The IPO of Virgin Trains U.S.A. - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-01/two-billionaires-want-to-restore-the-glory-of-u-s-railroads <comment><USER2> I did a deep dive into passenger train service at one time when I too was advocating for such a venture (although I don't have billions so it wasn't something I could just start).

One huge hurdle to successful passenger rail are the rails. They are "owned" by the two or three massive freight companies. So using them with a passenger service gives the passenger service second billing. If we could convince the US to build the National Interstate Rail system (as we did for the highway system) and used taxes to build and maintain the rails, and then allowed anyone to use them with just the investment in the train equipment, it would change the market hugely. And taxing the trains like we do with highways (more weight means higher tax), would create an entirely different situation.

But to do that, we have to dislodge the Rail industry lobby which is literally over a hundred years entrenched.

<comment><USER3> If you could dislodge the rail lobby, why waste time and money building a parallel national rail system when there perfectly serviceable existing tracks that can be converted to be operated for the public good? This is one of the things Eminent Domain would be _good_ for, as opposed to seizing people's homes and giving them away to property developers.

<comment><USER4> The pre-existing rails are currently at capacity with freight trains, and for good reason. We can't replace that without harming the logistical system that keeps the central US at something approximating the first world.

It's better just to build more capacity and reserve it for passenger.

<comment><USER5> HSR for passenger already requires dedicated tracks. Mixing 220mph trains and 75mph trains tends not to work very well. (Not to mention the curvature requirements precluding a lot of existing right of way).

The real problem is the lack of demand for passenger traffic. HSR ridership falls off a cliff around 2-3 hours; in practice, you're limited to looking at city pairs within around 500-700mi max, ideally all in a nice line, and outside the NEC, there's just too few of these pairs.

<comment><USER6> The pairs are more numerous than you'd think. Put 560 mile circles around Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Seattle and you basically cover most major metro areas in the US.

<comment><USER5> A single pair by itself is not enough to make the investment cost worth it. (This is the Midwest conundrum--there's actually a decent selection of third tier cities, but no three of them are close to collinear).

<comment><USER6> Three of them can be collinear if you consider Chicago a viable third city (e.g. Indianapolis - Milwaukee).

Some city pairs are kind of isolated (St Louis, Kansas City).

Some have decently sized cities that you can connect in a linear fashion (Chicago > Indianapolis > Louisville > Nashville)

And some you can serve in a somewhat roundabout fashion while still being time competitive (Chicago > Indianapolis > Cincinnati > Columbus > Pittsburgh).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Step one: reduce the police-state nature of rail (and, for that matter, all) travel within the United States. I had no idea until recently that the DEA conducts horrifying, intimidating, completely suspicion-less raids on Amtrak sleeper cars.

It happened to myself and my family last year, and although I'm planning to take Amtrak again this coming week (as there is no other rail option), it's scary to enter that environment again.

Wish us luck and safety.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal- eye/wp/2014/08/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal- eye/wp/2014/08/12/dea-paid-an-amtrak-secretary-for-confidential-passenger- information/?utm_term=.66f79cc4ac56)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/how- the...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/how-the-dea- harasses-amtrak-passengers/393230/)

<comment><USER8> > the DEA conducts horrifying, intimidating, completely suspicion-less raids > on Amtrak sleeper cars.

It's still far less worse than airports, isn't it? I mean, there is a risk that you are being searched but not everyone is. Compare that to airplanes where everyone is being searched and you and can't even take a bottle of water with you.

<comment><USER7> Most of the time, it's much better than the airport. 90% of the time, Amtrak is downright civilized.

However, as I found out the hard way, actually having your compartment raided by the DEA is _much_ worse than going through the TSA line.

You're in your little (previously cozy) compartment with the door blocked by DEA agents. It's just you and your family. They're barking orders and demanding to search things. They're saying that you can be removed from the train if you don't comply. They're smacking your camera out of your hands and telling you to stop recording. They're telling you that if you don't submit to a complete search, they'll bring a dog who might bite your child.

To be clear: they literally did all of those things in my case.

What do you do?

In my case, I held firm and told them that I wasn't going to answer any questions or consent to any searches, and after an absolutely terrifying 10 minutes, during which they repeatedly threatened violence against myself and my partner while our 3.5-year old wailed in terror, they finally went away.

I suspect that if I had consented to a search, they'd have stolen cash from my wallet (as has been reported by several other passengers, as you can see from the links below) or worse, planted drugs in an effort to increase their numbers and justify seizing other items.

Refusing to consent to a search is the obvious best thing to do in this scenario.

But it's not easy, and definitely far worse than any TSA experience I've had, which includes being singled out for "enhanced" pat-down and questioning.

I mean, it's the fucking DEA. Even the modicum of professionalism that you have with the TSA is gone.

> can't even take a bottle of water with you.

I typically bring an empty mason jar through security and then fill it at a water fountain.

<comment><USER9> Wow I didn't know about the drug planting. I just assumed consenting sucked but was the optimal thing to do.

<comment><USER7> What's the advantage of consenting? It seems purely disadvantageous for the passenger. It's not like you consent and they suddenly go away. I presume that if you consent, they proceed to search all your stuff.

Even if they don't steal or plant anything, it's a huge invasion of privacy and, if you have any delicate items, a risk that they'll be damaged.

<comment><USER10> There is no advantage to consenting to a search or talking to police. Ever.

<comment><USER11> Pissing off someone with considerable discretionary power to make your life miserable has no disadvantages, ever?

<comment><USER7> There may be cases where appeasing someone with discretionary power (real or perceived) leads to a better outcome, but consenting to an otherwise illegal search doesn't seem like it's possibly one of them to me.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER12> Well, if we're talking about corrupt cops who will plant drugs, might they also lie about you consenting to the search? Maybe you're better off doing whatever it takes to make them like you, so they are less likely make you the person they plant drugs on?

I don't know what the right answer is, it seems like a tough call. I'm skeptical of people who confidently say "consenting is never the right answer".

<comment><USER7> Well, you also need to record the conversation. I think that goes without saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If they're willing to pay for it, and put up everything they own as collateral, then great. This however is a piss-in-the-wind IPO from Branson, who is horrendous. If you ever come to England, Virgin will become a curse word in your vocabulary. Rail can be great, but not Virgin rail.

Edit: Changed "one" to "wind". Thanks for pointing that out!

<comment><USER14> OT: I think the phrase is "piss in the wind" ... As in it will be a terrible waste of time and you'll just end up with piss on you. May be a different meaning over the pond.

On topic: Are there stories about how Branson/Virgin has screwed up industries and companies in the UK? Have they already given him control over some rail systems that were mismanaged? Would be interested to hear about the source of Branson's poor reputation in his home country. As far as I know he has a decent reputation here in the US.

<comment><USER13> That was a typo, thanks for catching it. As to Virgin, yes the national rail service was privatized, and various contracts to run it have been passed around since. Notable for unreliable schedules due to underinvestment, apps and systems so Byzantine even the people at the till can't tell you what the lowest fare is, bus replacement services galore, and a general lack of profitability.

One place to read the horror stories would be: [https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.virgintrains.co.uk](https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.virgintrains.co.uk)

A typical "whoopsie" on the fares here: [https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/dec/21/virgin- trains-...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/dec/21/virgin-trains-fares- app-faulty-advance-ticket)

<comment><USER15> Definitely not going to argue about Virgin – they're useless – and this may be an unpopular opinion but.. let's not pretend it's just Virgin. As an ex-pat having lived in London for years it's my firm belief that this is just the way business operates in the UK. Thames Water for instance double billed me for a full year. They acknowledged their mistake, told me to pay the invoices anyway to avoid automatic late charges and then refused to refund. First Direct won't let me close my bank account, or transfer my funds unless it's to another UK bank. Black cabs will short change you.. And the constant non-apologies, the "we're sorry _if_ this causes you inconvenience" etc.. no one owns up to their faults and mistakes there. I've sinced moved out, and I'm sorry to high jack your thread, but that article on the fare "whoopsie" just made me cringe – par for the course when it comes to English business, in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> More like two billionaires see opportunity to draw from US railway subsidies.

<comment><USER17> As far as I can tell, _passenger_ rail is subsidized everywhere, not just in the US. But there's not that much passenger rail in the US, and freight isn't subsidized. (Quite the opposite, in fact - freight rail is the only transport mode in the US that pays taxes on its right of way.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Virgin Trains USA LLC, operator of a new east-coast Florida passenger > express train, hopes to raise about $500 million in an initial public > offering in coming weeks that would value the company at about $3 billion. > Its line connecting Miami and West Palm Beach is the first major private > intercity rail service built in more than a century (it was called > Brightline until a recent re-branding).

It looks like the first leg will connect Miami and West Palm Beach. However, the existing Tri-Rail system already does that [http://www.tri- rail.com/](http://www.tri-rail.com/) . I don't see how another rail system would be viable.

The Miami to Orlando connection does look interesting, but from the article it seems it would be the second phase.

<comment><USER19> Hmm. My assumption was that Brightline (Virgin Trains USA) would be a _lot_ faster than Tri-Rail for the WPB-Miami run; it's actually about an hour and fifteen minutes compared to around an hour and forty minutes, though, so how big a savings that is depends on how much of a hurry you're in. The Brightline trains and stations are almost certainly nicer, but the fares are _much_ higher: $17 (for the cheapest Brightline one-way ticket) vs. $6.90.

