Computers 'do not improve' pupil results, says OECD - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796 <comment> nv-vn I'm honestly not all that surprised, seeing as nearly every "technology in education" initiative really just amounts to using iPads for virtual textbooks. If schools used the technology to enrich education (specifically where it would be useful rather than just every single class) then at the very least it would be helpful in teaching new skills. However, treating computers as a magical gateway to better educations will never accomplish anything and I fail to comprehend how people thought it would be in the first place.

<comment><USER4> On a similar note, people seem to think that internet access will magically allow people to lift themselves out of poverty in developing countries. I personally find this idea to be pretty stupid; just because you have the sum total of the world's knowledge available to you (a paraphrased quote from the article) does not mean you are going to do anything with it or you can do anything with it.

<comment><USER5> Probably not for the majority, but for the people who _want_ to learn new stuff the internet is invaluable. I learned programming as a kid in the 80's, and the amount of time I spent only with finding and obtaining information is mind-boggling. Even in the early 90's if you wanted to get the official OS documentation for e.g. the Amiga you had to order them as several kilograms of dead tree from the States.

<comment><USER6> So, 15 years ago I traveled to Senegal to help evaluate how the Internet could be useful to them, economically speaking. Before my trip, I was imagining things much like you're describing here. What I saw on my trip was fairly eye- opening.

First of all, in much of the country basic services like electricity and running water cannot be taken for granted. Phone service is available -- for a price paid by the minute to some equivalent of a local entrepreneur who has invested money into getting a mobile phone plan and has some means of charging / powering the equipment (solar was the typical method, although I saw more primitive techniques as well). Internet access was generally many miles away in a regional capital, which is probably an all day trip for someone walking or on a horse (cars are for the wealthy). When you get there, access is very expensive.

I'm assuming things have gotten better in the last 15 years. For instance mobile phone penetration was already dramatic when I visited and can only have improved since then. However literacy was a serious problem -- you have to be able to read in order to make sense of almost anything on a computer, and in Senegal at least just knowing French is an elite signifier since most speak Wolof. Very few people were fluent English speakers -- I effectively had to learn pidgin French just to have conversations with the local telecom employees, although thankfully most Internet-specific technical terms were just directly taken from English.

In Dakar (the capital city) things were very different. It was pretty much what I imagined a typical city in Africa to be like -- and Internet access there was still expensive but in the realm of affordable. University students got some sort of access that was reasonable, although the pipe out of the country was pitifully small at the time (we had more bandwidth for our office than the whole country had in 2001).

The really interesting thing was that no one could figure out how to make money off Internet access other than Internet cafes and connecting people to the very large number of Senegalese who live outside the country. I imagine the remittance market is huge now. However things have changed, it almost certainly hinges on the extreme motivation people there have to better their lives. They will move heaven and earth to make a buck -- SV entrepreneurs could learn a lot from the drive on display everywhere I went. If you can imagine a way to make money from a situation, they were way ahead of you.

One last thing -- Senegal is considered one of the African success stories, generally speaking. It is relatively democratic, has a growing economy (without all the problems that come with having oil deposits) and has been the recipient of decades of development funding. _Many_ countries in Africa are worse off than Senegal, and I would imagine the snapshot I got in 2001 looks like utopia to them now.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the write up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kentaro Toyama talks about education and the failed promise of the OLPC program and other technological endeavors in education in _Geek Heresy_. His thesis is that technology "amplifies" the characteristics in society and self. If you have an underperforming school with ill-equipped or overwhelmed instructors, technology won't fix these issues. But in education research, where studies very carefully select a field site, you don't see experiments involving problem schools; you find experimental deployments in idyllic settings, with instructors who are extremely competent, and the researchers might even take a relatively hands-on role to ensure the technology gets used as desired by the protocol of the study.

In one chapter he points out that studies such as the OECD's tend to find middling results (as this one seems to, although I see more explicitly negative conclusions, like that students do _worse_ with technology in some circumstances) mainly because you're studying students from across all schools; look at the successful schools and see how technology affects them, and he seems to argue that you'll find those students make even greater leaps over the underprivileged students.

His bigger point is that technology's benefit is contextually determined by human factors, and that we need to understand the cultures in which we hope to use technology to benefit the members of that culture. Throwing tablets, laptops, or smartphones at everyone won't magically make the world a better place. It's a good read (so far, at least).

Also, I'm getting more and more annoyed seeing news outlets publishing summaries of third party studies without linking to _anything_. The BBC don't even link to the OECD's homepage, let alone the study they ostensibly published.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've got two kids in school (grades 8 and 10, relatively affluent district in the US), and I'm not shocked by this result. Anecdotally, whatever the possible upsides of computer use are, they are mitigated by some severe downsides:

* While promising the potential to be a learning tool, the computer is also an addiction. I've observed that it's almost impossible for some kids to manage their time, and to maintain their focus, while doing lessons on the computer. This has been a _huge_ setback for one of my kids. Fortunately, math is still done on paper, so he gets something out of that.

* I've looked at the online lessons. My impression is that the effort of programming the interactive environment for online lessons tends to limit the breadth and depth of those lessons. Math instruction has abandoned proofs. A huge amount of the computerized lessons are busywork.

* There's no limit to the amount of homework that can be pushed on kids.

This is nothing new. Roughly 30 years ago I had an internship at an educational computing center that had almost every kind of computer and educational software title in a demo lab, for teachers to try out. The vast amount of apps amounted to glorified flash cards.

How great it could actually be is lost on the teachers. Instead of working through canned lessons, or surfing for stuff to paste into a report, kids could explore "real" software such as (just listing some of my favorites), Scratch, iPython Notebook, Arduino, etc.

<comment><USER10> Humanity is suffering from a collective ADD epidemic under the spell of computers and internet and children are getting the worst of it. Computers are the last thing that kids under 12 need in a classroom. Teach them something that involves quiet focus, like 19th century cursive writing.

<comment><USER11> _Humanity is suffering from a collective ADD epidemic_

No, it's not. The US and a few other developed countries are suffering from an epidemic of ADD _diagnoses_. Unrestricted computer use is certainly not a good education policy, but there's no evidence that it causes ADD.

<comment><USER12> Oh, it causes ADD, alright. Without a proper way to use it, the Internet just leads people to jump between pages, bits of information and topics, which often devolves in distraction on the many entertainment bullshit resources out there...

You can't read a book properly when you know you can just jump to the middle or the end to see the most interesting bits.

<comment><USER11> "People reading on the Internet are easily distracted" is not the same as "having ADD".

<comment><USER12> Well, if it looks like ADD and acts like ADD, it is ADD.

Asperger's, for example, has been pushed under "autism spectrum disorder". And Pluto is not a planet.

I could see Internet overload/distraction be diagnosed as some ADD-like disorder, or the main cause of it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From a quick scan of the actual OECD report, it is quite clear that the authors are far less certain of the general conclusions than than the reporter from the BBC.

"With this data, patterns of correlation can be identified, but these must be interpreted carefully, because several alternative explanations give rise to similar patterns"

and

"Nothing guarantees that students who are more exposed to computers can be compared to with students who are less exposed, and that the observed performance differences can be attributed to such differences in exposure."

and

"Non-random selection and reverse causality thus plague within-country analyses, even after accounting for observable differences across students and schools."

[http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset- Management/oecd/educati...](http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset- Management/oecd/education/students-computers-and- learning_9789264239555-en#page1)

</comment><comment><USER14> There are several scenarios where computer use would not just be great but accelerate learning process:

-Teaching about planets, universe, Big Bang through interactive simulations

-Virtual interactive dissection for biology class

-Interactive geometry for understanding proofs

-Playing with molecular structure of material

-Interactive virtual model of steam engine and internal combustion engines

-Interactive excercise for basic arithmetic and trignometry

-Learning about WWII with photos, animations on map, graphs, data, videos.

I would have truely loved all these to be there in my school years. The key is that you need a _great_ software that is targeted towards specific parts of topics. Remember _interactivity_ is the key and only computers can offer that so cheaply and effectively even to the most disadvantaged students in remotest part of the world.

Instead of all these, when I hear "Tech for Education" it usually means, replacing books by ebooks, submitting homework electronically, ask questions in class chat rooms, recording activities in e-log and so on. Those things are triviality with negligible benefits towards actually understanding the subject - more likely negative benefit as it just adds on distraction. No one wants to do real tech in Ed like above examples because it's hard, requires lot of expensive talent and risk taking. Building chat rooms for class shouldn't even be called "tech in Ed", IMo.

Unfortunately schools are blowing 100s of million on just that and governments and philanthropists are happy to shove their cash in to creating ever more advanced chat rooms and classroom management systems rather than create actual interactive content that helps understanding of the subject.

It would have been nice if study pointed this out instead of denouncing use of computers in education straight up.

PS: No one should compare student performance with Shanghai or Mumbai. Those places have extra-super-heavy emphasis on passing exams and memorizations. You will find tons of students there who can acurately list down every single important date for WWII and without pretty much any understanding of dynamics that caused Holocast or even Holocast itself.

<comment><USER15> "There are several scenarios where computer use would not just be great but accelerate learning process:"

And dumb teachers across the world have missed all that, have they? Before spending taxpayers' money, how about some evidence that it's cost effective?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Computers in education", at least in my country (Portugal), was never about improving pupil results or _education_ per se.

"Computers in education" is all about clientelism; filling the pockets of a selected few which produce mediocre technology, a quid pro quo between politic executive power and the private sector.

</comment><comment><USER17> I agree.

My daughter has just hit secondary school in the UK. She was disappointed to find that they rarely touch a computer.

