This Time, Miller and Valasek Hack the Jeep at Speed - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/this-time-miller-and-valasek-hack-the-jeep-at-speed/d/d-id/1326468 <comment><USER2> As long as there's no possibility of a remote exploit, this actually seems pretty cool. You're telling me I can plug a computer into my jeep and automate things?

Maybe I want to have the car roll the windows down for a while if the interior temperature gets too high. Maybe I can get my own version of climate control by controlling the AC via the CAN bus. Or maybe I can use my dashcam and some CV software to automatically switch my high beams on and off for oncoming traffic. It's actually pretty exciting.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the hack supposed to expose the fact that there is a weakness and openness to attack? -- if they can hack a remote car any hacker could potentially do the same -- and then killing someone via remote hack would be a lot easier... we might start to see serial killers hiding behind the internet

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Sending CAN frames directly is essentially a remote privilege escalation (think sudo user with no password). One of the shining examples of this done properly is Tesla; they have a gateway that you can issue commands to over the internal network, but it alone issues the CAN commands. You cannot issue CAN commands directly.

[https://youtu.be/KX_0c9R4Fng?t=38m40s](https://youtu.be/KX_0c9R4Fng?t=38m40s)

<comment><USER5> Do people who design these things end up making a lot of puns about CAN and CANNOT?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > During a recent test-drive on a country road outside St. Louis, their > steering-wheel hack sent the Jeep into a muddy ditch, and they got stuck.

Guys, either get access to a track for testing or do this virtually. Tired of seeing them risk others' lives.

<comment><USER7> Here is the video[0] of their St. Louis country road test. You can evaluate the relative dangers to others accordingly.

[0] [https://youtu.be/ONDSAMfNGP0](https://youtu.be/ONDSAMfNGP0)

<comment><USER6> Honestly I don't care how remote it is. Maybe someplace in the southwest where they have effectively unlimited visibility, but as I grumbled about after the journalist PR stunt, they don't really know the possible outcomes of their tinkering.

Even in a non-hacking scenario there are plenty of weird edge cases that can arise in car computer systems. Catch any of John Hughes' talks about QuickCheck and he'll describe finding perverse bugs that would take a combination of specific inputs and could result in very negative outcomes for the driver.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple ditches NVIDIA, goes with ATI for their desktop lineup - <AUTHOR> http://tech.icrontic.com/news/apple-switches-to-ati-exclusively-for-imac/

<comment><USER2> " Apple has been going in the direction of ATI's OpenCL acceleration architecture, the competitor to NVIDIA's CUDA."

OpenCL is _not_ ATI's technology. When i spot such an inacurracy in an article, i stop reading it, since i have suddenly no more reason to believe that the rest of it isn't just as inacurate

<comment><USER3> That seems completely illogical since you cannot and will not verify most of information, and since information does not come in any kinds of packets or chunks of truthfulness. Why does an incorrect statement invalidate the whole article? When you find that your dog has a flaw, you don't throw away the whole dog now, do you?

<comment><USER4> When it comes to news sources, it's best to 'throw out the whole dog' when they can't get the very basis of their usefulness correct - reporting facts.

<comment><USER3> This is kind of like deliberate decision to miss the point based on a mistake in an irrelevant point. Too personal to argue though.

<comment><USER2> No it's based on the number of informations you're able to verify from the article, and the number of those which are false. Also this very piece of information is not irrelevant, it is at the core of the subject at hand.

If you're able to verify a small number of "facts" presented in the article, and a big proportion of those are false, the probability the entire article is bull went from 'unknown' to 'very high', relative to your personal knowledge.

Eventually you could be wrong, but there is enough sources of information on the internet to allow me to choose not to read those i think are bogus.

Even worse, the mistake i pointed out is a very simple one. It's almost _impossible_ to think, from the information you find on the web that openCL is ATI's equivalent to nvidia's proprietary CUDA technology. The mistake serves the article well though, by antagonizing the two technologies, and making the whole thing more sensational than it needs be. So this isn't a simple "irrelevant" mistake like you said. It's bad journalism, plain and pure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "ditching" is a strong word. Apple has always been rotating between GPU vendor.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not totally sure Apple has ditched NVIDIA for long - there are reports of Fermi based graphics cards working. Apparently the GTX460, GTX470 and GTX480 all work.

[http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/03/imac.and.mac.p...](http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/03/imac.and.mac.pro.to.get.new.gpus.soon/)

I have also heard other reports of users verifying they work, for both real Macs and hackintoshes.

</comment><comment><USER7> " Those who pay attention to details probably have noticed that since late 2009, Apple has been going in the direction of ATI's OpenCL acceleration architecture, the competitor to NVIDIA's CUDA."

It isn't really "ATI's OpenCL", NVIDIA supports OpenCL also. According to NVIDIA:

"NVIDIA has chaired the industry working group that defines the OpenCL standard since its inception and shipped the world's first conformant GPU implementation for both Windows and Linux in June 2009."

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, I didn't have a good experience with NVIDIA even though it's been a great brand to me when I used a PC many years ago. The NVIDIA 8800 in my Mac Pro was a miserable failure, and neither NVIDIA or Apple would RMA it even though I had on record multiple complaints about spotty behavior before it completely failed.

I read lots of complaints on the Apple forums, and not just about this particular card.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only one to notice the irony of an Intel CPU coupled to an AMD GPU?

edit: the downvotes show I am

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure Apple actually stops using NVIDIA at all, but that's great news. Great news for Hackintosh'es.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if this signals a possible switch to AMD CPU's in the future? Maybe AMD offered them a great deal on graphics boards for enticing them to try their CPUs. Of course this is just pure speculation.

</comment><comment><USER12> We'll get more OpenCL & OpenGL focus on ATI cards now :)

<comment><USER13> Does anything actually use OpenCL yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A sad day indeed, at least for me. I inevitably end up running some flavor of linux on almost all my computers sooner or later. ATI's support for linux, compared to nVidia, has been piss-poor to say the least (certainly in my experience). I have always recommended and bought nVidia cards for this one reason. In fact, we recently went with nVidia's QuadroFX 4800 cards for 5 new workstations (requiring stereo vision on linux/macOS). Want to guess the biggest factor why no one on the team even dared think ATI ? ... The (almost always) nightmarish experiences with ATI's low-end 'consumer cards' on their personal linux machines led to a lack of faith in any ATI product.

 _Please note, as far as linux support goes, I am talking about the "official ATI closed source drivers"._

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, this is exactly what I came in here to say. This truly is a sad day for anyone that wants to use anything but OSX on their Mac.

(Written on a Macbook Pro running Ubuntu 10.04)

<comment><USER16> As I said above the reality of current Ati drivers is much better than the fiasco that existed four years ago. On ubuntu it just works.

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, this is not my experience. Just this summer I installed Ubuntu 10.04 desktop on a computer running a relatively new ATI card (It was top of the line a couple years ago, I believe). While in general use its fine, there are plenty of really annoying issues. Unfortunately for us, as we were attempting to use it as a media center, there were significant issues with full screen video, where it would freeze up for 5 - 10 seconds at a time every minute or two. This is a known issue for the entire series of cards, and is a driver bug, but hasn't been fixed in the 1+ year that the issue has been open. Then there are other smaller issues with the card such as a 5 second delay maximizing a window, if you're using compiz. Not a deal killer, but still annoying, and there were a few similar bugs like this. After this incredibly sour experience with ATI, I'm not sure I'll recommend them again for a long time. And I haven't even gotten into how long I had to fight with X just to get dual monitors to work.

<comment><USER16> At some arbitrary time in the past I did use the xorg server from this ppa [https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/xserver-no- bac...](https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/xserver-no-backfill) when I was using compiz and things were slow on an ati card. I dont know if that ppa is updated for lucid but you could give it a try. If youre using it as a htpc you can disable compiz no ? I mean in most cases wouldnt you want to directly boot into mythtv / xbmc ? Also can you specify what card are you using ? If its x1xxx series or earlier then youre beyond the support window (the closed source driver is only for newer cards) and you might be better off using the radeonhd driver. I think I should do a write up on how to setup ati drivers on linux the right way. It takes < 5 mins to get a dual head display with auto detection going these days. HINT: aticonfig is your friend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jc-denton As a CUDA developer I'm pissed off by this decision.. Last time I checked OpenCL wasn't ready (much slower then CUDA) so I don't see how one could use the new Macs for serious GPU development :(

Also Adobes premiere uses CUDA.. maybe Apple wants to look their own product (Final cut) better on Macs?</comment>


Singularity Proponent Ray Kurzweil Reinvents the Book, Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/blio-ray-kurzweil-book/

<comment><USER2> Another exercise in missing the point. I'm getting so tired of reading comparisons between tablets / netbooks and e-reader devices. Yes, I'm well aware that my Kindle is black and white, doesn't have a touch screen, doesn't handle video, has an incredibly slow refresh rate, etc, etc. And guess what? _I don't give a fuck._ I got my Kindle for exactly one thing: reading the written word. And for that purpose, it's incredibly well suited. Reading a computer screen for hours is not enjoyable for me, but I get lost reading my Kindle.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for expressing your point of view. However, this isn't slashdot- you don't have to approach from a negative point of view, ask rhetorical questions, and answer them with swear words. If you just keep the sentences after the italicized swearing you would have a positive and more information dense comment.