So...yeah. I'm not entirely sure why they aren't targeting a market that _isn 't_ served adequately by an existing option, like Miami or Tampa to Orlando.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I recently took the Brightline train between Miami and Fort Lauderdale and was absolutely impressed. It felt as if I had been transported to Europe and aboard a DB train. Staff were professional and competent, stations were bright and clean, and the train was quite fast (in some places). I have an optimistic outlook for their SoCal train.

This is all in stark contrast to my experiences on Amtrak, full of half-caring staff and dirty cars on a train that would be hours behind. I get it, they don't have ROW since they don't own the tracks, but if the long distance trains left stations nearly on time, then they would be able to meet most of the scheduled sidings and pass with ease.

<comment><USER21> Yeah honestly the fact that Amtrak doesn't run anywhere near "high speed" isn't its biggest problem. Just updating the rolling stock and on-board amenities would be huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't recommend enough this recent video by youtuber donoteat01, which goes into depth about (everything wrong with) Elon Musk's underground highway system, and then about privately funded "public transportation," including train projects like this, in general.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs)

"Be suspicious of privately owned or funded 'public transportation' projects" is at 23:20

<comment><USER23> The guy makes a lot of good points about why the Musk's idea (at least as he describes it) doesn't make sense, but the political inserts he does only detract from his point, and shows his own biases and blind spots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can they take over Metro North next? Literally anything would be better.

The recent DOT change that allows Euro-style trains [0] makes privatization- driven rail expansion even more exciting....the potential rolling stock just got WAY faster, cheaper, and more energy efficient.

[0]: [https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally- legalizes...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/11/23/u-s-finally-legalizes- modern-european-style-train-cars/)

</comment><comment><USER25> If the Brightline project can't make this work, then no one can in the US. Florida has a large population, its densest clusters of population lie along a small number of linear corridors, and it attracts many tourists and a fair number of business travelers. It has attractions and busy airports that will be nodes in such a system. It also has ideal rights-of-way mostly unobstructed.

In the northeast there's infrastructure baggage, in the southwest there's unforgiving geography, and in the Midwest there's not a co-linear arrangement of multi-million-population metros, and in the Piedmont there's not a fortunate right-of-way for truly high-speed rail. Texas is the only other place to make this work, and they're trying too.

But the problem is always that construction costs for these kinds of projects are way too high. In Europe, EU-wide transportation funds pay for renovating and building EU-designated corridors. Individual countries subsidize it too -- much like you'd expect with roads. This structural subsidy would be absent here, and US construction costs (including materials and wages) are high as well. This is a significant financial hurdle that neither road-based transport nor air transport has to contend with.

<comment><USER5> You need the demand to make it worthwhile. It's been a long time since I looked at any city pair traffic estimates, but my recollection is that there's just not enough demand for intra-Florida traffic, compared to such routes as SF-LA, Texas Triangle, NEC, or even Midwest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of my favorite railroading business yarns is the opposite of an IPO: the dissolution of the Reading Railroad. When the railroad started to collapse a group of savvy investors bought a controlling share for pennies on the dollar because they realized that the company owned a fortune in real estate and facilities. They then sold off those assets to finance a group of movie theaters in Australia and New Zealand which still exists today.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Company#Post- railroad:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Company#Post- railroad:_1976%E2%80%93present)

</comment><comment><USER27> Put a high speed rail from SF to Tahoe please! I don't know why this hasn't happened... so much traffic every weekend all the way to Tahoe. Put in some rail! Even if it was private it would be profitable.

</comment><comment><USER28> SEC S-1 Filing: [https://sec.report/Document/0001140361-18-043289](https://sec.report/Document/0001140361-18-043289)

</comment><comment><USER29> Google: how to short ipo

</comment><comment><USER30> Everyone hoping that the whims of the ultra-rich will once in a while align with a common good is no way to structure a society.

<comment><USER31> I agree with you, but looking all along history, the whims of the ultra rich or the ultra powerfully or the ultra influent _have_ structured the world. All this time, the people with the means to shape the world have shaped it. So, maybe, no matter what we do, there is no escaping this. Only maybe filtering the poeple who get the power somehow.

<comment><USER32> Only in the Anglosphere and only since the Restoration in Britain. One need only look to the English, French and Russian revolutions to see the outsized influence the declasse have had on history.

Not even talking about Prussia/pre-WWI Germany in which the most powerful people were a non elected incredibly poor class of generals and civil servants.

<comment><USER31> > Not even talking about Prussia/pre-WWI Germany in which the most powerful > people were a non elected incredibly poor class of generals and civil > servants.

Power manifests itself in many forms, whether it be through money or persuasion or charm or tactical prowess. The point remains, decisions are made by the few for the many. And simply being good as something, does not make you a benevolent force.

That now, we decide the criterion is money as opposed to honor or holiness, is of little importance. They can all be perverted as soon as their utility is obvious.

<comment><USER32> >Power manifests itself in many forms, whether it be through money or persuasion or charm or tactical prowess. The point remains, decisions are made by the few for the many. And simply being good as something, does not make you a benevolent force.

Tautology is tautological.

Those with power in France in 1798, 1808 and 1818 were using completely different systems of merit. You could not have predicted Napoleon using the old system of power, nor could you have predicted the Bourbon Restoration using the revolutionary system of power.

That hierarchy is used by and large in all organizations is due to the fact we're limited by technology, not an inherit law of nature. The original Soviets (not the USSR) and Catalonian anarchists, had they survived, would have been examples of the many deciding for the many. Depending on how much you believe the literary canon classical Athens was a successful example of that for close to a century.

<comment><USER31> > Tautology is tautological.

I believe you had a point with this, but it eluded me. Can you explain (at the risk of destroying the joke?)

> The original Soviets (not the USSR) and Catalonian anarchists, had they > survived, would have been examples of the many deciding for the many.

But they didn't, and the fact that they did not pushes the balance towards the possibility that this might not be such a practical idea.

I think that hierarchy is not necessarily a law of nature, but is so common one might be excused for thinking it so. If there is some alternative, I can not conceive it in my mind - not at least in a realistic form - and I would be very pleased to have it explained to me.

I think there is some sort of a circular reasoning regarding this, in my mind. I think that in order to have a more egalitarian and self-directed society you need self-directed individuals. And yet,(according to my mental model) these individuals are the result of the society that produces them.

<comment><USER32> The point your making is that those with power have power. Which is a tautology. The point I'm making is that the qualifications for having power change constantly and unpredictably.

I do not think power being concentrated has anything to do with human nature, just the difficulty in taking action as a group. If you've even been in a meeting with a dozen people roughly of the same standing it takes a long while to decide anything. If this was a revolutionary situation you'd have the authoritarians already taking over the tv and radio stations before you've read the minutes from the last collectivist group meeting.

Even Athens and Rome realized this and would elect or appoint people with extraordinary power in a crisis.

When direct brain communication is invented I doubt we will see single individuals rise to power again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Reality continues to parody Atlas Shrugged

<comment><USER34> Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why stop there. Next restore the glory of the horse drawn carriage.

<comment><USER34> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a lot, and we ban accounts that do that.

In addition to [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), you might find these links helpful for getting an idea of the spirit of this site:

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

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

[http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Finally! Do airports next. ;-)</comment>


Linkedin Recommendations Are Junk - <AUTHOR> http://moniker.net/2013/08/06/linkedin-recommendations-are-junk/

<comment><USER2> I think that's a bit of a hyperbole. If I'm asked by someone for a recommendation, but I'm not comfortable recommending him/her, chances are I will simply ignore the request. If I do write a recommendation, it will most likely be on things the positive things I've seen about the person.

Assuming people in general approach recommendations in the same way, LinkedIn recommendations are good at identifying strengths of a person, but not weaknesses. In that aspect, they're not total junk.

Obviously, I wouldn't base hiring decisions on LinkedIn recommendations, just like I won't base such decisions on letter references, but they can be a small factor that influences the overall decision (after an on-site interview for example).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the author is making a bad analogy and ignoring the general function of recommendations. Of course they're all positive and lacking nuance. It's one to one vouching that both parties agree to, not review or analysis.

That said, I'd say they are certainly junk, just not necessarily for the reasons stated.

As I see it, LinkedIn makes junk of itself by being way too cluttered with the products of non-stop demands to engage in all sorts of empty actions. LinkedIn is an ugly rolodex, not a network.

</comment><comment><USER4> Stock recommendations are not really analogous to resume/linkedin recommendations. People expect stock analysts to provide unbiased, objective assessments of stocks. There is an expectation of positive bias when a person shows a recommendation on his/her linkedin profile.

There are two sources of "signal" in this case: The content of the recommendation as well as the very existence of a recommendation. Not recommending people only addresses the first.

</comment><comment><USER5> Even junkier: endorsements.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, I am constantly endorsed for things I have no skill or experience at, or by people who hardly know me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's called a recommendation. Generally speaking, when people recommend something,it's a positive. References might include a negative, so long as you ask a question that allows for a negative answer. When doing references, I usually ask for a potential 'area for improvement' so I am fairly certain to get at least one potential concern.

