Storing Your Data Securely: A Primer - <AUTHOR> https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/blog/store-data-securely-encryption-hashing-how-to-guide

<comment><USER2> Not related to the article, but the source:

Having my email address on my blog is a vulnerability. Another vulnerability is named 'Rudimentary Scan', meaning 'we looked, and your site has no client- side vulnerabilities'. These issues mean my blog is 'borderline unsafe'. Wut.

Neither of these are vulnerabilities; to call them such does a disservice to your customer's understanding of technical language.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, perhaps it's a little unclear.

Rudimentary Scan means you ran a scan from our homepage, pre-verification, and we couldn't run our full suite of modules. All that is saying is that now since you're verified you should re-run a scan which will look for quite a bit more. We figured putting it there would be the best way of not giving a false sense of security from our 'rudimentary scan.' We make it 'borderline unsafe' so as to prevent that false sense of security. I can totally understand your confusion, and we should make this clearer. Ideas / feedback are always appreciated. :)

The email address is an informational vulnerability, which is dismissible.

Does that clarify things? (cofounder of Tinfoil)

<comment><USER2> If I were you, I would put the full scan at the end of the setup workflow (straight after verification), so that by the time the user gets to their report, you have full results for them.

<comment><USER3> Feedback appreciated. We're rethinking the whole flow, and we'll definitely try to make sure it's clearer. The intentions were good, I promise. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a security guru, but the most common scenario (even today, that big data and NoSQL/Graph dbs thrive) is a website running on a SQL (with some additional memcached/Redis or Mongo?).

Say I encrypt the entries... Since the database runs in local host, if the host is compromised and subsequently 'rooted', what exactly does database encryption offer?

The intruder will sniff/find the encryption key(s) since the key must be somewhere inside the application or in memory (don't know how, but I'm sure it's possible) in order to be able to decrypt data on the fly. The way I see it it's just added complexity for the admin with no gain.

Is there any way of defending an SQL database even when the host is compromised?

<comment><USER5> Simplest solution to fix this is to change "Since the database runs in local host". Otherwise, it depends on the extent of the compromise. If the attacker got root access, then all of the data is compromised. Note: you can minimize the effects of this compromise by doing one of a few things: storing the hash of data (e.g. with passwords) so that the original data is still (relatively) safe, or you could also have the data encrypted with another key (e.g. if it is a credit card number) that does not reside on the local machine. If the attacker has not gotten root access, you can use different users to separate what potential data the attacker has access to.

<comment><USER6> I think that it's probably safer to assume that if the attacker controls a local user account, escalating that to root privs "isn't that difficult." I see such comments all of the time here by people that should know about security.

Separating concerns be user account has its uses (e.g. sandboxing an app from accidentally screwing with files it doesn't need access to), but I don't think you necessarily want it as the linchpin of your encryption strategy.

<comment><USER5> That is not a fair assumption. The reason being that you know nothing about the type of vulnerability that they are exploiting. For example, if the site has a SQL injection attack, user separation in the database would prove quite useful.

> but I don't think you necessarily want it as the linchpin of your encryption > strategy.

Its not about having one thing at "the linchpin". In fact, you should not rely on any singular thing, but rather separate out pieces of information so that no part has more than it needs. The test user should not have access to the production database and vice versa. In sum, you should use multiple things to defend yourself, not just one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A semi-interesting, completely off topic note on something I just learned after walking the earth for 28 years. The word "primer" as it is used here is actually pronounced primmer and not PRIMEr. Apparently the origins of both words are pretty unrelated.

<comment><USER3> OED accepts both pronunciations. Apparently "primmer" is the British way of pronouncing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _These functions belong to a family of functions known as key derivation > functions: they use hashing to produce a digest which is suitable for use as > a password hash._

KDFs are not for storing password hashes, they are for _key derivation._ This is a subtle point, the main thing is to use KDFs as KDFs (to derive keys that are then used to encrypt data). Details in the first link here (the second is about common mistakes when using scrypt):

\- [http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2014/03/why-i-dont-recommend- scryp...](http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2014/03/why-i-dont-recommend-scrypt.html) (bad title, he's referring to pass storage, not KDF usage)

