

<comment> amiga-workbench They would be better served by purchasing a 4-5 year old refurbed business grade computer like an Elitebook or a ThinkPad for ~120 pounds off ebay rather than buying a creaky consumer grade blob running on repurposed tablet hardware.

The industry's constant race to the bottom is getting really tiresome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think part of the recent sentiment towards Apple is due to the expectations game. If it had been a different company, like Asus, to introduce a very thin, very lightweight computer with excellent graphics and a touch strip, I think a lot of people would be thinking, "wow! Asus is really innovating! what a useful little machine!". But because it is Apple, the expectations go far beyond that of any other company, so the probability of disappointment is very high.

<comment><USER6> It's not just the expectations, Apple's price tags demand innovation. If they're not doing anything special you can get much cheaper hardware.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious if, beyond innovative features, the actual build quality and battery life of a machine should command higher prices. I had a couple Windows laptops (one by Dell) with quite poor battery life. My MacBook Pro from 2011 goes all day with serious activity without a charge, sometimes 2 days.

I don't discredit the disappointment in the recent Apple laptop announcements, but I do think that paying a premium price for a genuinely solid machine is reasonable, even if that machine doesn't have a rapid change in features. I've never had any other laptop last over 5 years without any major problems.

And it is also hard for me to deny that after lugging around a heavier laptop for awhile, having a light Macbook Pro definitely is easier when on the go.

<comment><USER7> > My MacBook Pro from 2011 goes all day with serious activity without a charge

As an owner of a 2011 MacBook Pro with a recently replaced battery, I don't believe you. We either don't share the same understanding of "all day", "serious activity", "without a charge", or "goes".

<comment><USER5> Well by serious activity I mean writing C++ all day in emacs and compiling it maybe a hundred times or more. And the usual web browsing, email throughout the day.

I can easily make it through a full work day doing this without plugging in the machine.

<comment><USER8> Running emacs practically counts as letting the machine idle these days. I know it used to be considered super bloated, but even fart apps use more resources now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To be honest, the zenbook line has been a big hit. Good value and very sexy.

Wish I had enough money for the UX390UA. It's basically faster, thinner, lighter, sexier Dell XPS...

<comment><USER10> I have its predecessor, the 303UB and on paper it's great, but it's not as nice as I expected.

The 4K screen has a "faux 4K" pentile-like layout so smaller text and any type of thin line look horrid on Windows and stock Ubuntu (I Hackintoshed it for better multi monitor support and OSX anti-aliasing looks much better, making me wonder if Retinas have the same type of "faux 4K")

The screen also has the same horrible yellow tint defect as several other 13" 4K models I looked at.

The touch screen has a layer above the screen that becomes really noticeable in certain light (Bot that the touch screen is really of any use on a non- transforming laptop).

The list goes on.

<comment><USER9> Isn't that the line with the Core M chips? They were a travesty for Windows 10. ~1000p on Passmark lol. Compare to an i7 6500U CPU, which has ~4500.

TBH, 4K laptop screens are a _total_ scam.

<comment><USER10> It's a i7 6xxxU (I don't remember the exact model off hand but I'd guess it's the 6500) with a GTX 940M...

Hi-Dpi support was so shoddy with multiple monitors on Windows and Linux that I sacrificed access to the 940M to Hackintosh it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you read all the comments here, nobody seams really 100% happy with their laptop. And apple really blew it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are there any Asus laptops which work painlessly with Linux?

<comment><USER13> I run Ubuntu 16.04.1 (no Windows partition) on an Asus X555 (8GB RAM, 120GB SSD). Works extremely smooth. I've also used the same setup on a Transformer series notebook and have had no issues at all. It's honestly been my best notebook experience - having used Acer & Lenovo before (not that those notebooks were bad)

<comment><USER12> Thanks! :)

How easy was the installation? Any crazy stunts to get it all working?

<comment><USER13> Nope. Simply installed from a USB drive. Of course, there's a little effort if you want a Windows partition, but that has been documented / blogged about ad nauseam, so shouldn't be too difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Quality wise who is better and reliable as a Windows or Linux machine manufacturer. Help me create a sequence:

1\. Razer 2\. Asus 3\. Microsoft 4\. Dell 5\. Lenovo 6\. HP 7\. Acer 8\. Sony (?) 9\. Samsung Apple (?) Clevo (?) Toshiba (?) system76 (?) alienware (?)

<comment><USER15> Lenovo ideapad (cheap ones, superfish, avoid) and Lenovo Thinkpad (no superfish, mostly good) should be thought separate manufacturers. They're not comparable.

For quality and reliability. This is astonishingly subjective and quite probably wrong :p

1\. Thinkpad. Not as good as they were, but _appear_ to be trying to improve again. Usually a fairly safe bet for BSD & Linux drivers. Support (UK) have been excellent.

2\. Dell 2\. HP (Like with Lenovo separate the cheap consumer crap, and the well made professional ranges)

3\. The rest

4\. Apple. Well made, hopeless for upgrade, now very overpriced. New keyboard seems to be disliked on reviews so far.

99\. Acer - Pet hate brand that always seems to have far more than fair share of issues, and support (UK) terrible.

No experience of clevo or system76. Not sure MS have been around long enough with Surface to judge well yet. Personally I would be wary of Razer, though I've not owned a laptop of theirs, which might be superb. None of their mice and keyboards seem to last 5 minutes. Santa will bring the kids no more Razer Nagas.