<comment><USER2> I find your premise that I should be positive rather odd. Isn't negativity sometimes warranted?

Additionally, my goal when writing isn't to create more "information dense" comments. My goal is to communicate information, ideas, and emotions. Sometimes negativity, profanity, and rhetorical questions are my preferred methods to accomplish that goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've never looked at a book and thought "wow, I wish I had video here".

I have looked at a video and thought "I wish I had a transcript instead".

<comment><USER5> I have. Videos are sometimes very slow, and poor ways of giving information (talking heads). So I have wanted transcripts.

And books can sometimes use videos to help demonstrate thing (although usually when such a capability exists, people tend to overuse it).

<comment><USER6> You misread his second sentence.

<comment><USER5> Oops. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow! It's almost as good as a PDF viewer.

<comment><USER8> Just like how the iTunes Store is almost as good as an mp3 player? Apples != oranges.

<comment><USER6> The advantage of the iTunes Store is that it convinced the technology-hating music industry to allow people to buy music online. Amazon has already done that for the publishing industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I live in San Mateo County and can already check out, along with other Northern California public library patrons, full color editions of a limited but hopefully growing selection of quite good books. The system uses Adobe Digital Editions software for display and DRM and replicates the library one- patron-checks-out-a-given-book-at-a-time model.

The majority of the current catalog is unfortunately full of the long tail of crappy bodice-rippers but if you wade through there are some good books. I don't see Kurzweil's system adding anything other than irrelevant eye candy.

</comment><comment><USER6> This reads like a press release. I like the screenshot that shows pretty pictures but completely unreadable text.

The Kindle was successful because most books are just text, and it presents text pretty well. Not pretty well from a "typesetting is art" perspective, but pretty well from a "being able to read it for extended periods of time" perspective. Guess which one sells e-readers and e-books.

</comment><comment><USER10> _[...] Ray Kurzweil, a prolific inventor who is best known for his prediction that machine intelligence will surpass that of humans around 2045 [...]_

Today it's 2045 and the machines surpassed humans in intelligence. (or it's 2009 they 'actually' surpassed us).

Am I missing a few decades here?

</comment><comment><USER11> Why is this always so hard for people to figure out?

Netbooks, notebooks, and PCs use emissive displays that can be tiring to use for extended reading (because it's like staring into a flashlight) and are relatively low resolution (~120dpi) compared to print (300dpi is generally considered the minimum for acceptable text printing).

E-ink is used by all of the major electronic book readers today because, despite its many other serious disadvantages, it leads to a more natural reading experience due to higher resolution (~170dpi) and a reflective display which is less tiring on the eyes.

Say what you will about the limitations of e-ink (color, refresh rate, etc.) it's still a superior technology for reading books. Thankfully a lot of folks recognize that (the makers of the sony reader, amazon kindle, bn nook, etc. and their customers). A piece of software, no matter how well crafted, will never be able to bridge the hardware gap that exists between LCDs and e-ink.</comment>


What turns a bull market into a bubble: Testosterone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/03/wall-street-testosterone-and-risk

<comment><USER2> Testosterone, nay, I would say herd mentality. That's the "I am loosing money if I don't get in" type of mentality.</comment>


Using drones, scientists found 8,000 more orangutans in Sumatra - <AUTHOR> http://howtoconserve.org/2016/03/11/drones-orangutan-conservation/ <comment><USER2> I got the opportunity to spend a few days in Bukit Lawang in North Sumatra and would highly recommend it to anyone traveling in the South Pacific.</comment>


We had issues with Monzo on 29th July - <AUTHOR> https://monzo.com/blog/2019/09/08/why-monzo-wasnt-working-on-july-29th <comment><USER2> I hope their internal report has more action-items...

They should have had probers running over test accounts on the production system to detect this kind of thing much quicker.

Cassandra's config layer needs some kind of check that it isn't allowed to make a change which turns a working service into a non-working one (adding 6 nodes while auto-bootstrap is set to false _always_ leads to data inconsistency - so why did the config system allow such a transition?)

Doesn't Cassandra support some kind of autoscaling like spanner/bigtable? Something that happens automatically a couple of times every day is far less likely to go wrong. Less human effort too.</comment>


Notes on Linear Transformations - <AUTHOR> https://www.monades.dev/notes-on-linear-transformations/ <comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that you would mention "Move the object to the desired location", then proceed to ignore it entirely.

Of course that is because _translation_ is not a linear transformation, but you then proceed to also not demonstrate the very common trick used to enable it (so common in fact that GPUs are designed around it).

<comment><USER3> [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/251561/translation-...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/251561/translation- matrix-and-why-non-linear)

<comment><USER4> In case it's not clear, you are (I assume) linking to an explanation of the "common trick" mentioned by stefan_ ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22412340](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22412340)). Specifically, you are linking to a question that necessitates this trick; one somewhat terse explanation of the trick is the answer [https://math.stackexchange.com/a/251566](https://math.stackexchange.com/a/251566) .

<comment><USER3> You are correct, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need Help? Willing to help? - <AUTHOR>

Last month's HMO (Help Me Out) thread[0] was well received. Many said they'd like to see a thread like this every month. So here's the May edition of HMO: Help Me Out.[1]
Need help with something? Write "HMO" followed by details.
Willing to help others? Write "Let Me Know" followed by your areas of interest.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172
[1] Credit to Tom Critchlow for the idea: http://tomcritchlow.com/post/82380207991/let-me-know-how-i-can-help <comment><USER2> Let me know if you want a mock tech interview.

I am a software dev/mgr, now consultant. I advise companies on tech recruiting practices. I will give you a mock tech screen and give you feedback. This isn't for any job -- but, if you are interested in the North East US tech market, I might be able to make a connection.

Contact via loufranco.com

</comment><comment><USER3> HMO

Help develop an open source educational web app.

[http://www.quill.org](http://www.quill.org)

Quill is a free web application that provides interactive English grammar lessons. We have built 30 hours of lessons ([http://www.quill.org/lessons](http://www.quill.org/lessons)), and we currently have 5,000 students using our site. We are a nonprofit organization, funded through the Gates Foundation.

The site is built in Ruby on Rails.

All of our outstanding issues are at: [https://github.com/empirical- org/Compass/issues?state=open](https://github.com/empirical- org/Compass/issues?state=open)

There are a variety of issues, from small bug fixes to major features. If you're interested in the project, please reach out to me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER4> Let Me Know:

I will criticize your startup idea (to get you to see it from a different point of view), review a summarized bplan, guide you with possible marketing strategies, explain to you what identifying and understanding your target market means, bounce ideas and talk if you have nobody to talk to.

Contact me via the thread.

</comment><comment><USER5> Let me know if you need help with any development or architecture design ( I prefer RoR but can help with any other platform also )

HMO: I would like to build good contacts with like minded people.

</comment><comment><USER6> i have plenty of time to help projects, contact me at: leandrodsferreira at gmail dot com

I'm a developer and linux server administrator with the following skills:

Nginx and lua development

Lxc and docker

Deep linux tunning

Development in C,Python, Perl, Lua, Golang

Att, Leandro Ferreira

</comment><comment><USER7> Willing to help with SEO, Conversion Optimization, Landing Page Feedback

</comment><comment><USER8> Sure. I feel like writing some tests. Python Unit Testing. :)</comment>


Crypto optimizations for Go blocked by licensing issues - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!topic/golang-codereviews/m5QTnSUZU6c

<comment><USER2> Discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567176](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567176)</comment>


The meaning of Bill Gates - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11622119

<comment><USER2> We got a tone of The Economist's idea of business (at the end):

"Whatever the corporate-social-responsibility gurus say, business is a force for good in itself: its most useful contribution to society is making profits and products."

I think it's sad and even provocative. The most useful contribution of business to _society_ is most probably to make life easier for its people, or to fulfill people's needs (hopefully developing their awareness and understanding of this very society).