\- [http://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2014/04/fairy-tales-in- password...](http://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2014/04/fairy-tales-in-password- hashing-with.html)

Another consideration is plausible deniability (PD) for situations where you're compelled to disclose your password(s). Our company writes Mac encryption software that specializes in this (and it uses scrypt). Here's a list of tools that offer PD (ours is called Espionage):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption#Software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption#Software)

I compared Espionage's PD to TrueCrypt's on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/2b5icu/major_advan...](http://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/2b5icu/major_advancements_in_deniable_encryption_arrive/cj24a1n)

<comment><USER9> The first of these two source suggests that with typical settings, due to a quirk with the way scrypt works, it's less secure than bcrypt.

The second criticizes an API design with the scrypt code.

Neither makes a case that password-based KDFs are "not for storing password hashes".

Using a good password KDF as a password authenticator is a fine decision.

<comment><USER8> > _The second criticizes an API design with the scrypt code._

Yes, I didn't claim otherwise.

> _Neither makes a case that password-based KDFs are "not for storing password > hashes"._

The first one did quite explicitly for scrypt: "And that's why I don't recommend it for password storage."

> _Using a good password KDF as a password authenticator is a fine decision._

Apparently not so for scrypt, and scrypt is the best KDF I'm aware of (heard something about yescrypt being better but haven't had a chance to look into it).

I don't see why a KDF is needed for password storage. What's wrong with SHA256 + random salt? If for some reason you want a slow hash function, use the salt MOD some constant to do several rounds of SHA256 (though I don't see why that would be necessary).

<comment><USER10> You mention yescrypt as an example of a good KDF, but its main design goal is to be a password hashing function!

The main difference between a password-based KDF and a password hashing function is that the KDF usually needs to support variable-length output. Otherwise they perform the same task: take a secret string of low-entropy s, and stretch the cost of breaking it to 2^(s + w) for some work factor w. In other words, a KDF is a superset of a password hashing function, and it's OK to use it as one.

<comment><USER8> > _You mention yescrypt as an example of a good KDF, but its main design goal > is to be a password hashing function!_

I mentioned I'd heard it was a good KDF (not a good password storage function). I didn't know that was its main purpose. Thanks, will need to read more about it.

Still, there's marginal returns on how much w can be increased while keeping the KDF useful, right? There's only so much magic they can do for a weak password.

The article on scrypt being a poor candidate for password storage stuck out in my memory. I haven't seen or heard of the practice of strong hash function + random salt for password storage falling out of favor, so I didn't look into using other KDFs for that purpose.

EDIT: it does seem like a trade off. This article seems to have a good explanation of it: [https://crackstation.net/hashing- security.htm](https://crackstation.net/hashing-security.htm)

        If you use a key stretching hash in a web application, be aware that you
        will need extra computational resources to process large volumes of
        authentication requests, and that key stretching may make it easier to run
        a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on your website. I still recommend using
        key stretching, but with a lower iteration count. You should calculate the
        iteration count based on your computational resources and the expected
        maximum authentication request rate. The denial of service threat can be
        eliminated by making the user solve a CAPTCHA every time they log in.
        Always design your system so that the iteration count can be increased or
        decreased in the future.

I do stand corrected about KDFs not being OK for password storage. Seems like they can be overkill in some situations, but in general do a good job of protecting passwords.

<comment><USER10> Yes, realistically you can only add at most ~30 bits of security to a password. This does not save very poor passwords, but can save decent ones.

'Strong' means different things in different contexts. SHA-256, for example, is a strong hash function: it has good preimage and collision resistance. However, a function is evaluated by its weakest point: when given a low- entropy secret (which is _not_ the assumption in a strong hash function) and a strong hash function, the easiest attack is to bruteforce it by sampling its distribution (e.g., the most common password patterns).

Since SHA-256 is fast, bruteforce is naturally also fast: the average time-to- break for a string of entropy s is 2^(s-1) times the cost of a SHA-256 evaluation. You can build on this by, say, iterating on SHA-256:

        def pwdhash(input, salt, w):
            h = sha256(salt + input).digest()
            for i in range(2**w):
                h = sha256(h).digest()
            return h

But once you get into these ad hoc schemes to make the password hash less amenable to bruteforce, you're basically reinventing PBKDF2. scrypt (and bcrypt, to some extent) is like the above, but also uses random memory accesses on a large buffer to make things harder for specialized hardware (think GPUs, FPGAs, etc).