<comment><USER16> How can thinkpads reasonably be trusted after superfish though? Some security agencies don't even allow Lenovo hardware onsite, sort of implies something...

<comment><USER17> "Lenovo ideapad (cheap ones, superfish, avoid) and Lenovo Thinkpad (no superfish, mostly good) should be thought separate manufacturers. They're not comparable."

<comment><USER18> Except they're _not_ separate manufacturers...

<comment><USER19> Actually, they may well be separate manufacturers. See may comment above [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845499)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When are these publications going to figure out that volume shipped vs Apple is a pointless milestone? I'm interested in margins and revenues, but not units shipped.

<comment><USER21> > I'm interested in margins and revenues, but not units shipped.

In that case Panasonic's Toughbooks would be the clear winner in the general- market space. Their low-end 'business rugged' laptops start at £1800 for an i5 spec... though with a three-year warranty.

Once you move into specialist fields such as mediical and defence there are vendors whose laptops have margins that would make Apple cry, but who 'earn' those through jumping through many many regulatory hoops. Dell played-around in that space in the late 2000s, their mil-cert laptops started around $5000 with standard Latitude innards.

<comment><USER22> > but who 'earn' those through jumping through many many regulatory hoops

They also earn it by knowing that those niches are willing to pay and normal computers can be problematic to an outright danger[1].

If you happen to have an employee that is a bit "rough" with their notebook and is a Windows user, a Panasonic Toughbook is a great buy. They are built like tanks and Panasonic knows their users.

Also, if you have a dust or grain dust[2] environment, you most definitely should buy medical computers. We have a carpentry area that needs computers and the sealed medical computers are perfect. I use [http://www.cybernetman.com](http://www.cybernetman.com) because I like the reps.

1) having a sealed computer that you can wipe down with Lysol is an amazing benefit for a hospital setting.

2) do not f around with normal computers in a grain dust environment unless you like fires and explosions. You want to take precautions to get proper clean airflow or use sealed computers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Last year I finally switched to mac for work (I had family mac air).

Before that I always used thinkpads. I still think the 15" T60 was one of the best computers I have owned. I would have stayed with it if I could upgrade 16gb (ahh Java development). The new thinkpads are bad.

I'm sort of annoyed that I finally got used to mac and it is now down a path of crap (love the form factor... hate the Mac UI and no upgrade).

<comment><USER24> > it is now down a path of crap

People always said Apple evokes feelings. Now it seems obvious that it goes both ways. I acknowledge that it is impossible to be objective on this issue (different use cases, different people, different habits and so on) but saying that they are on a "path of crap" is too strong for most of the time, I bet. I haven't ever used any Apple product, so it's just a _somewhat_ external observation.

<comment><USER23> Yes the comment was probably too harsh (I'm on the phone so it is harder to be tactful). Crap is also not very descriptive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My girlfriend got a Zenbook a couple of weeks ago. It's a really nice machine -- not quite what I need for development purposes, but very very good. Put me in mind to see what kind of Zenbook might suit my needs. So I headed down to [http://www.asus.com/zenbook/](http://www.asus.com/zenbook/) to see what kind of machines they had and how much they cost.

That's how I discovered one of Apple's secret weapons, which it seems nobody is talking about: _purchasability_.

My expectation was that Asus's site would allow me to:

      1. Browse their catalogue of computers.
      2. Compare their pricing and features.
      3. Buy one.

These are expectations which Apple's online store has given me, and I don't think they're extravagant. But with ASUS I could do exactly _none_ of those. Nowhere on the site could I find a simple list of Zenbook models. Instead, there's _so much flowery copywriting_ about how smart and sexy and popular a Zenbook will make me. Jesus Christ, it goes on forever. Are they using an infinite scroll? Anyhow, eventually I reach the bottom of the page: no list of available computers with specifications. WTF.

Okay, let's try "Find Your Zen" \-- maybe, um, that'll help me pick a machine per the features I want?

No, it's some kind of personality profile, asking me what my aspirations are in life. My aspirations are to buy a fucking 13"-14" notebook with a decent CPU, an hdpi screen, an SSD, 8gb of RAM and a real HDMI port. Fine, let's pick some random options and see what it gives us.

Oooh, it says I should by some kind of flip-book! Actually I didn't know that existed and it looks pretty cool. The UX360UA. Yep, I'd go for that I guess, but it would be nice to see it side-by-side with other options. Anyhow, how much does it cost?

No idea. Doesn't say anywhere on the site. WTF?

Okay, let's go to [http://currys.co.uk/](http://currys.co.uk/) to find out. Search for Zenbooks. 78 options. Damnit, no, let's narrow down the screen size. WTF, it says they doesn't have any 13" models? Oh, no, I see -- their search filters are just completely busted. Fine, let's search through the whole list until we find what we want.

Hm. They don't have the UX360UA, but they have something that looks identical called the UX360CA. Er.... what's the difference? Is that like a different model number for the UK market? No way to tell.

...Spend 5 minutes Googling, since there's no way to search for anything or compare features on the ASUS site... finally find a comparison which makes it clear that the UX360CA is has a down-rated CPU, definitely unsuitable for my work. Looks like Curry's just doesn't carry the machine I want.

Okay, let's try Amazon.

Searching for UX360UA pulls up scores of options, most of them having nothing to do with the UX360UA. Finally, however, I can see a price -- a mere half an hour after first looking for it on the Asus site -- but it's out of stock! Alas. Oh, it's also available from other vendors for a bit more, but still a good deal... let's do that!

