Tor Just Launched the Easiest App yet for Anonymous, Encrypted IM - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/tor-just-launched-the-easiest-app-yet-for-anonymous-encrypted-im/ <comment><USER2> to be clear, its not specifically "for Anonymous", although the lede unwittingly allies tor devs with them. which is probably closer to the truth than was intended anyway, wait, political dissidents use it too.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some blogs of really smart people you check regularly? - <AUTHOR> What are some blogs of really smart people you check regularly?
The less mainstream or well known the better.
Edit:
I'll provide some of my own;
http://blog.asmartbear.com/archives
http://www.dilbert.com/blog/
^Mostly of entertainment value but he says some interesting things from time to time.
http://rs.io/articles <comment><USER2> Seth Godin has a blog that's short and sweet: [http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/](http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/)

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/) is interesting when it comes to career advice.

[http://www.codinghorror.com](http://www.codinghorror.com) \- technology related.

[http://www.themiddlefingerproject.org/](http://www.themiddlefingerproject.org/) \- another smart blogger and not very mainstream.

[http://randsinrepose.com/](http://randsinrepose.com/) \- writer of managing humans. has an impressive blog.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm completely addicted to rationalist blogs these days (for better or for worse).

Currently bingeing [http://slatestarcodex.com](http://slatestarcodex.com), and many, many of the blogs he links to.

In a completely different category, I enjoy war reporting blogs for a really down-to-earth, naturalistic (and arguably overly militaristic) point of view of geopolitic issues.

\- The War Nerd ([http://pando.com/author/garybrecher/](http://pando.com/author/garybrecher/))

\- War is Boring ([https://medium.com/war-is-boring](https://medium.com/war- is-boring))

</comment><comment><USER4> Really smart people I know like www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ . It's quite popular on HN. I also recommend [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/) for interesting articles :P

</comment><comment><USER5> Steve Hsu: [http://infoproc.blogspot.com](http://infoproc.blogspot.com) Example post title: "Preimplantation genetic diagnosis and screening using next generation sequencing"

Razib Khan: [http://www.unz.com/gnxp/](http://www.unz.com/gnxp/) Example post title: "Most Horse Lineages Are in Heaven"

Gregory Cochran: [http://westhunt.wordpress.com/](http://westhunt.wordpress.com/) Example post:

"It is easier to develop a phobia about snakes than electricity or carbon monoxide, probably because we have built in neurological mechanism that confer that propensity.

Likely most animals have a similar propensity to develop a fear of fire: or it might come automatically. If there was such a fear-of-fire mechanism, we have lost it: and dogs have as well. If this is correct, one could learn about this hypothetical mechanism by comparing dogs and wolves."

\---

These are heavily biased towards population genetics and quantitative genetics. Would appreciate suggestions for blogs of smart people writing about molecular biology.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not tech, or even a famous figure, but I still check the blog of my history professor from college: [https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/](https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/)

I have a friend who wrote poetry on the side and never publicized it. These poems are so good that I still check it every other day, even though no new posts have been made in maybe a year.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com)

[http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/](http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/)

[http://pchiusano.github.io/](http://pchiusano.github.io/) (was [http://pchiusano.blogspot.com/](http://pchiusano.blogspot.com/))

[http://www.daedtech.com/blog](http://www.daedtech.com/blog)

[http://yosefk.com/blog/](http://yosefk.com/blog/)

[http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/](http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> From the VC space: Fred Wilson's AVC: [http://avc.com](http://avc.com) Ben Horowitz Ben's Blog: [http://www.bhorowitz.com](http://www.bhorowitz.com) Paul Graham's Essays: [http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html)

<comment><USER8> edit: for lesser known, I would say: \- Whitney Johnson's blog on disrupting yourself: [http://whitneyjohnson.com](http://whitneyjohnson.com) \- Occam's Razor on data driven marketing: [http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/](http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/) \- Copyblogger (probably in the well known bucket but still really good): [http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/](http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tom Tunguz: [http://tomtunguz.com/](http://tomtunguz.com/)

Patrick McKenzie [http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest- hits/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/)

Intercom [http://blog.intercom.io/](http://blog.intercom.io/)

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Philip Greenspun wrote really interesting things about web development in the mid-/late 90's. Nowdays he writes about more general issues, still always worth reading:

[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/)

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://jamesaltucher.com..](http://jamesaltucher.com..). but I think he's "jumped" the shark recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you figure?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://esr.ibiblio.org/](http://esr.ibiblio.org/) \- Eric S. Raymond

</comment><comment><USER14> farnamstreetblog.com</comment>


Exploiting Memory Corruption Bugs in PHP Part 3: Popping Remote Shells - <AUTHOR> http://www.inulledmyself.com/2015/05/exploiting-memory-corruption-bugs-in.html

<comment><USER2> Is this a 0day PHP exploit for SPLObjectStorage? Or is this [https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2015-0231](https://security- tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2015-0231) ?

<comment><USER3> > This post will be the first post in a three part series, starting with how > to exploit CVE-2014-8142(and CVE-2015-0231), followed by remotely leaking > arbitrary information, and ending with getting control of the PHP > Interpreter. Stefan Esser(@i0n1c) is the security researcher who originally > found both CVEs, and was also the first one to talk about controlling the > PHP Interpreter(dubbed ret2php) at SyScan 2010.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Flow chart tool for MS Office - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know of a simple FOSS tool to produce flow charts that are suitable for embedding in Microsoft Word and Excel documents? MS word smart art always seems like a real faff. Being from a finance background I sometimes turn to excel, but that leaves you with manually having to align the arrows. What solutions have other people found. I don't need strict UML/BPM or anything (although that wouldn't hurt to be in line with it), I am just trying to document short processes quickly and in a more professional looking way. <comment><USER2> [https://www.draw.io/](https://www.draw.io/) is a free online visio replacement

[http://dia-installer.de/](http://dia-installer.de/) visio clone on win/mac/linux

[http://staruml.io/](http://staruml.io/) UML modeller on win/mac/linux

[https://www.calligra.org/flow/](https://www.calligra.org/flow/) Linux KDE flowcharting tool with win/mac installers

[http://thinkcomposer.com/](http://thinkcomposer.com/) Mindmaps, flowcharts etc. on Win only

[https://modeling-languages.com/web-based-modeling-tools- uml-...](https://modeling-languages.com/web-based-modeling-tools-uml-er-bpmn/) reviews UML tools

</comment><comment><USER3> Do work have PowerPoint? Insert Shape Flowchart works OK. You can add line connectors and align shapes and so forth.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do actually, that is a good call

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Visio?

<comment><AUTHOR> Work wont buy me Visio or 365. Is it any good?

<comment><USER4> No idea, never used it, but it seems like an obvious choice to use with Office. An employer that won't buy you the software you need to do your job seems ridiculous though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is totally normal at my company. 'Can't you just do it in Excel'. They have shown an alarming tendency to be totally willing to waste my time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook applies for ad-targeting patent - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20021141-36.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 <comment><USER2> Seems pretty obvious to me: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non- obviousn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non- obviousness#United_States)</comment>


Ask HN: Dealing with the anxiety of startup work - <AUTHOR> I've been working at a successful startup for a number of years. While my impact is high, it has aggravated my anxiety disorder. Sometimes to the point of becoming non-functional.
Much of my anxiety is related to how brittle software is, the rush of everything, in addition to database migrations, scaling, etc. Throw onto that anxiety about balancing my family life with work, and I'm always anxious in one way or the other.
For those out there with similar issues, how do you deal with the anxiety of working at a startup? Is there something I'm missing, are startups just not for me? <comment><USER2> You say you have an anxiety disorder. Is it currently being treated? Anxiety tends to be very treatable, although obviously it's different for some people.