<comment><USER5> > Yes, realistically you can only add at most ~30 bits of security to a > password.

This sentence makes no sense to me. tptacek, correct me if I'm wrong, but Im pretty sure you can increase w to be as large as you want (i.e. the keyspace is large enough that youll be waiting years for a singular hash to finish before you wrap the whole keyspace). The only problem is that you force legitimate users to wait as well.

Let make up an extreme example to illustrate, you set w so that a hash takes 1 years - 1 day to compute on the clients machine. Also, they change passwords every year. (Yes, this is absurd because it means that the client can only work one day a year). Now, lets assume that he uses one of five-hundred passwords. If the attacker has 100x the compute power of the client, he will only have a 20% chance of getting the correct password. And that is with only roughly 9 bits of entropy.

<comment><USER9> Take anything 'pbsd writes to the bank. The problem here is that adding enough cost to add significantly more difficulty than that to a password quickly takes you to places where the real-world cost is infeasible.

(He's not arguing against using KDF-like constructions to store password authenticators).

<comment><USER5> I've actually wanted to ask you about: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8088253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8088253) but I cant reply yet. If that ever actually became an issue, could it be solved by instead having the client send (2 ^ w) - 1 rounds of the hash and having the server do the last round? My reasoning is that the client would have to brute force the full hash space if they wanted to reverse only the last round instead of trying to brute force the password.

<comment><USER11> one possible reason this doesn't work: A limit on the number of iterations for a password hash is the amount of latency the user is willing to accept, which is (approximately) constant regardless of whether those iterations are computed on the client or the server</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The scientific way to train white people to stop being racist - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/656159/the-scientific-way-to-train-white-people-to-stop-being-racist/ <comment><USER2> The best way I've heard of to train people to not be racist is Jane Elliott's "Blue eyes–Brown eyes" exercise[1][2]. Some things have to be _personally experienced_ , so this exercise uses eye-color as a proxy for race.

Carefully guided by the teacher, elementary school kids fall immediately into tribal in-group/out-group behavior. With just a few comments from the teacher, the kids invent their own reasons why their {blue,brown}-eyed classmates must be "inferior".

When asked twenty years later, most of the students specifically remembered the lesson and credited it as an important foundation for their later development.

[1] [http://www.janeelliott.com/](http://www.janeelliott.com/)

[2] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class- divided/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Part of "white privilege" is not having to give a shit about race. Race isn't a problem for white people, and there's nothing to be gained (but potentially much to lose) from them engaging in pre-loaded conversations about it. Live life, be happy, and shut the fuck up when your input isn't wanted.

</comment><comment><USER4> "refers to white people's low emotional tolerance for discussing topics of race and racism"

We can't really discuss race. As soon as we do and anything is brought into the discussion that does not conform to the current progressive narrative, we are called 'racist', shouted down, and ignored. This might have to do with the low 'tolerance' when discussing 'race'.

Having these discussions online with your name attached will most likely lead to your firing or a relentless group of 'activists' that go to your boss, your friends, or your co-workers and attempt to ruin your life. There are countless examples of this behavior happening in the last couple of years, all in the name of 'tolerance'.

Sorry, but this will never be discussed openly and honestly until we stop giving the online/offline bullies the power to ruin a person's life because they are unwilling to have an actual adult discussion and are offended by anything that goes against their own personal views.

'safe spaces' is a perfect example of this pervasive and destructive cultural shift.</comment>


5G signal could jam satellites that help with weather forecasting - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/04/5g-mobile-networks-threat-to-world-weather-forecasting <comment><USER2> This is an enormous problem given climate change and biodiversity loss, weather forecasting will be essential to reduce the loss of life in the event of natural disasters.

Recent history has shown us the natural disasters are becoming stronger and more frequent (the very recent cyclones spring).