And, hey, this is thing is _loaded_! It's got a 256gb SSD _and_ a 512gb HD. I admit: I could make use of that.

I get as far as putting it onto my wishlist before I notice that it's actually a UX310UA rather than a UX360UA. Just one character difference: can't blame Amazon for thinking that the Levenshtein distance was close enough to make it a match. But WTF, I now have no idea what kind of computer this is or whether it would be suitable for me. Still have no idea how much a UX360UA that I can actually _buy_ would cost, nor have I been able to do a side-by-side comparison of it with any other options.

So how the hell am I supposed to purchase this thing??? Had to give up for the day; I'll come back to it when I have more free time.

In contrast, Apple's retail experience (both online and physical) is... well, there's a lot of it that's extraordinarily polished, probably to the point of superfluousness, but they've got the very most basic mechanism figured out:

      1. Here's what we've got.
      2. Choose what you want.
      3. Buy it.

This allowed me to buy my current Macbook Pro at the Apple store on Regent street in under 12 minutes. I deeply appreciated the straightforwardness of that purchasing experience (in contrast to my girlfriend, who, when picking up her Zenbook from Currys, had to spend 15 minutes in a back room turning down upselling offers etc). Is this really so hard for others to accomplish?

And no, Dell isn't any better at this. Nor is HP. I haven't checked with Silverfish^H^H^H^H Lenovo yet but am not particularly interested in their machines. In any case, this is one area where industry needs to get better at aping Apple.

<comment><USER26> Purchasability AND limited choice. They're both part of the success.</comment></comment>


Lua 5.4.0 (work1) is now available - <AUTHOR> This is the first pre-release for the next version of Lua.
The email announcement from Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo is not yet in the archive, so I reproduce it here:
Lua 5.4.0 (work1) is now available for testing at
        http://www.lua.org/work/lua-5.4.0-work1.tar.gz
The checksums are
        MD5     0ff232b8658884155a43cf72212edbd9  -
        SHA1    a8193b14ed3869917d1102cb0418cf9dfb0d9baf  -
This is a work version. All details may change in the final version.
An updated reference manual is included and also available at
        http://www.lua.org/work/doc
The complete diffs from Lua 5.3 are too extensive to show.
A test suite is available at
        http://www.lua.org/work/lua-5.4.0-work1-tests.tar.gz
All feedback welcome. Thanks. --lhf <comment><USER2> From the manual: [http://www.lua.org/work/doc/#changes](http://www.lua.org/work/doc/#changes)

> new generational mode for garbage collection

(!)

> userdata can have multiple user values

> debug information about function arguments and returns

> new implementation for math.random

<comment><USER3> > new implementation for math.random

It's Xorshift128+, instead of random() or rand().

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From observing what has happened to Lua 5.1.5, LuaJIT, Lua 5.x.x>5.1.5, Python 2, and Python 3, it appears to me (with my limited experience in software development) that languages grow to mature to a peak where they provide their most value and productivity into languages which don't stop growing. These languages eventually prune productivity gains due to API breakage and library severance across major versions, to the point where their ecosystems become disparate.

I'm not sure I see the benefits of using anything beyond Lua 5.1.5/LuaJIT these days in game development. I'm not sure what the status of version adoption is beyond this particular field, but I contribute and participate in open source Lua-based game development projects to such an extent that I see the same names over and over again and have these people on my friends lists across different platforms.

A lot of these folks are all also still using LuaJIT, which has kept much of the community from moving forward, because if you're _not_ using it, you're missing out on some significant performance gains which are very relevant in gamedev.

<comment><USER5> LuaJIT is indeed a big draw, but it also has a bunch of 5.2 features, esp goto. 5.3 brought integers which is awesome because 64 bit datatypes can round trip through Lua will full fidelity.</comment></comment>


Bento Boxes Win Lunch Fans - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/dining/09bento.html

<comment><USER2> Is this on HN for the sole reason to make the rest of us feel bad about not taking the time to make animal-shaped foodstuff for our kids?

(PS: I have a couple of the "Laptop lunches" boxes - they are okay but a tad overpriced IMHO).</comment>


The worst graph in a decade? - <AUTHOR> http://art2science.org/2010/05/15/the-worst-graph-in-a-decade/ <comment><USER2> Surely the worst part of this graph is it should never have been rendered as a line graph at all? Either way you put the axis, there's no progression over time and a bar graph or some other representation makes a lot more sense.

<comment><USER3> Precisely. The first thing my brain told me when I saw the graph was "It's gone way down." That's how we're used to interpreting line charts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently was tutoring a high school student who was instructed in their data-management course to create several graphs from the same set of data, comparing rainfall in different Canadian cities.

Unfortunately this data didn't make any sense to be plotted as a line-graph, a bar-graph, a histogram and a pie chart, as the comparisons didn't make sense for any but the bar-graph. It was if the students were actively being taught how to use graphs incorrectly. Creating pie charts when the entire pie doesn't mean the whole of anything I think was the worst culprit.

</comment><comment><USER5> Holy cow, read the IEEE spectrum site[1] it's hosted on. The info on the page is _loaded_ with info that's not even _remotely_ represented by the graph. And see the "US $240" part? It's for _Norway_...

 _In most other categories Norway leads. Partly, that's due to its high cost of living. But they also seem to love media—especially books, at $240 per year per person. Must be those long winter nights!_

WTF? I think I agree, that's absolutely, _fascinatingly_ bad.

