The Clojure Community and Me - <AUTHOR> http://blog.raynes.me/blog/2011/11/27/the-clojure-community-and-me/

<comment><USER3> It's so true. Though I haven't been nearly as immersed in the Clojure community as Anthony has, two of my last four jobs/internships have been in Clojure (well, really, they hired me back). And I've loved it. I love the language–it's the perfect balance of having fun, being precise, and getting things (anything done). And I love the community. I've met so few Clojurists in person, but the ones I have met have been amazing, and the ones who share their stories and their wisdom via blog or IRC are just so damn intelligent and kind.

More than anything, I _Get Things Done_ with Clojure, and the community helps me do that. And from the feedback/re-hiring I get from my jobs, my employers and the people they serve would agree.

Anthony: Keep at it man–you're great!

<comment><USER4> > two of my last four jobs/internships have been in Clojure

Was this in SF?

I've always used Clojure in my spare time with hobby projects. But I didn't really see it as a professional option. I'm curious if thats changing now.

<comment><USER5> Lots of people are using it professionally (we have a team of 9 doing Clojure). More: [http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Clojure+Success+Sto...](http://dev.clojure.org/display/community/Clojure+Success+Stories)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I started programming at about the same age, living in Tennessee in the Pleistocene era, it took the concerted effort of several adults to even get me access to a computer (actually to a punched card reader that connected to a computer 100 miles away).

Now we take for granted that a smart kid in Alabama has his own personal computer and can participate in a conversation with an expert community anytime he wants. But it's amazing. And more importantly, the experts are so incredibly supportive!

I guess this tradition goes back quite a ways, though...think of Ramanujan and Hardy's mathematical relationship. Perhaps the key is a field that doesn't require expensive equipment and the gatekeepers that go with that. Or does this sort of thing happen nowadays in fields other than CS and math? Do 16-year-olds show up in economics or physics IRC channels and meet supportive communities?

<comment><USER7> I think part of the reason why programming (and open source especially) allows for very young people to participate easily is simple: bugs always exist. Open source projects need a lot people -- not just A-grade programmers or developers or computer scientists who've had decades of experience. They need documentation, bug reports, patches, active forum/mailing list members, and community organisers to be really successful. It's easy to get started just by hanging out on forums, eventually noticing a bug, reporting the bug, learning more about how the software works by understanding the bug, possibly trying to fix the bug, etc. Over time, it isn't too hard to start making very significant code or documentation contributions to a project.

In contrast, bug-testing Newton's Laws is a waste of time, and bug-testing General Relativity requires a very large budget. Attempting to make a meaningful contribution to physics is very difficult. The same can be said for any pure science.

By definition, any pure science (natural or social) doesn't evolve quickly enough to allow for quick-but-meaningful contributions because pure science is about establishing a base of knowledge that builds directly on previous knowledge. Without an understanding of the "previous knowledge," any newcomer would be lost and wondering what's happening.

In contrast, applied science is often an orchestrated effort that involves experts in different fields and contributions from different fields (e.g. your software is as valuable as its support, and your interface ideas are as good as the person implementing them). Prior knowledge isn't necessarily as valuable as the ability to integrate ideas from different places or collaborate with others.

Would you agree? I ask because part of me feels like I might be missing something.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you are correct, though you may be partially correct.

Perhaps many people get into programming by fixing bugs, but that never appealed to me, and didn't really appeal to many people I know. It's good advice for newbies trying to get better, I suppose, but it's not very satisfying work (for many).

I got into programming by exploring my computer, websites, and slowly piecing together an understanding of the machine. Eventually, I learned a programming language to (mostly) proficiency. And then another. And then another. I still don't feel like a pro, but I'm getting there. And I still hate fixing other peoples' bugs, or my own.

<comment><USER8> Fixing bugs can be very enjoyable. I like watching House MD for the same reasons. I feel like House's quest for a diagnosis given a subset of the symptoms and his way of trying to provoke new symptoms to appear in order to narrow the set of possible diagnosis, is just like trying to find the cause of a bug. I don't know if other programmers watch House with this analogy in mind, but I wouldn't be surprise if it's the case, the analogy is really strong.

<comment><USER9> Investigating bugs seems to me like the only part of computing that could actually be considered a true science. You come up with theories about why a system is going wrong, and then setup experiments based on those theories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First job as a programmer -- Clojure backend dev? That's pretty awesome. The joy you derive from the Clojure community comes across loud and clear in your writing.

For anyone else who's been toying with the idea of looking at Clojure, it has, IMO, the best tech community on the web. It seems like every maintainer for every Clojure project I've ever looked at is at least idling in #clojure on freenode 24/7.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anthony's Conj talk was pretty good all right. He looked completely at ease, and has a great deadpan delivery when he tells a small joke. Knows his stuff. He's grown in the last year, in lots of directions, and he is going to be a Force. Watch and see.

(No pressure, raynes.)

And he's right about the community. Besides attracting some really bright people, there isn't a lot of language chauvinism evident. (Well, the JRuby folks took some shots, but it was all in fun. We love you guys, really.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I was born and raised in Alabama, too, and it terrifies me to think that there are talented young people living there who have never left the state. The culture there is so unlike the rest of the country, you can get a skewed view of reality really easily. I mean, I have one.

<comment><USER13> From growing up in the Southeast, I think that's true to varying degrees all over that region. The culture tends toward complacency in its worldview.

One of the most difficult things to do is to suspend your own beliefs, dogmas, and preconceived notions about how the world is or should be, and completely immerse yourself in adapt to another culture, be that culture a foreign country, or just the other side of a big one like the US or Europe.

And that is particularly difficult for Americans who are taught from an early to 'express yourself', rather than to perceive the world or any given situation from the point of view of other people (as many foreign cultures, especially Asian ones, do). It's even more difficult for Southern Americans, who are, on top of all that, brought up with this relatively complacent world view.

I know plenty of exceptions, but in general I agree with your assessment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great story. BTW, I used some bits of Anthony Grimes's TryClojure project on a task for a customer - nice code and it saved me some development time - <USER2> appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER15> _So what comes after Haskell? After I had used Haskell for a couple of months and had got a few projects under my belt, it was time for a new step. I felt that my next logical step was a Lisp._

This strikes me as an odd "next step". I don't code in Haskell or clojure, but I've been eyeing both and the impression I got is that Haskell is harder to grasp but more powerful once fully grasped (and nearly as portable as C++). Sort of a superset of lisp. It seems that the next logical step after a couple of months of Haskell is more Haskell. It evidently worked out great for him, but I'd have liked to know why he switched to clojure.

<comment> Tuna-Fish ... Not really.

It's certainly more 'advanced' than any Lisp, including Clojure -- for the past few years (or decades now...), Haskell has been where new academic language research has been done. [1]

But that's just the problem. The fact is that Haskell is a research language standardized by a committee of academics without much experience or interest in real-world use. And it shows. Clojure, in contrast, is a language designed for practical purposes after years of experience from real-world use, mostly by one person, and while he's not as smart as the committee that designed Haskell, he has something committees rarely ever have. _Taste._

In practice, I find Haskell beautiful. With Clojure I get things done.

[1] I'd be willing to say that today, if you are not fluent in Haskell, you are strictly not competent to design a new programming language. For the exact same reason you weren't competent to design new one without knowing Lisp from about the '80s through '00s -- unless you know Haskell, you are passing by most of the new inventions in programming languages done in past few decades simply because you have never heard of them, and don't even know you are missing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I choked up reading this. That kid is awesome and is going places.

</comment><comment><USER17> > my mother would need to travel with me (for obvious reasons)

I dont get it, why?

<comment><USER18> Travel in the United States is enough of a bother without doing so alone and as a minor. Not something I wanted to deal with. Besides that, there are apparently a lot of problems with liability when someone pays for a minor to travel and it doesn't involve an adult.

<comment><USER17> Wow, typical America. I travelled threw europe with friends in that age and its no problem and thats over borders.

I know that the people at americans airports think that everybody is a terorrist or nazi but do the even think that if you travell within america?

<comment><USER19> Chas Emerick here; I set up the fundraiser for Anthony in 2010. That rule was mine, and it had nothing to do with "typical America" (whatever that means).

If something were to go wrong at any point, I wanted to make sure that someone would be around that had Anthony's best interests at heart (could have been any relative as far as I was concerned — I think Anthony's brother was also an option at one point). Similarly, I made sure I talked to Anthony's mother by phone before I started the fundraiser to make sure she was aware of what was going on and had no objections.