Making profits is only a necessity in order to be successful, not a contribution. Making products is only a (partial) description of what business does, not a contribution.</comment>


Show HN: A project scaffolder for web devs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/callmecavs/outset <comment><USER2> It's great to see light scaffolding like this. A lot of times you just want a nice foundation instead of the kitchen sink. Good work!</comment>


More People Taking Blockchain Classes as New Economy Grows - <AUTHOR> https://news.bitcoin.com/blockchain-classes-growing-economy/ <comment><USER2> _"The supply of people that have extensive blockchain experiences is pretty low," Kenna explained. "And the demand is quickly increasing. Sometimes they get five job offers a day."_

No, they don't get five "job offers" a day. They get 5 or so emails with links to job ads.</comment>


Kaby Lake Processors Coming to Macbook Pro at WWDC - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/16/15648172/apple-macbook-pro-air-kaby-lake-update-wwdc-intel-rumor <comment><USER2> Iirc Kaby Lake still doesn't support LPDDR4 which is what will be needed for apple to add a 32GB option.

<comment><USER3> this indicates something else

[http://www.cultofmac.com/462777/new-macbook-pro-intel- kaby-l...](http://www.cultofmac.com/462777/new-macbook-pro-intel-kaby- lake-32gb-ram-arrive-year/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have no complaints about speed. When are they going to improve the keyboards? You know, keys that travel, and Esc and Fn keys.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not so sure about the speed. My safari browser keeps getting hung every now and then especially when I use video intensive apps like hangouts or Netflix.

<comment><USER5> weren't macbooks supposed to be uber graphics capable?

I switched everyone over to dell (it was linux anyways) for their awesome hardware on the precision 7710. Its light, only m.2's, 64 gb ram, runs like a dream on a 4k screen in linux.

Can run hangouts, unity 3d and chrome with 200+ tabs, and have 3 external 4k monitors and a HMD without the fan turning on ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> MacBook may catch fire if you use chrome with 200 tabs</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Booknetic - <AUTHOR> https://www.booknetic.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Booknetic is an appointment booking plugin for Wordpress, which is available for any industry and can be easily integrated into the website with just a few clicks.</comment>


No excuses – we let you down - <AUTHOR> https://blog.revolut.com/no-excuses-we-let-you-down-32f81e64f974 <comment><USER2> >"At around 07:00 BST on Friday morning, our transaction database began to malfunction."

and

>"This server slowdown has never happened before"

Why does this transparency not include meaningful details of what actually went wrong? A "database malfunction" and a "server slowdown" are technical gibberish. This is not dissimilar to the kind of crap a traditional bank says when there are problems. It reminds of hearing "The system is down" from a customer service representative.

This apology is on the company's blog alongside a blog post titled "How to extract analytics data from your iOS application", complete with Swift code snippets[1]. So clearly they aren't worried about content being too technical.

We are talking about a bank and your money, why would it not be OK to err on the side of being too technical? Or at the very least provide a link for the more technically inclined.

[1] [https://blog.revolut.com/how-to-extract-analytics-data- from-...](https://blog.revolut.com/how-to-extract-analytics-data-from-your- ios-application-ee474a31a80d)

<comment><USER3> > Why does this transparency not include meaningful details of what actually > went wrong?

Because the people who can provide that are busy. This is customer communication, not post mortem from engineering. They had engineers spending whole day with extra hours on Friday to resolve the issue, then there was the weekend. I expect they'll take a day or more to dissect it internally, plan follow up, start working on it, etc. Publishing the plan can come later. (If they plan to do that)

What would you prefer them to do first: work on the follow up plan, or spend time writing a blog post about the follow up plan?

<comment><USER2> >"What would you prefer them to do first: work on the follow up plan, or spend time writing a blog post about the follow up plan?"

This blog post was published a whole day after the outage. Also I never questioned anything regarding the lack of follow up plan. I was questioning why technical detail wasn't more forthcoming.

>"This is customer communication, not post mortem from engineering ..."

The customer comms and service status were posted on their Twitter account on the 29th.

<comment><USER3> Ok, it's part of customer comms. I still don't think expecting full post mortem right now makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a CEO of a new/small company I want to own problems like this guy does. Crappy problem for hisbteam, but, i can still respect a person/company that puts it out there after.

<comment><USER5> In my personal experience, it's not always a good idea to do it like this. I've been quick to offer sincere apologies for what were big problems from my own perspective. That unfortunately turned out to affect only a small amount of my customers, confusing and annoying many others.

I still appreciate the intention to strive for transparency, but you need to do it right. If I ever do it again, I'll need to make sure that I know for sure how many people it's affecting, and how much.

What kind of a company are you building?

<comment><USER6> This is a very interesting contention.

What examples can you provide of "being transparent and sincere in trying to do better" back-firing? Did massive clickbait articles get reported, blowing up the issue?

<comment><USER5> I have a tendency to be over impulsive, in where I get personally emotional over customer emails sent to me, and then I work my ass off to fix the bugs, reports, complaints etc reported in the mails..

Then I figure out that I can't fix everyone's problems by fixing bugs only, get emotional, write a weird and over-emotional post, and just leave lots of customers behind at the end of the process.

It's still a small-scale issue if you ask me, as it is mostly personal, but it's an issue for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's nice to see Revolut owning this issue but I've had nothing but bad experiences with them since starting to use them.

I was stranded in Australia with my card at the checkout of a supermarket and my card stopped working with no explanation. An hour later, their Twitter feed told us that there was issues.

Another incident where I got cash out of an ATM. The ATM didn't spit out my cash but still debited the money. Revolut said it would take 90 days to get my money back. This was £500. At Christmas.

Unfortunately as a result of this, they lost my custom for life.

</comment><comment><USER8> We in Zimbabwe are used to this.

The biggest bank, Steward Bank, owned by the much adored Strive Masiyiwa and his Econet Wireless, is offline more than half of the time. They drop transactions and mobile money balances disappear without explanation or apology. Been happening for years now.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like plain old theft! But they are a bank, so working as intended. Private banks, ah, what a cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is why exercising your backup systems in production is critical. our company regularly switches to our secondary data center regularly and runs production traffic on it to ensure they failover actually works in reality, not just theory.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe that sort of contrition works in relationship arguments or parole hearings, but I hardly find it appropriate here.

"At around 07:00 BST on Friday morning, our transaction database began to malfunction. Naturally, we followed procedure and switched to a backup server. Unfortunately, the backup server began to drastically slow down and was struggling to process live transactions."

That is very vague and sounds like a euphemism for "we don't know who changed the config file but it broke production and so we had somebody spin up a new instance on their laptop".

I any case I was in a foreign country when my card (and those of my travelling companions) stopped working without warning or explanation. I don't want him to be sorry, I want a rationale for why I shouldn't switch to an equivalent competitor like Monzo (on the assumption they have better reliability).

<comment><USER3> > That is very vague

It's not a post from engineering. It's an announcement to customers. Most will neither understand nor care about the details of that infrastructure failing. What you want is an engineering post mortem which is a completely different kind of post. Don't get me wrong, I want them to publish one and would love to read the details. But their engineering team has (hopefully) much more important things to do at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To me the worst offender in revolut is that the ui is not blocked when is waiting for server responses (second is the inability to edit my preferred contacts list). It never caused me problems but I always felt uneasy (I use it more sparirily now so perhaps they fixed something). All the other problems that I care about have been slowly resolved. About the issue at hand this is not the first time the service is down but who knows, perhaps they're starting to learn their lesson. I used it for around 6 months intensively

<comment><USER13> Could you please expand on what you mean by the 'ui not being blocked'.

What behaviour do you expect the app to have and why?

<comment><USER14> Their UI is a mess. You'll enter the pass code, the screen will wipe out of view, revealing... Another pass code screen. Contacts that use Revolut will never be cached, and will instead always be looked up every time without any indication (I guess that's what the GP refers to).

For all the funding they have, I'd assume they could fix these, but no, they don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No big deal -- their backup was severely unprepared to handle live transactions. It's not like these guys leaked private information or otherwise lost people money.

</comment><comment><USER16> I for one found the blog post refreshing. Now that it's out there, it might be wise to follow up with a more thorough technical postmortem.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had no idea what the product is so I clicked the logo. It went to the blog which doesn't explain what it is. Instead it should go to the main site. There's no obvious link in the blog so I had to edit the address.

<comment><USER18> This is a bizarrely endemic problem on official company blogs, and I've often wondered why.

I always guessed it was something like, "Many WordPress and other blog-theme designers default to thinking of the blog is the product or main website itself, so their themes link the logo to the blog itself (and perhaps(?) there's no easy setting in the GUI to change this)?"

I see this default behavior on my own personal blog[1], which uses a fairly popular free theme, but in that case it's correct because my blog is really its own standalone thing.

[1]: Hehe, did you think I was going to try to plug my personal blog here?

<comment><USER19> In this particular case I'd say it's mostly because usually you'd send someone to "/" to go home, but this blog is a subdomain so that doesn't work. It's easier to miss that.