[1] : [http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer- electronics/audiovideo/dig...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer- electronics/audiovideo/digitally-divided)

edit: does anyone else _HATE_ those mouse-over previews? Know a way to get rid of them across as many sites as possible?

<comment><USER6> Throw this in your /etc/hosts file:

        127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com

and then just make sure you don't serve obnoxious mouse-over previews to yourself :)

Here's my full ad-block. I just add a hostname to it whenever I see an obnoxious bit of stuff on a webpage:

        127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com ad-yt-bfp.doubleclick.net doubleclick.net m1.2mdn.net ad.doubleclick.net media.fastclick.net cdn.fastclick.net ds.serving-sys.com spe.atdmt.com content.dimestore.com speed.pointroll.com img-cdn.mediaplex.com clk.pointroll.com img-cdn.mediaplex.com pagead2.googlesyndication.com pagead2.googleadservices.com pubads.g.doubleclick.net partner.googleadservices.com tenbux.somethingawful.com somethingawful.crwdcntrl.net content.yieldmanager.edgesuite.net kona.kontera.com core.videoegg.com servedby.advertising.com uac.advertising.com at.atwola.com bannerfarm.ace.advertising.com view.atdmt.com ads.forbes.com bid.openx.net d1.openx.org edge.quantserve.com altfarm.mediaplex.com ad.uk.doubleclick.net shots.snap.com snap.com resources.infolinks.com fe.brandreachsys.com www.ttzmedia.com lapi.ebay.com cache.blogads.com mm.chitika.net techeblog.pgpartner.com cdn5.tribalfusion.com www3.adservenow.com ad.z5x.net clicktorrent.info this.content.served.by.adshuffle.com ads.adsonar.com js.adsonar.com web.adblade.com optimized-by.rubiconproject.com content.pulse360.com cdn.optmd.com as.casalemedia.com ad.ca.doubleclick.net ilinks.industrybrains.com context3.kanoodle.com adsyndication.msn.com technology.msnbc.us.intellitxt.com an.tacoda.net a.rad.msn.com b.rad.msn.com c.rad.msn.com d.rad.msn.com mjxads.internet.com ads.adbrite.com tag.contextweb.com contextweb.com media.contextweb.com cdn.eyewonder.com cdn1.eyewonder.com amch.questionmarket.com  iacas.adbureau.net portal.mxlogic.com ads.revsci.net js.revsci.net images.intellitxt.com ads.cnn.com imagec12.247realmedia.com im.afy11.net ad.afy11.net afy11.net c5.zedo.com clickbangpop.com ads.clicksor.com clicksor.com pages.etology.com ads.okcimg.com okcupid.tags.crwdcntrl.net coop.crwdcntrl.net cdn.crwdcntrl.net d7.zedo.com ads.yimg.com us.a2.yimg.com

<comment><USER7> I use this: <http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have always disliked this type of graph. But some people think they are the coolest thing. Like this baby name website is really popular and it is based on a graph like that: <http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager>

(A couple years ago I made a competing baby names website, so that's why I bring it up. This type a graph is a little pet peeve of mine.)

<comment><USER9> That baby name graph is showing how popular names are over time. The NYT Box Office graphic does the same - [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/2008022...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/20080223_REVENUE_GRAPHIC.html) .

This kind of graphic is bad for showing exact numbers, good for showing relative share during time and change over time.

But the graph in the parent article wasn't making that comparison, so yes, it was a stupid, pet peevey way to do a graph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have a look at <http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/>

There is some great critique of various BI visualisations. I highly recommend the book Information Dashboard Design by the author Stephen Few

</comment><comment><USER11> The worst graph dissection in a decade. Does he intentionally omit reading that the graph is titled "Relative consumer spending on media, by category (2008) per capita"? Does he intentionally skip reading the article while he tries to decipher what a graph says?

What a tool.

<comment><USER12> The purpose of a graph (and any other infographics) is to illustrate data in an adequate and user-friendly manner. If you have to think over and over what the graph represents, it means it's poorly designed.

<comment><USER11> I don't disagree with your point. I'm simply saying it's impossible to understand what a graph illustrates without reading few, simple sentences. Like its title.

<comment><USER12> The graph looks like a timeline while it isn't. I don't know what's the number in the peak point. What does some point in the middle of the line between f.ex. tv and newspapers represent?

It's silly and confusing.

<comment><USER11> So, rendering the graph as a bar set with proper numbering and perhaps a detailed legend would convey the information just as well and avoid confusion as to what points between "Movies" and "Books" mean (although that very question has a very elementary one-word answer followed by a look of ever-so- slight amusement).

Still far from worst graph of the decade. For an example of a worse and far more hilarious case, over the top of my head: <http://www.mydailyroast.com/?p=311>

Have a nice day.

<comment><USER13> Is 'Nothing' the one word answer?