Being that the person requesting controls whether the recommendation is published, we shouldn't expect to see much negative. A well-written recommendation (even on LinkedIn), written by someone with some level of industry credibility, can actually be a fairly powerful tool to get noticed.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think Recommendations are junk because when you write one for someone, you are vouching that you believe they can do a good job and had a positive experience working with them. As for why you don't see negative recommendations, I would never write a negative one, I just wouldn't write them one at all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a followup blog post on this:

[http://problemflow.com/blog/2013/08/07/linkedin- recommendati...](http://problemflow.com/blog/2013/08/07/linkedin- recommendation-incentives/)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's almost like Linkedin is complete and absolute garbage in general. Almost like it was a venereal disease that no one asked for nor wanted, more than an actual website.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can say the same thing about references. When I see a stellar recommendation, that's when it makes a difference.

</comment><comment><USER11> Given that users can hide recommendations, I'd never expect to see a negative one.

</comment><comment><USER12> At first, I liked LinkedIn because it provided some transparency into peoples' career trajectories. One could compare what one was doing at a certain age to well-known people and see if one was on a right track, or should be trading up jobs soon. It had value. There was data there. "Hey, at age X I should have title Y." Granted, it was focused around something that's total and utter bullshit (job titles and professional status) but it made it easier to decode the bullshit.

Now, though, everyone's polluting the channels with nonsense. Why would I care that Bob has 37 endorsements for "APIs"? That doesn't mean anything.

Besides, social proof is for malakas. If anyone turned me down because I didn't have enough endorsements on a website, I'd laugh that person off the fucking bricks.

<comment><USER13> What are the correct titles for various ages in your opinion?

I'm trying to figure out how to advance past senior developer myself.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure. I think that if you want to be a pure technologist, titles don't mean as much, because anything beyond Sr. Engineer isn't standardized across companies, and if you're good at what you do, that say more than any title history.

If you want to take the management path, you should have some kind of management title by 32 and Director by 36.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So what.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not only that, the skills stuff is junk too - I have people endorsing me for skills that they have no clue of whether or not I posess them, nor how well I exercise them.

<comment><USER16> What? I'm always happy when people see that my mom endorsed me for knowing HTML5. /s</comment></comment>


DNS66: OSS ad blocker for Android that works for all apps (no root needed) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/julian-klode/dns66? <comment><USER2> This app works very well on Android. I've been using it for many months now. It creates a local VPN connection and only funnels DNS requests through it. You can specify which block lists to use and exclude certain apps if the cause issues. By default certain apps with known issues (like Gmail) are excluded. And of course the best part of all is that it does not require root. That and it's open source so you can install it from Fdroid for auto updates.

</comment><comment><USER3> DNS66 is neat and works like a charm.

If you want more features like per-app internet control, different profiles for wifi/lte/roaming, per app logging, etc then NetGuard is for you:

[https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard](https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard)

note: hosts based blocking is only included in the pro plugin in the github version due to Google restrictions in the play store.

</comment><comment><USER4> How does it fare against "Blokada" (also FOSS + no root required) in terms of battery use and features?

</comment><comment><USER5> It says it creates a VPN service. Does it mean on the phone itself? Or is this connecting to an external VPN that is reading all of my DNS traffic?

<comment><USER6> The XDA link says the VPN connects locally to the installed app itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Its free, open source and it works in all the apps I use like BBC and YT. No noticeable impact in battery.</comment>


The Boom in Fireworks Conspiracy Theories - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/firework-summer-2020-conspiracy-theory-police/613450/ <comment><USER2> Fireworks I think neatly divide people. When you're in the right environment for them (no infant/toddler, scared dog, veteran) they're wonderful displays of sound and color, a celebration. If you're _not_ they're a horrific disruption of life from people who fundamentally don't understand or care. It's perhaps the most obnoxious aspect of American "freedom" I've encountered.

Moderate neighbors simply wish people would use them on the weekend of a holiday, but people seem to buy hundreds for using weeks (months) before and after the 4th</comment>


Wordpress.com's move to SSL complete - <AUTHOR> http://developer.twingly.com/2015/01/16/wordpress-com-https/

<comment><USER2> Am I missing the point, or shouldn't:

[http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/reset-the- net/](http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/reset-the-net/)

redirect to https by now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question, maybe they're doing something special for their own blogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wonder what that huge drop-off was in late November?</comment>


Can a workplace block Google+? - <AUTHOR>

There must be millions of people who work in businesses who block Facebook.<p>Because Google's social network is built on top of their productivity products, will this open up a social network for these people? <comment><USER2> Yes, they can. Even my top bar is only partially loaded. Specifically, the right notification count (the red thing) is blank and I get a firewall error when I open it.

Edit:

It was actually blocked on Thursday, had to get on through my phone. I was surprised at how quick they were.

</comment><comment><USER3> To the degree they can prevent the use of cellphones, they can block Google+.

</comment><comment><USER4> All the urls base to plus.google.com, so I don't see why they couldn't, but I never really understood why a workplace would outright block facebook or anything else for that matter.

<comment> paul-woolcock They block it because a lot of managers and executives still think that blocking their employees from everything but their work is the best way to ensure worker productivity

<comment><USER2> You aren't 100% right. Some places also block any place where you can communicate/share/upload potentially confidential/proprietary/private/blah information. FB and Google+ certainly fall into this type of category (although, you could just pick up your cell phone, call a friend, and have them post whatever revealing information you have).</comment></comment></comment>


How did Steve Jobs thrive in a technical field with a non-technical background? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/How-did-Steve-Jobs-thrive-in-a-technical-field-with-a-non-technical-background/answer/Brett-Bilbrey?share=1 <comment><USER2> Steve did electronics projects with Woz as teenagers before they ever considered making a company. He was heavily into phone phreaking which is not a layman activity.

He wasn't as talented as Woz or Bill Gates at engineering but I don't know how you can call him "not technical".

Fun fact: That was BillG's favourite put down if he thought you didn't know what you were talking about, "I guess your just not very technical".

<comment><USER3> "your" -> "you're"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From interviews and first-hand accounts I've seen, Steve was able to digest very technical ideas and concepts and extract "cliff notes" and first principles from them. Take the example/myth of him visiting Xerox and seeing a GUI interface and mouse for the first time.

Additionally, Apple is and has been a consumer company, so understanding the nitty gritty technical details is not the core concern. Instead, building a premium brand, with a cult like following, and being able to identify market opportunities was his genius.

</comment><comment><USER5> He was a product star. He could see demand unmet, and guide to a filling of it. He saw the big picture.

</comment><comment><USER6> The iT industry is full of people who don't have a talent for tech stuff. A common path for them is to get work as a programmer, survive by keeping a knife hidden under their tongue, then get promoted to manager, architect, designer, or recruiter as soon as they can. It also happens in open source software.</comment>


Voxel virtualizes mobile apps to disrupt mobile advertising - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/09/voxel-disrupt-launch/

<comment><USER2> Brilliant idea! I can see its many applications beyond apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we do as well. However, we'll remain very focused on ads initially to bring it to the masses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> silly. Only has a shadow of being useful because the appstore does not have videos like the gmarket. And the gmarket nobody cares because theres no money there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like an awesome product.</comment>


Reindeer Ordering (SQL) - <AUTHOR> https://www.damirsystems.com/reindeer-ordering/ <comment><USER2> Can't actually read it because there's a Cloudflare captcha in front of it. It's probably a great article but ... bugger off with that nonsense.</comment>


A 2D Tour of a 3D Printer Factory - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397625,00.asp

<comment><USER2> They seem to be targeting similar markets to Makerbot, Ultimaker, Shapercube, etc. (complete kits for those who don't want to source parts but are still pretty DIY), but I don't really see any competitive advantage versus those existing players. Not sure how they're planning on positioning themselves.

Makerbot's product has gotten a lot more mature since I originally picked up a Cupcake a year and a half ago. At the time, the majority of issues with all of the Reprap derivatives was the extruder (plastruder MK3 on the Cupcake). They've iterated like crazy since then, and the current generation stepstruder MK7 is second to none. Makerbot's also got the Thingiverse community behind them, a large support network of owners, and an established reputation and fanbase.

With the exception of more significant redesigns (Ultimaker), there isn't a whole lot of product differentiation in the space apart from price, aesthetics, reliability, and small auxiliary features. Buildatron's website focuses on their build and part quality, but current capabilities are pretty standard, and there generally isn't an issue with inferior parts in the pre- sourced kits.

I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised, but unless Buildatron has some major tricks up their sleeve (which they could very well have in trying to develop a great software interface), it's impossible to justify buying a $500 more expensive product for their take on the open-source Mendel.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very little new information will be taken from this multi page article unless you are a complete novice to the 3D printing world.

Here's the final output of the printer in question: [http://www3.pcmag.com/media/images/328278-slide-15-img-8972....](http://www3.pcmag.com/media/images/328278-slide-15-img-8972.jpg?thumb=y)

You can see that it is not exceptional output resolution. Some imperfections are visible, as well as stair stepping on every layer.</comment>


In theory, rocks from Oman could store hundreds of years of human CO2 emissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/26/climate/oman-rocks.html <comment><USER3> The best long-term carbon sequestration medium we have is wood.

It is the slow and unsexy algorithm of:

Plant trees, and then build things with them. Be careful not to burn them. Repeat

<comment><USER4> Your theory sounds good until you consider the practical aspects of the last step:

> Be careful not to burn them. Repeat

So what do you do with the wood? A billion years ago, your plan would have worked out brilliantly. Some say it's where our oil came from. But now we have fungus among us that evolved to rapidly turn your wood right back into CO2.

