A Git Repo to Document Police Brutality During the 2020 George Floyd Protests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality <comment><USER4> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914), which is still on the front page.

<comment><USER5> Hi dang!

If I may ask, why is this one not on the front page? It seems to offer something significantly different that that older link which only links to an article indexing police brutality against journalists, while this is against all people. It appears to have enough upvotes to be on the front page - <USER2> some other part of the weighting system bump it off or is there a manual flag/bump on it?

Appreciate all your efforts here and hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory.

<comment><USER4> We downweighted it as a follow-up submission [1]. Follow-ups are by definition repetitive, and repetition goes against curiosity which is the root principle here [2].

I'm sorry, because this seems like a good project, and as a reader I approve. But as a moderator, the perspective is different—the quesiton is always, is there enough SNI (significant new information [3]) to support a significantly different discussion? in this case vis-à-vis [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393914), which has been on the front page all day? The answer seems to be no, because the comments in this thread aren't about the specifics of the repository—they're just about the general topic of police brutality. In other words this thread just gets sucked into the stronger gravitational field of the more generic topic, which unfortunately is what happens to most posts that fly too close to a large hot planet (i.e. a hot ongoing thread).

All that said, I'm tempted to contradict myself ("very well then I contradict myself") and dump the other thread in favor of this one, because I can feel there's something interesting here. So how about a compromise: if someone still feels like this post is interesting after, say, two weeks have gone by, they can email email@example.com and we can arrange a repost. I was originally going to say one week, but that's sort of on the cusp between now and the future. Two weeks is more on the future side.

[1] [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow- up&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[2] [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[3] [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

p.s. People who say "hope that doesn't come off as confrontational or accusatory" are the least of our worries :)

<comment><USER5> Appreciate the insight into the process! Someone very well may follow up in two weeks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a heads-up: before you get angry, bear in mind the situation is evolving and that the context and the timing information are very relevant. Here's why: at least in NYC, I know the protest leaders and the NYPD police chief got together just a day or two ago to have a dialog and try to mend things so they can work together instead of against each other. [1] They don't hate each other, and in any case, both sides realize they need the other's support. They just want to be able to work together to keep things peaceful. And it seems like they're giving each other another chance to do things right, and it's important that they get that chance instead of having more tensions flare again as a result of anger from 3 days ago.

So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something might have changed in the meantime. You won't necessarily see these on frontpage headlines, so it might take a bit of digging. (I've found actual videos from local news reporting on the ground much more helpful than textual articles from national outlets here. It seems to me it's just too difficult to capture all the relevant dynamics, emotion, and nuance in text.)

In fact, if anyone's involved, I would suggest putting this information in the repo here as well. You don't want to add fuel onto a fire that was already under control a few days ago, and you want to know when (or whether) good progress is being made. Ultimately the goal is to find a working model that others can hopefully emulate.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJGT06zIUiY&t=2m32s)

<comment><USER7> > Just a heads-up: before you get angry, bear in mind the situation is > evolving and that the context and the timing information are very relevant.

"Before you get angry about police brutality, remember context is important!" Are you serious?! Some people are talking to the police chief so you shouldn't be angry that they are blockading people on to a bridge. Or angry that they are driving SUVs into people. Or violently pushing people to the ground. And that's just the NYPD. A department where the commissioner was praising the department for their restrain, if that's restrain wait until they stop holding back.

Giving each other the chance to do the right thing? What are you talking about? What do the protesters need to do? Stop proetesting?

> So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to > see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something > might have changed in the meantime

> So, before you get worked up about what happened, check the date, and try to > see if there's any local news in the city that might indicate something > might have changed in the meantime. You won't necessarily see these on > frontpage headlines, so it might take a bit of digging. (I've found actual > videos from local news reporting on the ground much more helpful than > textual articles from national outlets here. It seems to me it's just too > difficult to capture all the relevant dynamics, emotion, and nuance in > text.)

Are you nuts? So if it happened 3 days ago and the police are saying sorry but not laying charges, it's a-ok? There are no real nuances here. You have police shooting rubber bullets are people's faces, spraying them with pepper spray while they have their hands up, tear gassing people. All while not facing criminal charges.

> In fact, if anyone's involved, I would suggest putting this information in > the repo here as well. You don't want to add fuel onto a fire that was > already under control a few days ago, and you want to know when (or whether) > good progress is being made. Ultimately the goal is to find a working model > that others can hopefully emulate.

No, you want to add fuel to this fire if you want this problem to be solved. Working models can be found in nearly every civilised country in the world.

Stop telling people not to be angry and start being angry.

<comment><USER8> You know a 77 year old retired cop was killed in St. Louis last night, holding his cell phone to call police about looters. You gonna protest his death too? Or do you just want an endless vicious cycle of blood feuds for the next 3000 years?

<comment><USER9> Clearly that is wrong too, but you know, two wrongs don't make a right. And a major difference is that violence against police actually is prosecuted unlike the opposite.

<comment><USER8> No, this guy was left to die in the street. His killers weren't caught.

He was a cop for 38 years before becoming chief of Moline Acres, Mo: [https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired- st-l...](https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500839-retired-st-louis- police-captain-killed-outside-looted-pawn-shop)

This is what anti police hatred brewing in this country leads to. Gang violence. You embolden true criminals.

<comment><USER9> The killers may not have been caught in this case, but I think it safe to assume that someone actually looked for them.

<comment><USER8> You got a lot of mental gymnastics to squirm out of your culpability for perpetrating hate towards the 99.9% of cops who do their job ethically. But you got no words for a dead man who served his community for 40+ years and meets a fate like this thanks to instigators and rioters who claim they're for justice.

<comment><USER9> I have perpetrated no hate, and don't strawman me.

Acts of violence are _always_ wrong. I did however point out the police are not prosecuted in any meaningful systemic fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for doing that, during the Hong Kong protests the (presumably) CCP were attacking doing ddos attacks and trying attack servers that hosted footage of the police illegally beating, arresting and pepper spraying lawful citizens protesting or simply just having the misfortune of being around one when the HKPF/PLA decided to get violent.

Here is the torrent hash if anyone wants to host it and seed:

9b85dd223c8f92c923f516ed77bbdfcb770f4dd8

> I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm > just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?"

I hope something like this is done for these protests (Anonymous?) and undertaken by the greater tech community as the Police need to be held accountable for the brutality and callous inhumane behaviour towards citizens and journalists alike, that many on here simply accepted 'as other people's problems.' And in many cities the police have simply decided of their own accord to just shut off their bodycams. I spent most of the weekend following the events and after you weed through the BS bots, you actually see the numbers are there to make it happen in just about every city. It's really just a matter of coordination and Will.

If nothing else this is a stark reminder of what your tax money is going towards, and it isn't going towards roads, schools or whatever absurd notion most use to justify the ever growing militarization and expansion of a Police State in the US.

The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley!

<comment><USER11> > The thing I don't get was that in the late 80s and 90s activism and > tech/hacking oriented people were pretty much one and the same, namely > Cypherpunks. Specifically in the Valley!

Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org)

<comment><USER10> > Alot of those folks were co-opted… at least according to folks like Bill > Blunden (belowgotham.com) and John Young (cryptome.org)

I don't know who those people are, nor have I taken the time to analyze their work. But let's assume that some were co-opted, you do realize that ultimately it doesn't matter because the few that weren't are responsible for some of the greatest innovation in citizen's use of cryptography and a non-state issue currency, those being: Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, Adam Back, Timothy May.