<comment><USER11> I think so, but the graph is so bad (allegedly) that I can't be entirely certain (apparently). /sarcasm</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to find a job with strong social impact with my infosec background? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm looking for your help because i want to drop my current job in a big cyber security company.
I feel like i'm totally disconnected in my day to day work, and i want to pursue new opportunities in an NGO/Lab with a strong social impact.
I like when the programs i'm designing have an end goal stronger than just sell a product, and i want to continue to be inspired everyday in what i'm doing at work.
My background in infosec is ~3 years of sandbox development and malware analysis.
This is a small list of the organizations that i have found so far:
- CitizenLab - Mozilla Open Web Fellow program - EFF - Freedom of Press foundation - InternetFreedomFestival - Amnesty International
Any ideas, recommendations ?
I would prefer having something that fits my current experience as a malware analyst, but i'm totally open working on topics such as Internet censorship or helping journalists/activists achieve a better privacy/protection from state sponsored attacks.
Thank you very much HN.
PS: you can DM me if you want to chat in details. <comment><USER2> You should add contact information in your profile (HN doesn't have chat or direct messages).</comment>


Shifting Gears: How a dedicated team of students built a world-class race car - <AUTHOR> http://makezine.com/magazine/make-37/shiftinggears/

<comment><USER2> I was involved in the Australasian Formula SAE competition back in 2002. In a gist, it's pretty much a startup experience, condensed.

It was my penultimate year at University, and I was looking to gain some work experience. I worked mainly on the marketing side (e.g. website maintenance, newsletters, video collages, etc.), but was also involved in some component fabrication and QA + compliance.

It was my University's first entry into the competition. The core team has tried to raise funding for the previous year's competition unsuccessfully. They did finally secured some funding from the University, but still had to raise quite an amount to cover the $50k needed to build / complete the car. We raised some cash for operating expenses from BBQ sizzles, raffles, etc. The bulk of the car was built from in-kind sponsorships (e.g. free / heavily discounted materials, free fabrication services, free use of CNC machines, etc.).

We managed to get a car together in the last-minute, and flew over to Adelaide to the Mitsubishi testing grounds for the competition. Unfortunately, our car didn't finish on the endurance stage. If only we had another week, we could be spending that time tuning the engine management system for fuel efficiency :)

However, it was quite impressive to see what the other University teams had achieved. University of Western Australia in particular, fielded a formula SAE based on a carbon-fibre monocoque chassis whereas others built the standard alumunium / alloy spaceframe. From what I've heard at the time, they've managed to invent a chemical curing process for carbon-fibre composite, instead of the normal vacuum oven process. From my recollection, they took first place that year.

One thing that struck me just now, we went to the local Go-Kart track in O'Connor (Perth) for some driver training and selection. The guys at the track kept a hall of fame with the name and age of the drivers. I was 0.23 seconds off from our team's fastest driver, but apparently the record is held by some kid, faster by almost a whole two seconds from our fastest driver. I should've remembered the name, but I'd like to think it was Daniel Ricciardo, reassuring myself that my Go-Karting skills isn't all that bad after all :)

<comment><USER3> Daniel? :-) He had his first win yesterday in Canada. Really awesome character, he was crying at the radio. I race too, on a Lotus Elise, but I'm _really good_ at it.</comment></comment>


Plasma Active One: "KDE for tablets" - <AUTHOR> http://plasma-active.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> A very interesting approach for tablet's interface. Organizing activities seems to be easy and straight forward. The user experience seems to be very good.</comment>


Jyst: Social Media Aggregator [Beta Feedback Sought] - <AUTHOR> http://jyst.us/

<comment><AUTHOR> Greetings all. My company has just launched this social media aggregator product, and we were hoping HN readers could provide us with some feedback about how to make it better. If you like it, please consider telling others. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> Some of the thumbnails are super stretched out vertically, like 30 cm tall.</comment>


A Turing Test for Computer Game Bots - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=23415&channel=computing&section=

<comment><USER2> "Each expert judge on the prize panel took turns shooting against two unidentified opponents-one human-controlled, the other a bot created by a contestant. After 10 to 15 minutes, the judge tried to identify the AI. To win the big prize, worth $6,000, a bot had to fool at least 80% of the judges."

How would the bot ever fool the judges 80% of the time? To do that, it would have to convince the judges that it was more human than the human opponent.</comment>


Grasshopper 100m Lateral Divert Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/08/14/grasshopper-100m-lateral-divert-test <comment> alex-g September 21, 2012: Grasshopper hops 2m ([http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/02/08/grasshopper-takes- its-...](http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/02/08/grasshopper-takes-its-first- hop))

June 14, 2013: Grasshopper flies 325m straight up and down ([http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/06/14/grasshopper- completes-...](http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/06/14/grasshopper-completes- highest-leap-date)), which was hellishly impressive

Two months later, this test seems enormously more difficult than the flights without the sideways maneuver. And it's not even a year since it left the ground for the first time.

<comment><USER2> Move Fast. Be so good you don't break things.

EDIT: Downvotes? Hello SV echo chamber. SpaceX iterates almost as fast as any tech startup in SV; and how many vehicle losses have they had?

<comment><USER3> Well, they've had some failures:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_1_launches#Launc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_1_launches#Launch_history)

But yes, overall they're moving and iterating and learning super fast. To me, it's one of the 21st century's most exciting companies so far.

<comment><USER4> As rocket failures go, SpaceX's have proven very boring. No booms, no light shows, nothing likely to kill a hypothetical human crew. The first one was actually kind of funny in the end. The satellite landed semi-intact in a storage shed... a few feet from its own shipping container[1]. Too bad we don't bother with parachutes on satellites, it probably would have been reusable with little or no repair.

[1] [http://www.usafa.edu/df/dfas/Papers/20062007/FalconSAT-2%20L...](http://www.usafa.edu/df/dfas/Papers/20062007/FalconSAT-2%20Launched%20\(and%20Recovered\)%20-%20France.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Incredible!