Yeah, there may have been liability involved — for me, for Relevance, for others, who knows — had something gone badly wrong. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know; but, having a parent or other adult relative along seemed like a relatively simple way to address that unknown.

Fundamentally, this had nothing to do with laws or regulations or even liability — it just seemed like the _right thing to do_.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I didn't want to make fun of your effort and beeing on the safe side is always good.

Why I said "typical America"

\- In Europe we have a view of America where you can get sued for anything.

\- Since 9/11 America has very strange laws about travling. (I had to fill out more then one form asking me if im a Nazi or if I knew one)

<comment><USER20> Who required these forms? I have traveled many times within and without the US and have never seen such a form, nor heard from anyone who has.

<comment><USER17> The Airlines. When you are at the Airport to pass on your luggage. The give you some forms to fill out. Then you have to give these to somebody befor you get to pass on your luggage. The nice lady then Ask you questions like: "Have you every left your bags unwatched? (That was on the form allready)".

Made the line 2x slower then it had to be. Made me not wanting to go back to Amerika anymore.

<comment><USER20> I remain unconvinced. Perhaps I'm being overly skeptical, but I'm just not buying that any "Airlines" forms require that you out your political affiliation, or knowledge of anyone IN a particular one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's gotta be the hair.

</comment><comment><USER22> Raynes is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Makes me wish I were young again.

</comment><comment><USER24> "The Clojure Community and _I_ "

<comment><USER18> I was actually going for a reference to Marley & Me. Though, I'm not entirely convinced that it is indisputably incorrect in this case. Even if it is, I highly doubt that it is the worst mistake in my post.</comment></comment>


Giant LED screen replaces green screen on the Mandalorian - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/gUnxzVOs3rk <comment><AUTHOR> Seems like photoshop creatir John Knoll at Disney, is on the team that created this. Green screen has been cutting edge on productions like game of thrones. With giant round LED screens, cameras and a lot of computers rynning the unreal game engine, greens screens seems obsolete.</comment>


Show HN: Research Design Repeat - An Analytical Approach to Web Design - <AUTHOR> http://designrepeat.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all. I've spent around a year writing this book. As someone who began as a self-taught designer, I understand the struggles involved in trying to create a unique and awesome website. With this book I broke web design down into a process that is easy to execute regardless of design experience or understanding. I'd like to think of it as a web design choose your own adventure as the way you progress through the process is dependent upon your specific project. This is design-focused rather than HTML/CSS-focused. I'll be around to answer questions should anyone have any.</comment>


Show HN: Electronic Letters - Send handwritten mails online. - <AUTHOR> https://bubbleideas.com/story

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, I am Arvind one of the guys behind Electronic Letters. Hope you like our web app. It's still an MVP if you compare it with traditional email (Gmail and all), but meaty enough for serious consideration.

My friends and I have been using Bubbles for sometime, and we found that it mostly replaces the 'payload' emails i.e. lowers the need of sending files as an attachment. 'Mail is the file' sorts. And it replaces one-line emails that one usually sends in a hurry.

Electronic letters have more possibilities and actions compared to simple reply and forward options of emails. For example, doodling, scribbling, in- line commenting, collaging etc. and returning the same mail back to the author.

There are other exciting possibilities like people can write in the language of their choice, send steganographic messages etc. It actually feels cool to read someone's handwriting, especially someone close!

Think what? Please share your feedback and guide us.

[Edited for grammar]

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool piece of work. Guess it would be good if I can record my handwritten signature once and have it included on my mails or letters everytime I compose one? Something like Gmail in the settings panel?</comment>


Dell disables some audio ports on their computers under the pressure from RIAA - <AUTHOR> http://www.ripten.com/2008/07/07/bend-over-dude-youre-getting-a-dell/

<comment><USER2> This is the age old fight - they are trying to close up the 'analog loophole'. Consumers are continuously getting screwed over by hardware and software manufacturers who break their products for absolutely no reason.

HDMI is a perfect example of this. Let's take DVI and SPDIF, both open digital formats, encrypt them, and put them in one cable to make it look 'new' and 'cool'. The end result is that there are serious compatibility and distribution issues. (i.e. a sony LCD might not work with a philips DVD player.) Then people won't notice when we disable the analog component video outputs.

It's legal to make analog copies of your media for personal use. It's illegal to circumvent encryption to do so. So let's convince all the hardware manufacturers to close up all the analog outputs and add encryption to all the digital ones!

It's all one big scam to protect their content. And everyone in the industry is in on it.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you monetize a website the user will spend 5 minutes on? - <AUTHOR> I'm creating a SaaS (mostly for myself), that shows a list recommending a few stocks, given a few parameters and analysis. This will be free and updated daily.
I'm thinking about offering other things like reminders (your stock XXXX has reached your desired indicators), newsletters, the option to follow a stock, and to receive the ranked list daily on your e-mail.
How can this be monetized? I'd like to go without ads if possible, and sometimes I think a subscription model is too expensive, even though the information provided is valuable. <comment><USER2> What about a one-time purchase of a set of pro features?

<comment><USER3> I agree. A freemium model works well for something like this. Pick the most important feature for someone who is making money using your info and charge only for that feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you both.</comment></comment></comment>


OWASP Top Ten Web Vulnerabilities - <AUTHOR> https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Top_Ten_Project <comment><USER2> OWASP's list:

1 Injection (SQL, LDAP, &c)

2 AuthN (login, sessions)

3 XSS

4 AuthZ ("forced browsing", direct object references)

5 Insecure defaults

6 Lack of encryption (CC#'s, passwords)

7 Clientside access control only

8 CSRF

9 Known vulnerabilities (nginx, openssl, &c)

10 Insecure redirects

A better list for 2014:

1\. AuthZ

2\. XSS and backend/DOM sanitization

3\. CSRF

4\. Insecure cryptography (password resets, session cookies, SSO)

5\. SQLI / database injection

6\. Mass assignment

7\. Application/API security mismatch

8\. Insecure password storage

9\. SSL/TLS hygiene (secure flag, HSTS, &c)

10\. Insecure redirects

If you're looking for great security findings, I think it's more productive to list the 10 most dangerous features rather than 10 specific bug classes, because security flaws have a long tail, and the "thickness" of the tail doesn't correlate with severity. A good list of 10 deadly features:

1\. Password reset

2\. Administrative features (in-band and as sidecar applications)

3\. User-exposed templates (incl. things like Markdown)

4\. File upload/download

5\. "Advanced search"

6\. "Thick client" analogues (Websockets, plugins, Chrome extensions, &c)

7\. Single sign-on (also things like OAuth)

8\. Email gateways

9\. Account data import/export

10\. Gateways to other APIs (roughly, anything that requires your application to itself make HTTP requests to other applications)

This isn't an argument against these features; just, this is where most Matasano people would look first if they were in a race to find the first gameover of a pentest.

<comment><USER3> As for the 10 deadly features: I can imagine the most, but can't comprehend what you mean with 5. "Advanced Search".

With 7., doe you object that generally or do you find the implementations being faulty? In heterogeneous corporation environments, this is on the very top of the wish list, if not number one.

<comment><USER4> Advanced search often leads to SQL injection. This is because there are some parts of SQL queries that can't be parameterized. If you allow the user to dynamically select which table to query against, or which columns to fetch, or how to sort or group the results, you need to sanitize all of these inputs by hand.

This is why saying "it's easy, just parameterize your queries" is bad advice. It's incomplete. There are still these unfortunate holes in most stacks that require you to be careful and whitelist user inputs.

<comment><USER5> In addition to SQL injection, many "advanced search" engines will compile regular expression patterns from user input. Depending on the language, this can range from a simple Regex DoS to Code Execution (I'm looking at you PHP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The top 10 list itself is here: [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2013-Top_10)

<comment><USER7> I rushed here thinking maybe there was a new release of the top 10.

It's essential reading for anyone involved in web technology though, I'd urge anyone who hasn't yet to read it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "injection" being at the top of the list agrees well with my observation that an astonishingly large number of developers just don't seem to understand at all the concept of _escaping_. I wonder if it may have to do with natural languages relying on context for delimiting, as English only has 2 levels of quotes; somehow I feel that if English used a more consistent escaping system more like that of programming languages, we wouldn't see this issue as much...

<comment><USER9> If you're "escaping" anything you've already lost: all of your queries should be _parameterised_ , not escaped.

<comment><USER10> What database do you use that supports parameterized table names?

Edit: see also, ORDER BY field names

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's still very easy to create injectable queries. Prepared statements are a good start but people still forget to escape everything.