<comment><USER17> In most cases I'd say that's the case, they're two separate websites and there's not enough user testing done on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems to be often the main database that on failure catches startups on the wrong foot. The GitLab incident comes to mind.

The easiest way to run a database is to set it up as a SPoF.

You want to be serious and set everything up with redundancy, but then in case of problems it is just too easy to mess something up by doing the wrong thing when switching back or promoting a stale replica or something.

I don't even know if there are proper hosted replicated SQL-ACID databases-as- a-service available one would consider using for financial services and similar use cases.

There seems to be merit in paying DBAs proper money to handle these things.

<comment><USER21> You can run a bank without ACID SQL

ING uses Cassandra, which has no single point of failure, has been around for almost a decade, and would have made gitlab's mistake a nonissue (and almost certainly would have made this one a nonissue as well - single instance failures don't matter and linear scalability is a thing)

<comment><USER22> Interesting. Do you have a reference of how (in what contexts) ING uses Cassandra?

<comment><USER21> I met one of their architects at a few Cassandra summits (2014 and 2015), so their talks should be online

Here's one: [https://academy.datastax.com/resources/ing-groep-nv- exploiti...](https://academy.datastax.com/resources/ing-groep-nv-exploiting- hotel-cassandra)

And another [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-sD3x8-tuDU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-sD3x8-tuDU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Regrettably, we have learnt a great deal from this experience"

Well, there's a weird turn of phrase. In what way is learning from the experience regrettable?

<comment><USER24> Awkward semantics for sure, but I think they regret having to learn _from the experience_ as opposed to learning by considering the possibilities beforehand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You guys are great. The largest Indian bank is offline almost every night and they are ok with it. Is there a place to publicly shame these kind of entities ?

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

</comment><comment><USER26> I had to look to find what this company does because the top logo doesn't take me to the page. If I weren't currently busy I might have missed it but I'm actually in the target market.

How do they make money?

<comment><USER27> Not hard to find out: [https://www.revolut.com/faq#how-does-revolut-make- money](https://www.revolut.com/faq#how-does-revolut-make-money)

<comment><USER26> Well, now I look silly. I couldn't find it on their page on mobile, but more likely my fault than theirs. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wait, let me get this straight.

      1. there's no monitoring in place
      2. fail over is manual
      3. there are no standby servers
      4. nothing auto scales
      5. backups are not tested
      6. they lack sufficient manpower
      7. there are no clusters
      8. the service is one error away from an outage

It sounds like they completely ignored the operations side of running a service, and finally defaulted on technical debt. Yikes!

I hope the best for them, but they have to start taking operations seriously.

<comment><USER29> Makes you wonder: if failure handling is so low on the budget/priority list, where does security stand?

<comment><USER6> Even lower, if my experience with clients is any clue.

Most people I've seen running companies are either clueless in general in IT matters (business or engineering people), or, "older" gents who grew up long before IT security and robust backups were "the norm" and stressed in every class and conference. If there's no direct money to be made, it doesn't matter.

Only in the last 3 years or so have I seen ANYONE of my clients care about potential hackers and breaches. And one of them only cared... because they were hacked by the Chinese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What does it mean when Nikolay uses the title and language,

>No excuses — we let you down

>An apology from the Founder & CEO of Revolut

>The last 24 hours have been painful to say the least. Painful for our engineers who have been working around the clock to resolve the issue, but even more painful for our customers who have been unable use their accounts.

and

>You will get no excuses from me.

and

>We have let you down and I take full responsibility for what happened.

for what is essentially a very minor brief issue. He says:

>I would like to reassure you that all personal data and customer funds were completely secure at all times.

So I would like your help interpreting why he uses such completely inappropriate and over-the-top apology language for what amounts to brief [Edit: 1 day of] downtime.

What is your take? Why is it written like this?

<comment><USER31> It's the Californian English style of expression, which is all about superlatives and deals only in extremes. With the exploding cultural influence of California in tech, it has spread and you now hear it from many people working in tech, regardless of whether they are Californian or not.

Edit: I guess some Californians got upset and decided to downvote me? It's not negative in any way, just a different style of expression. You certainly will never hear a Japanese or Romanian person exclaim "this is so amazing!" on a regular basis.

<comment><USER32> I didn't downvote, but suspect some of them are because you offered an unlikely or minor reason behind the superlatives.

Also, I'm unsure of your exposure to Japanese, but superlatives are used frequently in daily conversation. "Sugoi"/"Suge" ("great/amazing!") or " kawaii" ("cute!") are a couple examples. There's some nuance and loss in translation, but the general usage and frequency is similar to American English from my experience with my Japanese in-laws, friends, and employees.

I do agree that Californians and our sun-fried brains seem more likely to take it to an extreme.</comment></comment></comment>


A series of mistakes leads to $1m judgment against townspeople - <AUTHOR> http://detnews.com/article/20110813/METRO/108130383/1409/Cottage-remodel-undoes-Worth-Township

<comment><USER2> Why should the town be in the "business" of stopping people from renovating their homes in the first place?</comment>


Low-budget, human-enhanced Echo competitor made by Sears - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shaun_gallagher/this-low-budget-human-enhanced-echo-competitor-is-made-by-sears-6315f0727ac1#.xgmex3j67 <comment><USER2> So often, big companies try to create better horses, when the next stage of evolution is the car. This is a (barely) better horse. Amazon does it, too (see the laughably bad Fire Phone, which had unique features designed primarily to sell you crap from Amazon). I'm not buying a device to "help me shop". Shopping is the least of my problems that need automating (and when they are usefully automated, I want a subscription like Amazon offers with Pantry). I like the idea of having an automated assistant, but we're still so far off it's more annoying than useful, I feel like.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've never purchased anything using my Echo, but find it invaluable as a home assistant for all the things it does besides shopping. Shopping via text interface, if we're still at the stage of "personalized to your tastes" being a laughable claim, is a terrible experience.

Q- why does this Alfie device exist at all? It appears to just be a button + microphone that starts a chat session on your phone. There's no point in making that exclusive to the device. If you can't already, I'd be amazed if in a year you can't do this through the Kenmore app/website.

</comment><comment><USER4> So they made a box that uploads a recording of your voice to the internet, and then someone sends you what is basically a txt msg of something you can buy at sears?

That is really stupid and sad.

</comment><comment><USER5> After a month of trying out things, I mostly use Echo as a voice controlled music player - kids love it for that too. so this is more a Dash competitor than an Echo competitor.

</comment><comment><USER6> Color me impressed. That's pretty cool. I think there's plenty of room in the world for devices like this.

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong Do you want Sears listening in on your every conversation? How would someone justify that decision?

<comment><USER7> Based on the description, it sounds like you need to press the button to turn on the microphone. As opposed to the Echo which, as I understand it, is always listening.

<comment><USER8> Amazon Echo is always looking for the keyword, something that is done locally. I think it's the same thing basically, it's a microphone constantly connected to the internet and you have to trust (or verify) it's only transmitting when asked to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You have press a button on it though. That's just missing the point.</comment>


15-Year-Old Maker Astronomically Improves Pancreatic Cancer Test - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makezine.com/2012/07/18/15-year-old-maker-astronomically-improves-pancreatic-cancer-test/ <comment><USER2> "I actually love single-walled carbon nanotubes; they're like the superheroes of material science." I feel the same way. This kid is genuinely excited and interested which, is extraordinary. I love seeing youngsters getting excited about science.

Unfortunately, this blog post and the one it claims as a source [1] are rather fluffy on details. Justin organized this information and presentation for the Intel Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) [2]. More details about the process he discovered can be found on the ISEF 2012 profile page [3] and for those who don't want to follow the trail, I've reproduced it here:

"Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease with a five-year survival rate of 5.5%. One reason for this is the lack of a rapid, sensitive, inexpensive screening method. A novel paper sensor is described that simply, rapidly and inexpensively screens for pancreatic cancer. Mia Paca cells overexpressing mesothelin, a biomarker for pancreatic cancer, were cultured; mesothelin was isolated, concentrated and quantified with ELISA. After optimization with the Western Blot assay, the antibody to human mesothelin was dispersed with single walled carbon nanotubes. This dispersion was used to dip-coat strips of filter paper, rendering the paper conductive. Optimal layering was determined using a scanning electron microscope. Cell media spiked with varying amounts of mesothelin was applied to the paper biosensor. Change in electrical potential was measured before and after application and a dose-response curve was constructed with an R2 value of 99.92%. In vivo tests on human blood serum obtained from healthy people and patients with chronic pancreatitis, PanIn, pancreatic cancer revealed the same trends.. The sensor's limit of detection was found to be 0.156 ng/mL, satisfying the limit of 10 ng/mL, the level considered an overexpression of mesothelin consistent with pancreatic cancer. The sensor costs $3.00; 10 tests can be performed per strip. A test takes 5 minutes and is 168 times faster, 26,667 times less expensive, and 400 times more sensitive than ELISA, 25% to 50% more accurate than the CA10-9 test and is a sensitive, accurate, inexpensive, and rapid screening tool to detect mesothelin, a biomarker for pancreatic cancer."