> For years, cadets have trained falcons (the only performing mascot at NCAA > division I football games). FalconSAT-2 showed its excellent homing skills > in the launch failure by avoiding the sea and returning to its shipping > container so it "could come home to roost."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting to compare this with DC-X "Swan Dive" test in 1995:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o)

<comment><USER5> What makes the DC-X so freaking amazing to me is compare the sensors and computers you had available in 1995 to ones you have available today.

It is a great illustration of the 'ecosystem effect' where adjacent technology advances move the entire frontier of a technology forward.

<comment><USER6> That's a mighty impressive video, but 1995 was pretty good computing power wise.

What blows me away is some of the stuff they did in the 60's, including the moonshots.

<comment><USER7> the DC-X was also designed to be bottom-heavy, which helps, a lot. Certainly, once the falcon has deployed its payload, it's got a better balance situation than before, but the geometry is very different from the DC-X.

<comment><USER8> > bottom-heavy, which helps, a lot

I don't know enough about rocketry to know if you're correct. But if you are just saying this and you're not sure, please look at the Pendulum Rocket Fallacy: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_rocket_fallacy)

<comment><USER7> well, I learned something today. I just remember learning in high school that the center of force is below the center of mass, so that vector determines the direction of travel, and that always posed a challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OMG, is this actually supposed to be single-stage-to-orbit?

Ah, Wikipedia says it's two-stage-to-orbit. That's still impressive, but a ship that can reach orbit in a single piece without having to jettison anything is the Holy Grail of spaceflight.

And watching that blazing titan set down on the landing pad as gently as a butterfly is awe-inspiring in any case.

<comment><USER10> The problem with single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) is mainly weight. I think using composite tanks is enough to make a SSTO rocket. X-33 was supposed to use a composite tank, but the fuel tank failed during testing in 1999. Recently, NASA has succesfully tested a composite tank[1].

1\. [http://nasawatch.com/archives/2013/07/composite- cryog.html](http://nasawatch.com/archives/2013/07/composite-cryog.html)

<comment><USER11> I was confused by this video [1], which looks like it shows _three_ stages. All three stages are able to land on their own. Can you explain?

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abLC1l3loFA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abLC1l3loFA)

<comment><USER12> The Dragon capsule is more "payload" than "stage". The Falcon 9 will have two stages (hopefully both eventually landing themselves). The Dragon (not always used. Sometimes they may just stick a satellite or something on top) will also be able to land itself.

Sort of like how the Saturn V is considered a 3-stage rocket, even though during the later Apollo missions it had on top a service module, a command module, and a (two stage!) lunar module.

<comment><USER11> So what modules does the video show?

Also, if the mission is something like transport astronauts to the ISS, why eject any stages at all? Why not just make the rocket capable of flying to the ISS, let the whole thing dock to the ISS, exchange astronauts, then detach and land back on Earth?

(Of course, if there are tons of missions happening around the same time, all requiring a first stage rocket, and each mission has a period that doesn't require any rocket, then I see the point of letting the rocket go back and be used for other things.)

<comment><USER12> The video shows the lower stage and upper stage of a Falcon 9 taking off, then landing. These two stages are shown launching a Dragon spacecraft. The Dragon spacecraft is shown docking with the ISS. The pressurized half of the Dragon spacecraft is then shown landing (the unpressurized trunk section, with the solar panels attached, burns up in the atmosphere (though this is not shown in the video)).

Staging is done because not doing it ("SSTO" or "single stage to orbit") is _extremely_ hard. In fact, it has never been done before from earth. When that second stage burns, it is only accelerating the mass of itself and the Dragon spacecraft on top. Having it accelerate the mass of the lower stage as well would be massively inefficient, requiring _much_ more fuel to be used. So much more fuel that there most likely would no be any mass left over for the Dragon spacecraft. Without staging we wouldn't be able to put things in orbit at all (today and in the past anyway), let alone reuse rockets.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. I assumed the section with the solar panels somehow retracted the panels before re-entering the atmosphere, but they skip that part, and I now see that the part re-entering is actually a bit smaller.

<comment><USER12> Yup, that part burns up.

It's not a complete waste though. I believe at the ISS they usually pack those sorts of parts (parts that burn up that is. Other examples being the Russian "Progress" spacecraft or the ESA's ATV) full of garbage before sending them off. Intact reentry volume/mass is valuable (currently only the Soyuz and the Dragon can do that) so they just let all of their trash burn up. Here's a neat picture of the first ATV, carrying a bunch of ISS trash, burning up: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jules_Verne_Automated_Tran...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jules_Verne_Automated_Transfer_Vehicle_re- enters_Earth%27s_atmosphere.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is incredible. Yes, it would be insanely cool to live in 2500s with all that privately affordable faster-than-light travel and everything but still... it's very exciting to see the progress being made by private/commercial space programs. I wish them all luck. It must be an amazing feeling to be a part of all this.

This is actually the only thing that's giving me hope that man could really step a foot on Mars or mine valuable resources on asteroids in a (hopefully) not _too_ distant future.

<comment><USER14> Maybe life extension will progress as well? :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Glad to see that Space is going to be a commercial business instead of private governments doing everything. This gives me hope that Space will be a place that consumers can enjoy.

That said I think that Elon Musk is doing a lot to make things like Space and Electric cars more accessible to the average person. Even though the costs of Tesla cars are high now for the average Joe to afford, they will hopefully be down in the near future. I hope that the same will happen with Space-X.

<comment><USER10> >Electric cars more accessible to the average person.