Hell, these people inspired a certain loud mouth Cyberpunk who went on to create wikileaks, and tried to expose covert Nuclear armament by the US prior to that, you may have heard of him as he's currently being used as political football in an extradition case: Julian Assange. And he motivated a guy who went to to work on TOR (Jacob Applebaum) and a former NSA contractor that revealed the extensive abuses of the the Intelligence Agencies around the world (Edward Snowden).

What I'm getting at is that these kind of movements are useful precisely because they do not rely on a single entity or person to steer the actions of said movement.

<comment><USER11> > What I'm getting at is that these kind of movements are useful precisely > because they do not rely on a single entity or person to steer the actions > of said movement.

I don't disagree, I'm just not as surprised as you are that things have changed from the 80/90's… the stakes are higher… and the name of the game is "dealing with the metadata killchain", building it, or both ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I vouched for this. In other threads, an attitude I've seen is "well I'm just a tech worker, what can I possibly do to help?"

Projects like this are what you can do.

<comment><USER13> Also just in general, make sure the people around you are registered to vote, get absentee ballots if they need them, understand how to complete, and send them. Make sure they vote.

<comment><USER14> but vote for who? Joe Biden has historically backed legislation for search and frisk, he is only a good choice for people who think "BlueLivesMatter"

<comment><USER13> I'm not gonna tell you how to vote. I will only tell you to exercise your civic duty. We are all smart people here: to wield both the abstract and pragmatic concerns into a decision. Make it. It may be the last we get to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A laudable idea but why restrict it to the protests? There's a problem with police brutality in lots of places and at lots of times (even just the perception of it), perhaps a more standard way to report and record _which can be replicated easily_ and hence, compared better, might be an idea. (As I was writing an issue opened up on this kind of point [https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality/issues/83](https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/issues/83))

It seems to me that the current set up excludes the vast majority of people (who are unlikely to know markdown, Git, or Github) which limits its effectiveness.

<comment><USER12> (Not the author) I like Git for the decentralization and ease of someone backing it all up. Agree that there's a huge usability cliff for anyone outside our circle that wants to contribute.

Maybe a good add-on project for someone is creating a website where potential new incidents can be submitted and evaluated, then pulled into the repo automatically if they pass muster.

<comment><USER16> If Reddit wasn't censored, you could use that, but you'd need moderators to manage duplicates and spam. Backing up Reddit pages / posts / videos should be fairly straightforward. If anything it's a lot more accessible to anyone because you can e.g. post from mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This tweet has a good two minute video of some of these cases, for those who are questioning if this is "valid" as I have seen in many threads.

[https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320](https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1266917228752056320)

<comment><USER17> This one is from a link further down. I think it tells pretty much everything. [https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=0...](https://twitter.com/stephtseo/status/1267680737915924480?s=09)

<comment><USER18> I don't see what you seem to see in that video.

I see an umbrella put way over the fence. I see a policeman grab an umbrella that was way over fence. I see then someone else reach across the fence in response to the police grabbing the umbrella. I see the police then react to that person reaching across the fence.

I don't see blame. I just see tinder, a spark, and an escalation.

I'm fully 100% for "Black Lives Matter" and 100% against police brutality and the militarization of the police. But that video is too ambiguous convince all people. It's the same with the CNN reporter. People who want to see racism see a black reporter get arrested. People who don't want to see racism see 3 people getting arrested, one black, one white, one latino? Yes, racism exists but that video is also not proof of it.

<comment><USER17> > _that video._

First of all, it's two videos. Watch the aerial view in the immediate reply. (If you didn't see it, you can find it here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the_moment_it_all_happened/))

> _I see a policeman grab_

You see an attempted robbery resulting in the destruction of someone's private property.

> _I see then someone else reach_

You see a person trying to hold onto their property as they're pulled over the fence because a cop just assaulted them.

> _I see the police then react_

You see the police immediately start spraying and bombing and gassing, with the flimsiest excuse, an entire crowd of people who are literally just chanting.

This coordinated initiation of violence is extremely typical from the police playbook. Watch this third video from 26:30 as the filmer explains the meaning of a "posture" change when the police swap in gasmask brutes in place of the bicycle cops who were standing there before, showing that they planned to escalate from the beginning. [https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/](https://www.facebook.com/omarisal/videos/10220021035848747/)

<comment><USER18> The aerial video doesn't help at all. If you're being unkind to the protesters then the ground level video shows a protester shoving an umbrella in a policeman's face which is the start of the entire thing. The policeman reacts as anyone would when someone shoves something in their face, they grab/bat it away. That causes others to reach over the fence which would appear threatening and then the spray starts.

If you're assuming good intentions on the part of that protestor then the umbrella being over the fence and in the face of an officer was just an accident of being too close the fence so that their umbrella ended up in the police officer's face. The result is the same, the protester is crossing the line like the "I'm not touching you" meme. The officer has an umbrella shoved in their face and they react.

[https://www.slideshare.net/Matthewthig/4-11-am-im-not- touchi...](https://www.slideshare.net/Matthewthig/4-11-am-im-not-touching-you)

From the officer's POV this ([https://pasteboard.co/Jbm1UXn.jpg](https://pasteboard.co/Jbm1UXn.jpg)) is a protester trying to intentionally block their view or just annoy them.

I know you won't accept that interpretation as remotely valid because you've already decided there is only one correct way to see it.

I'm not placing blame and I'm not defending the police. I'm just pointing out your interpretation of what happened is just that, an interpretation. There is at least one other perfectly valid interpretation.

<comment><USER18> Here's another incident with 2 interpretations

[https://twitter.com/EDDIFUL/status/1267338642617364481?s=20](https://twitter.com/EDDIFUL/status/1267338642617364481?s=20)

1) The simple police brutality

2) Kid grabs policeman, policeman reacts

You can see the kid reach for the officer. The officer reacted. Whether it was actually a threat I have no idea. The officer is trying to pass. The kid effectively corners him into a wall, intentionally or not, and then reaches toward the officer. Maybe it was supposed to be a friendly tap on the upper arm but in the middle of such a situation it's not hard to believe whatever the kid reached for felt like a threat to the officer.

Again I'm not trying to defend the police but if you want people to come together, if you want that 1/2 of the nation that's on the wrong side to support your cause, then you need less ambiguous examples. Otherwise it's just easy to dismiss it.

Other than taking the kid down there is no visible brutality in that video.

<comment><USER17> > _Again I 'm not trying to defend the police_

You're doing a great job of it anyway trying to justify marching in brutes covered head to toe in armor all prepared for a gas attack and then mysteriously "reacting" to an _umbrella_ a minute later by bombing a crowd of people standing around chanting.

You're doing some heavy concern trolling here. I see you.

> _The kid effectively corners him into a wall_

If I push between you and the wall, you have not cornered me into the wall. The person who pushes in is responsible for being there.

> _Whether it was actually a threat I have no idea_

Kid has a phone in one hand and sunglasses in the other. If you have no idea then you're intentionally not paying attention.

> _Other than taking the kid down there is no visible brutality_

Other than the visible brutality, there is no visible brutality. Well, by _that_ definition...