Any 5G engineers here who could comment on how this could be resolved?</comment>


Apple looking to douse Kindle Fire with 8-inch iPad  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/14/apple-looking-to-douse-kindle-fire-with-8-inch-ipad/ <comment><USER2> Based on Apple's previous releases I just don't see this going through. It seems a bit excessive to create a product that fits in between the size of an iPod & an iPad.</comment>


How some people stay motivated at work when they don't love their jobs - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/999209/how-some-people-stay-motivated-and-energized-at-work-even-when-they-dont-love-their-jobs/ <comment><USER2> There's the well-known Simpson's image _" do it for her"_[1].

I'm confused as to who he's writing for as it seems very obvious that many people get "motivated" for work they don't enjoy because they have to support their family.

For example, every time the word _" passion"_ is thrown around on HN, it will incite people to respond: _" fuck passion... I just want to work my 40 hours and go home and spend time with my family."_

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/7MkgTGT.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/7MkgTGT.jpg)

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

<comment><USER3> There is also the faction of people who resent having to take a job they dislike and get nothing out of, simply as a means to provide for one's family.

<comment><USER4> I used to be married and that was my mindset. I knew if we started a family my resentment would be toxic, working a stressful job that you can't grow or learn from is horrible. Having people who don't do their jobs well depending on you all the time, then going home and having more people that depend on you all the time. That's just too much for me, I would break down quickly.

It makes sense to me that people ignore all that and just focus on providing for family, but I just don't know how to do that. If my job doesn't work for me, it colors my whole life.

<comment><USER5> It's an idealist mindset vs pragmatic one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm absolutely dumbfounded this is some sort of revelation to the author. It must be a new thing? Perhaps a product of the "self esteem/entitled generation?" Whenever I hear people (including job ads) talk about "passion" at work I have to roll my eyes. I _never_ though of work as a means to some sort of personal fulfillment, it's a job, it's purpose is to provide you money. That is it! If you get personal satisfaction out of your work that's a nice bonus. Those "passion" people are going to become very dissatisfied with work and life - there's very, very few jobs that have the ability to provide that. We should probably be looking at things in a more practical manner to avoid this.

I always thought jobs advertising that they are looking for someone with "passion" as a ploy to trick the bright eyed and naïve young into overworking before they become disillusioned.

I've actually enjoyed most of the "menial" jobs I've worked. The only unenjoyable job I worked was only unenjoyable due to piss poor management. Now I enjoy working as a software engineer, I like what I do, but it's still just a job, just a way to earn a living.

I'm reminded of Office Space on career advice: "[The question from a guidance counselor of what you would do if you had a million dollars] is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her there would be no janitors because because nobody would clean up shit if they had a million dollars."

<comment><USER6> The most fun job I ever had was at a shitty nightclub over summers in-between uni.

The pay was crap, and hours were 9pm to 5am, but I loved the people I worked with, and the physical/manual labour was more satisfying than cranking out some requirements for an app noone cares about.

Back in my single days, I actually applied to do some warehouse work outside of my 9-5 programming day job 'cos I found it so boring and unsatisfying. (Turns out you're not allowed to work so many hours for health and safety reasons)

I don't mind coding for a living - it's easy: I sit at a desk and browse the internet for most part, but it's hardly the peak of job satisfaction. I think if I was mad rich, I wouldn't mind doing something poorly paid but outdoorsy and invigorating.

<comment><USER7> Aside from mad rich, how about basic income? Everyone has some employer in their past they loved but having to borrow money from dad to fix my car was so not cool. If I could feed my family and provide medical coverage using a basic income maybe I'd go back to "cool employer" lifestyle.

My kids are moving out "soon" and I won't need the expensive house in the best school district anymore, I wonder how many people would downgrade life a bit with a basic income. I won't need the best school district for 4, I'll just need somewhere safe for 2, probably much cheaper.

I get it that a BI means poor people get to eat, and thats very nice, but it also means something to me too, which would probably be a purely fun job.

<comment><USER8> ...or the open source projects developers might suddenly have time to support

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article resonates with me, although I loved my job.

To make a long story short, when I was 20 I had to fully support my mother and my very young sister. This was the most important reason that led me to accept conditions at work (work for a foreign company who I didn't know anyone in person, for low salary, not enough vacation, work way more than 40 hours per week, be on call 24/7 for years, etc) that I know for a fact people that were not in the same situation would never take. At least the vast majority of my friends and colleagues from college.