Here's what you could expect if you were in England:

[https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/offer-psychological- int...](https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/offer-psychological- interventions-for-anxiety-disorders)

[https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53)

[http://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/generalised-anxiety- dis...](http://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/generalised-anxiety-disorder)

That's via the NHS. NHS treatment is patchy. You could also go private, in which case I'd recommend seeing if the NICE guidance is right for you then finding a therapist registered with eg BACP.

The recommended therapy is quite short and should be manageable. Up to 14 weeks at an hour per week.

> are startups just not for me?

Only you can answer that. I'd think that maybe you'd have the same level of anxiety even if you weren't working at a startup, but that it'd be about different things.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm being treated with medications for my depression, and talk therapy for my anxiety. It's helped a little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

I know all this is easier said than done, but it's just a matter of caring less about it.

During my worse times I made the decision to change job for a more relaxed role. I immediately felt much better, started to get a real life and could make better decisions moving forward. Now I'm back to a more challenging life, both on the personal and professional sides and I must say I'm very happy. Mainly because at the end of the day, I don't give more fucks than needed about work.

I tried to capture this on article some time ago, you might be able to relate to some of it: [https://medium.com/@pjperez/stop-giving-a-fuck-and-be- fuckin...](https://medium.com/@pjperez/stop-giving-a-fuck-and-be-fucking- honest-fba86abcfd51#.a9170e34o)

And I know it's not always possible to "just feel better" or not care at all, so I wouldn't dismiss any of the other advice about seeking help.

</comment><comment><USER4> You could be burning out. Anxiety is one of the symptoms of burnout, in particular chronic anxiety.

You should asses whether burnout could be the case and take steps to recover.</comment>


The other side of crowdsourcing - <AUTHOR> http://www.transcapitalist.com/transcapitalist/2009/9/1/the-other-side-of-crowdsourcing.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with the sentiment in this article.

I'm a programmer; to me, what designers do, and what they can come up with, is pure magic. I see amazing things all the time that I never could have produced myself. The best I can do is say, "I like this because," or "I don't like this because..."; I certainly haven't the ability to turn out the kind of stuff they do.

As a programmer, I'm not too fond of things like rentacoder, for the same reasons: it tilts the market in a really ugly way. The consumers don't understand the nuances of code, and their primary interest on such sites is price.

So, when I needed a designer, I compromised: I browsed 99designs for a few hours, found a fellow in the UK that had submitted a number of designs that I appreciated, and contacted him privately asking him to name a price for some work.

Hopefully it'll work out. I think using something like 99designs as a portfolio site isn't so bad.

<comment><USER3> hah. see, I go further; I can't even tell you what looks good. (I mean, I can tell you what _I_ like, but that is something entirely different.)

The thing is, to hire a designer, I would need to outsource the 'look and feel' to someone else. I mean, your logo needs to fit with the rest of your site; my logo generated in figlet would look horribly out of place on a web 2.0 'rounded edges' website. Instead, I have found some minimal css that appears to be under an open license, and busted out with 'figlet' for everything else. No rounded boxes, but I certainly have a look that is both unique and consistent. And I find it aesthetically pleasing.

I was tickled pink today by someone on twitter commenting that I was an excellent example of 'niche branding'

He even called me a 'cli webhost' so it sounded like maybe he knows something about advertising or art.

<comment><USER2> Man, with just a few tweaks, that would take me straight back to the good ol' BBS days. :-)

(I mean this in a good way.)</comment></comment></comment>


TwitchTV Launches iPhone App  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/26/justin-tv-brings-live-streamed-video-gaming-portal-twitchtv-to-the-iphone/ Justin.TV's gaming site comes to the iPhone. Via TechCrunch... <comment><USER2> Just like the Justin.tv app, I really wish they would have an iPad app. I wouldn't even care if the interface was just a blown up version of the iPhone's, I just want full-resolution video on my iPad.

<comment><AUTHOR> iPad and Android coming soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love that TwitchTV is following in the footsteps of Youtube. Giving streamers a partnership option is brilliant (<http://www.twitch.tv/partner/signup>). It's simple, not a lot of strings unlike the JTV Producers Program.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish the J.TV app was free. I would love to do wireless recording!</comment>


Tin: What the world owes this dull grey metal - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25977432

<comment><USER2> The thinkstock smd solder pix is doing it wrong. The board was obviously solder paste assembled (look at the unused pads) and its had the flux cleaned off yet there's a (probably photoshopped) swirl of flux smoke. I can do rework with a hand iron but joe average probably needs to use hot air rework, so they don't even have the correct kind of tool in the photo. Also the iron does not appear to have ever been tinned or used before and possibly is not on and possibly by complete lack of oxidation has never been powered up. If you try to do rework by shoving the point into the component thats not going to work very well.

Finally having fun trying to ID the soldering iron. Its not from the Hakko/Aoyue family like I have at home. Wellers don't clamp like that either. I googled around and its a brand new unused harbor freight model. Given how much harder open loop temp control makes everything, I don't think it would be my first choice for rework or assembly.

It is an interesting educational display of depth of field.

There is the meta issue that is semi-relevant that in some ways its harder to do a bad job than a good job AND it'll jar anyone who knows what they're doing away from your "message" so there is little point in halfway measures with graphics arts. And no fair hiding behind "its just popular science filler so who cares about techies" because its superbowl sunday, ONLY the techies are going to be reading about tin today.

<comment><USER3> haha, only on HackerNews could a simple photoshopped stock image get so completely destroyed by critical analysis.

One wee mote that appears to have slipped past your assault on oversimplification... the article's on BBC news, so a small amend's required — "in America, ONLY the techies are going to be reading about this today..." ;)</comment></comment>


Guilty Developer Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://22ideastreet.com/blog/2010/02/02/guilty-developer-syndrome/

<comment><USER2> Half the battle of writing software is crystallising what it should do, in detail. As you discover new edge cases and assimilate them into your code it's very easy to cling on to your initial vision for the architecture. When you return later on and look at the finished product it's all too easy to see that there's a better way to do things. Often you already know this by the time you're finished but you hit a deadline and the next feature/project takes priority over the refactoring.

</comment><comment><USER3> What seems to happen with me is that I'm fairly happy with the initial release. Then as the changes start piling on, eventually one of them will require a major conceptual change. Of course that could take months, or you can put a band-aid on in 2 days. In this day and age of startup mentality I don't know many programmers who are afforded the luxury to spend months on a task that can be hacked in a few days. Anyway, the code can survive a few rounds of that before it starts getting really ugly and then I'm apologizing with the best of them.

<comment><USER4> This, to me, has a lot to do with the languages and tools used on a project - the more 'locked in' to a structure you are, the bigger that cost will be when something changes.

This has been a concern of mine w.r.t. oop as implemented in C# (and by extension java), as the structure can be _very_ costly to change down the line when the inevitable 'pivot' in implementation occurs.