What they did do is on day one of science drop her a proper lab notebook and start talking about the scientific method and proper experimental recording, in mathematics they started talking about propositional logic and in RE they talked about logical reason. They're also not allowed to read eBooks; only paper ones.

I'm shitting myself with joy if I'm honest that they didn't stick them in front of a Flash game like they did in primary school and assume that was the end game for technology in education. They learned close to nothing and we had to do all the educating.

</comment><comment><USER18> The real promise of education technology isn't to plop computers in front of kids and hope they do better it's to get persistent, dynamic, individualized curriculum for every student.

Right now a kid that scrapes by with a D in 3rd grade English starts up at the same place as the kid that sat around bored because they'd read all the required reading the first week.

TL;DR We need a Young Ladies Illustrated Primer - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age)

</comment><comment><USER19> Interesting. I'm most fearful that this will be interpreted as "technology is bad! Keep it out of schools!" \- rather than "ok, now we have learned that randomly situating computers throughout a school may not be the right approach to introducing new technology into the school in an attempt to improve outcomes", and possibly, "should we revisit the outcomes that we are seeking in this new world?"

</comment><comment><USER20> What about the benefits to teachers? Taking a test on a computer won't make you perform any better, but it frees up a lot of the teacher's time grading, which is often spend "after hours".

</comment><comment><USER21> "The role that the computer can play most strongly has little to do with information. It is to give children a greater sense of empowerment, of being able to do more than they could do before. But too often, I see the computer being used to lead the child step by step through the learning process."

[http://www.papert.org/articles/ACritiqueofTechnocentrism.htm...](http://www.papert.org/articles/ACritiqueofTechnocentrism.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> For most applications computers do not make activities higher quality - <USER2> make them faster. And they need software to do this. History has shown that really good novel software is extremely hard to come by.

Before being productive on a computer a person has to learn to think and how to be creative. And after that one needs good software.

Sure, 1 in a 1000 kids is a born natural programmer and given a computer will make programming his/hers lifelong passion. For the rest of the crafts - unless exceptional applications are available like Photoshop and (Cintiq/Surface) for art, Scratch for learning programming, etc - <USER3> analogue learning materials may be superior.

</comment><comment><USER23> This has been known for years. The only thing computers really help are learning disabled kids.

It's like exercise. You can attach a motor to the exercise machine to do the work for you, the work gets done, but you don't get any stronger.

The same goes for learning. Learning requires effort. No effort = no improvement. Jobs called computers a "bicycle for the mind". Biking will get you further than jogging, but not stronger.

</comment><comment><USER24> Clifford Stoll was right. Read Silicon Snake Oil and marvel at his prescience.

<comment><USER25> I assume this article is a summary of his argument, seems more wrong than right with the benefit of hindsight:

[http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- nirva...](http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- nirvana-185306)

Quote: _" Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople."_

(I work in education, and the software is mostly pretty bad, since its basically "enterprise software", but I don't blame technology as such)

<comment><USER24> Stoll makes a convincing case that between the ages of 6 and 16 computers are harmful to education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's not the tool that yields results, but how you use it.

<comment><USER27> Agreed! Giving them hammers won't improve the outcome either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I was little, I remember this racing game and this block building game. You did multiplications (like 6x7) and if you got it correctly you would get another block in your wall. It was really addicting to be faster than you little friends.

</comment><comment><USER29> Stradivarius violins in schools won't help if teachers are not musicians. The whole notion of professional "teachers" instead of professionals is broken. My best teachers were practicing scientists, programmers and crafstmen

<comment><USER30> There's an element of truth to that, but I'd argue an effective teacher in a classroom environment also needs to know how to communicate to a group of kids. I've had teachers who clearly had an interest in a subject but weren't able to get it across (for reasons that were a little hard to judge). Arguably that's the sort of thing that teacher training should give teachers a chance to refine, though I don't know if that's the sort of skill that teacher training focuses on at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would have liked to see some data on the accompanying human resources and expenditure, if technology investment is taking from human resources investment then it's not a surprise that the results are poor.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think they have found this result because technology is not used correctly in schools. These "edtech" softwares are very weak most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER33> What the "International Tests" are optimized for?

I wonder if, a century ago, the increase use of automobiles led to a measurable decline in buggy handling skills.</comment>


UUIDs generally do not meet security requirements - <AUTHOR> https://littlemaninmyhead.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/cautionary-note-uuids-should-generally-not-be-used-for-authentication-tokens/ <comment><USER2> The problem highlighted here is not so much UUIDs, but instead the use of poor PRNGs (i.e. things other than /dev/urandom or getrandom(2) on Linux). All of the issues with the example libraries are around of the use of PRNGs from math libs, not crypto libs.

A "secure token generation" library might have the same flaws (and many do!).

A _correctly generated_ v4 UUID (S4.4 of the RFC) should be acceptable for use as a secure token, given it has 122 random bits.

The trouble with UUIDs, if any, is that only v4 UUIDs are really suitable for use as secure tokens, with v1 through v3 being entirely unsuitable.

Personally, outside of DB PKs in Postgres (or similar), I prefer to base64 encode 256-bits from /dev/urandom for tokens, as they're a little shorter (and Go makes it easy enough to do that).

<comment><AUTHOR> > A _correctly generated_ v4 UUID (S4.4 of the RFC) should be acceptable for > use as a secure token, given it has 122 random bits.

No it's not, from §4.4:

> Set all the other bits to randomly (or pseudo-randomly) chosen values.

I can use a PRNG with a cycle length of 8 and it would be fully correct according to the RFC, but it would be trivial to brute-force all the values.

<comment><USER3> Correctly generated implies not having such a computationally weak correlation

<comment><AUTHOR> Obviously I'm interpreting "correctly generated" to mean "generated in accordance with the RFC", so no, it does not.

<comment><USER4> "Correctly generated" also means, at the very least, "useful to the people implementing it." If you can't use a given UUID implementation without generating collisions in the first 100 items, you won't use that UUID implementation. There's an "implicit spec" behind each spec of what people will or won't actually bother to do.

Generating correlated v4 UUIDs isn't _wrong_ , but it is _stupid_ in the sense of being _self-defeating_ : nobody who _wants to generate v4 UUIDs_ wants them with insufficient randomness, and will have no reason to _not_ consider a bad random-number source to be a bug, because it's interfering with getting them the thing they want to get by generating v4 UUIDs in the first place.

(The real point of the explicit UUID spec, meanwhile, is in saying what constitutes a _valid_ UUID—and it's certainly _valid_ to generate a UUIDv4 using insufficient entropy. There's no way for a peer _receiving_ such UUIDs to guess that they're maybe-predictable-with-enough-effort and reject them on that basis, which is all "validity" can ever mean: what can or cannot be technically enforced by protocol peers.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fortunately Python is safe in this case. [https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/uuid.py#l582](https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/uuid.py#l582) \- urandom is the source for the UUID4. (same for 3.5: [https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/3.5/Lib/uuid.py#l600](https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/3.5/Lib/uuid.py#l600))

<comment><USER6> Ruby is also safe: it uses OpenSSL/urandom for UUID: [https://github.com/sj26/ruby-1.9.3-p0/blob/master/lib/secure...](https://github.com/sj26/ruby-1.9.3-p0/blob/master/lib/securerandom.rb#L59) [https://github.com/sj26/ruby-1.9.3-p0/blob/master/lib/secure...](https://github.com/sj26/ruby-1.9.3-p0/blob/master/lib/securerandom.rb#L246)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if you're only concerned about making unique identifiers, that don't need to be secret, that merely need to be unique, hiding the UUID generation state is a very good idea if users might have the ability to cause new UUID generators to be created. Otherwise, instead of a 2^(128/2) = 2^64 birthday attack, they can make 2^N generators, find the one that overflows into the next the quickest (i.e. a birthday attack on the 2N msb's), and have 2^(128-2N) work to do. This means you could do a 2^36-sized birthday attack and then have 2^56 work left to do, and that part's not memory-bound. For example, this works if you have generators that seed a 128-bit counter with /dev/urandom, and then increment from there. You can avoid this if you "just" use some CSPRNG.

</comment><comment><USER8> For anyone else wondering about their node.js code: node-uuid uses nodes crypto.randomBytes: [https://github.com/broofa/node- uuid/blob/master/uuid.js#L59](https://github.com/broofa/node- uuid/blob/master/uuid.js#L59)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wrote a fairly popular Python library to easily generate short UUIDs (encoded with base57):

[https://github.com/stochastic- technologies/shortuuid](https://github.com/stochastic-technologies/shortuuid)

Since it turned out that most uses didn't _actually_ need a UUID and just needed a random string, I figured I'd maximize the randomness per bit and added a .random() call that returns a short string that is taken from os.urandom().

It would probably be good if you asked yourself whether you actually need a UUID or a random string, and used the right tool for the job. Using a UUID when you want a random string and vice versa leads to these kinds of problems.

</comment><comment><USER10> Shouldn't this be 'Javascript UUIDs generally do not meet security requirements' ?

As he mentions in his story, the server was actually using Java UUIDs which are cryptographically secure. So 'UUIDs generally do not meet security requirements' is false, as generally here only applies to Javascript. Python, Ruby, Java all have cryptographically safe UUID.

<comment><USER11> > Shouldn't this be 'Javascript UUIDs generally do not meet security > requirements' ?