Unless you sterilize the wood and bury it deep in the ground where it will never be exposed to air or spores, you're right back to square one. Also there's the logistics and carbon footprint of burying and sterilizing the wood.

You're not the first person to think of this:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2266747/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2266747/)

<comment><USER5> Could we mass pressure treat wood to prevent it from being eaten?

<comment><USER6> That only works for a period of time depending on conditions. In this case, even a few hundred years wouldn't be good enough.

<comment><USER4> Hundred? If the wood is touching soil, try a few decades at best. I just replaced an old rotted out deck that was all pressure treated lumber. Also EPA considers it a hazardous waste.

[https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide- products/chro...](https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide- products/chromated-arsenicals-cca)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How dangerous is it to breathe in particulate matter from peridotite? There's another approach to making sequestration within these rocks economical - <USER2> could use underground explosives to simultaneously disperse peridotite particles into the air and uncover formations that haven't been exposed to CO2 yet. This would drastically increase the surface area and hence absorptive power of the rocks.

Even if this could be done in a manner that keeps the air safe to continue breathing, the other problem from doing too much of this is that it could increase the Earth's albedo and have a global cooling effect (akin to when volcanic eruptions on earth have caused famines, skipped summers/growing seasons). But in some ways, that may make this the perfect worst-case-scenario solution to runaway global warming. We could periodically use "clean" nuclear detonations to put enough particulates in the air to reduce the global temperature _and_ sequester carbon. Once the particulates settle, if there is still too much CO2, we could do another round of detonations, etc.

<comment><USER8> This is how apocalypse movies start.

<comment><USER7> Well, I'm sure in a limited case it wouldn't be that dangerous. But yeah, regarding the nuclear detonations, that's why I think it would have to be a last resort. Like, last resort as in a situation where humanity is in danger of extinction or in making Earth mostly uninhabitable.

<comment><USER9> So, now then.

<comment><USER10> More like 30 years ago.

But yes, now would be good too.

<comment><USER11> In that case we should adopt a more cavalier attitude toward nuclear weapons. If we allow at least one nuclear exchange between two nations we could help offset the effects of global warming for a good while longer.

<comment><USER10> Ocean acidification isn't helped by nuclear weapons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems to me there is much promise in influencing the natural carbon cycle in these kind of ways. Apparently natural processes release and absorb about 800 gigatons of CO2 annually against human emissions of 29 gigatons or so, so there seems a lot of scope to try to tip the natural balance a few percent. Especially if we go carbon neutral and are then looking to reabsorb a bit.

[https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than- natu...](https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural- emissions.htm)

<comment><USER13> > _processes release and absorb about 800 gigatons of CO2 annually against > human emissions of 29 gigatons or so_

We don't see to be growing more trees anytime soon, and we aren't adding any new oceans either.

<comment><USER12> There's this kind of thing "Surge in plant growth explains slower CO2 rise over past decade" [https://www.carbonbrief.org/surge-in-plant-growth- explains-s...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/surge-in-plant-growth-explains- slower-co2-rise-over-past-decade)

which has happened without really any planning. It's just that sort of stuff could be actively encouraged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember reading this article waiting for my haircut this morning.

Here was my biggest takeaway:

> More realistically, he said, Oman could store at least a billion tons of CO2 > annually. (Current yearly worldwide emissions are close to 40 billion tons.)

So we're looking at 2.5% sequestration of what we're _currently_ adding, from the largest deposits in the world. Best case, realistically.

The whole thing sounds like a total non-starter.

<comment><USER15> Sometimes the way you solve a big complex distributed global problem is a bit at a time. It's unlikely we're going to find one single global solution to carbon sequestration.

<comment><USER13> > _Sometimes the way you solve a big complex distributed global problem is a > bit at a time._

An example of such a time, from various available such historical "sometimes"?

<comment><USER15> There are so many examples I don't even know where to start. Disease eradication (through education, sanitation improvement, suppressing disease vectors, vaccination, etc), then there's poverty reduction, the way piracy was eradicated in the 19th Century, the way ozone depletion was tackled. There are endless examples.

Anyway, what are you actually saying other than taking a cheap shot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Or, you know, maybe we could just emit less CO2 to start with.

To be clear, I'm all for research about carbon sequestration, but it should not be an excuse to keep polluting irresponsibly. On the long term, we simply can't get away with compensating all our big negative impacts with big positive ones - how about introducing some moderation in our lifestyles instead?

<comment><USER17> If we want to avert a bad scenario, we need to both drastically reduce CO2 emissions and find a way to sequester the CO2 currently in the air (either through technological means, or through something like making big tracts of land into forests). Just sequestering is unlikely to be enough, unless it is extremely efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Fake" or rather misleading news!

So:

Geologists for a long time assumed the carbonates found with igneous rocks resulted from CO2 reacting with these igneous rocks were formed very very long ago.

A scientists uses carbon dating and discovers that the carbon in these carbonates was in fact formed relatively recently.

This should prompt 2 questions, but seemingly only prompted the first:

1) If unreacted pyroxenes and olivine in these rocks can capture CO2 to form carbonates relatively fast on geological timescales, can we help this natural process speed up?

Answer: yes, but unclear at what energetic cost, and unclear what to do with these carbonates afterwards.

2) WHERE do the carbonates end up, if the carbonates from older carbon are mysteriously MISSING???

Answer: reacting back to CO2 upon rainfall, or by erosion and weather ended up in seas and lakes!

One does not need rocks to create cabronates: simply expose water with CO2 and CO2 will both absorb as (CO2)_gas and also react with water to form carbonic acid H2CO3:

(H2O)l + (CO2)g <=> (H2CO3)l

If we take the resulting say magnesiumcarbonate from the rock that has captured CO2, and put it in water, it will first dissociate like all salts (metal, non-metal compounds) resulting in free mobile Magnesium ions and free mobile carbonate ions. You might as well just let CO2 in the air react with the sea acidifying it...

They pretend the carbonate form is a sink where we can dump our CO2, while in fact this very interpretation is inconsistent with the original discovery that the carbon in these carbonates is young. If it was truely stable the carbonates would predominantly contain old carbon.

So unless they have a plan to store these carbonates and protect it from rainfall, and prevent it from flowing into bigger bodies of water, I see no solution, only excuses to appear green such that banks can invest "green money" into these mining companies again, or perhaps to get "green subsidies" or perhaps to escape carbon taxes...

</comment><comment><USER19> Plants are pretty good at capturing carbon, why would anyone want something more expensive and difficult?

<comment><USER20> The area of plants needed to capture current CO2 emissions would be impossibly large. The energy efficiency of photosynthesis is horrible. In contrast, mineral carbonation is an exothermic process, in principle requiring no energy input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's an intriguing idea. But you'd need to move humongous quantities of sone, air and water. Without releasing so much CO2 to negate advantages.

<comment><USER22> Which is why we need nuclear power.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps so. With inherently safe designs, though.

Not some simplistic scale-up of Rickover's submarine engine.

<comment><USER13> > _With inherently safe designs, though._

Funny how with reactors always the new designs are "safer" or "100% safe". Until time passes, and those are the "old unsafe designs". It's like there's an industry selling and promoting them each time (no, wait...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could we do this on Venus to start terraforming?

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#Capture_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#Capture_in_carbonates)

Sounds like it could more than halve the atmosphere (from 93 times Earth atmosphere to 43 times).

Though worth remembering that the surface of Venus is an untouched wilderness region containing billions of years of geologically significant information. I'm all for walking around a balmy Venus, but if it involves pulverising the surface, we need to be extracting all the scientific information from the untouched wilderness area as we do it, because a lot will be lost forever otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Find a way to extract enough energy from this reaction (it has to be at least slightly exothermic) to pay for it, and we're good.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think Yogi Berra said it best:

 _In theory there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice there is_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage#Min...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage#Mineral_storage)

<comment><USER26> Not Yogi Berra, nor any of the other celebrities quotes end up sticking to, but one Benjamin Brewster:

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/04/14/theory/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/04/14/theory/)

<comment><USER25> in _theory_ said by Yogi Berra.. but in _practice_ ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It could store even more years' worth if we decrease our emissions.

I don't mean a general "we." I mean you, reading these words, and me. You can decrease your emissions, plastic pollution, etc. No technology needed. No loss in quality of life.

<comment><USER15> The problem with that is that most of the CO2 emissions we depend on as individuals are beyond our control. Things like the emissions generated in growing, processing, packaging and transporting the goods we buy, our food and clothing, our mail, the utility resources we consume, the services we depend on, public transport. Yes we can do thing in our daily lives but in reality it's a tiny fraction of our actual CO2 footprint. That's why societal and industrial level action, and therefor public policy is so important.

The biggest environmental issue we can affect in our daily lifestyle is recycling and reducing household rubbish. It's another important issue and one where we really can make a difference in our everyday behaviour.

<comment><USER28> You bring up "public transport" as one of the emissions sources beyond people's control, without bringing up the biggest source which is under our control: cars. US per capita CO2 emissions are 20 tons/year, of which a typical passenger car is 5 tons/year. If you're worried about the carbon footprint of your stuff...it is possible to buy less stuff.

<comment><USER15> There was a journalist in the UK that lives for 3 months, with his family, doing everything they could manage to reduce their carbon footprint, and they got it down by about 5%.

There are roughly 2 passenger cars per person in the US, so cars are about 12% of emission, but even if you had no car you'd still need to travel somehow. You'd never get your travel footprint to zero. I am not saying don't try or don't bother, I'm just saying firstly we are not going to solve this with public policy action. And second, sometimes there are other valid environmental issues we can focus on in our personal behaviour.