For example:

      prepare("SELECT name FROM users WHERE country = ? ORDER BY " + unescapedVar, country);

So I wonder, is there any way to force programmers into writing secure queries (by not writing queries)? Is ORM the way to go?

<comment><USER12> Just generally, don't write SQL queries as strings. An ORM is one option, language-level extensions another. But for that you need some good macros in your language - or convince the maintainers of your compiler to add it to the language (like Microsoft did in C#).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The main utility that I see in the OWASP Top 10 is as a baseline for the knowledge that we should all be expected to have as developers about web security -- knowledge that should be tested at interview, for instance.

My main criticism on the other hand is that some of the items on it are too broad in scope. This is especially true of A2 "Broken Authentication and Session Management" which covers three or four vulnerabilities that may be closely related in terms of functionality but are very different technically. Insecure password storage, session fixation and login recovery workflows all have quite different considerations and trade-offs and I'd have thought they would each be worthy of their own separate section.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's insane to think that SQL injection is still on the list (and near the top). I wonder if that's really the case for modern websites these days - could this list be biased due to legacy code that hasn't been touched in years?

In the 90s there were a lot of us who were just starting out and didn't know any better regarding the sql injection thing. Soon enough it became common knowledge that you had to escape everything when constructing a query. Shortly after that every environment ended up with a library so you could just use placeholders and they would do the escaping for you.

Granted, 15 years on I still find the occasional developer that is oblivious to this - but it's not like it was 15 years ago when people were saying "have you heard about a thing called sql injection?"

<comment><USER7> Right now there are a lot of people who are just starting out and don't know any better.

You've changed circles, you no longer work at places which hire such people, but they are just as prevalent as they were when you were starting out, you just don't mix in those circles any more.

<comment><USER15> s/Right now there are/There are always/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish OWASP was as strong as it was 4-5 years ago. The OWASP Testing Guide v4.0 has been in draft seemingly forever, plus there is little content created on Mobile development.

Recent news out of OWASP is the new Development Guide (good work, Andrew) [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Guide_Project](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Guide_Project)

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://twitter.com/jeremiahg/status/479042160193323008/phot...](https://twitter.com/jeremiahg/status/479042160193323008/photo/1)

The OWASP top 10 is old news but there is still work to be done.

<comment><USER2> _Zero percent_ direct object references? Three possibilities:

* IBM doesn't know what an insecure direct object reference is.

* I don't know what an insecure direct object reference is.

* IBM's scanning tool is routinely missing an extremely common sev:hi bug class.

The OWASP Top 10 is stupid. For some reason, every attempt at creating a taxonomy of security flaws of any sort fails, and OWASP's is a textbook example. But at least 8 out of the 10 flaws OWASP randomly selects are still common and meaningful.

<comment><USER17> My guess would the third of your options, it feels like a scanning tool artifact.

However, my point was that even given the age of the OWASP Top 10 and its incredible brand recognition among developers globally, the IBM bulk application scans are still finding (At least some of) these issues.

Interesting point about taxonomies of security flaws, similarly taxonomies of security attacks are also hard (Wicked maybe). This may be due to the difficulty of fully defining the world of unexpected or unwanted application behaviour. There is something complex about the space of possible attacks (or flaws) that resists classification at anything other than at such a level of foundational definition to be practically useless in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A11) Download a PDF with an outdated Adobe reader ;)

</comment><comment><USER19> Who knows when this list is updated every year?

<comment><USER2> The less you think about the process that updates the official list, the happier you'll be. The OWASP Top 10 concept is useful to communicate an abstract idea (that there's a core bunch of security flaws you can and should test an application for), but less useful in the specifics.</comment></comment>


New prepack with Material UI components, start prototyping immediately - <AUTHOR> http://helmetrex.com/Preview.html?projectId=1524 <comment><AUTHOR> But before you have to install React UI Builder [https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-ui- builder](https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-ui-builder)</comment>


Facebook is the Death Star, and we're all building it. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.angrymonkeys.com.au/were-the-ones-that-built-the-death-star

<comment><USER2> Wait, I can kill Ewoks by clicking on those Facebook Connect buttons?

<comment><USER3> I would've said Jawas, but they've already got it hard enough...what with the Sand People problem and all.</comment></comment>


Flooding of [US] Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html?emc=edit_ta_20160903&nlid=54466831&ref=cta&referer= <comment><USER2> All of the places mentioned in this article are subsiding (and therefore doomed); the increase in apparent sea level _with respect to the local coastline_ does not mean that mean sea level is rising planetwide.</comment>


Beset by Homelessness, Rising Rents,  SF Cracks Down on Dockless Scooters - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/26/beset-by-homelessness-rising-rents-night <comment><USER2> These scooters are amazing. Wish the city would focus on the drug addicts running around defecating on sidewalks and not try to regulate these convenient scooters.

<comment><USER3> We really need to organize "how to write letters in support of nice things" sessions for techies.

It really would not take many of us (maybe fifty or a hundred) writing letters to city hall to drown out the voices of these anti-tech activists.

<comment><USER4> Why is this a tech issue? There are plenty of folks who work in the tech industry who would like to see these scooter vendors take at least minimal steps to play nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meanwhile, dockless cars park wherever they want, block sidewalks, inhabit large swaths of the city without paying to do so, etc.

What a weird world where "scooters" are the problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't cars generally park in designated locations, pay large amount of money in taxes, often also in parking fees. Even in SF I think you are more likely to walk into a pile of excrement or scooters in a middle of a sidewalk than into a car...

<comment><USER5> Parking fees, tolls, taxes, etc aren't market rate.

Also, visit any of the neighborhoods on the western half of San Francisco and you'll discover that it's de facto not allowed to be handicapped or pushing a stroller due to cars owning the sidewalks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure how taxes could be "market rate" to begin with, but don't those scooters just get dumped anywhere without any payments to the city or something?

Also, just one of many reasons why I don't go to San Francisco if I can help it at all.

<comment><USER5> The taxes you're referring to, I presumed, are things like DMV fees. Those are used for things like roads (construction, repair, salting, plowing, etc), bridges, highway patrols, etc. They aren't market rate because they don't actually cover their stated purpose, thus are subsidized from other taxes. Additionally, they don't price in externalities like noise, pollution, emergency services due to accidents, death and injury to persons, etc.

The scooters are indeed left on sidewalks. Luckily the 20 pound scooters aren't actually killing or maiming people, spouting out toxins into the air, ripping up the asphalt, blaring "honk" noises at all hours of the day, etc. Not much of a public nuisance all things considered :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Bridges and stuff sometimes pay for themselves in increased economic activity, as do highways etc. Not sure about SF, but in Chicago, say, on top of the state fee for the license stickers (far more reasonable than California's, of course, but still) there is a city fee for a city sticker that has to be applied to all vehicles registered in the city.

Practically speaking, though, as nice as it would be to get rid of cars, pollution, etc., it's not happening unless you can offer something better to the public, and scooters aren't it. And scooters, at least how I am reading news about them right, aren't exactly paying for any externalities either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an SF resident, I love these things and regularly use them instead of calling an Uber. Requiring helmets (as the draft regulation does) is a bad idea; it would drastically reduce usage and push people back into cars.

One problem that some of these scooters have is that they seem to be easy to sabotage. I've seen vandals pulling on the brake cables near the front wheel, which would probably weaken the brakes or make them not function.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good. I'm all for better and more eco-friendly forms of transport, but after seeing a number of scooters thrown into the street haphazardly, this could not make me happier. People don't seem to respect property that isn't theirs.

<comment><USER8> Respect isn't necessary. You paid for it, had your way with it, and moved on. This isn't charity, it's business. If the owner has a problem with how the scooters are used they should be using docks.

<comment><USER9> The sidewalk belongs to everyone. It's a public space.

<comment><USER5> +1, wish they would start towing cars that park on the sidewalk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _you can only fix one of these things!_

seriously the reason scooters were addressed was because 3 companies decided to dump all of them sometime near the end of march and they had no legislation against it. and it was causing problems with pedestrians.

i find these articles annoying, why not harass midwestern cities with large opioid problems about doing X, when they haven't "solved" the opioid issue first.

</comment><comment><USER11> Vehicles on sidewalks are a menace. Do it in the street, hipsters!

<comment><USER12> Poop and needles are not a menace?

Personally I think poop & noodle cleanup should be a higher priority than dockless scooters.

<comment><USER11> By all means, hipsters should also police up their poop and needles. But given the choice, I'd rather deal with that--at least it isn't usually moving toward me at high speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can we add "roads worse than 3rd world countries" to the list?