Nothing wrong with v4 UUIDs generated in Javascript, so long as you don't use Math.random(). Every current browser supports, eg, crypto.getRandomValues(), which is cryptographically secure. If you use a broken PRNG in any other language, you'll get broken v4 UUIDs too. :)

(Also, don't make the common mistake of conflating "UUID" with "v4 UUID". A v4 UUID contains 122 bits of (hopefully) random data. A v1 UUID contains 0 bits of randomness.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This kind of problem is so prevalent that I think directly creating an 128-bit random ID from a CSPRNG is much safer than betting on the saneness of UUID implementers.

<comment><USER13> There's nothing insane about using a faster nonsecure PRNG for a library function that you expect to possibly be used on a hot path, as long as the security properties are clearly documented.

<comment><USER14> CSPRNGs are not much slower than the alternatives, and really, how often the hot path on data creation falls on the processor, instead of memory access or IO?

Nope, looks like a really bad choice for generic libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When do you use UUIDs and why?

I use traditional auto increment integer IDs as primary keys in SQL databases. I use those SQL query results in application code. Debugging seems a lot easier with smaller integer values rather than UUIDs that I saw in several enterprise software and SQL-DBs.

<comment><USER13> I use UUIDs for pretty much any "primary key"-like scenario:

* They're natively supported in most databases and languages

* They're strongly typed, meaning there's no risk of accidentally doing things that make no semantic sense with them (e.g. adding or multiplying)

* They ensure that any API user will use the correct datatype, rather than some clients breaking when your ids go above 2^31

* They avoid exposing information about how many entries they are, e.g. you can't tell how many users I have by signing up and checking your user ID

* The client can generate them without roundtripping to the database; this can save on roundtrips when you're saving several related pieces of data, and makes it easier to have circular datastructures if you need them

* As others have said, they're usable in an AP datastore

None of this is impossible to do with integers, but UUIDs make it very easy.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't the random nature of uuids make them extremely inefficient candidates for primary key as they can't be indexed well?

<comment><USER13> It's not like an auto increment key is meaningful, so the read performance will be the same either way. As for writes, a new key could go anywhere in the index, but OTOH you can insert multiple values concurrently (unlike with auto increment keys with MVCC where you'll have collisions and one insert will have to be rolled back and redone). As always, benchmark your use case and see what gives acceptable performance.

<comment><USER17> > As for writes, a new key could go anywhere in the index

This forces index tree rebalancing to occur on many (even most) writes, which is hugely detrimental to performance.

<comment><USER13> Which tree structure is this for? Many tree structures (e.g. the classic red- black tree) perform much better (doing less rebalancing) for randomized inserts than for ordered ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> UUID4 random is 122 bit of randomness:

[https://gist.github.com/miohtama/6e72c2458a7138599dc1](https://gist.github.com/miohtama/6e72c2458a7138599dc1)

<comment><USER19> The point here is that UUID4 is only as random as the underlying source of randomness. If the source of randomness is garbage your UUID4 is garbage as well. v8's Math.random() does not even remotely come close to a CSPRNG, and as a post a few days ago noted[0] it has a very, very small cycle length, so you can easily (via brute-force) find where in the cycle it was when it generated a given value, and enumerate all the UUIDs it _could_ generate.

[0] [https://medium.com/@betable/tifu-by-using-math- random-f1c308...](https://medium.com/@betable/tifu-by-using-math- random-f1c308c4fd9d#.7p2jjzxba)

<comment><USER20> C's rand() is typically poor as well. Thought it was par for the course for builtin rng to be somewhat shitty, but maybe other languages stack up better?

<comment><USER21> C's rand() (rather, your libcs rand()) is perfectly fine for what it's supposed to be: fast random data, with no particular guarantees to cryptographic security, for things like randomized algorithms or the 99% of cases where you're picking what powerup to spawn instead of generating super important key material.

To make it into a CSPRNG would be a detriment. The only thing I would change is to have a minimum cycle length.

<comment><USER22> No, C's rand is unsuited for most randomized algorithms. MCMC algorithms won't work with rand unless you're lucky, it's even unsuited for choosing pivots for quicksort. The only application where it might be ok is games.

<comment><USER19> > The only application where it might be ok is games.

Not even that. Different types of games require different types of RNGs (e.g. in an RPG or strategy game you probably want a stable seeded RNG to preclude RNG save-scumming), the C standard requires almost no guarantee of rand().

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://twitter.com/mjmalone/status/667429857165488130](https://twitter.com/mjmalone/status/667429857165488130)

The PRNG behind Math.random() has been fixed in Chrome very recently.

<comment><USER24> Fixed?

As far as I know, there are no CSPRNGs that are as fast as, say, mersenne twister. So if 'fixed' means 'made it a CSPRNG', then I'd have to say they broke it. crypto.getRandomValues already exists.

<comment><USER25> How fast do most users of a PRNG really need it do be? I think it's not unreasonable to pick something like ChaCha20 as a default PRNG (cryptographically secure, huge seed space, much smaller state than MT19937), and let people who need millions of random numbers for simulations use something else.

<comment><USER26> The algorithm that V8 chose to replace the current generator, xorshift128+, passes BigCrush and can produce a random uint64 in just over 1 nanosecond on a modern processor (that's ~7GB/s). Seems like a good choice. Not sure how it compares to something like ChaCha20 on performance, but I'm guessing it compares favorably (though it's unlikely to be your bottleneck either way).

Since I wrote the above linked article there's been a bunch of discussion, some of which has been about using crypto to back Math.random(). I'm sort of torn on that front - I feel like a good PRNG is useful for some stuff (like array shuffles), but maybe not? Maybe there are undiscovered (or even discovered, but not well known) vulnerabilities that justify CSPRNG even there, as there are with hash collision vulnerabilities.

Anyways, what I learned is that the benchmarks (particularly SunSpider, it seems) are putting pressure on implementors to (over)emphasize Math.random() performance, but nothing is really pressuring them to produce good quality. Sounds like the best thing to do might be to put some quality requirements in the ECMA spec to balance the performance pressures. Check out my recent Twitter likes for more details. I'm @mjmalone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Actually, this may be even worse than described. The UUID digits all amount to the hex digit of hi in the 16 __3 place (i.e. the 4th least-significant nybble). However, it also turns out that hi[init]*0xFFFF will give the same digit sequence but with a leading 0. This probably can be used to determine the RNG state from a single UUID, but the calculations for that are beyond me.</comment>


Bug Hunting in Smart Contracts with Crytic - <AUTHOR> https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/05/15/bug-hunting-with-crytic/ <comment><USER2> (FD: My company's blog).

I don't work in cryptocurrency and so maybe my perspective is flawed, but I am _continually_ astounded by prevalence of low-hanging fruit in what _ought_ to be an incredibly simple execution space.

As an outsider looking in, it feels like the cryptocurrency community has been given an _ideal_ environment for static analysis and formal verification and _still_ manages to produce grossly vulnerable and/or unreliable contracts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would've been helpful if they mentioned what kind of smart contracts they support at the very top of the article. I had to dive in to find out they're talking about Solidity

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems useful for testing public contracts. Bug hunters can get paid using the tool testing the contracts out in the wild and making money directly when they find bugs.</comment>


Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame - <AUTHOR> https://code.fb.com/data-center-engineering/open-rack/ <comment><USER2> This strikes me as a gigantic coordinated form of commoditize your complement.

<comment><USER3> DC power wise, the original reason why they did this is that it's grossly inefficient to have a 42RU worth of 1U servers, each with its own individual 110-240VAC to 12/5VDC power supply in it.

Or the equivalent of that with four-servers-in-2RU type setups, but also with AC to DC power supplies.

They centralized the AC to DC conversion in a single unit in the rack, feeding either 277VAC or 480VAC to each rack, and ran 12VDC to each server. The new system wisely moves from 12VDC to 48VDC (same as most telecom equipment), and probably has basic DC-DC converters in each server unit for 48 to 12VDC conversion.

They've also gone with custom motherboards that entirely eliminate the 5VDC rails which are distributed by 'normal' ATX server power supplies.

<comment><USER4> There are 90%+ efficient reasonably cheap flex psus, but the mainstream is around 80%.

So, you would not be saving much if you only have access to 110 or 220 mains.

The economy changes though if you can get access to industrial 3 phase linkup at 400V, and can avoid additional low step down transformers.

<comment><USER5> > _So, you would not be saving much if you only have access to 110 or 220 > mains._

"Much" is a relative term here, no? Like, doesn't that kind of depend at the scale at which Facebook operates?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could ocp make a rack that behaves like a blade server?

Construct a server rack that works like a network Patch panel and server power bus? Thus one would just install the server in the rack slot, no more Cables to the server. Bonus award if a robot could slide in the server in the rack.

<comment><USER7> What's the current industry practice for blades? Does AWS GCP, Azure use them?

<comment><USER8> > Does AWS GCP, Azure use them?

No. Cost / value is not in alignment there. You want your servers to be cheap and disposable.

Plus lose the control plane and you lose all the blades within it. There's just no value to it unless you're doing workloads that benefit from a high degree of locality. Cloud services focus on having their networks be as fast as possible so as to reduce the disadvantage of not being highly local.

Oracle (my employer), and AWS have been announcing various HPC cloud products where we're starting to focus on highly local, servers with fast interconnects, and it's _still_ not looking at blades. HPC workloads are rather untapped by clouds so far, and it's a big market.

<comment><USER7> I work AWS adjacent and I wish there was more externally facing information about how the DC's are operated. It seems like a really neat space.

<comment><USER8> It's more boring than you'd probably expect. Boring is simple, reliable and cheap. The less opportunities for things to go wrong, the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder, when will facebook's hardware people start using their own inventions?

I see them and other dotcoms pouring inordinate amount of money designing own hardware without actually manufacturing or using anything of it.