<comment><USER18> I'm not trolling and dang should have banned banned your message for name calling.

There is no brutality in that video. The officers wraps his arm around the kid and pulls him to the ground slowly and safely. There is no evidence in that video the kid got a single scratch or bruise. If there is evidence of actual violence it's not in that video.

There are videos of actual violence.

[https://twitter.com/vantaepedia/status/1266055700515520512](https://twitter.com/vantaepedia/status/1266055700515520512)

no need to use the ambiguous videos that don't actually help change minds but only preach to the choir.

Black Lives Matter!

<comment><USER17> > _There is no brutality in that video_

Putting someone into a headlock and dragging them around by their neck when that person had not initiated violence is brutality. And that person clearly did not initiate violence.

> _The officers wraps his arm around the kid_

Sure, a gentle loving caress around the neck, and then a gentle loving pull by the neck, and then gently and lovingly putting him to the ground by the neck.

> _There are videos of actual violence._

Both are videos of actual violence. Thank you for sharing that one.

<comment><USER18> Violence: Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

There is no intent to hurt, damage, or kill that kid and there is no evidence in the video of the cop on a bicycle taking down the kid that the kid was remotely hurt. Unlike other videos. So no, it is not actual violence.

And, no I'm not getting hung up on the word "intent". I'm pointing out if there is no actual hurt or damage then it's not violence.

As for the kids intent or the officer's perceived intent we'll never know unless the officer has a body cam and even if we did different people will likely see it differently just like the umbrella above. You see an innocent girl with an umbrella. Others see a girl intentionally putting her umbrella in the face of an officer and blocking his view effectively obstructing an officer. When he takes the umbrella clearly in his face people react and things escalate.

In any case you, and all the other downvoters, seemed to miss the entire point of my comments.

The point is there are multiple ways to see those videos. You claiming there is only one is about as relevant as telling someone their feelings are wrong. You can't tell someone else how they feel and you can't tell someone else what they see in those videos. If you showed those videos to 100 people and found that 50% (or even 20%) saw something different your rage that they didn't see the exact same thing you saw would not help you convince them they're wrong. If instead you understand those videos are actually not strong proof of your case you'd drop them for videos that are and therefore make your case better and help bring about the change you (and me) want to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only one that gets the feeling these riots have nothing to do with George Floyd at this point and are just a massive boiling over of tension from Coronavirus lockdown orders?

<comment> phoe-krk I think that and the resulting unemployment boom certainly contributes, but you seem to miss the obvious point here - that the Black and Brown people of US have other objective reasons to protest about, too.

<comment><USER19> Sure, Black and Brown people have legitimate things to protest. But all I see are videos of white kids throwing bricks and otherwise stirring the pot.

<comment><USER17> At this point, if that's all you've seen, it's because you aren't looking.

So maybe look up videos of cops shooting journalists, smashing windows, bashing people in the face when they weren't doing anything, and running people over with their cars. There are literally hundreds of such videos from the past few days.

Then you'd be able to say you've seen videos of things other than white kids throwing bricks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seeing US police act almost make me believe French BAC is a peacefull police force trained for violence deescalation.

I don't understand how you can not have the equivalent of CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei.

<comment><USER21> We do. SWAT teams absolutely exist. You're seeing them here.

<comment><USER22> Uh, nobody questioned that you've got trigger-happy and overgeared specialists on a powertrip.

That's not what CRS/Bereitschaftspolizei is though. I've only ever seen them running around entirely without protection or with shields to stop people doing dumb shit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Probably a bit of a controversial opinion but in some cases I can sympathize with the police officers. The reality is that the vast majority of them likely condemn the events around George Floyd's death. They are also regular people with families, children and friends they have to provide for. And they have the exact same problems that many of us do. Their daily work involves keeping things in order, which is something I respect. That said, the first video I opened at random[1] shows a small number of people blocking a road in what looks more like a civil war scene rather than a protest. And the authorities are greeted with "F-U" and people tossing objects at them. The people in uniforms are ordinary people. Put yourself in their shoes and tell me: having all the problems you have, seeing all the destruction, which in all cases is no longer a protest, people shouting "f-u" and throwing stuff at you: You can be the most mentally stable human being but everyone has a limit. Many of those men are possibly working overtime, in extreme conditions and I bet they would much rather be with their kids or sick parents for instance. With this idea in mind, I personally can't picture myself being able to remain calm and not overstep my boundaries sooner or later.

Now putting myself in the shoes of the protesters: seeing the same destruction, destroying of properties, cars and businesses, I'll call it a day because this is no longer a protest. I'd go back home and wait for this to be taken care of and join a civilized protest once this has been taken care of. A civilized country should be able to hold a civilized protest. And having spent most of my life in eastern Europe, you can say I know a thing or two about protests. Last large protest I was a part of was in ~2013 irrc and the aftermath was very different. The night after each of those protests, everything was spotless clean, people thew all their garbage in the bins, nothing broken or destroyed. People were coming with their children and pets and being completely comfortable with it. There was a completely unrelated incident of a gas explosion at a Chinese restaurant, which burned a nearby shop. People gathered donations fo the shop owner to recover. Incidents with police? Practically none during ~3 months of daily protest. And we are talking eastern Europe - the police officers are anything but the nicest people on the planet.

[1] [https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024](https://twitter.com/XruthxNthr/status/1266903223220097024)

<comment><USER24> I think most of what you're saying is not controversial, but I think you're missing a lot of context. Those officers, and the protestors, exist in a country that still treats black people as second-class citizens in a variety of ways. Hell, the current President spent years saying the previous (black) President was illegitimate.

You want to see the protesters and officers as equal, but they're not - <USER3> protesters are trying to change the status quo, the officers by and large want it to stay the way it is, and often want to make things worse for minorities ("Make America Great Again").

Sympathy for the officers is fine, but remember they can quit whenever they want. Black people can't quit being black.

<comment><USER25> As an outsider (maybe I am wrong) US will continue their bad treatment of 'black people' as long as you continue calling them 'black' and supporting it at the official level. It is just racial segregation in disguise.

<comment><USER24> > maybe I am wrong

Yeah, uh, I have bad news for you...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Please put the media clips into the repo. The original links will frequently disappear from the censorship platforms. Don't just link, mirror the videos.

</comment><comment><USER27> GIT (and github) is a terrible tool for general purpose collaboration of non- technical people.

Something like shared google doc would fit better.

Perhaps google docs, or other collaborative tools are actually able to scale to 30+ users? What is the largest google doc collaboration that you have seen work out?

<comment><USER28> I think Google docs has a limit of 100 concurrent users on a doc

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there a Git repo to track the stores that have been looted/burned to the ground?

<comment><USER30> Maybe they should do that, but make sure to exclude the ones that are insured. Because that's not a net loss.

Also be sure to include the ones that police are responsible for like this car that the Riverside Sherrif busted out for no reason: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_XERvsXvSU)

<comment><USER31> Its not a net loss if they have to increase their prices to pay for the new higher premiums?

These failures to understand basic economics are frightening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is awesome. However it's still pretty vague. Can there be any meaningful action from this ?

Is there a way for a civilian to get access to the officer's body camera recording and identify which cops are the trigger happy ones.