<comment><USER29> Did that journalist ever do plane trips? I recall reading that for many people that is the single biggest thing that accounts for their emissions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Top-Secret Security Clearance Is a Ticket to Lots of Job Offers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/jobs/topsecret-security-clearance-is-a-ticket-to-lots-of-job-offers.html <comment><USER2> APRIL 9, 2006. Can mods put a year in the title?

</comment><comment><USER3> Job board solely for those with a clearance already: [https://www.clearancejobs.com/](https://www.clearancejobs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> A direct consequence/cost of widespread over-classification?

</comment><comment><USER5> "The process is particularly intrusive at the top-secret level, with investigators examining an applicant's personal relationships, former employers, financial history and lifestyle."

You know this is really crap and it's the governments fault.

One, people don't want a government agent digging into every area of their lives looking for hints of marijuana smoke or evil immoral dealings.

Two, and more significantly, when you apply for these clearances you have to sign release forms for your medical data including mental health records. As a result, people who work or want to work in these fields are afraid to seek mental health treatment, or are afraid to be honest with their mental health providers because saying the wrong thing might result in the professional making a little harmless note, which will be released to government investigators, which will destroy your livelihood in that sector of work.

I understand the need for the government to strictly check their people, but the scope of check needed really prevents lots of good people from going through the process.

I think it's a shame.

<comment><USER6> Is there a way to go to a phycologist on the condition that all of the notes and recommendations are kept secret and after all of the treatment the records are destroyed? There would still be an issue if the agents directly ask the applicant if they were at a phycologist, but it would prevent the agents from seeing everything.</comment></comment>


Recommending items to more than a billion people - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/861999383875667/recommending-items-to-more-than-a-billion-people/ <comment><USER2> The technical name for this is "collaborative filtering". I think they are basing their work on this paper

\- [http://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume10/takacs09a/takacs09a.pdf](http://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume10/takacs09a/takacs09a.pdf)

EDIT: Actually looks like Eq (15) from

\- [http://public.research.att.com/~volinsky/netflix/BellKorICDM...](http://public.research.att.com/~volinsky/netflix/BellKorICDM07.pdf)

Anyway there are lots of papers around on the topic.

<comment><USER3> They do mention that in the 2nd paragraph and repeatedly throughout the article as CF. I found the article to be a nice primer on the topic as it listed common approaches to the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty cool, the scale is one reason almost any time Facebook publishes something in "big data" subject it is worth to read.

<comment><USER5> I guess it is the only reason, because most of these problems are relatively easy to solve for small data.

<comment><USER4> You would be surprised. Several companies have a big data-problem even with small amount of it. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, I gave a talk about the Alternating Least Squares algorithm mentioned here (and linked in several comments) and how we implemented it at Spotify:

Slides: [http://www.a1k0n.net/spotify/ml- madison/](http://www.a1k0n.net/spotify/ml-madison/) Video (for the extremely patient): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX_ARH- KoDg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX_ARH-KoDg)

</comment><comment><USER7> _To solve the matrix equation A × X = B we need to find the inverse A^-1_

Huh? Isn't Gaussian elimination more straightforward?

<comment><USER8> Since they're using collaborative filtering, the matrix they're solving for is very sparse (ie it's an undetermined system). So they're fitting a nonlinear regression model by minimizing the regularized squared error. Since the vectors they're trying to model (x and y) are both unknown, the optimization problem is not convex, or in other words, can't be solved for exactly.

[http://www2.research.att.com/~volinsky/papers/ieeecomputer.p...](http://www2.research.att.com/~volinsky/papers/ieeecomputer.pdf)

Edit: everything, then added AT&T research paper link

<comment><USER9> Come again? A nonlinear matrix equation of the form AX=B?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I have no idea why I said that. Answer's been fixed

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hoped for a minute that they shared their complete implementation; anyone aware of a recommendation system that can scale to millions of items, be updated as soon as new items come in (no full graph recalculation) and take multiple inputs (ratings, saved in library, etc)?

<comment><USER11> Have a look at Google's MinHash algorithm. While it's a probabilistic solution, You can run it as a mapreduce and will at no point need to have the full data set in memory/on a single machine. So it does scale pretty well.

[http://www2007.org/papers/paper570.pdf](http://www2007.org/papers/paper570.pdf)

EDIT: I see you changed your comment to include "no full graph recalcuation". Incremental recos are possible to do with minhash but I think you can't solve decay of old data easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please don't do it, however great technical feat it is, the truth is, it sucks. I hate those the most in facebook.

<comment><USER2> You would rather ads that are not tailored to your interests?

<comment><USER13> Well of course. Tailored ads just make sense to companies because it increases click/conversion rates.

I would rather not be convinced to buy things I don't have a need for. Thus, I don't see how more effective ads are any better for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Chronicle of a Death Foretold - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201291872137626701.html?utm_content=automate&utm_campaign=Trial6&utm_source=NewSocialFlow&utm_term=plustweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount <comment><USER2> Before the Law stands a door-keeper. A man from the country comes up to this door-keeper and begs for admission to the Law. But the door-keeper tells him that he cannot grant him admission now. The man ponders this and then asks if he will be allowed to enter later, 'Possibly', the door-keeper says, 'but not now'. Since the door leading to the Law is standing open as always and the door-keeper steps aside, the man bends down to look inside through the door. Seeing this, the door-keeper laughs and says: 'If it attracts you so much, go on and try to get in without my permission, But you must realise that I am powerful. And I'm only the lowest door-keeper. At every hall there is another door-keeper, each one more powerful than the last. Even I cannot bear to look at the third one'.

<comment><USER3> This man was kidnapped and tortured without trial.

I did not downvote you, but somehow I feel that your comment does not do justice to the plain reality of the situation. Which is decidedly not allegorical and not abstract at all.

<comment><USER2> Have you read The Trial? Josef K was arrested basically without trial, as well.

In fact, I read this article and I see many parallels to the novel by Franz Kafka.

The reason I quoted it was because the following (from the article) reminded me of it:

"Latif sank deeper into depression and hopelessness as the futility of the legal efforts towards winning his freedom became clear. In one of his last letters to his lawyer he tells him: 'Do whatever you wish to do, the issue [of my defence] is over', and includes with it a message of farewell written both to him personally as well to the world at large: 'With all my pains, I say goodbye to you and the cry of death should be enough for you. A world power failed to safeguard peace and human rights and from saving me. I will do whatever I am able to do to rid myself of the imposed death on me at any moment of this prison... the soul that insists to end it all and leave this life which is no longer anymore a life'".

Josef K thought the law was accessible and would protect him, because he was innocent--so there is nothing to fear, right? Wrong. The excerpt from above is taken from a central piece of The Trial--the parable "Before the Law", which was a conversation Josef K had with the priest.

Franz Kafka studied law. He thought it was made to confuse the layman and that the law was not blind and balanced, as the statue so famously demonstrates, but rather has wings and shifts.

Though The Trial is a work of fiction and Latif is a real man, when I first read this book, it helped me realise and gain more compassion towards those who have been treated unfairly by the law.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I have. I understand your point, but respectfully disagree.

Analogies to The Trial produce a sense of crushing inevitability, whereas I believe the system can and should be changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Completely coincidentally, I just bought the novel by Gabriel García Márquez, "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (in Spanish: "Crónica de una muerte anunciada") today.

It's a short novel by the Columbian author that I had read ~10 years ago, and thought of it again today when reflecting on the nature of journalism. The novel is a commentary on the notion of "truth". Its plot involves a murder in a small town in Columbia, and is told in a journalistic style, where you, the reader, learn new facts that reshape the perception of the "whole story" as the story itself unfolds through the narration. As the novel unfolds, you start to question the veracity of the facts presented to you, causing you to question whether the "true reality" of what happened is even knowable.

<comment><USER5> > It's a short novel by the Columbian author

ColOmbian ;)

<comment><USER6> The spelling difference doesn't change the fact that this is the same word: land of Columbus. This was an early proposed name for the country of the United States, Columbia, today most famously personified in the Columbia Pictures logo (and I think in the Statue of Liberty, but I'm not sure).

I kind of wish sometimes that the US had used that name instead of appropriating the name "America" from the rest of the new world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Poignant end to the article: "America, what has happened to you?"

<comment><USER8> Please don't take this as a defense of everything America has done:

The US is currently at war with both Al Qaida and the Taliban. Members of these organizations which are captured are allowed to be held as POWs until hostilities are formally ended.

What else is the US supposed to do? These men didn't necessarily commit crimes - prisoners of war are simply fighting for their country or side.

Release them? What about the prisoners who are 'high risk'?

Try them? You're not really supposed to charge prisoners of war with a crime. I mean I guess that you can, but why? The US is still at war with them. They'll have to be exchanged for US prisoners eventually (the Taliban have one still, if memory serves).

<comment><USER9> >What else is the US supposed to do? These men didn't necessarily commit crimes - prisoners of war are simply fighting for their country or side.

This shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation. The Taliban and Al Qaida were always criminals. Its not like they are simply members of the Afghan and Iraqi armies that were present before the United States entered, they are a small minority of religious extremists that that are attempting to impose their idiotic beliefs on other nations.