As I know, facebook still buys very plain OEM servers from Quanta

<comment><USER9> Facebook does use it. They design their own hardware, but they are do not manufacture it themselves, they aren't in the hardware manufacturing business. They parter with companies like Quanta to do that.

Here's an older article that explains the relationship: [https://venturebeat.com/2014/01/29/facebook- quanta/](https://venturebeat.com/2014/01/29/facebook-quanta/)

<comment><USER4> I'm well aware that. I'm saying that in a sense that they don't buy or use much of the original "ocp platform" they show off at their events.

And much of it was said to have ended after limited deployment in their Prineville DC, after which they switched back to regular OEM quanta gear with just few things like blue-green handlebars added, and "barebone" motherboard trays.

I've been whispered that the biggest buyers of the original "ocp platform" gear is not even facebook these days, but some banks

<comment><USER10> Facebook's entire blob storage and data warehouse (multi-exabyte) is run completely on OCP storage hardware built by ODMs, of which Quanta is included. Anyone telling you that we don't use OCP is grossly misinformed.

Source: I was on the blob storage team when we migrated all of our data from OCP's gen1 storage design [1] to the new gen2 storage design [2].

1: [https://www.opencompute.org/documents/facebook-open-vault- st...](https://www.opencompute.org/documents/facebook-open-vault-storage- hardware-v08-spec)

2: [https://www.opencompute.org/documents/facebook-bryce- canyon-...](https://www.opencompute.org/documents/facebook-bryce-canyon- storage-system-specification)

edit: corrected links.

<comment><USER4> Well, then it is.

What do you use for regular servers these day?

<comment><USER10> More OCP hardware (or designs that will eventually be contributed to OCP), in many different SKUs depending on use case. This page lists most of the current-gen hardware that I am aware of:

[https://www.opencompute.org/contributions?refinementList%5Bc...](https://www.opencompute.org/contributions?refinementList%5Bcontributor%5D%5B0%5D=Facebook&refinementList%5Bfamily%5D%5B0%5D=OpenRack%20v2&refinementList%5Baccept_year%5D=&refinementList%5Bproject%5D%5B0%5D=Server&page=1&configure%5BfacetFilters%5D%5B0%5D=archived%3Afalse)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The sooner this centralized model of storing data ends, the better.

<comment><USER8> What does that have to do with an open specification for racks of computers? This is a design that anyone could potentially adopt, and gain from the engineering efforts that those involved in OCP have done.

There's even a marketplace you can purchase Open Rack components through (and you could likely also go more direct to those companies rather than via OCP's marketplace): [https://www.opencompute.org/products](https://www.opencompute.org/products)</comment></comment>


The Bain Capital Files - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/08/the-bain-capital-files.html <comment><USER2> _There's a lesson this for me and my partners. Everything we publish to our investors should be written as if it will someday be published in Gawker. And every action we take in structuring our business, our relationships with our investors, and our relationships with the entrepreneurs we back should be conducted as if it will someday be published in Gawker._

This is nothing new. When I was studying political science in the early '90s it was called "the Washington Post Rule": a canny politician should never put anything in writing unless he would be comfortable seeing it on the front page of the _Washington Post_.

(Why the _Post_? Woodward and Bernstein: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President%27s_Men> I have to believe the rule goes back even further than that, but presumably before their time it was called something else.)

<comment><USER3> Warren Buffett's been telling all his managers for decades that they shouldn't base their decisions on what is "this side of the line of legality" but rather on what they wouldn't mind "seeing printed on the front page of the New York Times".

I'm sure the idea's been around for even longer than that, though. I bet Benjamin Franklin (a publisher, among other things) must've had a choice quote about that...

<comment><USER4> "Abstain from all appearance of evil."

1 Thessalonians 5:22 King James Bible

I'm sure if you dug around in Buddhist or Confucianist writings you'd find something similar. Being mindful of how your actions look is very useful in avoiding trouble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't care if you are progressive or conservative, dem or repub, if you are running for president I want to see a full disclosure of your business and financial dealings, years of tax returns (which can be forged anyway because 3rd party cannot authenticate with the IRS) and even a drug test.

Yes, a drug test and full physical beforehand. This is the most powerful office in the land, not some book promotion tour.

<comment><USER6> If all your candidates must be squeaky clean, you're probably ruling out some of the most able. The most law-abiding, unquestioningly tax-paying, physically-fit candidate is probably not the person who has the best understanding of and instinct for foreign affairs, the most ability to inspire, cajole, and back-scratchingly motivate Congresspeople to cooperate with important ideas, and the most ability to quickly to make difficult decisions in no-win situations.

<comment><USER7> unquestioningly tax-paying?

<comment><USER6> Years of tax returns that have a low percentage are an opportunity for attack ads even if they're strictly legal. It's politic but unwise to pay more than you would strictly have to.

<comment><USER8> Returning to your "quick decisions in no-win scenarios", there are going to be attack ads based on whether Romney does and what they contain or whether he doesn't and what they might contain, and it's easy to come up with possible contents likely or unlikely. Maybe it's just me that thinks he'd be better served by the path of openness in this instance.

Of course, it's just his taxes, and I feel like the only reasoning people are upset with Romney over this is that they are thinking "What's he hiding? If you have nothing to hide..." which most of us probably dismiss as bad thinking in the usual context. If the People want to make it a law for candidates to disclose their tax information, let it be done, right now he's just breaking a 40 year old precedent. (It seems McCain did the same thing and only released two years--was there an outcry about that? I don't remember, there were so many other juicier attacks. If "you're rich!" is the only thing they can attack you on you're doing alright.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Common advices from corporate lawyers is that the "e" in "email" stands for "evidence". As in: anything you write in a company email could one day show up as evidence in court...and from there in the newspaper. Here's a famous example:

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6142843-7.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> I am totally not defending the guy, but the question I have is what does the average citizen expect a 'rich' person to do with their savings? Put them into a pass book savings account at Wells Fargo and get .7% APR interest with everything over $250,000 at risk? When you give your money to a venture capitalist to invest in the startups we read about every day it shows up on your tax return a "MayField Plaza Partners Equity Fund, LLC" or some such. And its not like naming those things are easy.

When I rolled over my 401k from Sun into a personally managed IRA with my broker we put parts into things like "Fidelity Large Cap Fund" or "Emerging Markets Fund" which were pretty opaque except for the prospectus that came around once a quarter. So I'm wondering what the outrage is here.

<comment><USER11> I expect them to not to have loopholes they can take advantage of that ordinary citizens can't. For example, Bain converted fees for service into capital gains. A plumber or electrician can't treat his fees as capital gains, they are treated as income.

But if you're in financial, you can use all kinds of loopholes -- equity swaps, blocker corporations, fee-waivers+fund-investment in order to treat income as cap gains.

Then, if America votes in Romney and Ryan, we may end up with even lower capital gains rates, meaning financiers can escape most taxes, while ordinary people are faced with inescapeable income taxes.

I don't mind people investing in risky ventures, but they must pay taxes on their winnings like everyone else. And as Buffet said, the idea that higher taxes will scare away entrepreneurs isn't historically supportable. There are risk takers in every environment, it wasn't like before 1980 there weren't any entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER12> Perhaps it is not Romney and Ryan's fault. Maybe we need to simplify our tax system, so everyone pays equal share of taxes? But as it stands now, we have tax code of thousands of pages, so people in the know will figure out the loopholes. The analogy would be doing an SEO of a website. Sure I want everyone's site be optimized. But only people that understand all that is involved with the SEO process can properly configure pages and a server.

<comment><USER11> I'm all in favor of closing loopholes and simplification, but almost every single mainstream simplification that has ever been proposed has amounted to nothing more than an attempt to remove progressivity from the tax system. What makes the system complex is not the existence of more than one tax bracket, it's the bewildering array of itemized deductions one can take. Most of the 'simplifications' set out to accomplish two goals it seems: 1) simplify code 2) somehow lower rates. Unfortunately, when they try to be "revenue neutral" by closing loopholes, those hardest hit are the middle and lower class because of the mortgage interest deduction. So ultimately, many of these plans look like a tax cut for the rich and raising taxes for the middle class by taking away their deductions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Soon private investors will have DRM over their audited investor reports.</comment>


The History of a Forgotten Computer - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/blogs/MattPowers/20140425/215846/The_History_of_a_Forgotten_Computer__PART_1.php

<comment><USER2> Interesting read. I particlarly enjoy the fact that Montgomery Ward basically commissioned a computer for production. Makes you wonder what would have come about if all those retail outlet computers had gained traction and become established brands.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that was an annoying read when they stopped to explain terms every other sentence. Interesting none the less.

op·er·at·ing sys·tem

</comment><comment><USER4> That was interesting, thank you.</comment>


Google updating policy for ads on fake news sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-advertising-idUSKBN1392MM <comment><USER2> I think this is one of the good ideas that pave the way to hell. What is fake and what is truth? How is Google going to decide? Couple examples: 1/ Is global warming a huge conspiracy? The president of USA certainly says so. 2/ News: CIA plotted with terrorist to traffic drugs to US - that must be a hoax, right? 3/ News: The US govt secretly spread syphilis among black population - this infowars shit must be surely hoax. 4/ How about US pretending being attacked to start a war? I am talking about Gulf of Tonkin, not 9/11\. 5/ The government is reading all your emails and listening to all your phonecalls - bat shit crazy, right?

What I am trying to say is that once such mechanism is in place it can go on a slippery slope from there on. Next thing they will decide to filter fake news search results and that very minute they will be subpoenaed to hide something in the name of state security.