<comment><USER14> You haven't seen third world countries' roads, have you?

<comment><USER15> I have: I just drove from SF to Merida, Yucatan. San Francisco's roads are on par or often worse that most Mexican state capitals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Because you can only focus on fixing one thing at a time?</comment>


Higgs Papers Out - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/08/03/higgs-papers-out/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiscoverMag+%28Discover+Magazine%29

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the actual paper (pdf). <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7214v1.pdf>

<comment><USER2> Better link to the arXiv abstract, ie

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7214>

You also did not link the accompanying paper from CMS

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7235></comment></comment>


Why You Should Build Your Next API Using JSON - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apigee.com/detail/why_you_should_build_your_next_api_using_json/ <comment><USER2> JSON-LD, more specifically. Then your API can be widely understood by various RDF tools

<http://json-ld.org/></comment>


How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/opinion/artificial-intelligence-regulations-rules.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is much smarter than I anticipated from the title, notwithstanding its default presumption of property ownership as a starting point - though in fairness, it discusses regulating artificial intelligence rather than artificial sentience or consciousness, thus avoiding that tricky ethical ground altogether in most people's view.</comment>


Show HN: Better way to read HN on the iPad (Hacker News Padreader, Free) - <AUTHOR>

I love my iPad, but was frustrated by the experience of reading Hacker News on it. There wasn't a good way to load up both the article and the discussion in parallel like I do on the desktop. To me, all of the apps I tried in the store were deficient in some way so I made my own.
What I wanted: - Load both the article and the associated discussion without fiddling - Log me in to vote&comment - Show the top articles with info and load/add next 30 like the default view, not the 'newest' page - Full article URL
An obvious feature for v1.1 would be to add an IAP to ditch the ads. The swipe/pull to the right and left to open and close the web views might be too much a departure from other apps, so I'm interested to hear feedback there. Other suggestions?
http://itunes.apple.com/app/hacker-news-padreader/id428331410?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> Clicky iTunes link: [http://itunes.apple.com/app/hacker-news- padreader/id42833141...](http://itunes.apple.com/app/hacker-news- padreader/id428331410?mt=8)</comment>


Response to Nielsen's "Stop Password Masking" - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.sans.org/appsecstreetfighter/2009/06/28/response-to-nielsens-stop-password-masking/ <comment><USER2> Often I am in meetings or talks where someone is giving a presentation with their computer screen hooked to a projector and wants to log in to some site to demonstrate something. Without password masking that would be pretty unsafe. The usability concerns seem pretty silly to me in comparison.

<comment><USER3> But doesn't the checkbox suggestion take care of that situation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think not using password masking is actually a new usability problem in itself. People think your site isn't secure, or their password isn't secret, without masking.

I suppose if you mask it after they type it in, that would probably mitigate the problem. The way the iPhone does it, one character at a time, is probably the best compromise.

<comment><USER5> I would prefer the iPhone did passwords all-clear, at least as an option.

The small repositionable screen makes shoulder-surfing more difficult, more obvious, and easier to shield manually. And if someone has video trained on the screen/keyboard, no masking is enough to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neilsen's article makes good points, as does the sans.org article reviewing it.

But isn't any security solution a little invasive?

</comment><comment><USER6> Those who say password unmasking is retarded have never entered a WPA Wifi password...

Twice.

<comment><USER7> doesn't everybody else just copy-paste those?</comment></comment>


Engineer killed by US navy veteran first Indian hate crime victim in Trump era - <AUTHOR> http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/andhra-engineer-killed-by-us-navy-veteran-first-indian-hate-crime-victim-in-trump-era/story-bjWRa1qdoh1yhKR3GusQAK.html <comment><USER2> Sad to see an innocent die, this is what happens when elections are fought over hate.</comment>


Can worker cooperatives alleviate income inequality? - <AUTHOR> http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/13/worker-run-cooperatives.html <comment><USER2> One of the assertions made in the article is obviously wildly incorrect: the ratio between the highest paid and lowest paid workers in traditional corporations is not remotely 600-to-1. In the US, that would mean the top paid people in "traditional corporations" are earning _at least_ $9M/year.

Given that the average corporate CEO in the US makes a bit under $200k/year (per the US Federal government), it would require a definition of "traditional corporation" that has been stretched to the point of misleading. Even for multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies, the CEO base pay is frequently <$1M (this is largely public record). With very rare exception, no amount of bonuses or vested stock options will close the gap between that and a _minimum_ of $9M/year at most large corporations.

Some people at companies may be overcompensated but let's be honest about what typical figures actually look like.

<comment><USER3> Average CEO compensation came in at $15.2 million in 2013 for Fortune 500 companies.

<comment><USER4> It may surprise you to learn that there are many more corporations than the ones in the Fortune 500.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been dreaming lately of starting up a worker coop in silicon valley that focuses on consumer robotics. Is anyone interested in something like that? I'm an extremely capable hardware guy with a broad skill set and extensive robotics and manufacturing experience. I'm running my own little start up now that could help fund initial operations, and could use some people who excel at software, mechanical design, or general operations.

I am really troubled by the way traditional companies exploit workers, and see that as a major problem of our age. If you could show the world that a worker coop could succeed doing something highly technical like robotics, it would serve as proof that the cooperative model can work for more than just chicken farms. I'd be focused on growth like a silicon valley startup to some extent, but quality of life for everyone in the organization would be a big deal.

I'm also kind of curious about B-corporations, which allow a specific public benefit to share standing with profit as a legal goal. This would be more silicon-valley friendly as far as funding, since worker coops don't have the same revenue generating opportunities for investors. Though the coop could agree to some kind of internal "revenue tax" to pay back investors or save money.

I'd love to see some wealthy people just give their money away to talented organizations that want to spread public good. What I'd love most would be to just work on open source robotics that help the world. I've been developing a system for 3D printed robotics that use as few non-printed parts as possible, making it easier to collaborate online with hardware designs. I don't typically even use screws, since sourcing them can be expensive and slow - most parts just snap together or interlock.

An alternative plan though is for me to get rich the traditional way and then use my own money for good, so I am going to be checking out the new YC RFS for hardware whenever that comes out. I have some good ideas about improving life in the kitchen that might be workable. :)

<comment><USER6> You should reach out to NoBAWC ([http://nobawc.org](http://nobawc.org)) and [http://techworker.coop](http://techworker.coop) (and the list serv).

My worker co-op started out in the Bay Area and now is bi-coastal; SV is full of like-minded folks so you're among good company.

PS, check out [http://www.reddit.com/r/cooperatives](http://www.reddit.com/r/cooperatives).

<comment><USER5> Awesome, thanks! I have been following that subreddit but the other links are new to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To make this more relevant to our industry:

[http://techworker.coop/sites/default/files/TechCoopHOWTO.pdf](http://techworker.coop/sites/default/files/TechCoopHOWTO.pdf)

I wish this was easier to set up where I live; too many big companies holding all of the area's mindshare (for instance, our city is less than 50,000 in population, and we have two sizable startups, one incumbant and Oracle commanding the tech staff in the area). I can't imagine any of these companies tolerating hiring out work to a tech co-op.

<comment><USER8> >I can't imagine any of these companies tolerating hiring out work to a tech co-op.

Why should the internal structure of a subcontractor matter to the client?

<comment><USER7> Because they would rather hire employees than contractors. Oracle in particular has several miles of red tape just to authorize the use of a particular contractor...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The various forms of cooperation are incontestably one of the most equitable and rational ways of organizing the future system of production. But before it can realize its aim of emancipating the laboring masses so that they will receive the full product of their labor, the land and all forms of capital must be converted into collective property. As long as this is not accomplished, the cooperatives will be overwhelmed by the all-powerful competition of monopoly capital and vast landed property; ... and even in the unlikely event that a small group of cooperatives should somehow surmount the competition, their success would only beget a new class of prosperous cooperators in the midst of a poverty-stricken mass of proletarians. While cooperatives cannot achieve the emancipation of the laboring masses under the present socioeconomic conditions, it nevertheless has this advantage, that cooperation can habituate the workers to organize themselves to conduct their own affairs..."

~ Bakunin

</comment><comment><USER10> So... I've been interested in this model for startups. But it doesn't make sense, right? Because startups already give equity to employees as part of their compensation package. But nobody would call Google a "worker coop" \-- but I haven't figured out exactly why not. What's the deal?

<comment><USER5> I think a worker coop is always explicitly owned equally by all workers, which isn't what Google does.