With that in mind, those who are in Guantanamo that are suspected members of the Taliban and Al Qaida should not be held indefinitely without charges or trial. If we have evidence, we should prosecute them. If not, we should release them after a reasonable amount of time.

I'm a former Soldier and I know how much it would suck to know in your heart that a person you detained, was in fact a terrorist, yet they walk due to a lack of evidence. However, if we don't observe the rule of law, there won't be an America to defend anymore.

I'm inclined to believe that quite a few of the people in Guantanamo are guilty. But we also know for a fact that certain groups, such as bounty hunters, were shipping lots of innocent folks off to prison simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We need to start looking for these innocents and set them free in a timely manner. We already have enough blood on our hands.

<comment><USER8> There is no established rule of law regarding so-called criminal enemy combatants (as the Am Qaida detainees are classified - Taliban detainees are not thus considered). Insofar as I am aware, the US could execute them en masse perfectly legally.

The Taliban detainees have always been provided full legal POW rights. This means that they must he released after hostilities have ended.

I may well he misinformed. If so please correct me.

<comment><USER9> I agree the U.S. could definitely "get away" with killing them all, I'm speaking more about the intent behind the rule of law.

In my humble opinion, "after hostilities have ended" is too weak of a standard. I'm still a young man, yet I would be surprised if hostilities ended before I die of natural causes. Perhaps we can argue that we didn't know better before this conflict, but now that we do we should make some changes.

I was not aware that the Taliban were given POW rights. That was an extremely poor decision but I guess I stand corrected on that issue.

I don't really have a solution, I'm just weary of watching the slowest train- wreck in the history of the world. We should be better than this.

<comment><USER10> > We should be better than this.

Well, the US _did_ vote for the guy who said he would close Guantanamo. So it would seem most are better than this, but not the ones who matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who's paying the salaries of these prison guards?

Who's funding the US government agencies that appealed his release?

Read your paycheck carefully, and check kayak.com regularly.

You can stop any time you wish.

<comment><USER12> _Who 's paying the salaries of these prison guards?_

I'm pretty sure the people working that particular prison are soldiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ugh. The United States justice system is beyond horribly broken. It is despicable. America, we have failed you. Super Bowl commercials be damned.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hadn't heard of this story prior to today, and was definitely sad to read it. Interesting that it's being posted now though it's from 2012.

</comment><comment><USER15> And of course someone will pay for this some day. Someone totally innocent, who just happens to be in a wrong place at a wrong time. Just like most of these prisoners.

</comment><comment><USER16> At a minimum, sign [http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-close- detent...](http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-close-detention- facility-at-guantanamo-bay-3)

</comment><comment><USER17> Of all of the sad things I read in that article, the phrase, "the allegations against him must be taken as accurate if they are claimed to be so by the government."

Some might call it presumption of guilt.

</comment><comment><USER18> At its peak Guantanamo Bay has 750 detainees and prisoners. Now it's 150.

I kind of have a hard time taking anything said about the conditions inside from the detainees at face value. They have every reason to exaggerate and lie - and no reason to tell the truth...

Because comparing it to the types of prisons in the 3rd world that do have truly horrible living conditions and real absolute torture, is just dishonest. In most of those places you don't even get paper to write on, nor have a personal lawyer, nor get special religious treatment, nor have media walk- throughs, nor doctors on call 24/7, nor TVs, and so on and on.

<comment><USER19> What's wrong with what this commenter said? So we downvote opinions we don't like? What happened to the free exchange of ideas? HN comments section apparently is becoming a echo chamber and quickly losing all relevance.

<comment><USER20> Yes, defending Guantanamo in any way is disgusting and that is obvious to intelligent people in most parts of the world. Some views are so abhorrent per se that down voting may occur even if the comment is internally consistent, doesn't personally insult anyone, etc.

<comment><USER18> > millions of people are being tortured at Guantanamo

My argument against this consisted of:

1\. Factual figures on detainee numbers, which proves Guantanamo had an incredibly small head-count from the start, and has also been downsized significantly since then.

2\. Factual representation of conditions at Guantanamo that show nothing to support claims of wholescale torture (aside from a few detainees being isolated).

3\. A logical assertion that detainees have no reason to tell the truth and every reason to exaggerate and lie.

And I did not even bother with the fact that some of these detainees are so radical and violent that their own countries (that are opposed to the USA) DON'T WANT THEM BACK.

Your counter-argument is what's abhorrent... That you would call your closed- minded group-think emotional response an intellectual one.

Your entire position is "I support the discussion of ideas and point-of-views ... as long as they agree with me".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DNA technique that caught Golden State Killer is more powerful than we thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/11/17964862/family-dna-crime-search-golden-state-killer-forensics# <comment><USER2> There is no way of not leaving DNA samples on a crime scene.

Humans lose tiny particles of skin, hairs all the time.

I can see how this powerful technology can make 99.99% murder clearance rate reality, changing the world for better.</comment>


AppEngine doesn't fit the needs of startups on the runway - <AUTHOR> http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=226 <comment><USER2> If he's frustrated with app engine, he hasn't built a complex system and had to refactor it in order to scale -- app engine puts these decisions in your lap up front, not after you get on techcrunch.

This is my favorite aspect of app engine -- you can be confident that if you follow the best practices your app will scale. Try that with a rails or django app.

Sure you can scale Rails horizontally, but what about Sphinx? What about Mysql? If you're lucky your app will scale in a way that the "simple" methods of scaling these tools happens to work. But what if it's not?

Before long you'll wish you'd just been forced to make all requests complete in under 4 seconds initially :)

These are problems that you as a coder can address directly with app engine. Without it, you have to wear all sorts of sysadmin hats and hope you're not doing something foolish.

<comment><USER3> Big design up front is bad, but big scaling up front is good?

<comment><USER2> Not at all.

Consider Rails: Convention over configuration. The same applies to app engine, only with a slightly more restrictive set of conventions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting comments below. Apparently my point wasn't as clear as I hoped. I'll try once more--in the runway portion of a startup, especially when bootstrapping, I am willing to completely ignore scale if I can gain an order of magnitude in cycle time for experiments.

AppEngine offes a different tradeoff--easy scaling but relatively slow experimentation. My comments about the fit of AppEngine only apply on the runway. Once you get to climb out (validated product/validated business model/rapid growth), AppEngine is a great fit.

</comment><comment><USER5> The main problem with AppEngine is vendor lock-in.

If you write your program to AppEngine, and Google decides one day to close down your site, you have no options.

<comment><USER2> Not really -- someone could easily write an nginx/hypertable system to let you run your app engine app on other hardware.

That nobody has done this suggests that the community doesn't think google is going to shut down app engine. You run the same risk using any library that is currently being maintained that you would have to suffer a learning curve to improve if the maintainer quit.

<comment><USER6> He didn't say that they might shut down AppEngine. He said they might decide to close down your site. No library stops working from one day to the next.

I wonder what the appeals process is in case of a dispute. Considering some people's experiences with Google Checkout I would at least read the terms of service very carefully.

This is not just an issue with Google. It's a general issue with that kind of all in one cloud service.

[edit] If you use google accounts for authentication the risk is even greater.

<comment><USER2> The risk you are describing is that Google decides to shut down YOUR site only?

Where does that rank among:

\- Your chief developer gets seriously injured or quits

\- Your funding dries up

\- You run into unexpected scaling problems when rolling your own data center.

\- You miss out on some other opportunity because you have allocated lots of your finite resources to scaling.

I think we can look to Amazon AWS to see a more likely outcome of the sort of concern you are getting at: After a while Amazon did adjust the pricing of some of its services to better mirror its own costs. This was not to be punitive toward its customers, but simply to allow it to better pass along costs (most customers saw their bill decrease).

So I'd say the real risk is that if you use a beta cloud service and your business model is based on some sort of loophole in the pricing, you run the risk of that loophole being closed and your costs increasing.

<comment><USER6> The risk that my site could be shut down without notice ranks pretty high. Just think of copyright issues of the sort that Google itself has all the time. What would be Google's reaction to a cease and desist letter be?

This risk ranks much higher than my fear of scaling problems as that is something I am at least competent at solving. My funding doesn't dry up over night. If my chief developer quits, development will slow down for a while but the service won't stop working tomorrow. Some risks just cannot be avoided anyway.

And I'm not saying I want to run my own data center. What I'm saying is that I want reasonable terms of service and a realistic transition path to a different provider.

In case of a conflict I want someone to talk to me _before_ my site is shut down, and if the issues cannot be resolved I want a reasonable period of time to move elsewhere.

[edit] If the technical specificities of a platform prevent me from moving my site within that grace period, I'm not going to use the platform for any serious business.

<comment><USER2> Good point about a cease and desist letter, but I do think you'd run that risks with a lot of hosting companies and even bandwidth providers.

If your business/project is on shaky enough legal ground that you really have to worry about cease and desist letters, then I'd say you would need to look into some sort of offshore hosting. If so then your argument is against most normal hosting not just google app engine.

As for the transition path, that is a good point. Google has open sourced the spec and sdk, so someone could feasibly reverse engineer something that behaved just like app engine -- in fact I wouldn't be surprised if a serious attempt at this happens fairly soon.

<comment><USER6> Yes you're completely right that I may have that problem with other hosting companies as well. And that's why it's so important to be able to move if need be.

My project is not any more on shaky ground than Google's own business. Search engines or any service that lets users upload or link content is prone to cease and desist letters. Only very recently there was a post here on HN where someone complained that 6 tweets were uploaded to a competitor's site by a user.