<comment><USER3> I know there are people who will dismiss it as bias, but you can actually assign a quality score to publications quite easily. NYT/Wall Street Journal/The Atlantic/Guardian/Washington Post/The New Yorker vs. breitbart/HuffPost/....

Note that all those stories you're referencing were all broken by the papers I listed. The breitbarts of the world usually just repackage what actual news organizations publish with ideological slant.

<comment><USER4>
      Note that all those stories you're referencing were all broken by the papers I listed.

Actually, Snowden was turned down by _every single_ newspaper you just listed with the exception of The Guardian.

<comment><USER3> Wasn't it NYT/Guardian/SPIEGEL that released simultaneously? Also note that he chose to work with these organizations, even though he could have easily posted it online/given it to wikileaks.

<comment><USER4> No, they published later after The Guardian and The Washington Post had already covered a majority of the leaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the proverbial "other shoe" and its not at all clear who actually is getting hurt.

So the back story is that it is trivial to set up a "fake news" site and slant the crap out of the news and outright lie about what is going on to attract that segment of the population that is more interested in having their views validated than they are in learning anything new. And if you do that and fill it with aggressive ads you can make enough money per month to buy beer easily and sometimes even fund a comfortable lifestyle in a country which has a low cost of living.

So Google is going to stop selling ads to those sites. (good move on their part although it does impact their bottom line slightly) and they are going to stop taking money from those sites which try to buy adwords and make their site appear in the search results for a popular keyword. Also good but somewhat problematic.

This is the problem. Google sells ads on bids, highest bidder gets the best ad spot. Search ads are their cash cow and lifeblood. Hackers and fake news sites compete with each other trying to buy the ads on searches that hapless people do trying to find information about current events. So Google profits both by selling adwords and by the competition all these bad actors are engaged in trying to buy that top slot. Stop selling them adwords or stop allowing them to bid, and Google takes a big hit in topline revenue. How much remains to be seen, but if its a problem I expect fake news to be a hot topic at Searchengineland.

<comment><USER5> I think Google risks taking a huge hit to its credibility if the most prominent result for a topic is an outright lie. I'd guess that the loss of credibility/constant PR problems would more than offset the revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank god we are finally focusing on this issue. I can not believe we allowed right wing propaganda sites to publish so much false information for so long.

Anyone who denies the existence of this is being dishonest. There is no way you can defend the journalist integrity of the 'breitbart' of the web. It takes 'yellow journalism' to a whole new level.

It has also become obvious to us that the average internet user, has no idea how to vet anything on the web. They lack the simplest ability to recognize the deceiving nature of the URL they are visiting. And we're not just talking about uneducated folks. I've seen plenty of college-educated people share fake news.

This is rotting our democracy.

I am at the point where I feel like technologists and journalists have to work together to establish some sort of browser based credentialing system that we give to content creators to signal that they are a legitimate news source. Like how we SSL validate sites. It maybe as useless as a "certified organic" sticker, but at least it'll be better than nothing.

<comment><USER7> Thank goodness we can hide away and silence dissenting and right wing voices. It's not like that was a big part of what caused Trump to be elected.

I really am glad that google, facebook & co curate what political things we get shown, that fixes democracy once and for all by making us better informed citizens. /s

EDIT: To those who do not get free speech at all: By silencing people who spread conspiracy theories, you provide them with the first fact that they might be on to something. Because if they weren't on to something, why couldn't you just provide simple facts to contradict and embarrass the conspiracy theorist?

<comment><USER8> Conservatives are entitled to their own opinions, just not their own facts.

<comment><USER9> Everyone should be held to that, not just conservatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is good but I think there's an elephant in the room Google isn't addressing...and I don't know why.

Content origin/ownership.

Say I devote three weeks to researching a topic and then publish a detailed article on my website. A website with more traffic can swipe the entire thing, word for word, even the images, post it on their site and generate traffic on stolen content.

Google desperately needs a way for content authors to be able to register their work and penalize content thieves. This is probably impossible to make work retroactively but that's not a problem.

When it comes to news websites, the same applies. Why do we have the same story from 1,000 different sites? Whoever originates the story should "own it" and get the search traffic. Other sites are just copying. So, if CNN and FOX are just regurgitating stories from Associated Press, why are they even relevant?

I think sensible content ownership controls could clean-up a bunch of the internet and direct traffic to deserving sites. There's almost no incentive to create original content unless you already have so much traffic that you are going to capitalize on it.

I have hundreds of original articles I would like to publish on our sites and don't because I know what will happen. So, we publish articles with much less depth, because it costs money to sit down and devote hours to writing a well- researched piece.

<comment><USER11> >I have hundreds of original articles I would like to publish on our sites and don't

Wait, you have already sunk the costs to produce this content, but will not because others might profit from it? This doesn't make much sense at all unless I'm missing something here. You might have generated _some_ revenue, but now it's $0?

<comment><USER10> The content was written and delivered to our customers directly through email. It was not inexpensive to develop and that's why I hesitate to put it online for it to be stolen. We have healthy email lists of our customers and are happy to deliver good content directly into their mailboxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >"Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property,"

That sounds terrible. Does that mean if I'm ICANN registered with my host's "don't spam me bro" protections, that my blogs can be ad supported?

</comment><comment><USER13> I am sure this will be cheered at here, but this is a troubling trend.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is going to bring the New York Times down.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wonder what spawned this?

<comment><USER14> National Security folk calling in favors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does Vox count as fake news? Their manipulative misuse of statistics is so bad it should qualify as fake.

<comment><USER12> care to expound on that?

<comment><USER17> I'm mostly on the buy side so I'm not sure how much of the dogwhistle comes through, but here's a random article about how Vox is basically a platform for brands to sell products as news:

[http://digiday.com/publishers/flush-cash-vox-media-seeks- tec...](http://digiday.com/publishers/flush-cash-vox-media-seeks-tech- advantage-native-ads/)

Obviously they can't be too blatant about it but Vox promoting any position you pay them to is literally their business model.

I assume they don't tell their writers this but the softball neoliberalism that they pitch by default is brand-safe enough that nobody'd notice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Strange to see how Google, a company that once refused to do business in China in order to not have to engage in censorship, now openly seeks to implement censorship in the West.

And a bunch of "liberals" on a hacker news who in all other cases would rail against censorship on the Internet happily supporting censorship on the Internet.

I'm astonished that someone like Sergey Brin would even allow this to happen, considering that his family immigrated from a country that censored information it did not like for the exact same reasons in order to impoverish and control its population.

This is it for me, I'm moving away from all Google services.

<comment><USER12> Imagine the difference if it had been titled: "Google has agreed that it will stop serving ads to Chinese sites which are unfriendly to President Li's conception of Chinese culture and values."

<comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure now that this mass psychosis in the West will most definitely lead to civil war.

There are just too many people who can't seem to accept democracy or liberty if it doesn't go their way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What about fake opinion polls?

<comment><USER18> Well that's a hard one to answer for defenders of the politburo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are they going to stop ads on the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the other mainstream media sites that suppressed bad news about Clinton, while pushing fake and manipulated news about Trump?

<comment><USER21> >while pushing fake and manipulated news about Trump?

Link please.

<comment><USER20> Since you asked..The New York Times completely made up the story about Trump mocking a disabled reporter, to distract from their reporting of his comments about seeing Muslims celebrating in New Jersey [1]. Freeze framed his arms and completely made up the story to match. That's just one of many, many deliberate misdirections and bogus factchecking fails by the MSM in this election. The New York Times even apologised to its readers for its biased coverage.

[1][https://medium.com/@sparkzilla/trump-and-the-battle-of- the-t...](https://medium.com/@sparkzilla/trump-and-the-battle-of-the- truths-a13450ecbbc8#.kc7t2kiby)

<comment><USER5> Oh come on. I just watched the video again. He says "now the poor guy, you've got to see this guy" and then he starts flailing his hands around and imitating the reporter in a strange voice: "'uh uh uh I don't know what I said ah ah ah I don't remember' he goes like 'I don't remember maybe that's what I said'". I've watched plenty of Trump speeches and have not seen him use hand gestures like that, and I wouldn't associate that gesture with not remembering or hedging on something. I would definitely associate it with a disability like cerebral palsy.

It's definitely not just manufactured by taking a freeze frame. Look at the video.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2016/08/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact- checker/wp/2016/08/02/donald-trumps-revisionist-history-of-mocking-a-disabled- reporter/)

<comment><USER20> It is completely manufactured. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiUizn19p7o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiUizn19p7o)

<comment><USER22> In the first video, Mr. Trump tucks in his chin, draws back his eyelids, and adopts a "retarded" tone of voice.

In the second video, Mr. Trump just moves his hands around a bit, as you say.

I had not seen the first video until now, and I am unfamiliar with the disabled reporter, but I concluded right away that he was embodying someone with a physical/mental disability -- something like Parkinson's or cerebral palsy.

If he was not, then Donald Trump has only himself to blame, for behaving in a misconstruable manner.

<comment><USER20> Except that the disabled reporter doesn't behave like Trump's mockery at all. He has no outward shaking or hand waving at all. [1] So the situation is actually worse: The Times not only falsely painted Trump as someone who mocks the disabled, they used a reporter's disability as a prop to attack Trump, AND they took advantage of a stereotype of disabled people to mislead their own readers. You can either accept the evidence that they lied and manipulated the reader, or continue to follow the narrative. Choose wisely.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baUuXQ443fA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baUuXQ443fA)

<comment><USER22> Depends on your take. Was he re-enacting the disabled reporter? Obviously not. Was he ridiculing him in a mocking caricature? For the audience, who is mostly unexposed to the subject, it seems likely.