Basically a more targeted list that says "These officers violated the first amendment constitutional rights of citizens to peacefully assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances, this is the proof, please file charges".

We are protesting because the police are unaccountable for their actions. How do we move to a place where we can hold them accountable and there is a quick as fair process for justice to be served.

</comment><comment><USER33> You can also contribute to the press freedom tracker. [https://pressfreedomtracker.us/](https://pressfreedomtracker.us/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Here's a thread by T. Greg Doucette, a public defender and 1st amendment litigator who is white and conservative-leaning but who also attended an HBCU.

[https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273](https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266752393556918273)

The thread was at 185ish at last count. It has been growing since he started it on May 30.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't see the source for the linked "Web App" here; just the markdown files. Would be good to be able to contribute to that as well.

<comment><USER36> The Web App repo is here [0]

0: [https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality](https://github.com/ubershmekel/2020PoliceBrutality)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While we're on the topic, here is another useful program that removes metadata from images on github, of anyone can take the time to look over the source code and verify it does what it says that would be super useful:

[https://everestpipkin.github.io/image- scrubber/](https://everestpipkin.github.io/image-scrubber/)

</comment><comment><USER37> This is just inciting and encouraging violence against police, increasing a feud between the left and the police

</comment><comment><USER38> Just wanted to know why protests are still continuing? Aren't Police involved with the incident are charged?

<comment><USER39> The one officer who was immediately involved has been charged; the other three have not. However this case is more of the straw that broke the camel's back. It's freshest in our minds and is the face of the protests, but as a whole the protests represent decades of tensions boiling over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Why not go the other way as well, do one with how many police officers have been killed by protesters.

<comment><USER41> You're free to start one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> You people are credulous and mad. Goodbye Western civilisation.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you're going to document violence, do it on both sides and try to document without any bias. Don't let your agenda cloud your judgement about what narrative to tell.

</comment><comment><USER44> what about the looting on the street?

</comment><comment><USER45> Nice. Is there any repo that tracks all the riots?

<comment><USER16> Why do you ask, and what is your end game?

<comment><USER45> I have no end game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The organization for this repo has only 2 repositories in their github profile: this one .... and Atom the text editor. Wat.

</comment><comment><USER37> There's one from NYC that says: "A police officer forcefully pulls off a protestors face mask and pepper sprays him. The protestor had his hands up in surrender when this happened."

From [https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality/blob/master/repor...](https://github.com/2020PB/police- brutality/blob/master/reports/New%20York.md#police-pull-off-protesters-mask- to-pepper-spray-him--may-31st)

If you look at the video though the guy was pushing towards the officer against the officer's hand. What do you expect to happen when you decide to aggress on an officer instead of back away?

Here's the video they link [https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232](https://twitter.com/_doreenpt/status/1266994439039455232)

How many other incidents are there in this repo that are unfairly listed/described?

<comment><USER47> I watched that video. You have clearly mastered the application of Newton's third law, by pointing out that when someone pushes you away with their hand, you are also pushing against their hand. We only disagree about whether it's correct to pepper spray someone in the face when this happens.

<comment><USER37> The guy did not take a step or two back, like everyone else seen in the video was doing

edit: I just walked the video again. you have to be crazy if you don't think the guy was encroaching on the officer's space

<comment><USER47> I agree. We clearly have a dramatic difference of opinion about when it is a good time to pepper spray someone. I suppose the police officer in the video shares your opinion, and the authors of the document share mine.

<comment><USER13> The cops seem to have a low threshold for using it.

There was a video where a bunch of riot police were riding on the outside of an SUV. One fell off of it to the ground, got back up turned around and pepper sprayed behind him, even though there was no one behind him. There was no one moving towards him or even near him.

<comment><USER5> Truly an insane moment that really underscores the level of fear these cops are acting under. If they are that unstable, they should not be out in the field currently.

I have said this elsewhere on HN, but I think these protests would be better for everyone if police simply did not show up. I think the video we are referencing is a great example why.

<comment><USER37> Like what Minneapolis was experiencing before the National Guard came in?

<comment><USER5> The national guard is backing up the police. The police presence there was long before they came in. So yes, like Minneapolis. If the initial police response was different we could see a vastly different landscape of protests currently, but that set the tone and virtually no departments have been effective or even been trying to deescalate it seems.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Announcing the Matterport3D Dataset of Labeled 3D Spaces for Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@llebttam_45762/announcing-the-matterport3d-research-dataset-815cae932939 <comment><USER2> This is rad! Got any ideas of stuff that can be done with this using Keras?

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of things! Since 3D convolutional networks are very limited in their maximum resolution, most of the interesting things you can do involve learning on RGB+D images via a 2D CNN. A lot of tasks on images (segmentation, identification etc) are easier when you have even partial depth data as input.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you didn't see the link to the paper, it's here: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.06158.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.06158.pdf) A wide range of usecases are discussed there.</comment></comment></comment>


Bringing GitLab Pages to the Community Edition - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/12/24/were-bringing-gitlab-pages-to-community-edition/? <comment><USER2> I was looking for this feature a couple of days ago and saw it was in the EE. Which sucked for me and my tiny community- so I'm super pleased to hear this.

One of the things I'm not sure about though, is how does gitlab handle the domain per user? Do I delegate DNS to the gitlab instance itself or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear we made the right decision. We open sourced it because we learned that small organizations were interested and your comment is another indication of that.

Regarding your question. I assume you're talking about a self hosted instance that offers a FQDN (not domain) in the form of username.yourgitlabhostname.com For documentation about this please see [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/administration.html#dns- con...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/administration.html#dns- configuration)

BTW For instructions how to use your own domain see [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/README.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/README.html) "As a last step, you need to configure your DNS and add a CNAME pointing to your user/group page. Click on the Details button of a domain for further instructions."

<comment><USER3> This is great news!

I lead the "CII Best Practices Badge" project for OSS projects - if you have an OSS project, and you meet certain requirements, you can get a badge. One criterion is that "The project sites (website, repository, and download URLs) MUST support HTTPS using TLS.": [https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best- practices-badge/...](https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices- badge/blob/master/doc/criteria.md#sites_https)

I think making GitLab pages part of the community edition will make it easier to meet this criterion. Congrats, and thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I didn't consider that use case but it makes a lot of sense.

BTW I love the CII Best Practices project and GitLab is proudly wearing the badge on [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/#gitlab](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/#gitlab)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This also seems to be a direct result of GitHub's move to limiting GitHub Pages [1]

Good work, and keep it up GitLab Team! Lovely product, and well designed.

[1] - [https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-github- pages/#usage...](https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-github-pages/#usage- limits)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words!

EDIT: Job has commented in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250453)

The announcement from GitHub might have triggered us. GitHub Pages was limited about 3 days go [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227863)

Job asked for votes 3 days ago [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/14605#note_20...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/14605#note_20312668)

Looking at our internal chat logs it seems that the announcement got us thinking about pages again. But the decision to open source it was based on what kind of people used it (more small organizations than we thought, fewer large organizations than we thought).

I've asked Job to comment too.

BTW We're not sure if we'll limit GitLab.com Pages at some point, see "GitLab Pages with very high traffic (currently unlimited even in the free plan)" from [https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/#free- forever](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/#free-forever) Of course you now always have the option to host your own.