<comment><USER3> True and it seems like no matter how much foresight I have and how much abstraction we code in, eventually some change comes along that nobody saw coming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The examples given so far don't necessarily translate to situations where I feel devs _should_ feel guilty/bad, but there are situations, and I've left some messes behind in my day, often which I wasn't aware of at the time. I've taken over projects where the dev(s) should have known better, and in some cases _did_ know better than what they delivered.

If you _never_ feel guilty/bad about any code you've ever left behind - _never_ \- there's something wrong with you. You shouldn't go through life apologizing for every line of code either, but there's a balance to be struck somewhere that probably shifts over time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had this feeling before and I've worked with people who express this feeling. My question is, what is the alternative to having this feeling.

You want to show that you are now knowledgable of better methods and you would like the criticizer to recognize that your mistakes are not ones that you are still making. Furthermore, you can't really blame the criticizer, they're just trying to help you become a better programmer.

It seems all you can really do is give the sheepish grin and say "yeah, well, that was written at a very foolish time in my life..."

<comment><USER7> The alternative is to be a smug overconfident jerk who trots out outdated or sometimes entirely wrong justifications for ill considered design decisions. The alternative is being a developer who continues to do things day after day in bash and C because Perl and Python are "too heavyweight".

Feeling guilty shows that you've grown and that you know more today than you did when you built the system you're feeling guilty about. I'll take the guilty feeling as a side effect of growth when the alternative is stasis and stagnation.

<comment><USER8> There is a rational middle ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Guilty developer syndrome is arguably a good thing. The reason being that having it means a developer _doesn't_ have Nothing's Wrong, Everything Is OK Syndrome. That's the one you have to watch out for.

</comment><comment><USER10> Paring helps to alleviate this guilt to some degree. By hashing out technical decisions with at least one other reasonably intelligent person and coming to an agreement, you can have just a little bit more confidence than if you were working on your own.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yup. Similarly, one person I'm working with who is a good coder but who happens to have a bit less experience apologizes whenever I find a bug in his code. I just want to tell him, "don't apologize, bugs are just part of the game!" There are bugs in my code too ;) We fix them, and move on.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been taking the "then send me a pull request"-approach lately. There's no reason to be embarrassed about making something (even if it's sloppy) - especially if the person pointing out the flaws hasn't built anything themselves.

</comment><comment><USER13> The post has some really nice points. Specifically that you can never know 100% of everything and most probably you won't make the best design decisions every time. The point is to manage to not feel bad when you (or someone else) finds out that something could have been developed in a better way but instead learn from it and use it in the future.

</comment><comment><USER14> This always reminds me of the quote "Great art is never finished, only abandoned".</comment>


Building Enterprise Software on LinkedIn's Consumer Stack - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2018/10/building-linkedin-talent-hub <comment><USER2> This headline is almost a winner at overhyped tech jargon buzzword bingo.

Bonus game: take a shot every time there is mention of an internal or in-house system while reading the article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trying to copy amazon</comment>


Amazon.com just closed my seller account. No warning, no details. - <AUTHOR> http://thetechnologyavenue.blogspot.com/2012/11/amazoncom-just-closed-my-seller-account.html

<comment><USER2> email firstname.lastname@example.com is fastest way I know to get a response</comment>


DSLR – Damn Small Linux Remake - <AUTHOR> http://dslr.dimakrasner.com/ <comment><USER3> The small Linux distributions are an interesting alternate universe. Very hobbyist in some respects, as often it's mostly repackaging standard distro stuff, getting older software to compile, writing simple GUI scripts -- not exactly developing a semi-embedded Linux subset with state of the art tools. Very hackish. And I mean that in a good way…

<comment><USER4> If you do the Linux From Scratch book and follow the embedded track, you should wind up with a busybox based distro around 33MB's on disk, plus you will learn a LOT about how a distro does what it does. I highly recommend it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, I remember being shown DSL and being amazed someone could make an OS that small.

> DSLR's approach to security is different . It is possible to run as root > without causing a global disaster.

Is there any more information available on how this is achieved?

<comment><USER6> uLinux or picoLinux (I don't remember very well the name) -> Runs on one or two 3.5 floppies. There is a version with 3 or 4 floppies with an X-Windows included.

<comment><USER7> I remember running a QNX demo off a single floppy on a 66MHz 486. Included a web browser, a game ,and an editor, all in 1.44MB

[http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html)

<comment><USER8> I remember that too. Very impressive, it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Dillo is so awesome! I urge you to apt-get install dillo

The forgotten feeling when computers responded _immediately_.

I guess I'll be using it for some web.

<comment><USER9> Dillo also has an easy, approachable plugin architecture: [http://www.dillo.org/dpi1.html](http://www.dillo.org/dpi1.html)

This makes me feed sorry for the people dealing with the XUI/JS/CSS cesspit of Firefox plugins.

<comment><USER10> Do they plan to add a JavaScript engine?

<comment><USER11> Why would you ruin a perfectly good browser with JS support? :|

<comment><USER12> Probably because most users would prefer that the sites they visit actually work.

Supporting other embedded languages might be nice, but of course, unless all the major browsers also support the same, sites would have to provide an alternative in javascript for everybody else.

Not supporting javascript at all when it's integrated so deeply into the web, when you will doubtless be able to simply turn it off if you want, seems unreasonable.

For better or worse, the web is becoming a platform for distributing javascript binaries which execute in the browser. Unlike most other platforms, however, at least you can turn it off or view the source or block parts of it if you like.

<comment><USER13> Every site should be able to function normally without JS. Granted that doesn't necessarily hold true for web apps, but for regular sites they shouldn't lose functionality because somebody has JS disabled (or doesn't have it at all!)

<comment><USER12> I agree with you. I have js disabled by default and every time I run up against a site that uses client-side templating I find it incredibly annoying - I understand the rationale behind it but it's still annoying how many things tend to break without javascript.

However, you can't design a browser around an expectation of what the web _should_ be like.

And anyway, it could be worse. If there were no javascript we would all be complaining about the dominance of VBScript in the browser.

<comment><USER13> > VBScript

 _shudder_

JS itself isn't bad, it's the misuse which is bad. Subtle JS use should add _extra_ functionality, not _be_ the functionality.

It's funny, I was just having a conversation about JS in freenode #python the other day and we were complaining/discussing the same thing.

The worst is when my browser freezes because of some JS that's too over the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No policy statement on systemd? :)

[http://alpinelinux.org/](http://alpinelinux.org/) is another minimal appliance distro.

<comment><USER15> Yes Alpine is a nice distro that also uses Musl. Good way to try out Musl libc if you haven't yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The name would fit perfectly for a distro used on the embedded system in a digital camera. :-)

<comment><USER17> ADF (acronym design failure)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're a developer who doesn't know very well how Linux distributions (or operating systems in general) work, you should spend a weekend or two playing around with an embedded Linux distro like this. Unfortunately DSLR's build environment does not seem like the easiest to understand for first-timers.

For example, instead of Makefiles per package, there's a package-specific shell script which incorporates some magic from scripts/build_package and is then sourced by the same to add some functions, with references to patches in a separate directory, and build dependencies tracked by a Makefile.deps file that's included by the root Makefile before the build_package script is run, which incidentally has tons of package-specific logic built in. You'd be re- reading 10 files over and over any time you build or troubleshoot a package.