That's starting to be a pretty moot point given the Nissan Leaf.

<comment><USER2> Edit: Disagree.

The Nissan Leaf is an atrocious electric vehicle, with the same baggage the GM EV1 had. 80 mile range. Barely. If you don't use the heat or AC.

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/how-does-gms-fabled- ev1-st...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/how-does-gms-fabled-ev1-stack-up- against-the-current-crop-of-electrics/)

Nissan has to continue to slash the price to move them, while people will pay top dollar for Tesla vehicles (and, I argue, will continue to do so, not only for the high end but also the lower priced models when they're announced/produced).

Disclaimer: I'm super long TSLA

<comment><USER16> The Leaf is a superb vehicle in every aspect, except for range and price. Given a little time the tech will come close to Tesla's.

They could license Tesla's battery technology, but I doubt Musk would help set up competition to the future Model E.

<comment><USER10> >The Leaf is a superb vehicle in every aspect, except for range and price.

It's the most affordable electric car out there.

>Given a little time the tech will come close to Tesla's.

What tech?

>They could license Tesla's battery technology

Why would they? My understanding is that there's nothing special about Tesla's battery technology. Leaf just has less batteries (in kg) in them, so the range is lower.

<comment><USER17> There's a lot more to the Tesla battery management than a bunch of laptop batteries wired together. Cooling, wear leveling, charge management, LiOn combustion containment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Few questions. Is Grasshopper intended to be a vehicle that ships a payload into a low earth orbit and return itself back to the launch pad?

With that, a question of descent, once it's reached orbit and released its payload, would it re-enter with a short burn towards its earthly destination, decelerate with, say, parachutes, and then do its final descent onto the pad with the rocket? I can't see it doing its entire descent with a rocket, that would use so much fuel, and require so much extra weight.

<comment><USER12> Grasshopper is a test vechicle, they plan on doing this with the F9R. My understanding is that the F9R will burn once to de-orbit (well, the first stage will be suborbital to begin with), aerobrake without a parachute for a short period, and then burn again for the final landing. I may be wrong about the aerobraking step, but they aren't planning on using a parachute regardless.

IIRC they are expecting a 10% drop in total cargo to LEO when the F9 is used in the reusable configuration. It takes _far_ less fuel to get down than it does to get up since they only have to decelerate the lower stage (not the upper, or the cargo) and since the lower stage will be mostly empty at that point ( _much_ lighter). Furthermore the initial decent burn will be at a much lower outside atmospheric pressure (near vacuum?) resulting in a higher efficiency.

<comment><USER19> Also, the rocket will be falling at its terminal velocity, having lost the rest of its speed to air drag. Even without parachutes (and they don't intend to carry any), that's only ~120 m/s - the upper stage and payload are gone, the 1st stage has big tanks but only a little fuel left, so its density is low. The final burn for propulsive landing only has to cancel that last little bit.

<comment><USER12> Yup, air resistance works with you on the way down, not against you, and it is courteous enough to start small and work itself up when you are on the way down.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't it result in a lit of heat from the friction? Or is that only a problem at much higher speeds?

<comment><USER12> There will be heat; even the suborbital Mercury-Redstone missions needed heat shields.

I don't know how SpaceX is planning on handling that. Maybe the trajectory they put themselves on is going to be slow enough to survive reentry using just the main engine nozzles as make-shift heat shields?

<comment><USER21> Can't speak to the plan for the second stage (which will do a once-around and de-orbit if I understand correctly), but the first stage will not be following a ballistic trajectory and re-entry like a normal suborbital launch. Its goal is to return to the pad a few minutes after launch.

<comment><USER12> I suspect they will still do a single burn somewhere around apogee of the first stage; if I understand correctly they are well into their gravity turn by the time it separates so they'll have some horizontal velocity they will need to get rid of.

Maybe they are going to push the gravity turn later into the flight so that the first stage doesn't participate in that as much?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't help but think of Tintin - Destination Moon, when I see that.

<comment><USER23> And I can't help to think of that old computer game Lunar Lander where you were supposed to land a small craft in a rocky terrain: [http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/lunar_lander/](http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/lunar_lander/)

<comment><USER24> It's probably been mentioned enough already, but if you enjoy playing with rockets Kerbal Space Program is excellent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Excellent work. Really fine engineering we've witnessed there.

</comment><comment><USER26> Holy crap. Suddenly I feel like it's the 21st Century.

</comment><comment><USER27> Two Stage to Orbit, with vertical rocket-thrust tail-landing for both stages, eschewing carbon fiber for aerospace aluminum and using friction stir welding, rejecting exotic engine designs for proven ones, and financing from dot-com tycoons:

I'm not affiliated, and the end is kinda corny, especially if you are a typical skeptic/rationalist Silicon Valley type. It's not exactly how it happened with SpaceX, but there are quite a few parallels:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Rocket-Company-Library- Flight/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Rocket-Company-Library- Flight/dp/1563476967/)

EDIT: In case you are not sure, it's a fiction book. It's interesting because it presages some things SpaceX did later.

<comment><USER28> In case anybody else was as confused as I was, this is a story about a fictional rocket company.

Aside: does Amazon not categorize its books by "fiction" or "nonfiction"?

<comment><USER27> Sorry, I thought "the end is kinda corny" would be enough indicator that this is fiction. It does predate SpaceX getting on the public radar, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hello, fellow HNers.

So you love rockets and have plenty of time on your hands?