The model makes it hard to get investment, since there are no "super owners" like investors typically are. The coop could pay the investment back like a high interest loan with flexible terms, but I haven't seen exactly how that would work. I'm interested in that though - see my other comment here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This basically sounds like the lean-startup equivalent in the non-tech space. I suspect it's more possible than before because it's easier for the coops to outsource the legal bits than it used to be. It is ironic and perhaps even naive to pitch this as a reaction against capitalism when it is the efficiencies of capitalism making it possible in the first place.

And if these people really think this is a reaction against "capitalism", in its capacity as all-powerful bogeyman rather than description of how economic transactions work...

"but to Henry Lezama, the goal is to keep growing, to bring more people into the cooperative."

... they're in for a shock because as they bring in more people, in the limit this just becomes another form of business, and as more regulations kick in based on their size they won't be able to help becoming a "business", to say nothing of how "flat management" becomes practically impossible pretty quickly and hierarchy _will_ set in. (It's a human thing, not an ideological thing or a government thing or a "capitalism" thing. We instinctively, and I mean that fully literal, structure ourselves into social hierarchies.)

It's fantastic that people are starting to realize this and move the gains of this sort of business structure down the economic ladder. It's a powerful and flexible structure for both the members and society itself.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure a cooperative is going to alleviate income inequality. When you form the cooperative, I imagine the first member and subsequent members would filter for ability, qualifications, productivity, etc. So the same "average" and bellow average worker would be left out. How are the passed over want-to- be workers going get in on the cooperative and thus enjoy an income and presumably above average income?

Are the cooperatives going to take on slackers or averagely skilled people wanting to join? How would that cooperative compete against more 'competitive' cooperatives?

<comment><USER13> Your comment seems to presuppose that income inequality is largely the result of differences in skill and/or work levels, which is a common viewpoint that is not necessarily correct. The alternate viewpoint is that there are a lot of hard-working people with highly valuable skills who are underpaid due to the way corporations are usually structured. In a typical corporate structure, the people closest to the money are the best paid, which doesn't necessarily imply that they are the hardest working or mostly highly skilled.

<comment><USER12> You're right. But my question is about income from those at the margins who are laid off fired etc. Due to stack ranking, etc. How is that addressed? It's important to get those people in the economy as much as its important to attenuate cxo salaries...

<comment><USER5> I imagine a compartmentalized market of coops where highly successful coops have only a few employees with a large salary, and then they buy goods and services from other coops that may make less money and therefore cost less. So a robotics design coop may make $500k per employee but only have 5 employees. When they ship products they could ship via a shipping coop that only pays $60k per worker.

This allows some room for exploitation but it would probably better adjust for real market value of workers than what we have now.

<comment><USER12> Doesn't this result is similar income disparity that this idea is trying to avoid? So instead of expressing itself between intra corp hierarchy it's expressed extra-corp hierarchy... So basically its exported but still exists...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Co-ops seem like they are better suited for a side-hobby rather than your main source of income.

Part of the reason for less income inequality is that the types of people who join them aren't primarily concerned with their monetary compensation. They are more concerned about a cause or outcome than earning money.

It's selection bias.

The majority of people want to get paid the most they can. It seems like a co- op tends to pay the in demand and highly skilled people less, and the less skilled people more.

I think it would be hard to attract and retain high-end talent if they can earn more in the standard workplace.

<comment><USER15> It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. I suspect variations on the co-op model, more 'holistically' extended to include more parts of life perhaps, might be preferable to many people over the current approach, whatever it's called. But without experiencing it, and with the mindset that more money = more happiness, most people wouldn't give it a shot. And I understand that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Definitely works in retail and not just for low-volume specialty markets. I shop at WinCo, which is a great supermarket and successful coop:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryjosephs/2014/11/05/millionai...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/maryjosephs/2014/11/05/millionaire- grocery-clerks-the-amazing-winco-foods-story/)

Also Bi-Mart, fantastic coop chain.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always wondered why cooperatives assume consensus decision making. Couldn't I be an equal owner of something, but decide to leave the leadership to someone else, at least for a specified time? I feel like the consensus/debate thing often brings down egalitarian organizations. But ownership does not HAVE to equal control.

<comment><USER18> You're absolutely right, and I think this is more an assumption _about_ cooperatives rather than how cooperatives actually work. For example, Mondragon is a federation of coops some of which have hundreds of employees; they're not going to have a debate with everybody about everything.

Another way to think about it is that cooperatives are the ultimate expression of a democratic workplace. Yet it's not as if every law were discussed by everybody in a democracy.

In a way, that shows that we have a lot to learn about how cooperatives can work. The quote of the union representative is very relevant: Cooperatives aren't magic dust, even though I personally believe that they are one of the key tools for dealing with the problems of capitalism. As a society, we simply have too little understanding of how cooperatives work, and until enough experiences is collected and networks exist to advise founders of cooperatives, and all those other little things that help traditional business founders are extended to cooperatives, it's going to be difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Owning means of production is so "few revolutions ago". Extreme income inequality is due to capital ownership.

</comment><comment><USER20> Short answer: sometimes, provided they can function and compete effectively as businesses.

</comment><comment><USER21> Relevant: "Beyond Capitalism: Leland Stanford's Forgotten Vision" [http://dynamics.org/~altenber/PAPERS/BCLSFV/](http://dynamics.org/~altenber/PAPERS/BCLSFV/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Enough with the ignorant pop-econ articles laced with subtle political pandering.

<comment><USER23>
      > Enough with the ignorant pop-econ articles laced with
      > subtle political pandering.

Can you please point out the ignorant pandering parts? Are you just referring to the "income inequality" headline? Because the article seems pretty good to me. Lots of well-informed, well sourced information about co-ops.</comment></comment>


Neural networks meet space - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/neural-networks-meet-space <comment><USER2> _' "The neural networks we tested—three publicly available neural nets and one that we developed ourselves—were able to determine the properties of each lens, including how its mass was distributed and how much it magnified the image of the background galaxy," says the study's lead author Yashar Hezaveh, a NASA Hubble postdoctoral fellow at KIPAC.

This goes far beyond recent applications of neural networks in astrophysics, which were limited to solving classification problems, such as determining whether an image shows a gravitational lens or not.'_

Pretty fascinating stuff. Once you think about it, applying NNs to space makes a lot of sense. There is a ton of data to sift through and find patterns in. Amazing to think neural nets could crunch through this data in seconds, and point out areas of interest immediately. I wonder if NNs have been used in the search for exo planets yet.

<comment><USER3> > I wonder if NNs have been used in the search for exo planets yet.

Might be kind of overkill. The patterns being looked at for exoplanets are periodical dimming of stars AFAIK. I don't think you necessarily need a neural network to sift through that.

<comment><USER4> yes and no. Most exoplanet detections so far have been indirect: people just search for the dimming from the eclipse or similar other methods. So you're right about that. But recently we're starting to actually directly take sensitive enough images to be able to see planets (see [http://planetimager.org](http://planetimager.org)). They aren't using NNs yet. But there have been discussions of using NNs for various aspects of those searches.

<comment><USER5> Detecting dimming is actually surprisingly difficult and currently partly done by humans using Mechanical Turk-like platform. [https://www.planethunters.org/](https://www.planethunters.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't it take too long to train with such amount of data? I'm thinking the NN has to be constantly be in training because you never want to miss some data sets that contain special categories and not to miss them when in the inference stage

<comment><USER4> hi, Yashar here (one of the authors). These NNs were really fast to train. A day or so. We trained them on half a million simulated images. Then they're good to go for the analysis of any new data. We don't need to keep on training them as we get more data.

<comment><USER7> How long did it take you to get them to train in a day?

<comment><USER4> surprisingly not that long. We started this in Feb without any expectation that it would work at all, and after 2-3 weeks of playing with things they were working great.

<comment><USER8> I love how machine learning went to statistical learning and then back to machine learning. Playing is exactly the word to describe the discovery process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> dimensionality reduction is very powerful when you need to traverse a large configuration space and look for things that seem salient.

</comment><comment><USER10> Naive question: is the exponential increase in performance talked about in this article unique to neural nets? Or are there other techniques for writing classifiers that yield the same performance increase, given advances in hardware?

<comment><USER11> Neural networks are function approximators. So if you 1) know an algorithm that is really computationally complex but not highly random and 2) have a lot of inputs and outputs of that algorithm, you can usually train a neural network to approximate a closed-form formula of the algorithm. It boils down to a bunch of matrix-multiplies and some standard non-linear functions in between.

<comment><USER12> is that anything close to like polynomial fitting? What with PTIME and NP- Completion?