All of this inside of a chroot using a bootstrapped cross compiler, which lord knows most people have never dealt with before. And the dependencies for building the cross-compiler aren't built from source, meaning this isn't a fully bootstrapped build environment, to say nothing of tracking versions. The resulting packages will vary from system to system, and it will be more difficult to port to non-x86.

<comment><USER14> What do you think of [https://www.yoctoproject.org/](https://www.yoctoproject.org/) as an alternative?

<comment><USER18> Yocto seems to be an attempt to make a standards body for embedded Linux development. It's neat and probably a huge boon for corporate-sponsored development, but overkill for the casual developer to learn more about Linux. All you need is a HOWTO to step you through building a toolchain and setting up the files needed to boot up with some programs running at start time, which LFS provides.

Here's a guide for 'old' Linux distros [http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/](http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/) and here's a guide using systemd [http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable- systemd/](http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable-systemd/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I was in high school I had a 16mb flash drive, so I made a tiny Linux distro for it! It had X11 with blackbox, a web browser (dillo), a mail client (sylpheed), an IM client (ayttm), a VNC client, a music player (xmms), a terminal (rxvt), busybox with a lot of options set, and ssh (dropbear).

I just found the image of that flash drive, if anyone is interested. Keep in mind it is unchanged from its original form in 2006 :)

Image: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/8lomxad7cqjn10w/nanolinux.img?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/8lomxad7cqjn10w/nanolinux.img?dl=0)

Virtualbox Image (identical, converted with qemu-img): [https://www.dropbox.com/s/uo1huoawjkkqmj7/nanolinux.vdi?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/uo1huoawjkkqmj7/nanolinux.vdi?dl=0)

Screenshot: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/v7ijnd6b6688brz/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/v7ijnd6b6688brz/Screenshot%202014-09-09%2016.02.15.png?dl=0)

</comment><comment><USER20> They have an uphill battle, SEO-wise.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dslr](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dslr)

<comment><USER21> Why would they even care for SEO? It's not like it's a commercial project.

<comment><USER22> Why wouldn't they care just because it's not commercial?

<comment><USER23> Because their ability to work on this project does not depend on its accessibility from a search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I greatly appreciate the fact that one of the tenents of the project is documentation.

More often than not, the vast majority of these awesome little projects flounder under the lack of documentation.

Making it available (and well done) allows for anyone to just jump in and help.

Kudos!

<comment><USER25> "tenets" (because you're likely pronouncing it wrong too)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://www.gonullyourself.org/ezines/ZF0/zf0%202.txt](http://www.gonullyourself.org/ezines/ZF0/zf0%202.txt)

I wonder if we'll see a ZF02 remake for DSL? :]

</comment><comment><USER27> Back in 2008 when I was in high school I picked up computers that were thrown out by the school with 256 or less RAM. The smallest one only had 64mb of RAM! I managed to install Ubuntu 6 on it but I could feel the lag. I found DSL and I had no trouble running it on them at all. The iSO was only 50MB irrc. It was damn small.

This was me: [http://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act- Print/f-1/t-19848.html](http://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act- Print/f-1/t-19848.html)

<comment><USER6> I keep a copy of SuSE Linux from 1998. It have six CD-roms (in a time were Internet by dial-up was not cheap here), but I remember that I managed to install it on 200-300 MiB with a machine with less of 256 MiB of ram, and It could run GNOME 1.0 over KDE !!!! And it was running pretty soft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This remains me about my own LFS/busybox based stuff [http://freecode.com/projects/minili](http://freecode.com/projects/minili) "minili - miniMAL liNUX 3.8 MB size. You can download and burn it to CD/DVD or Try with virtual machines.If everything is fine,all you can do is, to login to this linux and run few basic commands."

</comment><comment><USER29> It was maybe about 5 years ago that I was still running DSL on a old Dell Pentium II laptop on the side of my desk. It made a decent ssh / x3270 terminal and acted as a digital photo frame most of the day. But it could do some light web browsing and stuff in a pinch. Booted from a mini CDR and used a 32 meg USB thumbdrive as storage.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does this come with tinyxserver by default? Anyone know how to start it? startx doesn't seem to work.

</comment><comment><USER31> Are there any mirrors? The site is getting hn-dotted. It should not take 8hrs to download a 108M file

<comment><USER32> [http://coolfire.insomnia247.nl/DSLR/](http://coolfire.insomnia247.nl/DSLR/)

The md5sums for 3 of them don't seem to match what's on the DSLR page though. The one with a .md5sum file does match. Use others with caution for now.

<comment><USER32> Turns out the ones with incorrect md5sums are indeed older builds. All ISOs are being brought up to date as fast as it'll go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For the ones having problem with slow speeds to download the iso, try here [https://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_DSLR_Linux](https://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_DSLR_Linux)

<comment><USER32> There's current mirrors added on the site. The isos from archive.org are outdated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My first linux that I managed to run on a vm. I only had access to dial up internet and thus could only download a very small package. The screenshots make me very nostalgic indeed.

</comment><comment><USER35> How does the power efficiency of DSLR compare to Ubuntu? Would I get longer battery life?

<comment><USER3> I somehow doubt it. Sure, there's a lot less stuff running, so there are fewer wakeups. But on the other hand, it's missing some essential power-saving software like `acpid` that tells bits of hardware to take a rest in the first place.

<comment><USER36> > [...] like `acpid` that tells bits of hardware to take a rest

I believe that that stuff is mostly in the kernel. Man acpid:

> acpid is designed to notify user-space programs of ACPI events.

<comment><USER3> acpid being only one of the tools usually there to interface with power management, I'm not really up-to-date what Ubuntu uses nowadays. And yes, as with a lot of hardware stuff you're going to end up in the kernel in the end, but without _any_ management/supervision software (never mind drivers), you usually won't get a quiet and cool laptop. Try starting a barebones arch installation on one these days, without acpid, tlp etc.…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Digital Single Lens Reflex?

</comment><comment><USER38> "...comes pre-loaded with many useful applications and breaths* new life into..."

*Grammar Nazi alert - <USER2>

<comment><USER39> There are a few other mistakes (okay, at least one; I'm not enough of a grammar nazi to have counted them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Sounds like a fun project.

</comment><comment><USER41> I cannot even think of how many security vulnerabilities exists in these applications used for this "remake".

<comment><USER42> To quote the DSLR's author _Very often, new versions of applications are heavier than older ones (Wirth 's Law). If the old version already solves the problem ... without any compromise in security or stability, why make the switch [to a bloated new version]?_

<comment><USER43> The author SAYS that, but that's ALL he says. There's nothing to back up the claim that the older versions are not a compromise in security. Are all known vulnerabilities patched? Are security fixes backported?