And then there's Google's user authentication service, which is very convenient. I can't think of a way to migrate that one without asking all my users to create new accounts and provide their google login password so I can check whether they are the legitimate owner of that account.

<comment><USER2> True. There isn't currently a great path away from app engine, but there is nothing about app engine that prevents someone from building one.

As for user auth, I'd suggest setting up a table that stores the user's email address and a random hash, so if google auth stops working they can just "reset their password" and you can use your own auth system w/ the same email address as the google account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title is terribly misleading and the article is silly. The bulk of the article lays out a scenario in which you would and should use a relational database. i.e. he's got some data and wants to run arbitrary queries on it. Claiming that app engines isn't a good fit for startups because it's not good at this is absurd.</comment>


Against all odds – Gaza is now home to a promising startup scene - <AUTHOR> http://www.geektime.com/2014/09/17/against-all-odds-gaza-is-now-home-to-a-promising-startup-scene/ <comment><USER2> Awesome article! Glad to see all this entrepreneurship in Gaza. Gives me hope.</comment>


Quality Assurance Software Tester looking to improve - <AUTHOR> Hello,
First of all, I wanna apologize for posting a probably obvious question, but I wanna make sure I get proper advice on this.
I am an experienced Quality Assurance Tester, having tested mainly gaming apps on mobile and Windows PC platforms. I am giving up on testing games, started learning coding, and am looking for something in software testing / automation. My target country to work in are: Nordic countries and Holland/Germany/Switzerland.
As such, I would like to get some feedback regarding sources of where I could look for software companies to apply to.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you! <comment><USER2> You'll likely have the easiest time looking at an industry you've already worked in. Your years of 'X' experience in a given industry means you'll know all the jargon and have a leg up on the competition. Good luck with the job hunt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, it's mostly trying to figure out some good sources of companies. It's a broad industry in this sense, just need a proper path for juniors as myself.</comment></comment>


The Easy Way to Obtain a Website's IP Address That Hides Behind CloudFlare - <AUTHOR> https://soatok.blog/2020/05/09/how-to-de-anonymize-scam-knock-off-sites-hiding-behind-cloudflare <comment><USER2> Coming with privacy tools, exploitation of the privilege is bound to take place. It sucks to see it happen, especially to a community I have particularly fond associations with.

Let this be a lesson though, if you're planning to spend any money anywhere, do some further investigation. This means checking for explicit contact information, as mentioned here. Even any kind of social media presence will do.

Even more so with fursuits, they cost several thousands, dropping that without any prior research is not advisable, and I think that goes without saying.</comment>


Kalashnikov assault rifles changed the world, meet Kalashnikov kamikaze drone - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/02/23/kalashnikov-assault-rifle-changed-world-now-theres-kalashnikov-kamikaze-drone/ <comment><USER2> The tech has been available since 10 or more years and it requires little knowledge to put something like this together.

I'm afraid we'll eventually start to see terror attacks with these types of weapons in western major cities. Once they are "successful" there will be many copycats.

An international ban seems like a good idea, but for now a consensus seems unlikely.</comment>


US Air Force's 1950s supersonic flying saucer declassified - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/137505-us-air-forces-1950s-supersonic-flying-saucer-declassified

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see what became of the project and why it was apparently canceled.

I disagree however with the last statement of the article: "If flying saucers were somehow faster or more efficient or capable of lifting heavier loads, we would almost certainly see them in a commercial setting."

Just because flying saucers aren't used commercially doesn't necessarily imply that they are inefficient. It just means that the flying saucer technology _we have at the moment_ is more inefficient than the fixed wing technology. Fixed wing technology could simply be ahead because it has seen a lot more iterative development.

Endeavors of this kind, that carry a huge upfront investment in the initial technology compared to what's on the market now, tend to be things where a free market really performs badly.

<comment><USER3> Saucers are fixed-wings.

A saucer wing has a very low aspect ratio, which has very low aerodynamic efficiency in cruise. The high-aspect trapezoidal wing we commonly see today is used because it produces much less drag while providing sufficient wing area to lift the aircraft. This has been understood since the 1930s, if not earlier.

I can't see why a saucer airframe would be desirable unless it spent a lot of time in backwards and sideways horizontal flight, where it might have better stability than a traditional wing. The complexity of the controls and thrust arrangement wouldn't seem outweighed by this though.

Actual test performance of Avro's saucers never exceeded altitudes of a few feet and speeds of a few mph.

<comment><USER4> Sometimes I think the people who designed these kinds of saucer crafts actually believed in extra-terrestrial UFOs and were on a mission to try and duplicate what they envisioned their technology would be.

<comment><USER5> Or, our government has witnessed said technology and tried to recreate/reverse-engineer it? Makes you wonder why they would build something like this just on a without a valid reason behind doing so.

<comment><USER2> The US government seems to be quite ready to try out a lot of fringe stuff if it provides military applications (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project>). They may as well just have gotten their inspiration from the general flying saucer hype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Non-swipe link: [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/137505-us-air- forces-1950...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/137505-us-air- forces-1950s-supersonic-flying-saucer-declassified?onswipe_redirect=never)

<comment><USER7> thank you. I look forward to an internet without Swipe putting its nose into web pages. My iPad renders webpages just fine without this nonsense.

<comment><USER8> personally, i like swipe. If i see it start loading, i know that there's virtually no chance of interesting content on the pages that follow, so i can back out quickly. It seems as though the only sites that use it are terrible blogspam sites like extremetech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's with the Extremetech mobile site for iPad? There's nothing but black and a slow moving "ring of death" for like 30 seconds. Then I can see the page, but nothing responds for forever. Then after about a minute, the page is all there _but then has to refresh again_. What is this? Completely incompetent. Does anyone even test this? I'm on wired connection over 802.11n. There's no excuse for this dial up modem like performance!

<comment><USER10> That would be onswipe [<http://onswipe.com/>]. They offer a plugin/integration that makes your site "mobile ready" and optimized, meanwhile displaying ads and getting revenue from that.

Except they don't. They just overrule scrolling and cut off content and bombard you with ads. There is a lengthly bashing of them here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2699610>.

 _"OnSwipe has become a perfect tool for preventing me from viewing content I'd otherwise happily read."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article, also led me on a tangent to check out the Coanda effect: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83_effect>

<comment><USER12> The explanation of what causes the effect is very poor on that page. Does anyone have a better one?

<comment><USER13> so from what I understand, the air bends around a surface the way water sticks to the side of a teapot. The nozzle design has a "step", a little cutout at the top of the curve closest to where the air is exiting from. This little step causes a small vortex, or eddy, like in a river. The vortex causes an area of lower pressure which bends the stream of air. You can clearly see the exhaust nozzles on "fig-1" of the declassified documents: [http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Fig-1-...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Fig-1-Cutaway.jpg)

Figure 2 has labels cut off, but there seems to be 6 engines around the craft, forcing air to 6 points (note where it is labeled "engine access panel"): [http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Fig-2-...](http://www.extremetech.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/Fig-2-Cutaway-of-Aircraft- Structure-e1348157629308.jpg)

The article that explains the effect: [http://www.pdf- archive.com/2011/09/07/applications-of-the-co...](http://www.pdf- archive.com/2011/09/07/applications-of-the-coanda-effect-ocr/#)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The saucer looks suspiciously like "Project Silver Bug"

[http://www.foia.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090218-169....](http://www.foia.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090218-169.pdf)

It appeared in many of the popular magazines of the time [http://blog.modernmechanix.com/issue/?magname=MechanixIllust...](http://blog.modernmechanix.com/issue/?magname=MechanixIllustrated&magdate=3-1956)

IIRC it was cancelled because it was incredibly unstable. Had a tendency to spin like a top.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm calling it as a fake. The drawings are in the too-good-to-be-true category, and the Flying Saucer logo is hilarious. No updates since Sept 20, and published with only 4 pages scanned? Is there any evidence for this other than the Wordpress blog on which it appears?

Yes, I'll take small bets.

</comment><comment><USER16> So with a top speed of 2,300-3,000 mph and a range of 1,000 miles, it could sustain top speed for what, 20-25 minutes, assuming no fuel required to achieve altitude or for landing?

It's hard to imagine the mission profile such a vehicle would fit.

...other than doing a short-range, high-speed insertion of a bomb delivered from high altitude. In the 1950s. Oh, nevermind.

<comment><USER17> Interceptors (a type of craft made obsolete buy long range surface-to-air missles)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand where the Coanda effect is coming into play here. From the first cutaway drawing (<http://goo.gl/QKOJy>), it appears that the outer disk rotates independently of the main hub--possibly powered by the central turbines forcing air outward to the wing? It also shows the air in-take port(s) where you would expect outward thrusting air. And, it seems, like the Coanda effect relies on a more spherical shape, as opposed to the very flat sketch shown. How would that design produce the Coanda effect?

I am basing my questions on what I could glean from Wikipedia and a couple Youtube videos:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPUAq3QObp4>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqxJe-RMUsI>

</comment><comment><USER19> It stands to reason that if I'd spent millions of public dollars on several failed black funded secret military projects trying to get a flying saucer in the air, then I'd also hide that fact from the public.

Logically, if they were successful, they would have been spun off into a massive private corporate venture by now.

To be honest I'm surprised they declassified it. Does anyone know if the the US military have a requirement to do so?