<comment><USER11> Kind of - but instead of computational complexity in the "NP" sense, you have lots of data. It's often so hard to get good training data that the cost of just waiting out a big algorithm to finish can be cheaper. So you have to weigh that.

<comment><USER12> well sure, you said as much before. But I was also thinking, what if P~=NP, in the sense that any function can be approximated by a polynomial of sufficiently high degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice. Friends with the authors here, I'll try to bring them to answer questions.

<comment><USER4> Bob?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I understand it correctly, it sounds like they used a NN to fit a surrogate model to the kind of analytical physics-based pipeline that they had been using before?</comment>


I need money to validate my product, and a validated product to raise money - <AUTHOR> Other than bootstrapping and begging family members for cash, what are some funding hacks I can do to grow my company? <comment><USER2> The first thing I'd do is to question the assumption that you need money to validate your product. Why do you?

If it turns out that you do, I'd think about ways you can limit the product to eliminate the necessary cost to validating it. Cut it back until you can validate it for free, and do that - that's your MVP. However, rather than just using it for validation, try selling it to people. There's no better validation than that. Start your revenue early. Build from there.</comment>


Deconstructing Xkcd.com/1987/ - <AUTHOR> https://snarky.ca/deconstructing-xkcd-com-1987/ <comment><USER2> You can also see an explanation of every xkcd in [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1987:_Python_Envi...](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1987:_Python_Environment)

In this case, the explanation in the OP is more detailed than the explanation in explainxkcd.</comment>


Krispy Kream Donut love and coding - <AUTHOR> http://g3.yumdonut.io <comment><AUTHOR> [http://g3.yumdonut.io/](http://g3.yumdonut.io/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 6th grader built this custom donut 2048 from scratch for her love toward Krispy Kream donut. She even sent an email for them to use this for their customers in stores for free in exchange for requesting the sponsorship for her robotics team -lol

</comment><comment><USER2> Love it</comment>


Diakonos: A Programmer's Text Editor in Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.stepthreeprofit.com/2009/02/diakonos-programmers-text-editor-in.html <comment><USER2> _Personally, I use nano. This is not out of ignorance, mental damage, or a deep moral perversion as my friends that use emacs and vi insist. I want an editor which is small and quick to install. It must be available on all platforms and easy to install (if there's no Debian/Ubuntu package in the main repositories, forget it). I'm not going to mess around with configuring it._

Most sane people would use mg under these circumstances:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mg_(editor)>

But seriously, why optimize for such an uncommon case? 99% of the time you'll be programming at your own workstation, where you can install and reconfigure anything you want.

 _I am particularly excited about finally having an editor that's not written in C._

Hmm, I wonder if such a thing has existed since the early 80s? I think it starts with an E...

(Yes, Emacs has a little C, but so does Ruby. The important stuff that you will actually want to hack on is written in a high-level language, though.)

Finally, there is yi if you really want to ditch C:

<http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Yi>

It is quite impressive.

<comment> a-priori Not only that, but if you use Emacs, then I highly suggest learning to use Tramp. Ever since I discovered it, I've stopped using vim in terminals to edit remote files.

<comment><USER3> I've tried using Tramp several times over the past few years on multiple operating systems and environments. However, it has always been unbearably slow for me, even with persistent SSH connections via ControlMaster/ControlPath. Any pointers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. This is now my new console editor. I've always used nano (after pico) for nix editing. Never been worth the trouble to get comfortable on emacs or vi (all my coding is mostly on Windows or MacOS)

Having syntax coloring and the simplicity of good old of ctrl-c, ctrl-v, and ctrl-z is perfect.

<comment><USER2> Both emacs and vim run on MacOS and Windows. Emacs even supports the CUA keybindings, although if you're going to use those bindings, you might as well not bother with emacs.</comment></comment>


WikiLeaks publishing over half a million intercepted pages from 9/11/2001 - <AUTHOR> http://911.wikileaks.org/

<comment> brown9-2 Am I the only one who feels a little ... wrong reading these?

This isn't a leak in the usual "whisteblower" sense of the word.

Instead it's a leak of communication between individuals that was intended to be private.

If someone "leaked" emails from Gmail or Facebook, I think most of us would be angry about it and feel as if some sort of privacy was violated. So why do we feel different about this - because these messages are eight years old, or because it's wikileaks?

<comment><USER3> The pager network was/is more like a twitter stream. Messages are sent in a plaintext stream of the format [date][time][network][destination #][msg type][content] and individual pages just pull their own messages from that stream.

I don't really think there is an invasion of privacy, and in any case I think it has sufficient historical value as to override privacy concerns. True, someone will probably get divorced due to the revelation of some old affair, but I am not going to lose sleep over it.

<comment> brown9-2 Well that is how they are designed technically, but I doubt most of the senders and recipients of the pages were aware of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good analysis at [http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/ent...](http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/entry5770280.shtml?tag=stack)

"It's not clear how they were obtained in the first place. One possibility is that they were illegally compiled from the records of archived messages maintained by pager companies, and then eventually forwarded to WikiLeaks.

The second possibility is more likely: Over-the-air interception. Each digital pager is assigned a unique Channel Access Protocol code, or capcode, that tells it to pay attention to what immediately follows. In what amounts to a gentlemen's agreement, no encryption is used, and properly-designed pagers politely ignore what's not addressed to them. "

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, there's a lot of confidential info in here. After just glancing over one 5 minute interval:

firstname.lastname@example.com||From:Joe BradyF.Y.I. - Ops is calling a PRT on a SAM (Settlement Account Maintenance) failure - This is NOT a network issue - <USER2> Ops is working this issue - They are looking to fail over to LKS

email@example.com||Steve, I have an outage in Northampton, PA. They had a power problem and lost the CNI ring. 21,000 lines effected. call me at 717-227-0334. Kevin

firstname.lastname@example.com||PROD Chain Fail for SITERICP Chain=OBI_MF_GL_P

300~MPfetchData:openConnectionToManager:ERROR CONNECTING:192.168.35.97 : www36 connectToServerPort:socket/socket timed out at /home/crdtdrv/creditderivatives/script/MPfetchData.pl line 342, <SOCK_192.168.35.19> chunk 178126.

firstname.lastname@example.com|HTTPD Frontend front2r.escrub.co|ERROR: could not connect to front2r.escrub.com on port 80 (httpd). Timestamp: 20010911015701

kaccount.intel.com/service_status.asp Detailed message is URL: <http://networkaccount.intel.com/service_status.asp> ??does not contain: SFSA0005 SUCCEEDED

etc etc etc

<comment><USER6> Well, thats what you get for sending confidential information over plaintext. Most of the stuff I've seen is just status updates anyways, probably irrelevant after 8 years.

<comment><USER7> It can be irrelevant after 8 years, but could be relevant for someone that could act on it at the moment it was captured. Maybe for some social engineering attack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 2001-09-11 06:27:40 Skytel [003928287] D ALPHA TOM. THIS IS RAY, MY CONTINENTAL FLIGHT CANCELLED MHT TO EWR. NEXT FLIGHT IS AT 9:40 AM ARRIVING 11 AM. PAGER NUMBER 1 888 935 8317

EDIT: sorry - the proper place for comments like that is [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a7xpt/conspiracy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/a7xpt/conspiracy_theories_commence_wikileaks_to_release/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this some kind of joke? On [http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-08_25_200...](http://911.wikileaks.org/files/messages_2001_09_11-08_25_2001_09_11-08_29.txt):

> 2001-09-11 08:26:01 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 93-if you want to say goodbye, i > will understand but i will always be in love with you. that...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:03 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 2...will never change. if i don't > hear from you, i probably won't bother you when i get to...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:05 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 3...work. so if you want to talk > to me, in this case, you will have to make a move first. if...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:07 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 5...how much. i miss you and i > miss us.

> 2001-09-11 08:26:09 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 4...not, then i get it. i told > you i'm not stupid. I LOVE YOU!! so much in fact, i hurt with...

> 2001-09-11 08:26:07 Arch [0948817] A ALPHA 5...how much. i miss you and i > miss us.

Sounds like either an affair or someone paging the script to the Young&Restless….

<comment><USER10> I've gotten almost that exact txt. Girls really do write like that.

<comment><USER11> And some guys...

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1odyq)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A surprisingly detailed and informative news summary of this story: [http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/ent...](http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/25/taking_liberties/entry5770280.shtml?tag=mncol;txt)

</comment><comment><USER12> In case you found the title confusing, these are intercepts of pager text messages sent on 9/11 (possibly leaked from some US goverment agency?). There's no explanation of what geographical area or what network providers are covered.