<comment><USER5> Hi sytes. Thanks so much for this. I was active on the thread trying to get it added to CE, and it makes a big difference.

One thing GL is still missing in its licensing model is a good story for my usecase. I run a GL install that's open to the public so users can report bugs in my software, but there are only 2 real "internal" users. I picked up 50 "users" last month, who just made an issue or two and drove away.

The current model forces me to choose either CE (no paid features for anyone) or EE ($1950/mo). That is what drives some of the disconnect on features like Pages, I'm not going to pay five figures a year for no matter what's in EE.

But if I could pay $300 a year, and get either some paid features, or paid features for some users, that would be pretty easy. Then there is something to do in this situation besides complain that everything isn't free, and creates more opportunities to get invested into GitLab.

As long as there's a $25,000 gap between price tiers you will have these cases where people are flamewarring about whether some feature makes it into CE.

<comment><USER6> Just to clarify, our pricing [0] is per year. So the cost for 50 users is $1950 a year, $162,50 a month for Enterprise Edition starter.

We have been thinking about a model that would allow us a more smooth ramp from CE to EE, hence the change to EE starter and Premium. However, this doesn't mean certain attractive features might still land in paid tiers.

I'd love to get more feedback on this.

[0]: [https://about.gitlab.com/products/](https://about.gitlab.com/products/)

<comment><USER5> Right, but your licensing is per user per year. I add 50 NEW users in a month. Each of them use the product for about 20 minutes, but I believe I would need to license them for an entire year.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you disable the accounts of users they no longer count towards your license. So you could consider deactivating accounts that have been inactive for more than a month. Anyway, feel free to get in touch with sales@ our domain to discuss the options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Superb. Thank you, Sytse, and have a great holiday!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear you're happy! I don't want to take credit for this, it was mostly the wider community politely asking in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/14605](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14605)

We're thankful that the conversation was data driven and everyone assumed best intentions from each other. In the last few days we released 8.15 with auto deploy and web terminal [https://about.gitlab.com/2016/12/22/gitlab-8-15-released/](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/12/22/gitlab-8-15-released/) and the company achieved its monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales goal. I can't think of a better way to celebrate and be amazed at what we did together in 2016.</comment></comment>


Google Appengine will finally get SQL store? - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/appengine/business/

<comment><USER2> > Enterprise features: Coming later this year, hosted SQL databases, SSL on > your company's domain for secure communications, and access to advanced > Google services.

[http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google- app...](http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-app-engine- for.html)

(Haha. I just noticed the May 2010 date on the blog post.)</comment>


Show HN: Buckets, our family's simple budgeting tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.bucketsisbetter.com/

<comment><USER2> Enjoyed playing with it, but have a couple thoughts:

1\. Monthly budgets may not work for everyone, if its easy I would add additional default time ranges for pay period management (2 week pay periods is common in many industries)

2\. Your landing page shows support for multiple-category tracking, but I don't see how or where it is implemented.

3\. Detail views don't appear to auto-sync with bucket changes while they are open.

4\. I couldn't figure out how to set or add a description to bucket changes. Tried "20 safeway" but it just sat there. In addition, the bucket entry textboxes can't show enough data sometimes (180.00 gets cut off, for example, in the default make it rain).

5\. Make it Rain! and Make it So! while fun were very confusing until I watched your video about their purpose.

6\. Adding an account doesn't seem to add anything to the system.

7\. Really like the total line at the bottom of the page and the animations/visuals that help show state changes, I think this and the simplicity are your main benefits.

Hope you find the comments useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the detailed feedback.

Re 1, what do _you_ do? 2 week pay periods?

I'll work on 2-5.

What do you mean by 6? What did you expect to happen when you added an account?

Thanks!

<comment><USER2> I get paid 1st and 15th, my wife (RN) every 2 weeks.

Per 6: not sure what I expected, just didn't find a particular use for the function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback you have about any aspect of this project is appreciated.</comment>


Facebook bans those with funny names - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/25/facebook-bans-funny-names

<comment><USER2> This is so silly, there are A LOT of people with unusual or fake-sounding names. A funny one I remember from personal experience...I used to work in a sporting goods store and one day when I was ringing up customers a man handed me his credit card to pay and the name on the card caught my eye, in raised gold letters: "MR. WANG DONG." ;p

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh goodness, I imagine I might face some confusion and trouble ahead!

-Sir Awesome Podcast Jellybeer Happyduck Bottom III

</comment><comment><USER4> In other news, Facebook was the luckiest rather than the best duck in the pond, and it shows in the choices they make.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I still liked using it best pre-apps. It was a fast, legible, efficient, all-around pleasant to use myspace alternative. Between the endless invites, long, messy pages, pointless add-ons, and now the poorly received redesign it does feel like a long time since they've actually made any good changes.

<comment><USER5> what is everyones problem with the redesign anyways?

<comment><USER2> That's actually a good question. I haven't been on facebook much in a while but last night I decided to go and investigate the situation. I was actually pretty impressed by how things have changed and I think I'll be logging on more often.

As for the recent redesign, they had to do something to get everyone's profile organized, readable, and consistent again (while still giving people the ability to customize things and add apps) and they actually did a really fine job. It may be a little confusing and disorienting at first when you're expecting everything to be on a single page, but once you realize your profile is now made up of several different distinct pages (wall, info, etc.) it makes perfect sense and works smoothly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry but I didn't understand any of that.

Can some one translate?</comment>


Coronavirus Mortality Rate - <AUTHOR> https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/ <comment><USER2> Okay, I have been following this closely as I follow JS libraries and this is the headline: The virus seems to require intensive care to some subset of the infected people and deaths occur when that care is not given in timely manner. That means it's mortality rate increases dramatically when your patient care infrastructure gets saturated.

<comment><USER3> Eloquently put. Agree 100%. The logical conclusion then is to ramp up your patient care infrastructure proactively: identity and clear the bottlenecks.

<comment><USER4> This leads to situations a society has to be willing to accept without crying how much money is wasted - namely: You _will_ have empty beds/hospital wings/hospitals most of the time. And people _will_ sit around doing 'nothing' aka training for the day when they are needed.

I'm not convinced that the current political climate in either Europe or America is prepared to do that.

<comment><USER5> > And people will sit around doing 'nothing' aka training for the day when > they are needed.

This is already an accurate description of most fire departments and militaries around the world. It shouldn't be too hard to accept that a similar necessity of spare capacity occurs for healthcare.

<comment><USER6> You are woefully underestimating the size of healthcare compares to emergency services. Neither emergency services nor the military are slack. They are both scaled for sustained operations; peak utilization is made up by volunteers or allied forces/departments.

BLS says there are 334K at firefighters at $49k/yr.

There are 240k NPs at $113k/ye, 3M RNs at $71k/yr, 728K licensed nurses at $46k/yr, 300K lab techs at $52k/yr, and 1.5M NAs at $28k/yr. Go ahead and double that coat when you include MDs and Admin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Watching this closely based in Singapore, the true mortality rate is probably an order of magnitude lower

a) The stats coming from Hubei are adverse selected; they are from patients who already had severe enough illness to go to the hospital

b) A vast amount of mild cases are not diagnosed or tested, this is for reasons related to self reporting and minimal screening efforts globally

c) The virus spreads rapidly (R0 of 4 in some estimates) and has had 3 months to sweep through Wuhan ; there appears to be a lot of death in Wuhan but that may be because most of the 11 million population was exposed

Maybe I'm confirming a bias, but I believe its true profile is something like a more rapidly moving seasonal flu

<comment><USER8> They're also selected for people who made it to a hospital. The most frail types, or those who got sick after hospitals were filling up, could have died without ever getting to a hospital, and not even be counted yet.