Such exaggerated mimicry is a regular occurrence in American secondary schools. I saw his exact performance targeted at the "special" kids, some of whom were quite normal, many times in my youth. If Mr. Trump was raised in America, he would know not to use those kinds of expressions.

> You can either accept the evidence that they lied and manipulated the > reader, or continue to follow the narrative. Choose wisely.

No, those are not the only narratives. Here's a third: Donald Trump, regardless of his intentions, briefly acted the part of the fool. The media, acting in their own self-interests, covered the story -- with dramatic embellishment -- which had practically been handed to them. Either way, it's his own damn fault.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CGI script to produce RSS feed of comments on HN post - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/4625596

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps I just don't grok the zen of HN, but I just don't get why the site doesn't provide RSS feeds of comments on postings.

I also don't get why nobody has written something to provide this. Or, at least, if it has been written, I couldn't find it (perhaps my Google mojo just isn't high enough).

<http://api.ihackernews.com/> gets part of the way there, but it's an API, not an RSS feed, and it's broken and has been for quite a while.

So I wrote a script (gist at the link above) to generate such a feed.

You can see it in action at [http://jik3.kamens.brookline.ma.us/cgi-bin/hn- comment-feed.c...](http://jik3.kamens.brookline.ma.us/cgi-bin/hn-comment- feed.cgi?id=5107045) (which I will have to remove if there is so much interest in this Show HN that people clicking on the link overwhelms my tiny little VPS).</comment>


Cloudatcost one time payment now has a recurring payment - <AUTHOR> Cloudatcost updated their ToS and now for the "one time payment" servers now there's a yearly recurring "maintenance" fee of $9. They didn't advertise that change, just updated their ToS. <comment><USER2> Interesting. This fraudulent company is founded by the same people as KidsWifi.

[http://ventures.fibernetics.ca/team/](http://ventures.fibernetics.ca/team/) [https://twitter.com/skr1px](https://twitter.com/skr1px) [https://twitter.com/jodyschnarr](https://twitter.com/jodyschnarr)

[https://kidswifi.com/](https://kidswifi.com/)

[http://news.communitech.ca/columns/cloud-at-cost-injects- fib...](http://news.communitech.ca/columns/cloud-at-cost-injects-fibernetics- with-startup-energy/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Heh - just got (and paid) the invoice for this... I got a "lifetime" vps from them in 2013 - knowing full well it wasn't ever going to be a sustainable business that way. It's easily worth it (for me anyway) to throw them $9 a year to help keep them afloat.

I think you're right that they didn't communicate this well - the first I heard of it was an email from their billing department with the subject: "24 Hour Server Suspension Warning"

<comment><USER4> Why did you choose to pay the invoice? Has the service ever been usable?

<comment><USER3> Yep - I do a far bit of "stupid idea testing" and joke websites for friends to laugh at. I use it as a VPN server sometimes. It's almost certainly hideously over sold on the hardware it sits on, but for a lot of stuff I don't really care... I'm happy enough with what I get from them to not be too fussed by them asking me for $9/year for what they said I'd get for my one time $35 payment... (And I realise that I'm super privileged being able to write off $9 as "an expensive beer" rather than "the difference between making rent this month or not"...)

<comment><USER4> Ok, for me the 70% downtime means I save time by using some other provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I've been hit by this. I do not want to accept the terms because while $9 may seem insignificant, who says they wont double it every 6 months?

The communication has been extremely poor.

</comment><comment><USER2> some info about the company, noting the one-time fee.

[http://news.communitech.ca/columns/cloud-at-cost-injects- fib...](http://news.communitech.ca/columns/cloud-at-cost-injects-fibernetics- with-startup-energy/)</comment>


German intelligence can't spy on foreigners outside Germany - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-cant-spy-on-foreigners-outside-germany/a-53492342 <comment><USER2> The article title is terrible; or, at least, incomplete without the subheading, but this is still very relevant to privacy:

 _Germany 's Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that monitoring the internet traffic of foreign nationals abroad by the BND intelligence agency partly breaches the constitution._

And this paragraph provides more nuance:

 _The ruling said that non-Germans were also protected by Germany 's constitutional rights, and that the current law lacked special protection for the work of lawyers and journalists. This applied both to the collection and processing of data as well as passing on that data to other intelligence agencies._

Essentially: The law as written does not sufficiently protect the constitutional rights of all human beings, so the intelligence service is directed to improve the law to provide enforceable protections as were found absent.

<comment><USER3> "The ruling said that non-Germans were also protected by Germany's constitutional rights"

That's a pretty big task if it's not heavily caveated. I'm curious how they manage conflicts around citizenship and constitutional reach then. I'd love to hear a German Constitutional scholar weigh in.

If their constitution protects non-citizens does that mean that German police/military are required constitutionally to protect non-Germans from acts by non-German states or individuals? Are there any positive rights in the German constitution (like a right to be provided legal counsel) that a non- German citizen could "charge" the government for so to speak?

It seems based on this interpretation that someone from - say Nicaragua - could claim that the Nicaraguan government is in violation of German constitution and the German government would be obliged to provide counsel to the Nicaraguan citizen.

<comment><USER4> I'm not really a German constitutional scholar but I study German law and am somewhat specialized in constitutional and international law.

I think the questions you are touching upon are very interesting. There are definitely a lot of "positive rights" in the German constitution, that is to say rights, that do not simply protect an individual from action by the state but actually require the state to act in a certain way. That being said, the German Constitutional Court (GCC) is very careful not to "over-interpret" the constitution in such a way that the state only has one legal way of handling an issue, which is especially true in these constellations of so called Schutzpflichtverletzungen (violations of the duty to protect).

Regarding the ruling issued today this explicitly only concerns "Abwehrrechte" (rights against actions by the state). Two key provisions from the judgement read:

>Der Schutz der einzelnen Grundrechte kann sich im Inland und Ausland unterscheiden. (The protection of fundamental rights can differ regarding their application inside or outside German sovereignty.)

>Jedenfalls der Schutz des Art. 10 Abs. 1 und des Art. 5 Abs. 1 Satz 2 GG als Abwehrrechte gegenüber einer Telekommunikationsüberwachung erstreckt sich auch auf Ausländer im Ausland. (At least the protection of Art. 10 I and Art. 5 I 2 GG as rights __against actions by the state__ in relation to the Surveillance of Telecommunication also protects foreigners outside German territory)

(translations very roughly by me)

This is more speculative but this shows in my opinion that the Court sees the problem you're referring to and is very careful in stating that there can be differences between inside and outside jurisdiction AND that the current judgement only concerns Abwehrrechte against the state.

<comment><USER5> .. so, please correct me if I'm wrong, but this leaves open a loophole for the CIA/NSA monitoring stations within Germany - which are not possessions of the sovereign government - to continue to spy on anyone they like, as the German government has just washed its hands of any responsibility for that.

<comment><USER4> If you speak German you might be interested in this article regarding the very similar case of the US Base Rammstein located in Germany, which is used for drone strikes in the middle east [https://verfassungsblog.de/ramstein- deutschlands-mitverantwo...](https://verfassungsblog.de/ramstein-deutschlands- mitverantwortung-fuer-voelkerrechtswidrige-drohnenangriffe/)

It's difficult to give a complete summary but basically there already have been some judgments by courts in Germany regarding the air base. Those judgments state that there are certain obligations arising from the constitution and also from international law when it comes to supporting the US in coordinating drone strikes. Things get tricky because it's not even clear what the US army is doing exactly in Rammstein and also the German governments obligations under international law (in particular their contract with the US) have to be considered when restricting their duty not to allow targeted killings.

I don't think you could argue that the current judgment "leaves a loophole" because the BVerfG might reasonably make a judgment in the future that the German government may not allow CIA monitoring in Germany. (Or it might not do this, but this judgement does not indicate anything in this regard)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny, considering that the job of the BND is collecting information from foreign countries.

<comment><USER7> The headline is misleading. The court only ruled blanket internet surveillance illegal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I considered submitting the link with a better title than the article's one. Though I wasn't sure if that would be or not against the rules.

Maybe dang can update it with something more to the point.

<comment><USER2> That's permitted by the rules if you think that the alteration is justified. If you're worried about being censured, you can include a comment on your new post "The original title was XYZ I altered it because reasoning ABC", so that if the mods are looking at it later, they understand your reasoning and can offer you a followup reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course it can. Perhaps it _may_ not. But that doesn't mean it won't.

</comment><comment><USER9> My partner works at the NGO and was part of the team that brought, fought, and won this case ([https://freiheitsrechte.org/english/](https://freiheitsrechte.org/english/)). Happy to (try to) answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article makes it look like Germany shared data with Azerbaijan - was that the case?

<comment><AUTHOR> The quoted person from the article says that they had issues with surveillance from the Azerbaijan services, as a example of a bad state of affairs. There is not implications of data being shared, in fact she says the opposite.

Quote:

> "I suffered a lot in Azerbaijan from the unlimited power of the government > and their abuse of anti-terror legislation, which also allowed them to > interfere with my privacy and expose my intimate life," she said in an > emailed statement. "I am happy that democratic checks and balances are still > operational in Germany and it was possible to revert the abusive laws which > could be used as instruments against whistleblowers and journalists."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see a court that cares about a constitution...

</comment><comment><USER12> Soon: Six Eyes

<comment><USER13> Afaik Germany is not part of 5 eyes or 9 eyes. There seems to be a tiny bit of ww2 era resentment there.