<comment><USER44> Almost never: which may causes issues likes thoses! : From Wikipedia & OpenBSD: The affected versions of OpenSSL are OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f (inclusive). Later versions (1.0.1g and ulterior ) and previous versions (1.0.0 branch and older) are not vulnerable. Installations of the affected versions are vulnerable unless OpenSSL was compiled with -DOPENSSL_NO_HEARTBEATS.

same applies for : [http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurity...](http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco- sa-19990414-ios-nat-acl)

same applies for : [https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2010/03/18/update-on- secun...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2010/03/18/update-on-secunia- advisory-sa38608/)

same applies for : [http://www.debian.org/security/2000/20001013](http://www.debian.org/security/2000/20001013)

same applies for : [https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01015/0](https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-01015/0)

sticking to early versions (lazingly will save you)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Witness Accounts Show the Power of False Memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/nyregion/witness-accounts-in-midtown-hammer-attack-show-the-power-of-false-memory.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

<comment><USER2> I watched the video ten times and I don't understand how this is a good shoot.

You have two cops against a guy with a _hammer_ and the immediate solution is to shoot the guy? The first reaction of the assaulted cop is to run away from the attacker, which is understandable, I suppose, but really doesn't look like optimal hand-to-hand tactics. And her partner immediately draws his pistol and shoots the guy in the back. Why not grab him from behind and take him to the ground? Or whack him in the back of the head with a nightstick?

I really have to question the training and capabilities here. Is part of the problem here that one of them isn't large enough and strong enough for the situation? I doubt that, proper training and attitude should be enough here. But if size is a crucial factor here then that person shouldn't be a cop.

I expect cops to deal with something like this without killing people. Subduing people without killing them is part of the job. They didn't get it done here. To me this looks like manslaughter, and they certainly shouldn't be on the force.

<comment><USER3> This is spelled out in the General Order documents of every US police department.

Virtually all police are authorized --- in fact, trained & required --- to use deadly force to "protect themselves or another person from imminent death or serious bodily injury". A credible hammer swing to their partner's head obviously qualifies.

Unlike in other situations, they aren't supposed to carefully judge the minimum possible level of force. If "imminent death or serious bodily injury" is at stake, they are trained to use firearms.

No cop in that situation wants to try to grapple with the attacker --- he's about 8-10 feet away from the officer when he brandishes his weapon --- only to fail to prevent the hammer strike that paralyzes his partner.

There's a legit public policy debate to be had about whether US foot police should be outfitted and trained more like UK police, so that most of them don't have firearms at all. But it's not fair to single these officers out. If we're going to evaluate this incident under the rubric of "a good shooting", as you did, it's hard to see how this doesn't qualify.

<comment><USER4> In many cases, I've always wondered this:

Why not just shoot the legs? Why does it have to be "deadly force"?

Just asking. My knowledge of this subject ends at watching Schwarzenegger target legs in T2.

<comment><USER5> It's funny that you reference T2, because the usual snarky reply to your question is that that only works in the movies.

The whole point is that you're trying to neutralize a deadly threat. It's no time for target practice or carnival games. Someone is attacking you with a deadly weapon. It is time to neutralize that threat at all costs.

I appreciate the instinct to preserve life. That shows a level of empathy that I respect a great deal. But I think it's an eccentric position. Most people are of the opinion that you lose the right to your own safety when you make a threat on another person's life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought it was really odd that this never got discussed during the whole Brian Williams thing. Sure, sometimes people deliberately embellish their stories, but memory is a delicate thing that changes over time without you ever noticing.

It's very very common to clearly remember something that never actually happened.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, definitely. I have a few memories like this. I can very clearly remember seeing the Easter bunny when I was a kid. Obviously this never happened, but I can describe the scenario and what the human-sized rabbit looked like. Also, I have a memory of my brother which is logistically impossible for me to have.

These are just examples of things I realize aren't real memories because the situations were never possible.

I was recently talking to some coworkers about a problem we had about 3 years ago. We all had different accounts of some of the details, but we were all about equally certain about our recollection of events. After digging through some old email, it turns out only one of the four of us was right.

The fallibility of our memories is something I think most of us significantly underestimate.

<comment><USER8> My favorite is having a chain of memories where A happened after B happened after C happened after D happened after A. At least one of them is wrong, but I don't know which, and unless I think about the entire chain at the same time, they all make sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Illustrated Guide to Law is doing a section on this right now: misconceptions of how memory works, how it really works, and how we fill in gaps in memory without realizing it or intending to. [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3032](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3032)

As an aside, I don't think the expert they quoted could have had a better paired name to go with their statement than: "Said Dr. Strange, 'It is surprising to the average person how quickly memories can be distorted.'" Read it in your best super villain voice.

<comment><USER10> If I was "Dr Strange", I'd make a point of wearing a suitable outfit inspired by the comics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I read an article about Ms. Loftus (whom this article also mentions) in Slate several years ago and it kind of got to me. Between that and various issues with forensic evidence you start to really be overwhelmed by the scope of the false conviction problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> Relatedly, [http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/05/man-knife- sho...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/05/man-knife-shot-dead- metropolitan-police-london)

"It was the first fatal shooting by Metropolitan police officers since that of Mark Duggan in August 2011 which led to the worst riots in modern English history" (ie the Met hadn't had to shoot anyone for three years)

and also "Witnesses differ in their recall of the number of shots fired, with accounts varying from three to 10".</comment>


Tesla employee foregoes $1M payment, works with FBI to thwart attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-employee-fbi-thwarts-russian-cybersecurity-attack/ <comment><USER2> Not so much a "$1M payment" as the appearance of a future payment in exchange for installing malware:

>that could allow the hackers to occupy the Tesla information security team. ... extract corporate and network data, which would be held ransom.... For his participation in the ploy, the Gigafactory Nevada employee would receive $500,000, later raised to $1 million, to be paid in cash or bitcoin.

...

>The hacker agreed to pay an advance of $11,000 to the Giga Nevada worker. Two days later, on August 21, the Tesla employee was contacted by the hacker once more, who stated that the project was being "delayed" and all payments relating to the plan would not be transferred until a later date.

<comment><USER3> Agree. There was no reason to think the $1M would have been paid, and every reason to expect not. The $11k figure was a tell. Doubling from $1/2M to $1M was another.

It is always easy to increase an offer that you don't plan to make good on.

Reminds me of the Pascal's wager variant: "Lend me a $1000, I will give you $1M in a month. Don't trust me? Make it $100M. However small you think the probability that I will make good, just take the reciprocal and multiply that in, and that's what I promise."

<comment><USER4> The probability that he will make good is a function of the payback amount (interest) so this may have have no solution. Each multiplication changes the underlying probability itself and requires a recalculation so this does not work.

<comment><USER3> It does not work, regardless. The probability that he will make good starts out at exactly zero and stays there, whatever your estimate.

It is a demonstration that Pascal's wager is nonsense.

<comment><USER5> The probability isn't zero though. It's very small, but it's not infinitely unlikely. I mean, what if he accidentally made 10 times the amount by luck and then had a stroke that changed his personality so he decided to pay out?

<comment><USER3> No matter how much he offers to pay back, and no matter how its reciprocal compares to the actual probability of paying it, it would still be foolish to lend the money. And that is the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another source: [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2020/08/russi...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2020/08/russian-tourist-offered-employee-1-million-to-cripple- tesla-with-malware/)

Russia is a petro-state: it depends utterly on oil revenue to function. I don't know how long it thinks it can delay the arrival of electric cars with schemes like this, but evidently it doesn't mind trying, and it also thinks that the current U.S. national leadership is too inept or too in its pocket to mount a real response.

<comment><USER7> It seems clear like this is state sponsored, but why would the government go to such lengths? It's too risky, especially for the agent traveling to the US.