<comment><USER7> Agreed but even if you think the real Wuhan death count is 10x the official (ie. ~10K deaths in Wuhan), there's still an order of magnitude lower mortality rate assuming there's been widespread exposure in the 3 months

<comment><USER9> We don't know the actual death toll in Wuhan. The number we get is people who were diagnosed and then were determined to have died of the disease. What we'd really like to know is simply how many people have died of any cause, and then subtract a base rate. The total deaths figure is not being provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of discussion seems to highlight the problem of unreported cases, but surely this is a problem for all diseases, not just novel ones.

Are there any epidemiologists here to answer how we account for unreported cases of e.g. flu in mortality rates? And if we don't, is it reasonable to ignore unreported cases of coronavirus as well, to compare like with like, or is there some factor I'm missing?

<comment><USER11> That is correct, though I'm not an epidemiologist. The number is estimated using statistical models, such as SEIR and others. [http://www.public.asu.edu/~hnesse/classes/seir.html](http://www.public.asu.edu/~hnesse/classes/seir.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The more I read about this, the more I wonder about the reliability of mortality rates generally. Or at least, for diseases where diagnosis depends on DNA-based testing.

I mean, it seems likely that pretty much everyone who dies will be tested. Except for victims of auto accidents or whatever.

But it also seems likely that many with minimal symptoms won't be tested. Perhaps because hospitals are so busy that people can't be bothered. Or maybe because people are afraid of hospitals, because they're full of sick people. Or simply because there's inadequate testing capability.

So isn't it likely that mortality will always be overestimated for such specific diseases? As opposed to, for example, auto accidents or falls.

<comment><USER13> From what I've read it's highly unlikely the dead will be tested. Just cremate them and move on.

At least, that's what it seems like with all the tales of death certificates with cause of death as "Unknown viral pneumonia"

<comment><USER14> > From what I've read it's highly unlikely the dead will be tested.

Not only that, but are the Chinese authorities going to accurately report that numbers?

<comment><USER15> At this point, I'm not sure to see any reason for them to lie about it except for the force of habit.

<comment><USER16> Another reason would be that on a day-to-day basis it's easier to say "yeah we had 100 deaths yesterday" than it is to say "we've been lying, there were 1,000 deaths yesterday and 10,000 so far with 500,000 infected in Wuhan by our estimates". Which would probably also cause a wee bit of panic, too.

If that's actually the case, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The ongoing nightmare of the cruise ship in japan will provide a worst case unbiased example not tainted by the reliability of Chinese reporting. I just hope that most of them will escape what looks to me like my personal nightmare.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. The quarantined cruise ship is, sadly, an excellent inadvertent experiment for us.

It won't help much with the R0 calculation, but it will give us a good idea for mortality, though it might take 3 weeks to get that number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this website not look a little suspicious ?

It is hard to find an actual name of a person behind this site. When I go to faq -> "Who .." there is another company called "Dadax" listed, but no link. odd

I am asking because people have sent me other suspicious sites over the last few weeks (wuflu.live).

I am not denying the virus, just questioning things on the internet.

<comment><USER18> I am loath to use my real name on absolutely anything I put online. ...and frankly, I do not understand people that do.

There are crazy people on the internet, and many of them love to hold a grudge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The initial death rates were shocking. The reproduction R0 number seemed high. This was a very contagious virus. The world went into a panic. And rumors, conspiracy theories, and bad science didn't help (the German and Indian papers).

But what was really behind the numbers. Was it old people that were dying? Was it middle aged and young people? Was this some kind of stealthy virus that creeps up on you, and then just kills you?

It's possible that it was a lack of medical facilities and equipment, that contributed to the crisis, and thus, contributed to the high initial death rates.

For example, when people started getting sick. The first batch went to the ICU, and took up available beds and medical facilities. These people had the highest chance of surviving. But then, the next wave came in and created the beginning of the crisis, and swamped the system. Then, the third wave came in and totally overwhelmed the system, that the hospitals couldn't help them at all. They were turned away, and left to fend for themselves. These people started dying in their homes.

The system suffered such a massive denial of service attack, that it was impossible to help and provide service to everyone. Thus this created the shockingly high mortality rate during the initial days of the crisis.

If we are lucky, then this might remain true. So in other parts of the world with more medical facilities, knowing this might save people, and give them a higher chance of surviving this virus.

Stay strong, Wuhan!

Wuhan, Jaiyou!

</comment><comment><USER21> For "realtime" numbers there is a chinese web-page which shows the mortality rate is of the order 2% and the new infections in Hubei are decreasing. (Google translate is your friend.)

[https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia](https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not an expert by any means but I suspect that the Mortality rate is lower than what they have said.

We've been told that the majority of people will get very mild symptoms if they have it. So the actual number of people that have been infected is way higher since many will never even think of going to a doctor.

So the 2-3% case fatality rate is higher than the actual number. If the number of deaths is correct or close to correct.

The scary part is that the virus is so easily spread between humans so the number of deaths will skyrocket when compared to other epidemics. Let's hope they bring it under control soon and there's a vaccine in the near future.

<comment><USER23> The scary part is "acute cardiac injury" being a frequent complication. The virus causes heart attacks!

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30183-5/fulltext)

"Complications included acute respiratory distress syndrome (12 [29%]), RNAaemia (six [15%]), acute cardiac injury (five [12%]) and secondary infection (four [10%]). 13 (32%) patients were admitted to an ICU and six (15%) died."

<comment><USER24> (from the article) 80% of people who died were over 60 years old and 75% had underlying health conditions including cardiovascular problems, so the fact that the virus caused fatal cardiovascular events in some of those cases is not unexpected.

<comment><USER8> About 80% of Americans over 60 have cardiovascular problems, compared to a third of elderly Chinese people. That stat indicates that fatality rates could be higher in the US (and other western countries, although I don't have those numbers immediately) than China.

[https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart- public/@wcm/@sop/@smd...](https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart- public/@wcm/@sop/@smd/documents/downloadable/ucm_483970.pdf)

[https://www.jwatch.org/na48562/2019/03/05/china- cardiovascul...](https://www.jwatch.org/na48562/2019/03/05/china- cardiovascular-epidemic-warning-bell)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The TL;DR;

Initial estimates of mortality rate are all over the place due to uncertainty in the data sets.

That said, the best estimate at the moment is around 2-3% and is subject to change as more data comes in.

<comment><USER26> Yes. By comparison:

\--- Mortality rate ---

1918 Spanish Flu: 10-20%

2020 Coronavirus: 2-3% est.

1968 Hong Kong Flu: 0.5%

\</comment></comment><comment>--

The realization that China censors heavily makes both accurate, timely and complete reporting of facts much more difficult. Intermediaries are used to exfil data to Western journalists, but this is haphazard, slow and incomplete. A journalist who has contacts on the ground described the situation, including that a few bodies on the streets and in crashed vehicles (people who were too sick who failed to make it to a hospital) in central Wuhan were not being collected: [https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/7/laurie_garrett_china_c...](https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/7/laurie_garrett_china_coronavirus_response) We may never know the exact numbers because it's likely face-saving deception will be used for geopolitical and local political concerns.