<comment><USER14> Isn't that point of the "6 eyes" comment? Theirs would be be the sixth.

<comment><USER9> That.. doesn't make much sense? The whole point is to prevent the outsourcing of illegal surveillance.

In any case, the BND suddenly became a lot less attractive for any intelligence-sharing deals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this "can't spy" or just a directive to improve and protect foreigner? Also, they are spy. No one like spying but it is a necessity. In fact, sometimes you cannot let other country be told directly you "inform" their spy! Not sure why they are not allowing to do their job by their own constitution? Limits definitely needed internally, but externally?</comment>


Place for Open and Interactive Mathematics - <AUTHOR> https://imaginary.org/ <comment><USER2> I wish the pieces had descriptions explaining the connection between the math and the visual in more detail. Particularly, I was looking at this one: [https://imaginary.org/hands-on/the-harmonic- series-2-3d-scul...](https://imaginary.org/hands-on/the-harmonic- series-2-3d-sculptures)

As an amateur musician, I find the idea of 3d-printing chords a fascinating concept, but the print here looks like it's formed into a cube shape and it's not at all clear to me how one gets to a cube from what I assume are three sinusoidal waves (one for each note in the triad).

<comment><USER3> I think what they're doing with those sculptures is that they're taking three sine waves of different frequencies A, B, and C, and that the sculpture is the path that the point (cos(A t), cos(B t), cos(C t)) takes over the combined period of all three frequencies. That's why it's cube-shaped; x, y, and z each vary from -1 to 1 over the respective periods of each component. Like a 3D Lissajous figure; see this ([https://gfycat.com/angelicdismalamazonparrot](https://gfycat.com/angelicdismalamazonparrot)) for a 2D example.

But I also agree that I shouldn't _have_ to be guessing like this, and that it'd be better if they had more explanation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has the G+ HN circle changed your usage of G+ and HN? - <AUTHOR>

How has your G+ experience changed since adding the HN circle? <comment><AUTHOR> For me, I find myself spending a lot more time on G+. I'm having more discussions and really finding G+ so much more awesome overall.</comment>


Ask HN: How to niche down an app development company? - <AUTHOR> I've seen the advantaged of niching down in other companies (Like web design for restaurants, so you can systematise your offerings and build a more scalable service business), but I'm struggling to find a niche for mobile apps. How would one find a niche that could result in 5 - 10 clients a year, for projects that would at least bring in $10k? <comment><USER2> TBH I don't really think there's a market in mobile apps. They're expensive and most groups don't see the need for an app.

If you find a group that _needs_ an app then you've got your niche. Anything that requires daily interaction or that needs to use the unique features of a phone/tablet</comment>


Facebook Charging $100 to Message Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/01/11/facebook-message-mark-zuckerberg

<comment><USER2> I think this is really cool. The price point will definitely deter random spammers who just want to talk to Mark. But it is low enough for someone who wants to reach out to Mark to be feasible. If I had a brilliant idea I wanted Mark to know about, I'd be stoked. There is no guarantee that he will read it, but if someone paid 100$ to message him, he might be intrigued.

Most likely he has some folks to review those messages, and bring a (select) few to his attention.

<comment><USER3> > If I had a brilliant idea I wanted Mark to know about, I'd be stoked.

(...)

> Zuck: People just submitted it.

> Zuck: I don't know why.

> Zuck: They "trust me"

> Zuck: Dumb fucks.

<comment><USER4> That quote is taken a bit out of context methinks.

As much as I might dislike or distrust the man, and might consider $100 worth the chance to send a one-off drunken insult, I can see that intended as self deprecating humour. I do it about myself all the time: "what sort of fool would trust the likes of me with _that_ " said to the person who has just indeed trusted me with what-ever "that" is, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> $100 to send, and how much to guarantee that young Mr. Zuck actually READS the message? :)

<comment><USER6> Linkedin Actually guarantees that they will read your message, or they will give your money back.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious, how is this different from normal messages?

Edit: after thinking about it, I guess the fact you're paying to message someone would impress the recipient, thus enticing them to reply.

<comment><USER6> They call it 'InMail'. The difference is that the recipient has to make an action in the message, or your money returns. You have some InMails according to the plan you chose to pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> according to [1], Mark Zuckerberg makes $310.67 per second... so $100 will buy you under one third of a second of his time... I hope you are not expecting a long reply.

[1] [http://www.best-reviewer.com/how-much-money-does-mark- zucker...](http://www.best-reviewer.com/how-much-money-does-mark-zuckerberg- make-2053.htm)

<comment><USER9> Maybe when Facebook was still private and rising in value? I don't see where that income lies today. His salary is slightly over $1mm and $FBs value isn't shooting up anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now this would be great if I could turn this on for my inbox and set the price.

<comment><USER11> And you get 70%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Slightly off topic but I'd easily value communicating with my peers at $100. I have the good fortune of working with smart people who, despite the importance of their own projects, are willing to help me if needed. The time of others has value and I think it should be used accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me a lot of the scheme that conference organizers set up. They might charge $5,000 for you to attend because that way you know you'll be with other high caliber people. They use money as the filter and just happen to profit as a result.

<comment><USER14> > _This reminds me a lot of the scheme that conference organizers set up. They > might charge $5,000 for you to attend because that way you know you'll be > with other high caliber people._

Spoiler alert: Those things are complete scams. The conference organizers pay for some big names to show up, and then fleece the people who have $$ but no power or access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Keen Facebook observers will recognize this as a variant on the $1 pay-to- message plan that the social network has been experimenting with for months._

Welp, time to get all of my family's email addresses and close my FB account. Really the only thing I use it for at this point, and not valuable enough to pay any amount of money per message.

I don't like siding with Mashable on many issues, but I really hope FB isn't this hungry for new revenue streams.

EDIT: Welp, now I need to friend my family members to message them for free.

<comment><USER16> If I understand correctly, you only pay that much to go to the inbox if you aren't a friend with the person. Friends message friends for free.

It's actually pretty clever, I think. It's too high for unsolicited spam, but it's a trivial amount for the very rare instance of wanting someone you're not a friend of to read it.

<comment><USER15> Ah, thanks for the clarification. This makes sense, and I think was actually mentioned in the Mashable article. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I could imagine this would be worth it, on the guarantee that you get a personal, thoughtful reply. Not "ok" or "no".

</comment><comment><USER18> This is similar to the telco model where they charge texts and phone calls. Charging for communication is really the only way I see Facebook ever hitting its IPO valuation. This example is a bit extreme, but if they can figure out how to charge for the communication aspect, they may have a nice business.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll pay him $100 to stop all these drama stories about Mark Zuckerberg.

It's seem like every now and then I hear stories about his sister, or how he dupe some guy for facebook, got duped in paying $1 billion for instagram, and now this.

Seriously, he's like a drama queen.

</comment><comment><USER20> How about someone make a marketplace for this exact sort of thing? "Contact Y for $X now!"

<comment><USER21> Someone has built that and posted it here a few weeks ago, I can't for the life of me remember the name though. To get around transaction laws they had "credits" though, so you couldn't cash out which sorta killed the idea for me. I'll try and find the post.

<comment><USER22> transaction laws? You can't send someone money to talk to them?

<comment><USER21> I can't find the link now, I've been through every Show HN from the last 3 weeks and I can't find it. I distinctly remember it said something along the lines of, "due to transaction laws your coins can only be donated to charity" or something. Maybe that was how they make money; people forget about their "coins" and "charity". Hopefully someone else remembers it, all I can remember is:

Weird name. 3 founders. Video presentation at some sort of incubator (maybe techstars?) and they had a... brown website? I think it was brown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Brilliant, wonder how much $$ this feature will bring in.

</comment><comment><USER24> brings a whole new definition to "money talks"

</comment><comment><USER22> This is why their stock is going to sore. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't work for my account :/

</comment><comment><USER26> I plan to message him to complain about the price.

</comment><comment><USER27> Insanity prevails.

</comment><comment><USER28> Small price really and he probably reads them, unless a lot of people pony up that $100. He's the founder /CEO or the world's most used site and worth north of $20 Billion...

<comment><USER29> His paper worth maybe not his value (IMHO). He got lucky and his _team_ pulled Facebook through the rough times till the network effect kicked in and everyone had to be on Facebook.

He's got 1 hit and I rather pay another guy with multiple hits (and failures) that $300/hr.

I want the experience not a lottery ticket.

<comment><USER28> _" He got lucky and his team pulled Facebook through the rough times till the network effect kicked in and everyone had to be on Facebook._ "

Lucky for 8 years with all those decisions and all those competitors? Luck alone isn't it</comment></comment></comment>


The Obfuscated Fibonacci; Or, a Curious Connection in Computation - <AUTHOR> http://statusfailed.com/blog/2015/01/27/obfuscated-fibonacci.html <comment><USER2> I wish they would mention L-systems in highschools instead of just labeling the Fibonacci sequence as "magic" that happens to occur in nature. It could spare young students a lot of numerological woo.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the obfuscation is in the order of application of the rules. My uninformed procedure would be:

        a
        ab (rule 1)
        aa (rule 2 - we have to apply rule 2 before rule 1 again, or we'll never get past rule 1, just a followed by arbitrarily many b's)
        abab (rule 1 - applies to all instances of a)
        aaaa (rule 2 - applies to all instances)
        abababab (rule 1)
        aaaaaaaa (rule 2)

So since that doesn't generate what the article does, lets try applying each rule only once to the string per round:

        a
        ab (rule 1)
        aa (rule 2)
        aba (rule 1)
        aaa (rule 2)
        abaa (rule 1)
        aaaa (rule 2)
        abaaa (rule 1)
        aaaaa (rule 2)

That's not getting me to the article sequence either. Let's try anchoring the single substitution on the right hand side of the string:

        a
        ab (rule 1)
        aa (rule 2)
        aab (rule 1)
        aaa (rule 2)
        aaab (rule 1)
        aaaa (rule 2)

Nope, doesn't help. Hmph. Please send me a clue.