It doesn't make sense to me, unless Russia really doesn't give a shit about its government employees nor its public image

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can refuse a payment. but if the offer was to brake your arm or hurt a family member it would not be so easy to refuse.. scary

</comment><comment><USER9> I guess the scare thing for me is that this is probably not the first, nor the only time this has happened. And not even to just Tesla. I'm constantly impressed by security teams that deal with this level of activity and attention.

How many other companies have been breached in such a manner? We assume FANNG are immune but are they really?

</comment><comment><USER10>
      ... the hacker reportedly boasted that his team had recently received a ransom worth over $4 million from [...] CWT Travel

Wonder how the internal investigation at CWT Travel is going, to find the insider there? Sounds like they're going to be having a Very Bad Day in the near future. ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> When I was a kid I wondered how cool it would be if we lived in some dystopia cyberpunk world controlled by all powerful zaibatsu and hacker console cowboys.

Well I guess I have my answer: not that cool.

</comment><comment><USER11> Poetic justice for CWT!

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this the reason Apple stopped an update to a Watch app for Teslas until the Dev proves that Tesla has permitted it? Is Apple getting ready to release a vehicle that competes with Tesla?

<comment><USER12> The timing of the indie developer's Tesla watch app (that has seen many iterations until yesterday) suddenly being kicked out of App Store on such not recently (if ever) enforced grounds seems to be too coincidental..don't care how many Apple employees downvote!</comment></comment>


Luxe a Year Later - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@curtisylee/luxe-a-year-later-241fbfed67c7#.pzqs8troc <comment><USER2> The number of times I've felt threatened by a Luxe driver behind the wheel in SF is unacceptable. I've seen them do burnouts in customer cars, drive aggressively through parking decks (including the one that I pay $275/month for a privilege of parking a car in), and generally be poor members of the community. Not to mention packs of them on scooters on sidewalks.

<comment><USER3> That's the dirty secret with these on-demand service apps: _they 're not members of the community_. Why should they care? Are they getting paid better? Are they living in those nice places with those nice cars?

<comment><USER2> Oh, I'm well aware of that. It's a fictitious narrative that's spun, for sure.

I'm honestly more interested that no one from Luxe came in here to defend them against my comment, given that the OP has precisely two submissions to their username - both of which are this exact same article.

Nothing that Luxe is doing is actually contributing to the cities in which they operate. Quite the contrary, they're facilitating the use of singular private transit where there generally isn't a compelling use case without their service. I'd be happy to see them vanish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know what the real unit economics look like for this business? My guess is mediocre.

</comment><comment><USER5> You hope, one of the areas where technology really solves the problem, through the self driving cars. But there is still some time for that as it seems.

</comment><comment><USER6> Shaping the future of cities? oh my</comment>


Show HN: Happyfinder – A fuzzy file finder like Helm, for the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hugows/hf

<comment><USER2> Looks similar to fzf[1], which is also written in Go.

[1]: [https://github.com/junegunn/fzf](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf)

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this relate to Pick? [https://robots.thoughtbot.com/announcing- pick](https://robots.thoughtbot.com/announcing-pick)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, totally missed that launch...

I think my app is much smaller in scope! Only a file finder..

Some points I noticed: Works on Windows "out-of-the-box", conceptually simpler, highlights matched chars..

I thought about making it into a framework as well - lets see how much I use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got excited for a short second [http://helm-engine.org/](http://helm- engine.org/)</comment>


Google relents slightly on blocking ad-blockers – for paid-up enterprise Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/29/google_webrequest_api/ <comment><USER2> Now Chrome will have the crippled adblocking capabilities of Safari. This is the browser equivalent of removing the headphone jack — removing a feature many people use to get some security benefit for a few. The problem for Google is that unlike Apple's customers, you can't pee on a Chrome or Android user's back and tell them it's raining. No Android user was happy the headphone jack went away just because there are wireless options.

Since Google controls the extension distribution system, it could just as easily plastered extensions that use this API with scary warnings, so only users who knew what they were getting into would install them. It's not like users install so many extensions that use this API that they would start to ignore the warnings.

</comment><comment><USER3> At least whatever Google decides to do I'll still have my Pi-hole blocking ads and trackers

<comment><USER4> Domain-based filtering isn't enough to block all ads and trackers -- unless Pi-hole is doing more than just acting as a DNS server nowadays; I haven't checked in a while.

In particular, using Pi-hole forces you to decide globally what domains you'll block -- so you can't (for example) block Twitter/Facebook on 3rd-party domains but allow it when you directly visit them. DNS blocking also can't handle individual URLs within a domain -- so you won't be able to block ads on sites like Youtube or Facebook.

Aside from lacking granularity for when domains are allowed or disallowed, Pi- hole also won't protect you from the majority of first-party tracking. That's less of a concern though because (at least for now) the V3 manifest isn't stopping extensions from blocking tracking cookies or disabling features like Canvas, so you can still rely on them for that.

Typically though, I advise people to prefer extensions like UMatrix and Ublock Origin, and to fall back on Pi-hole as a backup strategy when nothing else is available. It's useful (particularly to help with native apps and IOT devices), but I don't think it's a substitute for a good browser-based ad blocker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this impact chromium? Will Brave Browser continue to function?

<comment><USER6> Yes it does, and will put a burden on forks to maintain their own patch tree. Vivaldi already semi declared unwillingness to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That does not really seem like a "relent"...

</comment><comment> m-p-3 If that's not a good reason enough to switch back to Firefox, then I don't know what will.

</comment><comment><USER8> Still looks like scummy behaviour to me.</comment>


Scribd Facebook Instant Personalization Is a Privacy Nightmare - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/scribd-facebook-instant-personalization/ <comment><USER2> Given Scribd's dodgy reputation (for example, [http://blog.ericgoldman.org/personal/archives/2010/09/scribd...](http://blog.ericgoldman.org/personal/archives/2010/09/scribd_puts_my.html)) I was curious to see what they'd do with Instant Personalization which has a high creepiness factor even on a good day. True to form, they didn't disappoint.

I've been tracking the security/privacy problems with Instant Personalization for a while; my recent post might be relevant: [http://33bits.org/2010/09/28/instant-personalization- privacy...](http://33bits.org/2010/09/28/instant-personalization-privacy- flaws/)

I'm also curious to see how things will turn out when a whole bunch of YC startups get Instant Personalization access, as YCRFS7 promises.

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of us realize the privacy concerns and are very carefully weighing the cost/benefit tradeoff, especially from a user perspective. Instant Personalization has a distinct air of "evil" about it, but it can be very beneficial to users and a great experience in the right hands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do sites insist on default opt-out? Everyone here seems to be blaming Facebook. Certainly, Instant Personalization is a Facebook tool that Scribd used but the core of the matter is Scribd created yet another feature that is opt-out.

I consider opt-out a special case of bait-and-switch. You offered X and I signed up for X. Two months later you added Y and change my settings so now I am signed up for X + Y. Since X != X + Y, I consider X + Y to be a new product Z. I signed up for X, you switched me to Z. Bait-and-switch as far as I'm concerned. Doesn't matter to me if Z = 99% of X. Z != X and the switch happened without my prior consent.