<comment><USER27> I was looking up the current flu season in the US here: [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm)

It says the mortality rate is 7.1%. Does that make the current flu in the US much worse than the Coronavirus?

<comment><USER28> That's not the mortality rate but the ratio against overall deaths. it says: "The percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 7.1%, below the epidemic threshold of 7.2%."

<comment><USER29> Ha, right. The completely standard and obvious threshold of 7.2% to declare an epidemic...

Seems like the number is chosen so that you can say an epidemic is anything worse than the flu?

<comment><USER28> I was just quoting, but also wondered about that seemingly random threshold. Looks like a crude measure

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The mortality rate, as calculated by trivial formula, has stayed close to 2% for a couple of weeks now.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's interesting that MERS was about twice as deadly as the Spanish Flu. I guess because it happened in a certain part of the world, the Western media just decided it wasn't worthy of wall-to-wall Snowpocalypse yellow journalism.

<comment><USER5> MERS had apparently a low infectivity, making it a low level threat to the rest of the world.

<comment><USER26> It's difficult to say that because it was still transmitted to people more easily than Ebola. And the data and research show MERS isn't going away; bats maybe its natural reservoir. Pretending it doesn't exist or not doing anything about is playing Russian roulette with public health. If the US Army Corps of Engineers can eliminate malaria from the southern US, maybe a vaccine can be developed for the natural host and domesticated animals to prevent the risk to humans.</comment></comment></comment>


AdBlock Plus Now Illegal in Germany - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fmeedia.de%2F2016%2F06%2F24%2Faxel-springer-vs-eyeo-olg-koeln-erklaert-geschaeftsmodell-von-adblock-plus-fuer-rechtswidrig%2F&edit-text=&act=url <comment><USER2> Please note the court explicitly considers ad blocking legal. This is about ABP's "acceptable apps" program.

</comment><comment><USER3> HN headline is click-bait. The article's headline is: "Axel Springer vs. Eyeo: OLG Köln stated business model of AdBlock Plus unlawful".

So this _only_ concerns Eyeo and its "pay us, or nobody will see your ads" business model. Adblocking is legal. Even using ABP is legal.

Much ado about nothing, unless you're Eyeo.

Edit: This isn't even about adblocking, but about anti-competitive behavior: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gesetze- im-internet.de%2Fuwg_2004%2F__4a.html&edit-text=)

The lawsuit has been going on since at least 2014. Here are some comments by a German lawyer on it: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.internet- law.de%2F2014%2F12%2Fsind-adblocker-wettbewerbswidrig.html&edit-text=)

<comment><AUTHOR> Article says "the OLG forbade the distribution of Adblock Plus", headline says Adblock Plus is illegal.

<comment><USER4> Weird and silly mismatch. Might as well write a headline saying "Sex is illegal in Texas" because the article says that it's illegal to offer up services as a prostitute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can the title be changed to "Whitelisting by adblock plus declared illegal in Germany" to stop the confusion.

</comment><comment><USER6> What if I run my own DNS aggregator (dnsmasq, say), and send the most egregious advertisers to 127.0.0.1 via DNS lookup?

Does that count as an "ad blocker"?

See:

[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts) [http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

Someone told me it was pretty effective to do this.

<comment><USER7> > and send the most egregious advertisers to 127.0.0.1 via DNS lookup?

I've done this with my local HOST file and its only moderately effective. The problem is that 127.0.0.1 never replies and the timeout period causes the page load to stall.

If I knew how I'd redirect requests to a local IP running a webserver that replies 410-Gone, 202-Accepted, 200-OK (or whatever code necessary) to any and all requests so the requesting page moves on and doesn't stall. If I was even more talented I could set up a public webserver and share it with the world so we could all point to it and block these ad servers that are ruining the internet.

NB: I'm not opposed to ads but the marketers need to realize the WWW is not TV and stop forcing unwanted, irritating and obnoxious ads and auto-play videos.

<comment><USER3> _> The problem is that 127.0.0.1 never replies and the timeout period causes the page load to stall._

You could try 0.0.0.0.

<comment><USER7> Would that reply to HTTP requests or still timeout?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> see also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945836)

</comment><comment><USER8> Yeah, let them try to detect I'm using adblocker :-) And what will prevent community from developing same thing under different name?

\-- Edit -- funny to find out this bothered somebody enough to down vote. Probably some German bureaucrat unhappy somebody's flagging dead laws before they are pushed through people's throats :-)

<comment><USER9> You obviously didn't read the article, but the terrible headline is at least partly to blame for this.

<comment><USER8> Well, I did not - shame on me :-) Though didn't think the title could be that far from actual content.</comment></comment></comment>


Nate Silver on how ignoring math skews political journalism - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/welcome-and-welcome-back/ <comment><USER2> Politics is entertainment. No matter how slam-dunk an election may be, networks have an incentive to make it look like a photo-finish, in order to make the viewing experience intense and drive viewer engagement. If you say "yeah, it's pretty much over by this point," your viewers have no reason to tune in for the rest of the week. If you say "it's so close, absolutely anything could tip the scales," people will keep watching your live coverage of butterflies in China.

Tangent: I first realize this before I was of voting age, watching the same thing unfold on an episode of Survivor. For extra credit, describe how reality television and political election coverage have influenced each other in recent years.

<comment><USER3> I wonder to what degree that's US specific. I just don't seem to see the same thing happening here in Germany. Our campaigns are much shorter and we have less of them, also no 24 hour news channels (none that count, nothing like what you have in the US).

Coverage about the election is still dominated by the big public broadcasters and seems a lot less hectic. All not very entertaining, if you ask me.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it depends on what relationship you have with your government. Americans like to see their presidents, in particular, as Bold Heroes Leading The Free World...to do something, at least, whether it's building the Panama Canal or winning a war or sending men to the moon. We carve their faces into fucking mountainsides over here. Americans really want inspirational leaders who can be larger-than-life figures boldly changing history by sheer force of will.

There's no tactful way to say this, but the last time Germany tried electing a bold, larger-than-life leader looking to change the course of history by sheer force of will, it didn't turn out too well. So I'm not surprised German culture has somewhat shied away from that tendency.

Frankly I'd be happy if Americans were satisfied with electing dull but competent administrators rather than trying to look for epic historical figures. It gets the expectations all out of whack, and leads people who aren't up to it into making poor judgments.

<comment><USER5> It's not a German thing. It's the same across Europe, certainly in countries that don't have a popularly elected head of state (the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, ...). Maybe it's just a Presidential thing? An election with one winner is probably more entertaining than an election where the most exciting outcome is party X gaining a slightly higher percentage than expected.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure about that--none of the fascist leaders were actually the head of state of their countries, at least to begin with (Germany had a ceremonial President, Italy and Spain had kings). You can get the same aspirational voting for a PM or Chancellor as you can for a President. But it's possible that Europe as a whole is cynical on having the kind of aspirational leaders Americans always try and go for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Political journalism is surely more skewed by predicting or speculating on who WILL win elections, instead of asking who SHOULD win.