[1] - [http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680194/meet-the-15-year-old- who-...](http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680194/meet-the-15-year-old-who-is- changing-how-we-test-for-cancer)

[2] - <http://www.societyforscience.org/isef/>

[3] - [http://apps.societyforscience.org/intelisef2012/project.cfm?...](http://apps.societyforscience.org/intelisef2012/project.cfm?PID=ME028&CFID=28485&CFTOKEN=10931553)

<comment><USER3> Every time an ISEF article pops up, I always sigh out loud and begin a diatribe [1] about why the winner (invariably in medicine or biology) and the title (invariably "teenager cures XYZ") is misleading.

To my surprise, it looks like this guy actually did a lot of the research on his own. At the very least, it appears the ideas was authentically his own, and then he enlisted the help of a lab to accomplish it.

[1] <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3329605>

Edit: Because HN is killing old permalinks: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3328995>

<comment><USER4> He applied techniques that had been used on breast cancer (<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21836232>) and prostate cancer (<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19481922>) to pancreatic cancer. The implementation is more impressive than what the vast majority of teenagers or even undergraduates are capable of, but the idea certainly isn't novel.

<comment><USER3> Sure sure, I agree with your points. But usually these ISEF winners are even further removed from "novel" ideas - they are literally placed into projects that grads/post-docs are already working on.

Effectively, they become another pair of hands on a project that is well outside their intellectual input.

It looks like this guy synthesized his own idea rather than piggybacking off the work of another, partially completed project (which is usually the norm for ISEF winners)

<comment><USER4> Agreed, that is what it looks like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >he's just pioneered a new, improved test for diagnosing pancreatic cancer that is 90% accurate

Without more context, that claim is meaningless. Surely it cannot mean "this test gets the right answer 90% of the time when used on the general population". Nearly 99.99% of people do not have pancreatic cancer, so if I make a program that prints out the sentence "You don't have pancreatic cancer.", then my "test" would have a 99.99% accuracy rate against the general population.

<comment><USER6> It must mean that it is 90% accurate in identifying cancer. If your test was given 100 people with PC it would be 100% wrong but this test would be 90% correct. That is how I am reading it anyway.

<comment><USER5> But a low false negative rate is equally unimpressive unless it is combined with a low false positive rate. If I modify my program to always say "You have pancreatic cancer", then it would have a 0% false negative rate, but it would still be a worthless test because it would have a 99.99% false positive rate. Simply knowing the false negative rate is not particularly helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the article... "Yes, he even got in trouble in his science class for reading articles on carbon nanotubes instead of doing his classwork."

This just irks me about our (U.S.) education system. I understand doing classwork is important. Yet here you have a young student taking interest in science and engineering and gets in trouble for it? That doesn't make sense to me at all. The work he's doing should be more than enough credit for his classwork. Take him aside from the class and foster this work and passion. He'll learn more science from this one project than doing 10x the amount of classwork in any syllabus. I see no reason why his science grade could be reflected on this work.

<comment><USER8> Education is a competitive sport. You don't let Olympic sprinters waste time playing basketball, or they won't win any medals. If kids waste time learning about stuff that's not on the exam, they won't get the marks they deserve, and some other kid will get their place in university.

<comment><USER9> Your metaphor is flawed. By your metaphor this kid is an olympic basketball player being forced to practice sprinting. Who cares what's on the exam? Memorizing facts for high school tests isn't any real indicator of knowledge of intelligence. That is precisely what's wrong with education though. When I was in High School I got in trouble for designing software and writhing code on paper. Then I got hired by Microsoft when I was 18, and have been doing pretty well for myself since.

<comment><USER10> I got in trouble all the time for tinkering with the school computers and reading more then doing my homework. (I still aced tests.) I'm making decent money now programming and computer fixing for a 200+ employee ophthalmology (eye doctors) office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am reminded of the Steve Jobs quote, A class people hire other A class people.

199 rejections, and the Professor that decided to let a 15 year old try a wild idea is at ... Johns Hopkins.

America may be doing a lot of things foolishly, but mentoring great talent for the future seems taken care of

<comment><USER12> >A class people hire other A class people.

I like the quote but I think people throw it around far too loosely. It seems to be an impossibility or else every company founded by A class people (assumption: there must be at least SOME such companies) would only ever consist of A class people, but that clearly isn't the case. For sake of argument let's assume Google, Facebook and Microsoft (and likely many, many others) were all founded by A class people. Do these companies consist solely of A class people? If not someone, somewhere, must have hired a non A class person, thus the hirer themseves couldn't have been A class by the original statement. You can apply the recursive argument here eventually terminating in the founders :)

EDIT: Add Apple to the list of companies with (obvious) A class level founding teams. Funny oversight on my part since the quote is from Steve Jobs himself :)

<comment><USER13> The rest of the aphorism is: A-class people hire A-class people, but B-class people hire C-class people. Point being A-class people look for the best, B-class people look for someone further down on the food chain.

<comment><USER14> who hires B's?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a really neat concept.

I have a MD and a background in biochemistry, and can say most people I've met in the field of oncology don't nearly have the creativeness and audacity of this kid's idea. Essentially he's using the carbon nanotube materials, sending an electric current through it, and detecting minute voltage changes that occur when cancer proteins bind to the antibodies laced over the nanotubes.

The cost of using nanotubes to detect cancer, however, may be quite prohibitive. Think 500-1000 dollars per test. On a population screening level, I don't think most governments or insurance companies would go for it.

</comment><comment><USER16> The real question now is whether this work will be patented and made 26,000 times more expensive or buried.

<comment><USER17> I'm voting buried. No way Big Pharma is letting this one see the light of day.

<comment><USER18> Do you know of any technologies that Big Pharma has suppressed? I'd be interested to read about it!

<comment><USER19> [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.blake.ht...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.blake.html)

Interesting read about a great invention wasted.

<comment><USER18> I don't think that has anything to do with Big Pharma. That's the medical supply manufacturers using their supply chains to keep the little guys out.

<comment><USER17> Follow the money trail a bit farther and you'll see the pharmaceuticals on the horizon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Video about him when receiving the award: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmVzs3-GNBc>

<comment><USER21> I actually saw this on CollegeHumor scarily enough a week ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Because "we" are mediocre, our children follow after us, staring out of classroom windows while teachers prattle on about only-God-knows-what. When we are inspired and and challenge our kids to do more, they come up with s __* like this. Age is no barrier! Bravo.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great story. You have to admire this young man's drive, determination, and obvious intellectual precocity. He'll surely go far (he already has).

I also think it's inspirational b/c it points up the importance of synthetic scientific research done by folks who are so to speak 'out of the fold'. We need institutional science, clearly, but we also need people who can take a step back and look at the big picture and see how things fit together.

</comment><comment><USER24> I get tired of "X-Year-Old Does Such and Such" posts. If the accomplishment is newsworthy enough on its own, why can't it stand on its own merit?

<comment><USER25> A new pancreatic cancer test is absolutely newsworthy on its own (especially if this one proves out in broader studies). The fact that it was done by a 15-year old makes it even more impressive. It's not unreasonable to applaud a young person for being way ahead of the curve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd love to hear the reaction of those universities who initially rejected this and their reasons.

<comment><USER3> Just so it's clear, these were individual labs at universities that rejected his request. There are a lot of legitimate reasons they may not have wanted to take him on, including:

-Not enough physical space in lab - most wet labs are crowded with 2-3 people per bench

-No one with enough time to supervise a high school student bumbling around the lab. You basically need a grad student or post-doc babysitting new people (HS student or new grad, doesn't matter) since they don't know where anything is or how to do anything

-Not enough money. Funding has to come from somewhere, and if they don't have money to throw at this particular project they won't.

-Not the focus of the lab. I would hazard a guess that the HS student emailed _anyone_ that was remotely involved in pancreatic cancer or material science. Realistically, there are probably a handful of labs that do this sort of research and the kid just didn't know which ones to email...so he emailed everyone.

-Other. Maybe the professor is teaching? On sabbatical? Already has ten undergrads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've actually read about this before, but still never found any technical details about how the test works. My inner conspiracy theorist worries that a pharmaceutical corporation has bought this idea up.

<comment><USER28> I was interested to see what criteria were used to measure performance, but I haven't found a paper written about it. The most detailed information I could find was from here:

[http://www.pancan.org/section_research/strategic_research_pr...](http://www.pancan.org/section_research/strategic_research_program/news/topic_maryland_science_fair_pancreatic_cancer_diagnosis.php)

Essentially, this seems pretty damn early as far as results go. There will probably be a few years before we know it actually works or not.