<comment><USER20> They do. The rules for classification of documents come from Executive Order 13526: <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526#Part_1>

The upshot is that when a classified document is created, it comes with a declassification date. They can be 10 to 25 years in the future. There are also specific exemptions that come with 50 or even 75 year timers. After that it's automatically declassified unless a review determines that it's still sensitive.

So you can generally expect to see declassified documents on a 50-, 25-, and 10-year delay.

If you're worried about information being classified to prevent embarrassment, though, that's illegal:

        Sec 1.7

            (a)    In no case shall information be classified,
            continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to
            be declassified in order to:

               (1)    conceal violations of law, inefficiency,
               or administrative error;

               (2)    prevent embarrassment to a person,
               organization, or agency;

               (3)    restrain competition; or

               (4)    prevent or delay the release of
               information that does not require protection in
               the interest of the national security.

While that doesn't make it impossible that it happens, it does mean anyone with access to the information has a duty to report that sort of fraud to legal authorities if they encounter it.

<comment><USER21> There are 9 Exemptions to that Executive Order. These exemptions allow the government to extend the declassification window indefinitely. Number 8 in particular is very broad: (8) reveal information that would seriously impair current national security emergency preparedness plans or reveal current vulnerabilities of systems, installations, or infrastructures relating to the national security;

I don't think it would apply to this saucer as it is not a "current system" but it basically extends the time limit on any fielded system.

<comment><USER22> Considering the numerous exemptions including the one for "national security," I wonder how long it extends the time limit on actual government evidence of extraterrestrial UFO's.

/removes tinfoil hat

<comment><USER23> I'd imagine that if there were any UFOs and they were classified it would probably be similar to the "born secret" clause that nuclear weapons research gets. So if you discovered anything it would retroactively be classified even if you didn't know it at the time and you could be prosecuted (and worse) for sharing it.

/removes Faraday suit (Tinfoil hats aren't effective anymore)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really chuckled at this. It almost reads like a disinformation campaign.

<comment><USER25> I think the most likely explanation is some combination of a) the Pentagon wanted to throw money at some Canadian aircraft firms, and b) they wanted some authentic uselessness to leak to the Soviets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Ultimately, though, the fact that we use fixed-wing aircraft today is a good indicator that flying saucers, while cool, just aren't that functional."

This means that the article's author is very narrow minded.

He's logic: We use fixed-wing aircraft today, so there is nothing we could discover tomorrow that would make us shift from fixed-wing to disc shape.

Why do people think they know it all? Or why do people think that today's knowledge will be true tomorrow?

Because this is the 16th century and we know the Geocentric model is true?

<comment><USER27> No, he's saying that if the idea was viable it would probably have come to fruition within more than 60 years of research we apparently had time to do on it.

<comment><USER26> I disagree, it probably wouldn't, unless it was something very simple. 60 years is nothing. In the next 6000 years most things u can barely dream off will be ancient history.

If in last 60 years we didn't discovered something it doesn't mean in the next 600 we won't discovery something 10 times as good as it.

If you are not the author you are as narrow minded as him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yes and the US air force stole the designs from the Nazi's after ww2. There are a number of images floating around that showed the nazi's were testing designs with Saucers, that being said it is only really the tin foil hat crew that would believe this crazyness.

[http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3546515/Hitler...](http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3546515/Hitler- ordered-fleet-of-Nazi-flying-saucers-capable-of-destroying-London-and-New- York.html)

<http://www.naziufos.com/>

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nazi+Saucers&ie=utf-8&...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nazi+Saucers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- GB:official&client=firefox-a)

yes yes some of these links are very questionable :/ But where the hell do you find information about hese things. Personally I have always had the option that there must be grains of truths in even the oddest conspiry theorys.

tl:dr = nazi's started hte reseach, before the end of WW2 they destoryed most of it to stop the allies getting it. Allies saw it, tried to replicate it and failed badly. The Real tinhatcrew believes that the nazi's that escaped took this research to russia, how has also experimented with saucers.

if i remember correctly the usa could only get them to hover about 12ft off the ground :/

<comment><USER4> You've got _some_ of your facts wrong.

The US didn't steal the designs from the Nazis. They offered the Nazi researchers that were involved with these programs asylum if they'd help us further that research. One such program is Project Paperclip. Later, many of these scientists went on to work at Lockheed and other defense contractors. They had expertise in rocketry, turbines, and airframes that we simply didn't have at the time.

We still see their efforts in current generation aircraft (like the B-2, which I worked on). They were respected. There are memorial photos of them in the halls of places you will never see.

FYI: Those of us that worked on "fun stuff" used to get a kick out of the tin foil crowd. _Do not_ rely on them for any remotely reliable information. Instead, pay attention to Janes and other defense aviation journalists (the DEW Line being one good example).

Edited for clarity,

<comment><USER28> I dont mind people saying i got lots of facts wrong, but hte only one you pointed out that the USA offered Asylum to the nazi rather than my statement of "stole", maybe that was not the right word to use. US just threattened them with POW camps if they did not do as told.

Dont get me wrong i will never know the truth but the Allies were chasing this technically because the nazi's started researching in to it.

<comment><USER29> Well, yes. When your enemies are working on something, you want to see if their stuff is good. If it's good, then you use it yourself. This isn't "stealing" as much as it's "I really don't want the other guy to have a strategic advantage." If it doesn't work (apparently, this idea didn't), then you drop it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We desperately need some new ideas in aerospace. Here is one for an airship to orbit, that would use EHD thrusters to get to orbit electrically, maybe with energy beamed from the ground in microwaves:

<http://www.jpaerospace.com/>

Here is more about the EHD effect and lifters, including the TT Brown effect:

<http://jnaudin.free.fr/>

It's all real and has been replicated numerous times. I think it's a shame that it's not covered in history books.

It would be straightforward to build a saucer or some other shape to get to the edge of space and then use conventional rockets to get to orbital speed. But research like that isn't funded for the same reason that green energy is barely funded - it's not sexy. There's little profit in it. And people with money just don't have the vision to pull it off. It breaks my heart that geeks are getting people to click ads or working as quants on wall street instead of picking the low lying fruit that could take us into the 21st century.

<comment><USER31> Stratolaunch (funded by Paul Allen & Burt Rutan) is partnering with SpaceX to build an air-launched Falcon 9: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratolaunch_Systems>

Why would a saucer or other shape make more sense than proven fixed-wing aircraft designs?

<comment><USER32> Thanks for the link Rory, I had to go searching a little deeper to actually find an image of the Falcon 9 Air. Pretty cool: [http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/pictures-and-information- fr...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/pictures-and-information-from.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not a conspiracy theorist and this is slightly off topic, but please bear with me. I'm just thinking out loud here.

One of the main counter points to 9/11 government conspiracy, is that a operation of that scale just couldn't be keept a secret, since to many people would be involved (and the government is all together useless). Yet here we are with a freaking flying saucer that the government did make, and apparently keept secret for over 50 years! I don't know how many people ware involved, but I'd imagine that a lot. So ... I guess they can keep big secrets?

<comment><USER34> They didn't keep it secret for 50 years. It even has a wikipedia page: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar>

<comment><USER35> That appears to be a different craft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Some further info on the VZ-9 Avrocar referenced in the article: <http://www.zl2al.com/blog/the-avro-flying-saucer>

</comment><comment><USER37> What is new? What are the new sources? The Silver Bug (see this FOIA from _1997_ : <http://www.project1947.com/fig/sb/sb_html.htm> ) and Avrocar have been known about for years.

The headline seems like they just wanted clicks.

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe it's just me, but I find it very cool that people actually looked at alternative design of aircraft and stuff like Project Orion. Yes, it's a waste of money. But at least it's a fairly creative waste of money that could have produced some interesting technologies.

<comment><USER39> Project Orion was only a waste of money in the short-term. Long-term nuclear pulse propulsion will probably be put to practical use. Potential Earth impacting asteroids are fairly easy to protect against, you spend a lot of effort cataloging them and then you find the ones that could hit Earth 50, 100, even a thousand years in the future and then you go and you nudge those asteroids just enough to put them onto a non-impacting course.

But there are also long period comets that come in from the oort cloud. We may never have the technology to fully catalog all those objects (out to thousands of AU up to a light-year distant from the Sun). Which means that even our very much more technologically advanced future selves will almost certainly still be faced with the potential problem of having to intercept and divert an Earth-impacting oort cloud comet that has wandered into the inner Solar System. And to do so not with a century of lead time but with only a few years. And, worse yet, to have to trudge out to the outer Solar System in the first place just to have a chance to divert the thing in time.

This calls for a vehicle with a stupendous amount of thrust and delta-V capability. Precisely what nuclear pulse propulsion excels at. More so, the "pulse units" can do double duty by being used to divert the comet (using thrust generated by ablation from stand-off explosions).

So ultimately research into nuclear pulse propulsion is likely to be key to preventing the destruction of human civilization on Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if you could reuse those old designs for drones.

</comment><comment><USER41> Roswell was huge disc shaped microphones listening for Soviet nuclear tests, the whole thing was declassified long ago.

</comment><comment><USER42> So it turns out that all the "UFO" sighting descriptions near Area 51 were pretty accurate after all.</comment>


How Secret Societies Stay Hidden On the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/how-secret-societies-stay-hidden-on-the-internet/375113/

<comment><USER2> I remember fondly the day that I made a social network for a secret society. Can't say who... ;-)</comment>