I still loved my job, but it was a balance between accepting shitty conditions and being a very dedicated worker betting on a brighter future for my family.

It turned out very good for me, although it took a very long time to, in terms of salary, be on par with a national median.

I never thought about it that way, but family indeed was the real motivator for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't see how you can ask people to self report in a circumstance like this and get anything but cognitively assonant responses.

If you are hemmed in by poverty, location, and financial obligations, you are going to convince yourself that your circumstances are acceptable to you, whether or not that is actually the case, or you won't survive in it, and be around to make a self-report.

<comment><USER5> That's like telling religious people "you aren't REALLY happy being religious, you are just afraid of going to hell."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Listen. You don't live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home."

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/the-work-you- do...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/the-work-you-do-the- person-you-are)

</comment><comment><USER12> Supporting your family is not a third kind of motivation. It's totally extrinsic, because you get more money for doing the job than not doing the job.

</comment><comment><USER13> Some people on this discussion have mentioned the motivation of "they pay me".

For me personally "they pay me" is enough to get me in the door and sitting at my desk for a certain amount of time each day.

I think it's actually this way for a lot of people.

My previous job doing DevOps-y stuff was completely different. In that job, if I didn't show up and do my work, other people wouldn't be able to work either. Doing that job felt like I was supporting my work family.

My current job (software QA) is very disconnected from eventual users and it just feels like a very repetitive slog every day.

Anyway this should maybe have been a throwaway, but whatever.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is my story for the internship I am doing. Though I like the main aim of what I am doing, but I couldn't write a single line that involve any thought. And it's not I don't like programming. I contribute to open source at least once almost every week. It's just I don't feel like reporting to someone who knows less than me(no kidding), and I resort to trickery that I done something, which in reality I don't spend half an hour a day. And, I can not leave the internship because of the fear of what I will tell my friends and family.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a huge difference between the quality and quantity of work one does when intrinsically motivated, v.s. externally motivated. Yes, fear of losing your job and the inability to support your family that comes with it can and does motivate people to perform. That said, intrinsically motivated people are on a league of their own, driven to pursue their craft for the enjoyment of it.

</comment><comment><USER16> isn't this "third motivation" simply fear that if they don't perform they will be fired and their family would suffer from it?

<comment><USER17> That may be the case for some, but for some others I've met in similar situations in developing countries, they were happy and felt proud to be supporting their families. I didn't feel like their primary motivation was fear. Not everyone is so complex or pessimistic.

<comment><USER9> Yes. To me it was about the challenge itself and the "I can do it" motivator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/06/05/jordan_pe...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/06/05/jordan_peterson_why_you_have_to_fight_postmodernism.html)

"I can tell you, because I received many letters of this sort ... young people are absolutely starving for someone to provide them with a sense of responsibility, and say look here, here's something worth living for, man.

You can find meaning in life with freedom, but freedom. Freedom is a chaotic sort of meaning, right, and freedom isn't sort of thing makes people happy. It is the sort of thing people troublesome -- troubled. Because freedom expands your series of choices, and that makes you nervous and uncertain... not to say that that's a bad thing. It's a good thing but it requires that you shoulder the responsibility of the freedom, but responsibility per se is what gives your life meaning, genuine meaning in the face of suffering." -Jordan Peterson

</comment><comment><USER19> I read this article hoping that it would provide some meaningful insight into my own situation, but unfortunately, it only raised more questions. What about those of us who don't have families to support? What about those of us who are, in essence, unneeded? What each person needs in his or her life, whether it is provided by work or by something else, is a sense of meaning. Without this, vigor suffers. How this is not commonly known is beyond my comprehension.

Viktor Frankl wrote a whole book about this innate need for meaning, aptly titled "Man's Search for Meaning." In the book, Frankl observes that those who best survived the horrors of concentration camps were precisely those who were able to give some sort of meaning to their suffering, which in many cases came in the form of a family or loved one that waited for them to emerge from captivity.

This article is not very useful, and its lack of insight leaves me feeling surprised that it was written by a psychologist (who ostensibly should know better).