<comment><USER4> Apply both rules at the same time. a - > (a)(b) -> (ab)(a), etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually did a related proof of sorts for a @1haskelladay puzzle a while ago. [http://rextester.com/BQA14775](http://rextester.com/BQA14775)</comment>


Quitting The Silicon Valley Swamp - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2017/04/28/quitting-swamp/ <comment><AUTHOR> _" For years, I've "called out" Silicon Valley's "bad apples", but by the start of 2017 it was impossible to distinguish maggot from apple from the rotting barrel itself. My workdays were an endless perp walk of sociopaths, psychopaths and criminals with names like (Pando investor) Peter Thiel, Travis Kalanick, Emil Michael, Palmer Luckey, and Gurbaksh Chahal – not to mention their enablers and co-conspirators like Paul Graham and Sam Altman, Rachel Whetstone and Steve Hilton, Joe Lonsdale, Arianna Huffington, Sherwin Pishevar, and a thousand more like them."_

Interesting. The authour calls out bad behaviour of an industry and individuals and singles out ^Tech^. I'd say most business is like this full stop, tech is just more visible than say finance, armaments or dining.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are installer ETAs so way off being accurate - <AUTHOR> Just installing latest macOS and wondering why ETA never match reality. Same for Windows. I remember win95 to be way off real install time. Why is it? <comment><USER2> I think it is not a big priority for installer creators to get them right. I've thought about adding something to my build process manager that would learn how to estimate progress by watching logs but it's never been a big priority compared to say, finishing up the software that it builds.

Why I can't get is why installers on so many OS seem to take forever to look at the system configuration database, determine what version you are running, what the latest version is, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand it's not priority, but in case of latest macOS installer experience is worst since last 4 versions. Too many restarts, progress bars not even reaching 100% before starting from 0 again. ETA in final stage is way off. Most of the time only progress bar is shown, with no message about what is installer doing (but one can clearly see all those restarts in between).</comment></comment>


MPEG-DASH vs. Apple HLS vs. Microsoft Smooth Streaming vs. Adobe HDS - <AUTHOR> https://www.bitcodin.com/blog/2015/03/mpeg-dash-vs-apple-hls-vs-microsoft-smooth-streaming-vs-adobe-hds/ <comment><USER2> This is a sales pitch masquerading as educational. It is designed to be deceptive. Why is there not a checkbox for "supported on over one billion iOS devices" where HLS is checked and DASH had a big red X? "HTML5 Support" I can play HLS in HTML5. It requires a little extra javascript, but I do it all the time. "EFFICIENT TRICK MODES" with I frame manifests. HLS does this as well. I can go on...

</comment><comment><USER3> From the About page for bitcoding.com[1]:

"bitmovin – the company behind bitcodin.com – was founded by Stefan Lederer, Christopher Mueller and Christian Timmerer. All founders participated in the MPEG standardization and made substantial contributions to the MPEG-DASH online video streaming standard."

So, this is a sales pitch.

[1]: [https://www.bitcodin.com/about/](https://www.bitcodin.com/about/)</comment>


Ask HN: After e^x growth, what aspects of HN are changing? - <AUTHOR>

Just out of curiosity, I looked at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/news.ycombinator.com Alexa stats for "max" duration show a very sharp increase from 2009 levels. I was a bit surprised!!! Is HN aiming towards becoming a reddit or digg? How will the HN community evolve during this exponential growth phase? <comment><USER2> Things that have changed:

      * Stories have a much tougher time making it to the front page
      * It's more rare to recognize all of the people in thread comments
      * The level of discourse has slightly degraded
      * The focus of the site has become more general-interest and
        less startup or hacker related

Things that have not changed:

      * New people claiming the site is turning into reddit
      * Hand-wringing about the direction of HN

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny :) - I was just checking <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> ... and bumped into: "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi- noob illusion.)"

Oops "semi-noob illusion" ;-). I did not imply a complaint... was just wondering about its growth!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Alexa says traffic has grown 4x since the start of 2009. In fact it's been a little over 2x. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404759>

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is amazing. I guess the huge increase has resulted from increasing media coverage of YCombinator and its alumni.

I'm here now for close to a year, I haven't felt any major changes in site "flavor" except for the fact that the diversity of submissions have increased. However, the core HN reader group is quite successful in prevention too much dilution of content.

One reason I don't think HN will go the way of the reddit/digg/etc is due to this dedicated, close-knit community, that is tied to HN in ways quite different from, say, reddit's community is tied to reddit. A coarse comparison could be the Wikipedia admin community perhaps. Also having "benevolent dictators for life" like PG helps :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://hackermonthly.com/> was awesome! What other initiatives have aimed at unearthing the hidden wisdom buried inside HN?

<comment><USER5> <http://news.ycombinator.com/ask> for queries to the HN community

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What studies have been conducted about the news covered by HN/its users/its karma system etc.? Is crawling of HN discouraged? Is there an archive of all HN data available somewhere for download? I noticed an "Ask YC" archive at <http://ask.searchyc.com/> Are there other such places or lists?</comment>


Holofication Nation - <AUTHOR> http://www.themachonacho.com/holo-ui-instagram-snapchat/

<comment><USER2> I've just downloaded the Holification Nation Instagram client. It's nice, but the icons are very grainy. They may not have included xxhdpi assets, which is unfortunate; that oversight tarnishes what would have been a really nice app.</comment>


UC Davis Wondered If $175,000 Would Make the Internet Go Away. Conclusion: No - <AUTHOR> https://popehat.com/2016/04/14/uc-davis-wondered-if-175000-would-make-the-internet-go-away-conclusion-no/ <comment><USER2> What is really fucked up is this though: "After the Nevins & Associates contract expired, the University hired in 2014 the Sacramento-based company ID Media Partners in an $82,500 contract to "design and execute a comprehensive search engine results management strategy" aimed at improving the reputation of the University and Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi."[1]

So basically, they are using student tuition to promote a private person (Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper- spray_incident...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper- spray_incident#University_PR_response.3B_alleged_attempt_to_divert_web_searches)

<comment><USER3> My daughter is a student at UCD. Chancellor Katehi has been the subject of protest again this year, though without pepper spraying, I believe. (apparently, these people can be taught a little bit)

Apparently, Katehi had a part time advisor job for about 4 years for $400 K per year with a textbook publishing company... (wait for it!). And preferentially selected said company's more expensive textbooks. For some reason, some students were very unhappy about this apparent conflict of interested which resulted in them / their parents getting soaked for books. The administration has been displeased with the disorderliness of the protestors, who have been very disruptive. (not 1960s disruptive, but you get the idea)

Ultimately, Katehi resigned from the position at the publisher. I think she agreed to donate some money to charity or some other token which didn't really amount to a clawback.

Here's where my cynacism kicks in: if Katehi resigns, it's likely because the rest of the mob threw her under the bus to prevent further investigation which might ruin things for everybody. Otherwise, the students might be best served by an explicit policy with teeth to prevent this kind of conflict of interest in the future. Throwing out Katehi might well result in a round of "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", simply starting over (for the next student class) where this one left off. So, ironically, I suppose it is a good sign that Katehi has NOT been forced to resign.

Disclaimer: I am staff at the UC. That doesn't mean I can't see how things frequently dysfunction at the highest levels of US govt and biz, though.

<comment><USER3> Oh dear! Is this discussion affecting page-rank for keys such as "Chancellor Katehi" "conflict of interest" "student protest"???

Life is hard.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't want google to pick up keywords such as Chancellor Katehi + conflict of interest + student protest + pepper spray

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a meme: [http://i.imgur.com/4WgaE5S.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4WgaE5S.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Also got a lot of traction on r/photoshopbattles. Not the greatest work I've seen on there, but many more comments than they typically get.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/4f260e/ps...](https://www.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/4f260e/psbattle_the_uc_davis_pepper_spray_incident_that/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This could be a matter of selection bias: who knows how many groups have successfully hidden something for $175000? We'd never have heard about it.

<comment><USER8> This is a common service offered by SEO and marketing firms. Some are centered entirely around the need to "polish" search results, like Reputation.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If the US had a EU style "right to be forgotten", could Chancellor Katehi use it to make google forget about this?

<comment><USER10> That stuff is pretty badly specified and has pretty random processes, but it seems unlikely. Some speculation:

a) officials doing things in their official role generally have by default "public interest" against them

b) She is still chancellor, making the public interest even argument stronger and weakening her case. This is all still somewhat going on, not some transgression in the past, which these rules mostly are about. And even in the future, a few years after she has left

c) the university doesn't have the personality right, and the information who has been chancellor at a specific time won't be generally removed. So even if she would win a request to remove her name, it would be trivial for sites to still make the connection, making the entire exercise pointless for her, especially since I'd expect it to require a few court cases, triggering Streisand to full effect again.

If some site published private data about her (where she lives, about her family, ...) right to be forgotten might be used against these specific instances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess they never heard of the Streissand effect, huh?

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought the previous article suggested that they spent several times that.

<comment><USER13> Maybe changing the number is part of their strategy. ;-)</comment></comment>


A free Argo Tunnel for your next project - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-free-argo-tunnel-for-your-next-project/ <comment><USER2> Goodbye, ngrok</comment>