<comment><USER29> Without wishing to rain on the kids parade...

There are two aspects to the reported work. The first is the use of carbon nanotube biosensors incorporating antibodies. Google shows they've been around for a while and are reportedly more sensitive than previous methods. The second is using the levels of mesothelin to diagnose pancreatic cancer, this is less widely established, but was also recently reported by a different lab ([http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040157)).

Putting the two together seems to be the work of Jack Andraka.

<comment><USER30> The fact that a 15 year old digested that information and put the two together is impressive in itself. Who cares if he was standing on the shoulders of giants? He bothered to gaze towards the horizon rather than at his own navel.

<comment><USER29> I agree. Also, it's _possible_ that his work will actually directly lead to a test for pancreatic cancer, though that would take more work to establish, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there a law for "something"-year-old does "something" headlines?

I see them all the time - and I hate them because I cynically predict that what ever it is that they are about to tell me is going to be either trivial, false or hyped.

I don't blame the kids - I guess it's just to get the clicks/attention for the news organisations.

If your age is being touted as the reason we should care about what you have done - then the thing that follows is probably bullshit, trivial or hyped.

Have you ever heard "34"-year-old tech CEO launches new multi billion dollar product line?

No. You read "Google launches Project Glass".

</comment><comment><USER32> I hate to sound like a dick, but it bugs me that MAKE claims him as one of their own by arbitrarily labeling him a "Maker." He's not a maker, he's a research scientist.

</comment><comment><USER33> Straight up awesome!

</comment><comment><USER34> It has been proven that prostate cancer screening does not improve final outcome.

<comment><USER35> Especially for pancreatic cancer.</comment></comment>


New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood's Plan to Smear Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/new-court-evidence-reveals-hollywoods-plans-smear-google/ <comment><USER2> If I were google I would choose a big upcoming multi billion Hollywood film. And just return empty pages while the marketing campaign is roaring. For the star/cast/everything.

I would call it piracy prevention program - that way no one will be able to find piracy content trough google.

<comment><USER3> I assume this is a joke. This would be terrifying. The MPAA are trying to stop google from fairly distributing pages they disagree with. Google is net neutrality and should act as a dumb pipe utility in the sense that it returns the most relevant info based on your search.

If google returned empty pages for something it didn't agree with, the implications would be appalling.

Google should do during the spectrum wars when they bid on spectrum and territory to leverage telecom co.s. They should threaten to back netflix or start a studio to make movies and content. They already have distribution and funds.

<comment><USER4> I agree Google should return the best response to your search and not cut things out for bargaining points, but "dumb pipe utility" is incredibly off.

<comment><USER2> Google deliberately decided to downgrade the torrent sites ... so they lost all pretense at neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manual union labor w/ exhausting overtime hours that cost $$, and big egos demanding everything under the sun.

The thing is that when the level of CGI realism gets to the point that most blockbuster movies don't really need to shoot on location at all, there's no need for Hollywood production anymore. The Pixar office campus model starts to become the norm. You can produce movies from anywhere you can fit a server rack. The only films that will need Hollywood will be the ones that wouldn't work as CG - comedies, documentaries and dramas which don't make much money and will need to get cheaper and cheaper to be viable.

Basically Hollywood as we know it will collapse eventually. The companies that will win at the filmmaking game are the ones with their fingers in digital distribution, a global marketing apparatus, cheap compute resources, and cheaper human talent. AKA Google / YouTube. So the MPAA needs to knock out Google for any hope of survival. Tactics like this will only accelerate the process. So Google wins.

<comment><USER6> Your point about "shooting on location" versus CGI seem absurd to me. A Hollywood production is _so_ much more that just the logistics to shoot on location. It is actors, directors, casting, production design, production management, music, manuscripts, editing etc. All of these things requires a specialized skillset. None of these can be replaces with a server rack. Animation is somewhat different production-wise, but still need the same kind of talent, just not as many trucks.

Hollywood accounting is infamous, but it seems Hollywood actually know what they are doing business-wise. They pay stars a lot of money because it translates into ticket sales, not because they are idiots.

Many movies are made outside of Hollywood (so-called independent movies) with cheaper talent (sometimes working for free), but only rarely are they as financially successful as Hollywood movies.

<comment><USER5> Those roles can be outsourced offshore to cheaper labor markets or handed to cheaper (aka non-union) domestic talent markets, which is what I was hinting at. Wasn't really implying that computers can replace creatives. Basically the argument is when you level the geographic playing field, quality creative talent is a cheaper commodity.

<comment><USER6> Lots of movies (and especially TV) are made on the cheap outside of Hollywood and around the world. There still seem to be a significant demand for Hollywood-style grand productions and movie stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm actually wondering how illegal this is? This is trying to influence the stock market and attacking 1 company without "legal" jurification. They are trying to hurt Google's through stock, this IS actually the same as stealing/taking away a billion $ (stockvalue) ... (that should be illegal, isn't it?)

They obviously failed before execution, but that shouldn't matter...

Does anyone know if Google can use this information in court for a lawsuit against MPAA?

<comment><USER8> It is probably covered by defamation of character law (it would be in the UK at least) or by malicious litigation law.

<comment><USER9> Despite Tony Blair pushing through changes to allow corporate bodies to use defamation laws, it's still pretty rare and an uphill struggle. The McLibel case showed how dangerous it is for a company to resort to that sort of litigation.

They spent millions, had an array of hilarious 'mom & apple pie' witnesses flown in from the US and managed to lose on many points (but not all) and were left with a useless judgment which they can never collect on as they were stupid enough to sue two people with no assets or any prospect of having any.

They did however, become a laughing stock in the legal world and have an array of TV programs and plays, mocking them mercilessly. Plus some of the, till then, unproven, claims of disgusting practice ended up being proven and therefore repeatable without risk - which was not the case beforehand.

Defamation actions are never a good way to go. Even winning one does not generally help you much.

<comment><USER8> I thought that companies were legal persons in English law? And if they can prove actual damages then they can sue for libel? As always IANAL

I'd agree that McLibel didn't play out that well for them - however here we're talking one massive company vs another. McLibel was not even close to the same thing as e.g. Google vs. the MPAA would be.

Anyway my main point was laws already exist to protect companies from malicious communications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The MPAA is not "Hollywood" and had not been so for a long time.

MPAA current members: Sony, Disney, Fox, Universal, Warner and Paramount.

Netflix is not a member. Lionsgate is not a member. You tube is certainly not a member. The MPAA therefore doesn't represent the content industry let alone all of Hollywood. Those writing about the MPAA (Wired) should not take its word as representative of anyone other than its FIVE backers. And some of those (Sony) aren't exactly happy with them these days.

<comment><USER11> Uh... Under whose definition are Netflix or Youtube (Google) part of "Hollywood"? The term has always been used to refer to the industry formed by the big traditional studios which were founded in the early part of the century in the Hollywood/Burbank area. Lionsgate might qualify (and I don't know why they aren't in the MPAA), but then they haven't even been around for two decades yet.

The MPAA is "Hollywood" for sure, inasmuch as that term has any meaning at all. I simply don't understand what point you're trying to make.

<comment><USER10> I'd say that Hollywood is the north-American content industry focused around Hollywood California, but including New York, Vancouver and anywhere else where movies and TV is produced. Netflix is a major content producer who uses the same people as the MPAA backers. Youtube doesn't produce content in the same way, but they are very influential having stolen things like Music Videos from the likes of MTV. These non-MPAA entities compete in the same space but have very different opinions than those who support the MPAA.

My point is that the MPAA does not represent these other "Hollywood" content producers and shouldn't be described a representing any content producers beyond the five members.

<comment><USER11> Some advice on argumentation: don't make a point by subverting well- established jargon unless you're really explicit about it. You just confuse everyone involved.

I actually don't disagree with your point exactly (though it's a little spun: original content on Netflix and Youtube represents a tiny, tiny fraction of the eyeball-minutes of the movie industry -- it might get there some day but it's not remotely there yet). But what you were trying to say was completely obscured by your insane-seeming attempt to say that the MPAA doesn't represent the interests of "Hollywood".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would not mind if the entire entertainment industry just die. Some (likely, the only worthy) part of it will adapt, and the rest is totally worthless.

</comment><comment><USER13> The MPAA just might have picked on the wrong kid this time.

<comment><USER14> How so?

<comment><USER13> Because the MPAA is often the larger entity in court, and with leverage (copyright law). They have a long, litigious history from DMCA takedowns & expansion to SOPA. They don't mind suing individuals, wholesale [1].