<comment><USER13> There is readily available software that allows you to intercept pager communications. The two protocols mostly used by the paging companies are FLEX and POCSAG, and the nationwide paging networks all operate(d) on the 929-931 Mhz band.

The two most prominent intercept applications are: \- POCFLEX, a DOS based software package that requires a 4-level FSK interface to the scanner \- PDW, a windows based software package that uses a soundcard to recover the pager text from the scanner baseband.

You can download both packages here:

<http://www.discriminator.nl/software/index-en.html>

Most likely someone setup a few radios and archived all pager texts from the different major nationwide paging networks, and then consolidated the data into one set of files.

<comment><USER14> is this common practice? why would someone collect all this info at this point in time?

<comment><USER15> I suspect, although I don't know of anyone doing this myself, that there are people doing this all the time, just as a hobby or for the hell of it. The equipment required is minimal and so are the storage requirements, so you could easily log everything. Even in 2001 it wouldn't have been cost- prohibitive.

There are probably people sitting on years worth of data, just because that's a hobby for them. 9/11 is probably one of the only dates that's of interest to the general public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 2001-09-11 08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA Someone just told me there was an explosion at

2001-09-11 08:47:48 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA wtc....BR

This appears to be the first transmission about the actual attack.

(Edited to remove garbage in between from other pages)

</comment><comment><USER17> Can someone who works on Wall Street explain how pagers are still used? I had no idea that anyone had pagers anymore.

<comment><USER18> Still have pagers where I work. We (developers) share one and rotate it around the team (each person has it for a week) for application support. As far as I can tell, it's better than any of the alternatives.

<comment><USER19> Better than email on a mobile device?

<comment><USER18> No return on that investment. Hardly anything can be solved via e-mail. Call comes in, 99% of the time I need to log in remotely to solve it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting, but do we know that these messages came from a reliable source?

<comment><USER21> How do you know anything on Wikileaks came from a reliable source? Or anything on the web or the news or from your friends?

You basically have trust, first-party confirmations, alternate sources giving consensus, and guilty reactions—none of which can be relied on for accuracy either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This really looks like a wonderful opportunity for visualization freaks to get their blit on .. I'd love to have this massive database visualized in some way ..

<comment><USER3> I wonder how that would function, ie whether a collaborative tool could be set up to sort through them. I can see easy analysis possibilities employing spreadsheets, but it would be most useful for historical research if there were some way to tag them, filtering out automated status messages and the like.

<comment><USER23> That's already going on at the Reddit post, e.g. an import into MySQL for querying, filtering out the numerical-only posts, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I do not think that is gonna lead to something useful, people can fall into "chinese syndrome" syndrome, when a movie predicted what hapeened a week later...

Yet it is very chilling to read.

<comment><USER25> We're currently T -4 hours from the raison d'être.

<comment><USER26> 1 point by lsb 6 hours ago | link We're currently T -4 hours from the raison d'être</comment></comment></comment>


NYT reporter hides corporate ties of Sanders critics she highlights - <AUTHOR> https://fair.org/home/sidney-embers-secret-sources/ <comment><USER2> I don't disagree with this piece but I would find it more palatable if the author would add: "Disclosure: I am a Bernie Sanders supporter."

[https://katiehalper.com/tag/bernie- sanders/](https://katiehalper.com/tag/bernie-sanders/)

[https://www.twitter.com/kthalps](https://www.twitter.com/kthalps)

She tweets: "The @nytimes hasn't said anything since their "journalist" got busted for irresponsible & dishonest reporting. The Times is worse than Fox & Ember is worse than @BretStephensNYT bc everyone knows that they have an ideology & bias. @melbournecoal & Times pretend to be objective"

I mean, come on.

I don't mind any of this: just disclose it in your piece which is after all about bias, having an agenda, and conflicts of interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty interesting article. NYT seems to have quality reporting on the surface, but I personally started questioning their bias over the past couple years and eventually cancelled my subscription.

One of the things I'm not sure about are their editorials/investigations against tech companies. While I strongly believe in regulating the Facebook and Googles of the world, my cynical side is convinced NYT publishes these investigations not simply because these are honest journalists looking for the truth but because these media outlets are legitimately under threat and don't know how else to compete. And I mean legitimately under threat as in these tech giants are competing with companies such as the NYT. They're simply looking out for their personal interests.

<comment><USER2> > questioning their bias over the past couple years

It's not new. They hired an ombudsman in 2003 after warranted criticism for their unquestioning support of the Iraq war, but they got rid of that position two years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The sheer number of recent NY Times pieces warning of the "danger" of progressive policy has certainly made their institutional bias pretty obvious.

For instance:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/us/politics/2020-democrat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/us/politics/2020-democrats.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/opinion/sunday/second- dem...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/opinion/sunday/second-democratic- debate.amp.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/democratic- debate...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/democratic- debate-2020.amp.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/democratic- candid...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/democratic-candidates- primaries.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was hoping this would be about NYT partnering with Verizon on their 5G Journalism Lab, but alas.

[https://open.nytimes.com/exploring-the-future-of-5g-and- jour...](https://open.nytimes.com/exploring-the-future-of-5g-and- journalism-a53f4c4b8644)

<comment><USER3> This article certainly represents NYT in a much more positive light, focusing on what innovation is possible using 5G. I'm curious why post this here and not in its own thread. My skeptical side thinks you're trying to present NYT more favorably and wanting to distract from the original topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have canceled my NYT subscription after reading this.

</comment><comment><USER7> This can't possibly be what the front page of HN is for. As the primary season gets into full swing, an all-pairs mapping of candidates to media outlet grudges will generate a story like this several times a week; the front page will have US horse-race politics pegged to it continuously.

<comment><USER8> I am not from the US, but this article "gratified my intellectual curiosity"[1] by demonstrating a clear pattern where it shouldn't exist, and, therefore, I upvoted it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER9> Personally, I don't find it that "the NYT has lied" could ever satisfy my intellectual curiosity"; if anything it's business as usual.

<comment><USER8> It's not about a particular news medium, political party, or politician. The article highlights a much deeper issue in general. That's why I found it to be an interesting read.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Learn OS fundamentals - <AUTHOR> What is the best way to learn the fundamentals of operating systems, with a focus on UNIX/Linux? I am a recent graduate in mathematics and I've taken basic CS courses but stopped short of taking OS/Compilers.<p>Not looking for a 600+ page tome, a book in the 200-300 page range or a lecture series would be optimal. <comment><USER2> The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, which is the gold standard on Unix and BSD. You won't be pleased to learn the 2nd edition is 900 pages though. :p

The author Kirk McKusick has some excellent videos on YT too. May not cover all you want as he used to sell a video course on his home page (his site isn't loading for me, so I can't check). Should give you a start though. Trivia: The magic number of the UFS2 filesystem is his birthday as Easter egg :)

The first edition is freely available on FreeBSD's site [https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/design-44b...](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/design-44bsd/) Note that this is based around 4.4 BSD so some recent features will be missing.

Bach's Design of the Unix Operating system is horribly outdated these days.

I'm not aware of anything shorter that I'd recommend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think 'tomes' is where it's at these days.

An operating system covers quite a lot these days so a short book would either skip a lot of topics or be very shallow in the specifics and the specifics is very much at the core of coding an OS. You need to know a lot of the environment it runs in, so it becomes detailed rather quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> > a short book would either skip a lot of topics or be very shallow in the > specifics and the specifics is very much at the core of coding an OS

I'm ok with that! I'm not planning to write an OS, just want to have a programmer's mental model of how an OS works.</comment></comment>


Many Are Wrong About iPhone 4 FaceTime - <AUTHOR> http://sanziro.com/2010/06/many-are-wrong-about-iphone-4-facetime.html

<comment><USER2> The thing I find most interesting about facetime is that jobs announced it will be an open standard soon. I am looking forward to that. I have been looking for an open alternative to skype but didn't find anything that would come close to it so I welcome any competition in that field.

voip doesn't really work out of the box the way skype does and if apple manages to compete seriously with skype using an open standard that'll be great.

</comment><comment><USER3> .... FaceTime will be WiFi only initially. Not sure why Apple roll out this FaceTime at all.. especially it's only on WiFi. So am I supposed to make video call with someone using the same network as me or .... still quite clueless.. Anyone help me understand.

<comment><USER4> You don't have to be on the _same_ wifi network, you just both have to be on wifi somewhere. It's like video chatting on the desktop (Skype, iChat) but on the iPhone instead. I'm sure they were forced to make it wifi for now because the 3G carriers couldn't handle all the extra traffic (AT&T at least).