I'm sure in the short-term numbers game, opt-out wins opt-in by far. Grab as many eyeballs as you can in the cheapest way possible. In the long term, people stop using your services. There's a reason I'll never use RealPlayer even though the company has completely changed since the early 2000s. I just don't trust them anymore. Same with Facebook. I just don't trust them with my data. Same with Google Buzz. Even though I'm comfortable with Google managing emails, I can no longer trust the Buzz team. Privacy loss doesn't have to directly happen to me in order for me to feel violated.

<comment><USER5> _Since X != X + Y, I consider X + Y to be a new product Z. I signed up for X, you switched me to Z._

This is absolutely unreasonable to apply _in general_ , because it would devastate the pace of change for web applications, and it is actively harmful to the users as well. You're going to be routinely asking them to make decisions which a) they do not want to make b) they have no information to make and c) they are incapable of making. It will merely confuse and annoy them, and the best possible resolution is that they do what they do any time people put up meaningless repetitive dialogs and click Next Next Next until you stop asking such stupid questions as whether to format C:\ or not.

("Attention, non-technical elementary school teacher in central Kansas. You signed up for Bingo Card Creator revision 1,550. Since you last logged in yesterday, we have made 5 changes to the service. These are summarized as: $INCOMPREHENSIBLE_COMMIT_NOTES. Do you want to consent to these changes, or should we keep a Rails application stuck to r1550 spinning for you until the end of time? Pretend this does not sound scary and that you understand that sentence. It is not scary and you don't understand that sentence, but you have no good way of knowing that.")

<comment><USER4> I should have clarified what X and Y mean in this instance. They do not correspond to individual software features but rather the set of expectations that both parties have agreed to beforehand with regards to privacy, access, security, and overall functionality. Every site has terms of use that basically say "you agree to the condition that we can change anything anytime and you cannot do anything about it." So as far as I am concerned as a user, X stands for the entire site experience regardless of the terms or privacy policy. I don't care that your 45 page document said you can add Y anytime. If Y was not there when I signed up and it affects my security, privacy, or accessibilty in a way that I value, you should tell me about it before you opt me in.

Personally, you would be the last person I would think of as pulling such shenanigans. Your work and words have shown that you care about your users more than making some extra cents in the short-term. I can't say I feel the same about others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a huge reason that I do not use Facebook to login to any site -- pretty much every site that offers that functionality asks to be able to post items for you (in your feed), to send emails, etc.

It seems like some site owners' dreams are to turn you into a bot for their own promotional purposes, or to just use your voice as their personal bullhorn.

I'll stick with registering to sites using a "plain" login (or OpenID, where available) -- at least that way, I have a bit more control over the way my online identity is used.

<comment><USER7> This is about instant personalisation, where you don't have to log in for any of this stuff to happen.

It should be a huge reason to log out of Facebook after every visit (or not use it at all), but 99% of users are never going to do that.

<comment><USER8> It's actually easier than that. Just turn off Instant Personalization in your Privacy Settings.

<comment><USER6> I guess it is good that I had done that too -- I assumed you actually had to "connect" to Facebook because I visited the Scribd page as described in the article, and I didn't see any fancy Facebook stuff happening (although I did see my browser hit Facebook).

I had forgotten that I had turned off instant personalization (likely due to some TC article or something). So this works without even logging into the site? Jesus, it is worse than I thought!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the reason why I stopped using Facebook once instant personalization and the embeddable like buttons were added.

The risk of unknowingly spamming people was too big for me and I just quit. I don't even care as much about the privacy issues as I care about these services doing things and post stuff in my name without any way to stop it or even just indication that they are doing it

<comment><USER10> Same here. First I thought I was just going to have a bit of a time-out, but I haven't been back and don't miss it one bit. The previous privacy flaps were stuff to deal with, annoying but manageable, the 'like' buttons (incidentally it was a fellow HN'ers name popping up on a third party website) did it for me, end of FB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the world who actually likes features like this.

As long as I'm given more relevant content, feel free to use my publicly posted information.

<comment><USER12> > _As long as I'm given more relevant content, feel free to use my publicly > posted information._

Doesn't that way of putting it, though, make it sound a bit like you are actually making the decision to opt in?

<comment><USER11> I'm opting in by posting anything on Facebook, yes. I assume that using the service opts me in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I suggest installing the FacebookBlocker extension:

<http://webgraph.com/resources/facebookblocker/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Whether we like it or not, Facebook is as much a part of the web ecosystem as Google. Instead of trying to fight it, just embrace it.

<comment><USER15> _Instead of trying to fight it, just embrace it._

Why? Facebook provides no value to me; if Facebook disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow, my life would change in absolutely no way.

No need to embrace it.</comment></comment>


Orion – BitTorrent Client with streamings support - <AUTHOR> http://www.ktechpit.com/ubuntu/orion-bittorrent-client-torrent-streamer-for-linux/ <comment><AUTHOR> Orion is a powerful BitTorrent client, with torrent Streaming support. It comes with powerful plugins like torrent-search(search torrent from more than 20 sites privately), discover(for discovering new movie titles), torrent- meta(shows metadata about torrent in sidebar) & Lock screen(locks app with passcode).

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting, a commercial BitTorrent client for Linux.</comment>


Cold turkey for a facebook addict - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8299362.stm

<comment><USER2> Give me the shakes just thinking about it. What's the methodone equivalent?</comment>


Introducing the New Google Play Music - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/products/google-play/introducing-the-new-google-play-music/ <comment><USER2> Much needed step.</comment>


Hackers Steal, Encrypt Health Records and Hold Data for Ransom - <AUTHOR> http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-08-10-hackers-steal-encrypt-health-records-and-hold-data-for-ransom/

<comment><USER2> _It's unclear whether the Illinois surgical center's records were backed up (...). The organization declined to comment._

This is where they get a huge lawsuit so they learn that they can't hire incompetents to handle their systems, right?

<comment><USER3> Maybe maybe not.

But I can also see a scenario whereby they were backed up, but they are also attempting to catch the culprits by pretending they have no backups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The attackers' choice of tactics, particularly the use of encryption, indicates a level of sophistication and targeting that suggests they knew what they were doing_

Sounds a little strange to be honest. Using encryption shows sophistication? My mum probably can figure out how to use an encrypted zip file. Using encryption is generally quite easy. Breaking it will show much more sophistication.

<comment><USER5> Depends on what kind of encryption they are using. If they have implemented public/private encryption, where the virus only have the public key, then yes it would indicate some form of sophistication.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but it's easy to phone home once for a password and then toss it out when finished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm assuming everything because the story is so vague. I'm thinking an employee accidentally opened a malware executable with ransom-ware and suddenly it's an elaborate personalized hack in the press.

<comment><USER8> That's also my conclusion. Ransomware is not exactly unheard of in the malware space, and why would hackers specifically target them when there are bigger fish to fry?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Backup. Encrypt your backups. Store copies of the keys somewhere safe. Test recovery from backups regularly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Short on important details. Specifically, what was the backup procedure and frequency? Was the backup routine affected for some time prior to the encryption and made to look like it was working but wasn't or was the backup policy lax or nonexistent?

</comment><comment><USER11> This article is light on detail, and heavy on FUD. It seems to me that the author is (just doing his job) making a story out of something relatively small and insignificant, while promoting fear of electronic medical records and health information exchange.