<comment><USER7> I am reminded of an article on Ars Technica (POTUS 2008: Are you ready for some football?) from a few years ago about how political coverage has become more and more like sports coverage. It's clichéd, but I agree that the media should focus much more on the matters being discussed than on the people discussing them. At best, this personality-driven media obfuscates the issues. At worst, it tolerates and even encourages dishonesty.

As much as I enjoy and even respect what Nate Silver has done, he drives this "who's winning the race" style coverage nearly to its logical extreme.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely; I expect I'd enjoy Nate Silver's blog a lot less if I was American.</comment></comment></comment>


A Look at Stuxnet, the World's First Digital Weapon - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/ <comment><USER2> This is quite important for the current debates we're having. If you look at the news media, or the Hacker News front page for that matter, you stumble upon articles accusing China and Russia to hack into foreign governments regularly. Similarly, China and other asian countries are often accused of adding backdoors to their hardware (e.g., routers, switches, telco equipment). The only* backdoors ever found in hardware were found in hardware build by US- based companies. And, of course, Stuxnet is the first example of governments (USA and Israel) attacking a foreign country's critical infrastructure with a "digital weapon." I'm not sure how to feel about that.

*I'm not sure this is still true today

\---

Let me add that, when it comes to topics like this one we should probably stick to what we know for sure. Figuring out if code is a backdoor or a bug is already hard enough (not always though). The same goes for attacks. Governments accuse each other of doing a lot of things, and fortunately, sometimes they even admit that they make these claims up.

Oh and please don't take my word for any of this. There are well known and respected people who speak very openly about these topics on conferences like CCC, DEFCON, etc.

<comment><USER3> _I 'm not sure how to feel about that._

I know how I feel about it: I would much rather wars were fought with code and robots than with tanks and bayonets. And I would rather those than CBRN weapons!

Certain countries were _going_ to neutralize that facility. Had to, for survival reasons. The only real question is . . . how? They could have picked a full-scale war. They could have precision-bombed the facility. They could have assassinated the workers. These solutions have all been chosen in the past, in similar scenarios. By comparison with the other options available, Stuxnet achieved the goal in an extremely civilized manner, with no loss of life.

They say the purpose of war is to kill people and break things, but really it isn't -- it's to accomplish objectives, to make people do what you want. The killing and breaking is really just a way to make objectives happen. And the better targeted your weapons are, the better you can make what you want to happen happen with less and less extra mess. Cyberweapons are some of the best targeted things ever dreamed of in the history of warfare. You can disable infrastructure without going within miles of harming a human on either side, military or otherwise. I am a big fan.

<comment><USER4> Like civilians don't need "infrastructure" or "aren't harmed" by its loss... I'd say stick to your day-job or whatever.

Drone warfare is a horrible new twist on the human tradition of killing each other over pettiness. There is nothing good about it.

<comment><USER3> _I 'd say stick to your day-job or whatever._

You know, this is an example of the sort of vacuous insult that I don't expect to see on HN -- or at least, didn't expect to see a few years ago. Every time I come by here, I'm disappointed afresh by the community, and I find myself visiting and participating less and less frequently. :(

I disagree with a lot of what you said, and can give you a serious response if you want one -- but from your tone, I strongly suspect you don't.

<comment><USER2> What upsets me the most is that these kind of personal attacks delegitimise the entire argument (which happens to be my argument too). Fortunately, there still are a couple of people here who know the difference between "not condemning" and "advocating."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about the bogus code that supposedly led to a Soviet gas pipeline explosion years ago?

<comment><USER6> I thought those were more like faulty engineering blueprints

<comment><USER7> Looks more like SCADA software than plans:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's one of the Siemens forum threads where apparently stux is first encountered by engineers.

[https://www.automation.siemens.com/forum/guests/PostShow.asp...](https://www.automation.siemens.com/forum/guests/PostShow.aspx?PostID=250319&Language=en&PageIndex=1)

<comment><USER9> Wow... forget dog, I guess nobody on the internet knows if you're an Iranian nuclear engineer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One interesting thing about Stuxnet is that it targeted Win2000 but was only discovered just after it went out of support.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure how relevant this is given that people claim the purpose of Stuxnet was to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Facilities like that usually aren't allowed to install software updates anyway. The reason is certification. They install certified software on a machine, and then it gets locked away and nobody is allowed to touch it. Then again, I don't know if this is true for Iran as much as it is for western countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have lost the ability to read a long piece. I feel frustrated when I go to the news site and I am presented with a 'narrative' that seems to hide the real information. I need a paragraph that tells me straight forward what this weapon is about, not a long, obfuscated narrative. It's my fault, I'm not complaining.

<comment><USER12> I think I know why you're getting down-voted, but it's an interesting and real issue.

If you go a while, mostly digesting only tiny chunks of information, your brain optimizes around that and eventually becomes bad at dealing with longer narratives. (Aside: sometimes those narratives are worthwhile, other times they seem like they're just filler to make editors and publishers happy. But that's beside the point.)

It's also something we seem to be losing as a society.

The good news is, at least in my own experience, it's a skill we can develop (and it's closely related to attention span). When I buckle down and read complex texts for non-Internet periods of time (20-30 minutes), I quickly regain my speed and comprehension. But I find it important to deliberately exercise that part of my brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "An look"? Not a native speaker, but shouldn't it be "A look"?

<comment><USER14> I imagine the short limit to titles' lengths forced an omission: An _Unprecedented_ Look at Stuxnet...</comment></comment>


Cannot log into Twitter - <AUTHOR> All queries return 200, but you get a big blue page with:<p>"Something is technically wrong." <comment><USER2> same here!</comment>


Ask HN: Should Rust be displacing Java and C# in enterprise domain? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Why would it?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the trillion dollar platinum coin? - <AUTHOR>

I just saw a few articles, stating, that white house  is considering minting a 1 trillion dollar (wtf?) platinum coin. So my question is, what is it? and is it legit? what are the pro's and con's ? <comment><USER2> There are laws concerning how much money the government is allowed to print. The odd thing though is it is by material, so much paper, gold, copper, and silver money. There is a loophole in so far as it doesn't mention how much platinum money can be printed(not sure you would call it a loop hole since it also doesn't mention how much green cheese money can be made). So the proposal is to print their way out of the debt crisis. It isn't a serious proposal as it would cause insane amounts of inflation(other countries that have tried it have hit inflation rates above 100% a year). The white house has officially come out against it.

[http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/01/white-house- den...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/01/white-house-denies-call- for-trillion-dollar-coin-to-avoid-debt-ceiling/)

<comment><USER3> No offense, but that answer was wrong in every respect. There's a law that allows the Treasury to mint platinum coins of any denomination. It only mentions platinum. It wouldn't print the way out of the debt crisis. It's just an accounting trick that also wouldn't cause inflation.

<comment><USER2> None taken, I only know the little I have read about it in the papers. Though I am not sure how you can increase the money supply by a trillion dollars and not see any inflation. While the coin may never go into circulation it would be on the books and spent as if it was otherwise there would be no point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The trillion dollar coin is a speculative idea that will not happen in reality. It has been all over the news in the United States during the last week.

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=trillion+dollar+coin&oq=trillion+dollar+coin)</comment>