<comment><USER3> Hm.. correct me if I am wrong, let's say I call someone I know via the AT&T network on the iPhone 4, with FaceTime will be able to see the other person, providing there is wifi connection someone near me n the person I am calling. Cause FaceTime is providing the video chat feature via wifi over the Internet instead of the 3G carrier.. Right?</comment></comment></comment>


Australian Government budget illustrated using d3.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget/data-2012

<comment><USER2> The visualization isn't as good as ABC's - I tweeted this yesterday: ABC's use of the tree map is far superior to SMH's bubble charts. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-08/interactive- budget-201...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-08/interactive- budget-2012-how-its-spent/3971410)

I also tweeted that it's a shame ABC used Javascript infovis toolkit instead of d3

</comment><comment><USER3> It's neat, but it doesn't seem like an efficient way to represent what is, essentially, tabular data. You can only hover over one item at a time, making it hard to compare data, you can't sort or organize it in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER4> They should definitively add the data as tabular data as well. However, I think this is great for people who are not good with numbers. Probably not the color blind tho, red and green bubbles hovering over each other cant be good. Add some subtle patterns to each category as well as colors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man, this is terrible! Are the numbers proportional to radii or areas? How to compare two bubble blobs when bubbles overlap? How to spot the proportions of colors within a blob? This changes are about what? Last year? If so, the most interesting part is how much did it changed, which is simply missing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Slightly Tangential question for those that have used D3 or similar libraries. I'll be working on a product soon that shows web analytical data such as search terms and popular pages on the site. I want to represent that data visually. Which library would you recommend for this work?

</comment><comment><USER7> Could they make this more difficult to do comparison? When the title says "Spot the..." you expect it is because the visualisation makes it abundantly obvious, not because it is some sort of cognitive challenge.

</comment><comment><USER8> Are there any downsides to using d3.js? We're looking to rebuild a primarily chart-based application in the near future, and it's currently top of my list of libraries to use.

<comment><USER9> * No support for old IE.

* You have to think carefully about how you want your data to be displayed and do your own design work; D3 is a toolkit, not pre-made charts, and if your design sense sucks your graphics will too.

* A somewhat steep learning curve; but it's the good kind of learning that teaches you to see the world in a different way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would love some labels on those bubbles. Would be nice to know what each of those things are.

<comment><USER11> hover over them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love d3, but decided not to use it because of IE. Using Raphael for my task.

</comment><comment><USER7> Horrible data visualisation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool graphic. First good data visualisation in smh. Well done guys

</comment><comment><USER14> +1 for yet another great D3 implementation

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome chart, the budget not so much.

<comment><USER16> Do you have any actual criticism of the budget? It is a little off-topic from discussing the shininess of the charts.

I thought it was pretty average and most of the cuts/gains were largely procedural (much like the last few budgets). No really large changes are being made in this budget (you can see it from the chart and reading the actual numbers instead of following the media's interpretations). It is returning Australia to a surplus which may or may not be the right move. All in all it is pretty much what you would get from a team of accountants and consultants.

<comment><USER17> _No really large changes are being made in this budget_

Well.. there aren't any huge structural changes (unless you count the Carbon Tax), but a budget turn-around of >3% biggest reversal in over 50 years[1]. That's quite significant.

I think it was a fairly reasonable budget in the circumstances, and I think most commentary reflects that. I think the biggest opposition criticism is for holding back the cut in company tax. I agree with that, but if one takes the view that returning the budget to a surplus is a high priority I think the delay in that was reasonable given the cuts to other sectors. (I am not at all convinced the priority given to returning to surplus is required, so I guess that is also a criticism).

[1] [http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/BUDGET-20...](http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/BUDGET-2012-Swan- Gillard-tax-pd20120508-U485B?OpenDocument&src=hp3)</comment></comment></comment>


In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade -- altogether - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-utah-school15-2010feb15,0,906102.story <comment><USER2> Instead of cutting public employees numbers, their salaries or pension plans, they're focusing on cutting the actual benefits the state provides for its people. Say hello to the inherent incentive structure of government.

<comment><USER3> Maybe ... in this case the current proposal on the table is to make it optional. For a significant subset of students, the ones who the school system is essentially warehousing, that strikes me as OK. After all, a high school degree nowadays is essentially worthless, a basic college degree has replaced it.

There's the danger of the slippery slope, of course.

<comment><USER2> The danger of arguing about these proposals - they may very well be worthy of separate appraisal - is that one accepts the basic principle that in times of receding tax revenues it's ok to cut benefits for the taxpayers but not to downsize the actual legislature or governing body with its employees as well. It's a perfect smoke screen on the part of the legislature.

<comment><USER4> I was doing some work for the Office of the Speaker of the House in California, which is huge and employees hundreds of people. They are paid by the state. A guy there told me that when the is a gov. shutdown, they get IOUs for months. Plus they do get laid off also.

<comment><USER2> "According to a 2007 analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Asbury Park Press, "the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005, compared with the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector." Across comparable jobs, the federal government paid higher salaries than the private sector three times out of four, the paper found." There is an eye-opening story in Reason magazine on how public servants have it much better than private sector workers: <http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/12/class-war>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to high school in the States and a decision to graduate a year early was one of the best ones I've made. There's no reason not to teach half of the stuff that's covered in high school to middle schoolers. It was rather ridiculous to see 9th-10th graders open algebra and geometry textbooks for the first time.

Incidentally, there's no 12th grade in Russia and in most of the former Soviet Union countries. There were only 10 grades until 1987-88 or so.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, I did concurrent enrollment and by the age of 16 was taking half a day of University courses and half a day of secondary courses.

However, this is quite a bit different. Will any out of state University seriously consider a college application without 12 grades of experience?

This is tremendously short-sighted. There are some rabid conservative Republicans that believe all public education should be removed and replaced with private education. This is just taking advantage of a budget shortfall to accelerate that process.

Would you trust private corporations to school your children? I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong...

<comment><USER7> Certainly here in Sweden there are several high school run by private for profit companies. On the whole they seem to be doing OK, some are top of the league, some are so bad the government has to threaten to close them down, but most are perfectly average. Pretty much just like the state run schools. At the end of the day choice is good. If a high school student has 8 different schools he can go to then those school will work hard to up their game and try to attract that student (since students=money)

<comment><USER8> It's the same thing here. We have a large number of private schools. Some are based in religion, others are quite secular. These secular private schools tend to offer a more rigorous education (although that does not seem to necessarily reflect actual achievement).

<comment><USER9> Define "here".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recall a millionaire couple (older folks, maybe 55-60) I knew when I was a kid - they built and operated nursing homes; I recall very clearly them with an architect's ruler going over the blueprints for a new building.

They worked on a farm, and were themselves the son and daughter of farmers going back many generations.

Education level? 8th grade education.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the Philippines, completing high school means you've done a total of 10 years. I don't know of a good way to compare high school outcomes per se, but RP college grads who go on US grad schools certainly seem to do okay.

</comment><comment><USER12> As long as BYU is on board, Utah can probably just go ahead and pass the bill.</comment>


AMA Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin) - <AUTHOR> https://hashnode.com/post/i-am-robert-c-martin-uncle-bob-ask-me-anything-cjr7pnh8g000k2cs18o5nhulp <comment><AUTHOR> HN mods, is there an issue with this link? Why it's not on the homepage yet? It happens with all my submissions.</comment>


Do YC and PG describe world as they wish it were rather than how it actually is? - <AUTHOR> Ex: Successful founders do startups to solve problem and not more getting rich. How about Steve jobs, gates, Google guys etc, did they really startup only thinking about the problem to solve? <comment><USER2> The outcome of building a successful startup is wealth, which can be nice, but that is rarely the only goal. Speaking for myself, the uncertainty, stress, craftsmanship, _perceived_ control, problem solving and creativity all make it very interesting. It is a proxy for adventure as much as it is a way to get rich. I would probably not do startups if I cared about wealth, or wealth exclusively. Wealth seems like a good byproduct if you do something useful. Few people do startups exclusively because the problem at hand compels them to. Perhaps that answers your question.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Few people do startups exclusively because the problem at hand compels them to.

I guess this helps answer the mental discomfort I was having w.r.t the wisdom "do startups when you really care about the problem".

But I have heard many founders say that they always wanted to startup as that was what they thought a way to get rich, just yesterday I was listening to Tristan Walker say his starting motivation was to get rich: [https://mastersofscale.com/](https://mastersofscale.com/)</comment></comment>