Do we need to be careful about security? Yes, but we need to get over this fear of efficiency in healthcare.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems this would make an interesting use case for bitcoins.

<comment><USER13> It would make a very interesting use case for Bitcoins. Why is it that so many of the possible uses for them make it seem like the world would be a better place without them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is right out of Reamde

<comment><USER15> Off-topic, but is that worth reading? The plot synopsis didn't look very visionary like I'd expect from Stephenson...</comment></comment>


Daniel Bernoulli and the making of the fluid equation - <AUTHOR> http://plus.maths.org/content/daniel-bernoulli-and-making-fluid-equation/

<comment><USER2> The Bernoulli family did a lot of stuff, very interesting how they seemed to be blessed with mathematical talent:

>>Over the course of three generations, the Bernoullis produced eight mathematically gifted academics who between them contributed to the foundations of applied mathematics and physics[1]

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article.

I find it quite helpful to have historical context when learning about math and science. Somehow, learning the who/when/how helps immensely in learning the what. For instance, the book A Brief History of Everything by Bill Bryson is very good at presenting things with a context.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article, while interesting, unfortunately describes the Equal Transit- Time Fallacy [1]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)#False_explanation_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_\(force\)#False_explanation_based_on_equal_transit- time)

<comment><USER5> Does it? I only see talk of accelerated flow on top of the wing leading to reduced pressure, nothing about arriving at the trailing edge at a certain time.

<comment><USER6> Right, and for what reason would the flow atop the wing be faster than below?

The equal-time assumption is what leads to the idea that flow on top is faster (and therefore, pressure is lower).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's easier to understand airplane flight with Newton's laws, rather than Bernoulli's principle:

[http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm](http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm)

In particular, the normal hand-wavey arguments that say that air particles must "meet up" after they are separated are total bunk, so that it's not clear that the upper edge actually has a faster airflow. In fact I had a class at Cornell with someone who was studying how dragonfly wings fly, and in addition to momentum-transfer due to steady streams (like airplane wings) you can also have momentum transfer into vortices which are created by those wings.

In general I feel like this article has a lot of social detail and not very much physics. So, for example, someone who doesn't really understand what pressure is will probably be totally unenlightened on why a moving fluid will have a lower pressure. In particular there is a _huge_ caveat to saying that "pressure + kinetic energy = constant", which is that this is a statement valid _on a streamline_ of the fluid. (A streamline is a curve traced by a small group of particles in the fluid as they go downstream -- averaging out their individual jiggles so that we just see how the fluid overall is flowing. If you inject a steady stream of dye then it often shows a streamline, for example.)

If you're not on a streamline then it might not hold. So for example, cut two holes in a bag, stick some tubes on either side, and have a fan blow into one of those tubes: now you've got air moving at a certain velocity inside the bag; yet it is _inflated_ (higher pressure than the stationary air outside the bag) even though it is _moving_ (which you would think would lower the pressure). Turn the fan around and the bag will be inclined to deflate. The air outside the bag is not on a streamline with the air inside the bag.

The transport equation looks like this:

         ∂c/∂t + (v·∇) c = D ∇² c + Source − Sink

This equation tells a story: "there is a box moving downstream (v·∇) which contains some stuff, with a certain concentration (c). The time-rate-of-change (∂/∂t) of stuff in the box is equal to the stuff moving into the box, minus the stuff moving out of the box. Some stuff is moving into adjacent boxes proportional to the concentration difference, in a process called diffusion (D); everything else is somehow going out of the scope of the fluid flow (Source − Sink)."

The interesting thing about fluid mechanics, that leads to the Navier-Stokes equations, is that in classical mechanics we have conservation of _momentum_ , which means that the fluid's own momentum in each direction _is a stuff subject to this same story_. This causes the term (v·∇) c, in particular, to have two instances of v in it (it becomes "nonlinear") and so everything becomes difficult to analyze -- which is why there's a million-dollar prize to make some substantial progress in understanding the resulting equation.

<comment><USER8> Also, planes can fly upside down. Flaps probably have to be used to maintain flight, but flaps don't seem to significantly change the surface area of either side of the wing.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Make a rectangle – a puzzle game - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kelukelugames/makeabox <comment><USER2> This was always one of my favourite puzzle games growing up. I had a plastic copy of it that I would spend hours rearranging.

For those who aren't familiar with this puzzle, the goal is to take the 12 pieces and make a 10x6 rectangle. The 12 pieces are known as Pentominos, and each one is a unique arrangement of 5 squares connected on the edges. There are more than 2000 different ways to arrange the pieces into a 10x60 rectangle.

It's a lot of fun!

<comment><USER3> Same here. I kept notebook full of solutions I have found. My favourite trick was to use sets of 2 pieces placed next to each other that could be flipped without need to rearange other pieces. This way I could get 2 slightly different solutions in one shot.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The mods asked me to repost my puzzle game. Someone appreciates something I made. I want to cry. :)

<comment><USER4> How does this game work? What am I supposed to be doing? Do you mind providing a short description? I could not manage to find one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try moving the pieces so they make a rectangle. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I made a rectangle and nothing happened. Is it supposed to, or am I meant to simply bask in my quadrilateral glory?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bask!

Thanks for the suggestion. I should add a screenshot function or something.

There are thousands of solutions so I couldn't figure out a good way to detect if the user was finished. Much to learn I have. :)

<comment><USER6> You'd probably have to check algorithmically. Starting from the top-left most piece, have they (reasonably fuzzily) covered the 6x10 grid proceeding down and right? If so, yay! You can also check for things like too much overlap, but checking if there is a piece covering each of the centers of the relative grid should be sufficient.

My first solution: [http://i.imgur.com/rV2Ueow.png](http://i.imgur.com/rV2Ueow.png)

edit: It also was not clear up front that I could click to rotate/flip the pieces, until I did it by accident.

<comment><USER7> _> edit: It also was not clear up front that I could click to rotate/flip the pieces, until I did it by accident._

This explains why I couldn't solve it... I was feeling rather stupid seeing all the people solving it with 1,000's of solutions but I couldn't find one.

Thanks! :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Currently the game is too complex, so it's not satisfying for an average user

It might be a good idea to turn it into a game where it starts easy, gets harder, and you can share the level you achieved and brag about it (like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, the level could be stored in localStorage so a user can continue fresh from that same level later on, with a different random pieceset)

Edit: Just checked the code, impressive :) - I assumed the game and pieces were randomly generated

</comment><comment><USER9> In safari I am able to rotate a pice by clicking, but I can only do it once for each piece. I am not sure if it is even still possible to complete it this way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh no. Thanks for the error report. I just re-prod the bug and will work on a fix. Sorry about that.

It took me a while to get it working on Android and desktop. I need to get better at making things cross platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good start. Needs more snap :).

</comment><comment><USER11> I assume the goal is to make a rectangle? Does it have to be a square?

<comment><USER12> Rectangle, not possible to make a square. (Count the area and try and find integer width & height that fits)

<comment><USER13> But two squares is possible (8x8 with a negative 2x2 anywhere inside, including at the center)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, people are solving it fast! Took me a few hours the first time. Granted I was 10. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> feedback: would be more satisfying if the pieces snapped to a grid. also are they not flippable? i couldn't find any way to do that.</comment>