In this particular case it's pretty clear the MPAA and the AG were both out of bounds. Why would the AG, the top lawyer for the state government (and supposedly for the people), need to help the MPAA with a smear campaign? According to Google, AG Hood's office supplied a proposal to the MPAA [2] with an editorial suggesting slumping stock prices, media segments in collaboration with the AG, regulatory lawsuits...

This is a conscious, targeted attack against Google because Hollywood didn't get its way. The project was even codenamed "Project Goliath" (related to the MPAA & affiliates, not the AG) [3].

Google has the resources, capability and will to vigorously defend itself where others may have not.

[1] [https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/MPAA_v_ThePeople/](https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/MPAA_v_ThePeople/) [2] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2179...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2179099/gov- uscourts-nysd-442776-40-0.pdf) [3] [http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/12/7382287/project- goliath](http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/12/7382287/project-goliath)

<comment><USER15> > editorial suggesting slumping stock prices

Is this not fraudulent?

<comment><USER16> It'd be very nice if the SEC jumped in.

<comment><USER17> US financial regulators usually have to be shoved in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe Google should do product placement in movies like Apple does: [http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-product-placements- in-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-product-placements-in-tv-and- movies-2012-8?op=1)

* Apple's marketing chief, Phil Schiller, said that "One of Apple's employees works closely with Hollywood on so-called product placement so its gadgets are used in movies and television shows. _

<comment><USER19> They've done product placement and they've also done something that Apple never has - they got an entire movie about just their company. It's called The Internship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if the threat of continuous attack and litigation could hurt shareholders of the MPAA's partners more than Google itself. Particularly since the last decade of investment into anti-piracy campaigns and measures has not curved piracy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hollywood is slowly decaying into irrelevance. This is a sign that they know their days are numbered. People are not going stop pirating, hell the whining and draconian measures to get people to stop pirating their movies makes me want to pirate the shit out of it even more.

Plenty of video services like netflix, amazon prime are producing their own quality tv shows that exceed most of the crap movies we get. Everything is CG or some dumb plotline about sex. I'm sure films & tv shows will turn out from tech giants. I think if Google jumped in and began paying celebrities to star in their movies it could do well. I've always thought Hollywood to be a propaganda machine.

<comment><USER22> The threat to Hollywood goes deeper than piracy. Within a few years, video games will be generating photo-realistic feature films on demand, with unique scripts and characters and worlds adapted to the viewer's tastes and mood. Game/movie publishers won't have to worry as much about piracy because they will be selling the service, not the content. (But upload your personalized movie to YouTube and they can monetize that, too.)

<comment><USER23> I may possibly be the best person in the world to comment on this particular statement. Given that: no, this isn't going to happen in the near future.

"Films on demand" \- some aspects of this are near-future plausible given existing script, mocap and voice acting. Simple programmatic cinematography is just about possible, and AI editing is getting better. 5 years away, maybe, for sitcom / soap-opera equivalent lighting and cinematography. A LOT longer before you're replacing Roger Deakins, though.

"Photo-realistic" \- photorealistic CGI films have been just around the corner for 15 years now and continue to be so. Proof-of-concept 15 second renders are doable, feature-length films with non-humans are doable (albeit with a LOT of human intervention), but 90 minutes of CGI humans is a lot harder.

"Characters" \- moulding their appearance is almost doable now. Motion is a lot harder - we've got semi-programmatic facial animation but it's a bit rubbish. Programmatic body animation is getting there. Programmatic voice acting is a Really Hard Problem and I'm not aware of anyone making any significant moves forward in that area.

"Unique scripts" \- no-one has demonstrated anything close to an AI scriptwriter at this point. It may well be that's a problem which requires strong AI to solve.

We might be looking at Hollywood being replaced completely at some point, but I doubt it'll happen in the next 20 years.

However, what IS a huge threat to Hollywood is the increased power of indie filmmakers with technological assists. I write about that sort of thing over on my blog at [http://www.strangecompany.org/blog/](http://www.strangecompany.org/blog/)

One filmmaker today can do things that would have required a crew of 20 back in 1993. The cost of filmmaking is plummeting. And that certainly is a threat to Hollywood.

<comment><USER24> what are your thought on building a business model around that trend ?

<comment><USER23> If you can find a way to monetise the _enormous_ amount of new content that's being produced right now - in excess of 10,000 feature films a year - then you have the potential to make a vast amount of money.

Discoverability and marketplaces are the key problems for film at the moment. There are other groups working on that problem, but so far it remains unresolved.

I wrote a bit about this on Charles Stross's blog a while ago - [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/06/hugh- han...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/06/hugh-hancock-here- again-charli.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can you really smear a company who's reputation is already beyond repair?

<comment><USER26> Not sure if serious

<comment><USER25> Tax dodging, conspiracy to suppress salaries, non-meritocratic compensation policies - the list goes on.

<comment><USER26> Apart that the only illegal thing is the second, do you really think that people is aware of this or that they give a shit?

<comment><USER27> Plenty of people do give a shit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what do you use for instant/asynchronous communication? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I'd like to know what instant chat tools HN folks favour for instant asynchronous communication.
I'm leaning against setting up an IRC server simply because graphical notifications would be nice. I would also prefer something open source, and possibly PHP based as I'd like to extend it and tie into our existing systems. <comment><USER2> HipChat (<https://www.hipchat.com/>)

\- It "just works" on every platform, including my phone.

\- It's great for group chat and one-on-one.

\- If someone @mentions me while I'm away or offline, it will send me an email and/or pop-up on my phone just like any other notification (all of this is configurable).

\- You can use HubBot with it and it has GitHub integration.

\- You can use it over XMPP if you need to.

I never thought I'd pay for a chat product given all of the free options out there, but it is just so good that I can't help but recommend it to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> IRC is great because of the simplicity of bolting things to it.

We do all of our CI notifications and deployments with a bot in a builds channel.

With that said, Grove is going away and it doesn't look like there's a polished hosted alternative, so we're torn between setting up and managing our own internal system (which dollars per month will cost us more, once you put a dollar value on ops time) and trying to find something which will do what we want.

</comment><comment><USER4> We use Google Talk (it's just XMPP, so you can use an OSS client like Pidgin) and email. But you shouldn't discount IRC just because of that: many clients offer or at least let you add graphical notifications: my favorite client, Weechat[1], has plugins for libnotify/dbus, Growl and OS X Notification Center. I'm sure other clients offer similar functionality.

[1]: <http://www.weechat.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Which sort of graphical notifications are you looking for with IRC? XChat, for instance, has default options for system tray notifications when your name is mentioned, when you get a private message, when there's a new message in the channel, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> +1 for Hipchat. Outsourcing everything but the thing you're selling always makes sense, for productivity and security reasons, even more considering how cheap these services are nowadays and also knowing how crappy free php scripts tend to be.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.quora.com/What-are-alternatives-to-pusher-com>

</comment><comment><USER8> Ejabberd. I'm sure other XMPP servers are decent too.

PHP must have an XMPP library, python and ruby do, if not.

<comment><USER9> We're using ejabberd at work as well. We're ~70 people and have got email address == xmpp handle, and we're using team-specific and general MUC chat rooms.

I do miss using IRC at this company, but at some point around 08 or 09 most people switched to Skype (as we'd used to for client communication anyway) and forsake IRC, but not all were happy with it. So in early 2011 (I think) we've had some polls and 3/4 preferred XMPP over Skype, so we switched. Personally I'm very happy with it.

My experiences with client libraries in PHP were horrible, though. xmppy (Python) and smack (Java) are much better.

<comment><USER10> Which xmpp client do you use?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tlk.io <http://tlk.io>

</comment><comment><USER12> XMPP?

</comment><comment><USER13> I know you're leaning against it but I thought I'd say anyway that we use IRC for everything since it's easy to hook into from anywhere. We don't even use a full-fledged server, just a single file python script. There's plenty of options for graphical notifications and you can hook into from PHP if you want.

</comment><comment><USER14> I second the choice of IRC server, but for some setups it may be overkill. I personally like gobby/sobby, it has a chat module besides being a collaborative code editor. It's open-source and cross-platform.</comment>


Hollywood has more impact on Harvard's CS50 than the Nasdaq - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tutorspree.com/post/15645271731/hollywood-and-computer-programming

<comment><USER2> The title is incorrect. The correct title is that there is a stronger correlation between (CS50,Hollywood) than there is for (CS50,Nasdaq).

You could probably find that the price of a crate of lemons in Mexico for delivery in 2 months is more highly correlated with CS50 than either one of those but that doesn't mean that they have anything to do with each other.

<comment><USER3> Exactly what I came here to say. Correlation does not imply causation: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was part of the Malan spike (took CS50 in 2007, TF'd in 2008). Switching the first week from ANT to Scratch was a pretty brilliant move on Malan's part, along with touching on web programming in the final week of the course. CS50 was one of the top two classes I took in college, without a doubt.