Here is Kerbal Space Program, enjoy!

[http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/demo.php](http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/demo.php)

</comment><comment><USER30> Now I want to see what Kerbal Space Program ships the SpaceX guys are making when they are goofing off.

<comment><USER31> Probably none.

KSP was mentioned to Elon in some post-talk Q&A session - he hadn't heard of it and seemed unimpressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> SpaceX software engineers on Reddit AMA:

> > First question: do any of you guys play Kerbal Space Program?

> Are you kidding? That's how we design our rockets!

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1853ap/we_are_spacex_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1853ap/we_are_spacex_software_engineers_we_launch/c8bp6sx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Launching a ten story tube into the air, and safely landing it on the ground really is impressive.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does SpaceX document all their tests publicly? Or are we just seeing the successful ones? (If they've all been successful ones, will we see unsuccessful ones if they come in the future?)

<comment><USER34> Well, it's kind of hard to keep the tests secret: [http://youtu.be/i9n6rYoSGNQ](http://youtu.be/i9n6rYoSGNQ)

<comment><USER33> Ahh, yes. A little digging shows that these tests are done at their McGregor, TX test site, and McGregor is well within hearing and visual range of the tests.

[https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=spacex&data=!1m4!1m3!...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=spacex&data=!1m4!1m3!1d4031!2d-97.459888!3d31.400645!2m1!1e3!4m10!1m9!4m8!1m3!1d4556!2d-97.4079412!3d31.4347774!3m2!1i1293!2i909!4f35&fid=7)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how useful the Lunar Lander Challenge was in being a trailblazer. Here's one of Masten Space's 2009 flights. Rock solid transfer from one pad to another, with a 90 second hover. They had hired a guy from Draper Labs to do the control code and won, snatching the big price from Armadillo. Impressive control. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaXW5TaFwAE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaXW5TaFwAE)

</comment><comment><USER36> This is also using a fairly new engine, the Merlin 1-D [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_1D#Merlin_1D](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_1D#Merlin_1D). It is designed for mass production, using nearly 50% fewer components than the 1-C, and it seems to be flying great! Can't wait for the next launch!

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone else seeing the youtube loaded bar as gray? Is this a custom overlay?

see: [http://imgur.com/wKOB6jh](http://imgur.com/wKOB6jh)

<comment><USER38> It's an option in the embedded player API.

[https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#colo...](https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#color)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Each videos is more awesome than the previous one, but one thing remains constant, the incredibly short time between low altitude and stable landing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Useless speculation: Hyperloop is a red herring meant to distract us from the rocket that will get you from LAX (not Sylmar) to SFO in 15 minutes!

</comment><comment><USER41> Elon gets that humans need to go to the stars to ensure our survival. That's the big idea. The neat part is writing history along the way.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't mean to stir controversy but I am curious how many countries are thinking 'I want one of these for my military'.

Hear me out, wouldn't this technology allow for more advanced ballistic flight across Earth and perhaps even become more efficient than anti-ballistic missiles, evading any 'danger'?.

<comment><USER43> I don't know anything about military strategy or missile technology but I'm having a hard time seeing how a missile making a turn that slow would really be effective at evading any kind of supersonic defensive weapon.

Also, missiles have to explode to be useful; a safe relaunch would be a bit worthless.

Just to add a pedantic remark, if the missile is guiding itself then it's not a ballistic missile anymore.

<comment><USER44> Yes, it's a guided missile not ballistic so those anti-ballistic things would be useless anyway. The best defense against guided missiles would be to disrupt the guidance system. However, there is technology being developed with the accuracy to allow a missile to use inertial navigation systems in the absence of gps.

<comment><USER45> It's already been developed in the 1980s with the Pershing 2 systems. They used inertial navigation, then terminal homing via a radar transmitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Pretty cool how the lens flare forms an "X" around the exhaust.

</comment><comment><USER47> Beautiful!

</comment><comment><USER48> this should make space travel more affordable

</comment><comment><USER49> Wow, amazing</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to use the iPad Pro as a desktop PC? - <AUTHOR> Thinking of buying the new 9.7" iPad Pro for my wife to replace her old iPad. I'm wondering if it could also replace her old Windows PC. For "lean-back" tasks (email, reading, etc) she loves the iPad. For web surfing, online shopping, web videos and occasional spreadsheet, she prefers the PC's 22" screen and a physical keyboard.<p>Is there a way to send the iPad's screen to a 4K monitor via the Lightning connector, and turn the iPad's screen into a multi-touch trackpad. I know iOS doesn't support mouse cursor so the GUI would be a problem. Does anyone have a creative workaround (without jailbreak)? Thanks for reading. <comment><USER2> This is like asking if it's possible to use a screwdriver as a multitool. It is possible (casting the iPad screen to a monitor, for example), but why not just buy the multitool? A Macbook Air is close to the same price as an iPad Pro and does everything you want, and I'd argue that a Surface Pro 4 does the split-personality thing even better than any Mac product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wife really likes the big 4K monitor we have, and the Macbook Air's 13" screen is too small for her. To be honest, I really don't feel like buying a new PC to do what the iPad Pro could already do. Besides, she could use a new iPad and the 9.7" iPad Pro is only $599 vs the 13" MBA at $999. I wish iOS had a setting to drive a 4K monitor and turn the iPad into a multi-touch trackpad with mouse/cursor support.

Yes, I have the Surface Pro 3 w/Win 10 for work and the split-personality works pretty well for me.</comment></comment>