EDIT: If folks are interested in the curriculum, head to <http://cs50.tv/2011/fall/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone else find that bar chart hard to bear? Like, 2px wide bars? Why?

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't find this surprising. Enrollment is expected to be a lagging indicator. Effects of any "trends" may take a couple of years+ to propagate themselves between industries. If tech firms are incredibly hot today, CS50 enrollment isn't going to suddenly increase today.

This works for declines too. People continue to enroll to study finance or law in promise of riches[1] after each respective bubble has already popped.

More importantly, though, not every college freshman/high school student meticulously follows HackerNews or the latest fads. Not everyone even follows NASDAQ or can analyze the tech sector. People like "sure" things. Hate it or love it, the mainstream media and Hollywood have quite a lot to do with what people know and think.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?pagewa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER7> I was one of the students on the far left of that chart - the early 90s spike. I don't recall any external influence like The Social Network, but the course had a great reputation, and the world was going through a tech shift (students had just gotten email for example). Perhaps who's teaching is a driver as well.

<comment><USER8> Who was teaching back then? Check out the paper I referenced (from the prof teaching now) - good insight onto the changes he's made and how they've impacted the class. Still, though, that huge jump at the end has to come from the outside. Ec10 was the only class larger this year.

<comment><USER9> Margo Seltzer taught CS50 for much of the 90s -- at least '95, '97, and '98 and also, I believe, for a couple years prior to that. (She was on leave in 1996, and Brian Kernighan taught the course.)</comment></comment></comment>


A Pattern for Writing CSS to Scale - <AUTHOR> http://tech.pro/tutorial/2024/a-pattern-for-writing-css-to-scale <comment><USER2> You say to nest your styles but that over-qualifies the CSS and drops performance for the sake of readability....

How is that CSS at scale?</comment>


Ask HN: passing the torch on userscripts.org - <AUTHOR> I'm unable to find the time/energy to give to userscripts.org lately.  My startup is currently focused on building Nebula & Nova, and I cannot see finding time to devote to the site I spent 5 years building/running.
The site has been in "maintenance mode" since starting Nebula, but it deserves more.
The site is still very active (Google Analytics for last month):
 * 2,474,330 Visits
 * 9,532,743 Pageviews
The site is quantified: http://www.quantcast.com/userscripts.org
But it needs someone who can do the right thing for the community.
There will be technical issues scaling (rails 2.3, postgres, git).  Legal issues (dealing with DMCA takedown notices/people who don't like scripts that "fix" their site). Community issues (the site lacks a nice directory and community aspects).
Companies or individuals are welcome but I need to know your intentions with the site going forward :)
Private inquiries to anotherjesse (at) gmail.com <comment><USER3> seriously? It's a massively popular resource. The number 1 destination for greasemonkey users. There's real value there. I am a little shocked that you're ready to turn it over to someone else.

Obviously I know nothing about you or your situation - your startup may well be the next big thing. It just seems to me that you've got a big thing in userscripts.org already.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I am a little shocked that you're ready to turn it over to someone else."

I am very conflicted about it. I have spent thousands of hours developing and operating it - but I don't even have time to sleep right now with the work going into Nebula/Nova.

I don't want to turn it over to someone who would destroy the community. Any transition would require them understanding the community and a solid plan for how to improve it.

<comment><USER4> could you not retain control and attempt to hire someone to do the legwork on it? i have a feeling that the community would rather put up with something like adsense, a sponsored ad, or donation requests in order to help fund the community if the alternative is pushing ownership onto someone who might wreck the place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Woah. I am totally going to be contacting you about this. (For those who don't recognize the name, I'm the guy who runs the distribution system for software and other hacks on jailbroken iPhones, Cydia.) I have absolutely no fear of DMCA issues regarding this and believe strongly in post-facto program modification, and already manage a large community surrounding this. I even spend a lot of time dealing with system and site scaling (we get a lot more traffic than that in Cydia). Expect an e-mail from me shortly! ;P

</comment><comment><USER6> OMG I love you and I didn't even know it. Congrats on Nebula's and UserScripts' success. You have made my internets much more enjoyable.

FWIW I'm with user24: life is long and you'll have many years to regret the sale/dispensing of UserScripts if you ask me. It's very hard to acquire a user base like you have.

<comment><AUTHOR> The technologist in me loved being able to write and deploy software accessed by over a hundred of thousands users a day.

I've learned so much about running a (relatively) large website from userscripts.

I used to have time to watch munin, new relic, ... every day - it has been a month since I've checked <http://munin.userscripts.org> :(

I don't really want to get rid of it, but my life is too hectic to give it the time it needs. The site went down for half a day last week due to a DMCA takedown request that occurred while I was traveling for work. It needs someone who can pay attention.

Maybe I can find a product / hacker / designer who can run it with me - but I don't want to make myself the bottleneck, so if someone comes around who can do a better job, I should probably step down :(

<comment><USER6> Maybe this is the wrong place to ask but doesn't the site make enough money that you could hire someone? I see you have "sponsors".

How much time on a weekly basis do you estimate would be required to maintain the status quo?

<comment><AUTHOR> the "sponsors" is buysellads.com - which brings in ~400 a month. That said it used to make $100+ a day on adsense but I didn't like the ads. (funnily after I removed adsense google offered their custom packages/...)

I'm purposely minimizing revenue since:

1) if the site made money those who don't like what greasemonkey does might seek damages for the money 2) it sends the wrong message to the community if I'm just making money and not giving it the attention it needs

Before Nebula I had planned to work on userscripts and make it pay for itself and my time. I tried to spend some time on it each day, but working on Nebula is really 2 jobs - working for NASA (the client) and working on my company (ansolabs) - and I rarely get any time for the company, let alone my non- nebula open source work.

Status quo would take an hour or so once I have procedures in place for how to deal with DMCA issues. But I think it needs a lot of community features (moderation, groups, directories of good scripts, ...)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for taking the time to answer so thoroughly. I wish I had the time to play with it or could offer my time to help but, like you, I am busy with my company. If you think I can help in any way, feel free to email me (email in profile).

Best of luck and keep us posted!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd gladly work on any number of these types of issues.

Freedom to customize an interface and add features that are missing is something I feel quite passionately about. The web is suppose to be about freedom and setting people free from being forced to use repeatedly anything that feels unsatisfactory. With user-scripting one is no longer a slave to the interface that's presented. Anything that is so insecure or incomplete in and of itself deserves to be exposed, and the person who does so deserves credit. If anything scripting only serves the greater good, that anyone would get angry about their own site's problems and try to force a take-down as if they can't control their own server is truly unacceptable from any of the parties that would enforce this policy of fighting those that are informing them.

Working with rails would be great. I've got some postgress and scaling experience.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hopefully you can post the results of your sale here and anything you learn along the way...good luck!

For a point of reference, I just remembered a similar, but much smaller site called Snipplr recently sold at auction; you can see the results here:

[http://flippa.com/auctions/94283/Snipplr-com-PR5-- 500000-vis...](http://flippa.com/auctions/94283/Snipplr-com-PR5--500000-visits --17000-Registered-Users)

</comment><comment><USER9> I definitely think you should consider re-opensourcing the site. I'd learn ruby just so I could help improve it and I'm sure there are many others who use the site that would also like to help. You or someone you found would still need to run the admin side and deploy updates, but I think it would help lighten the load.

<comment><USER10> This being pretty much the setup I help maintain at MashLogic today, and while I would join erikvold and sizzlemctwizzle in supporting and maintaining (mainly the technical side of) the site, I think you're right in passing on the torch to someone with a bit of a passion for the field, and maintaining the (a fair bit less pleasant) legal angle on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's really said news. I was very active in the beginning, but I too have moved on. It's that I haven't learned any rails (yet), otherwise I'm interested. Maybe you can make it more an community afford, opening the site up for multiple active people.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nebula looks awesome. I say this as someone who has a slice of what it is like inside a government IT department. Is Nebula going to expand outside of NASA as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> We already host usaspending.gov and a few other sites for non-NASA users - <USER2> our focus is on NASA scientists, researchers and engineers.

That said our work is open source, so others inside and out of government can adopt our work. For instance Rackspace has started OpenStack and it adopted Nova (our python powered compute framework).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You should enter the RedGate challenge. It isn't 100% up their alley, but if your user-base is primarily IT and Devs, it might be.

</comment><comment><USER14> Heh, I still remember the first notice (not DMCA, just German law) that made me drop the domain :)

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER15> URL for nova/nebula?

<comment><USER16> <http://nebula.nasa.gov/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> userscripts.org now doesn't work at all

you either get %00 internal server error or please wait message

</comment><comment><USER17> userscripts.org has now stopped working

either get 500 internal server error, or please wait message</comment>