</comment><comment><USER20> "another day, another dollar" is a good motivation for a lot of people...

</comment><comment><USER21> Presumably for this author, when he came of age to work, he didnt need to support his parents or his brothers, so he had the luxury to look for true meaning in his work and had enough balance in his checking account that quitting wasn't an unreasonable choice when he didnt find what he was looking for. I would think he is not alone, and many people around the world who come from upper middle class families are in the same boat if they dont have anybody else depending on them and if they can't find meaning in their job.

</comment><comment><USER22> People are also strongly motivated by being part of a team and "winning" e.g. achieving a common goal or beating an enemy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Bollocks to this. Just show me the money!

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny how the first thing that appears when you open the article is some guy pouring a drink.

Turns out it's not for him (I think) nor did the guys at QZ intend to suggest it was, but I just interpreted the picture in a whole different way.

</comment><comment><USER25> this is interesting. i thought i was a bit silly for working to essentially please my mom. maybe its still a bit silly. but sometimes people are silly and act in irrational ways. at least i'm not alone in this.

</comment><comment><USER26> The author is mistaken, it's not motivation he's attempting to describe; it's coercion.

</comment><comment><USER27> Money, mostly.

</comment><comment><USER28> I like money.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not going to ask why this BS is on the front page of HN. But it would be nice to know how many people upvoted it.

<comment><USER30> Work motivation is a big topic in the software industry. See the comments regarding "passion" that pop up in these discussions for example. Studies about and discussions of what motivates people to work are therefore very perinent to HN.

<comment><USER31> I wouldn't necessarily call this article "bs", but at the same time, I don't see how people working for their family is really HN-newsworthy...But perhaps people in the software industry need reminding of this?

<comment><USER30> I believe there is a definite movement to partially replace remuneration with intangible "passion" in this industry, so yes the industry does need reminding of this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hi, I'm a UX Developer - You're a what? - <AUTHOR> http://uxmag.com/technology/hi-im-a-ux-developer-youre-a-what <comment><USER2> As a developer, I have to admit that I feel a lot of ambivalence about this emerging discipline. It's taken a long time to convince the world of the benefits of a "developer driven culture", but I think it's critical to avoid putting developers into a box where they are simply executing specs. I see a lot of that creeping back in through the new concept of a "UX Developer".

Here are the three big quotes that are making me nervous:

"It's our job to help translate their vision to the development team in a way that they can understand and accept"

"Similarly, we need to speak on behalf the developers to help reign in the designers, at times."

"However, for the traditional developer the application works if it executes all of the items listed in the functional specs. The focus of the traditional developer is centered on tasks rather than goals."

Oh man. So the role of a UX developer is to stand in between the developers and designers and represent the interests of each for us? All the while, assuming that the mindset of a "traditional" developer is to be myopically focused on tasks rather than goals?

Everything I read about UX as a skill set I like. Developers and Designers should be focused on goals. We should strive to acquire the skills and mindset that are often associated with "UX" (good developers were doing this long before "UX" became a term or job category).

Everything I read about UX as an actual job role, I don't like. I can't stand the idea of a worker in my organization deciding that developers are focused on tasks and need someone running interference between them and the users and designers.

As I've pointed out in other discussions around UX on HN, one key question is to ask yourself: would this person be useful on a small team? A developer or designer with lots of "UX" skill would be even more useful on a small team. But the type of person described through this post? Not really, and could even do harm by mucking up the relationship between developers, designers, and the things that they actually need to be exposed to to write good software.

In short, I believe that UX is a great addition to a developer or designer's skill set, but I'm not at all convinced that it would be a great job category.

<comment><USER3> I'm inclined to believe the same thing.

I'm not so much irked by "UX Designers", as they have a seemingly useful role if you consider what they claim. Many of their practices however are laughable at best and rarely accomplish their stated goals.

Why should I trust your soft approach to UX? If I'm paying you 70,000 a year, that means you should be providing more than 70,000 a year worth of value - Otherwise theres not really much point in hiring you. Can any UX designer, even in principle, provide more than modest value for sites whose users don't number into the 10s of millions? Keep in mind that its _not_ the difference between no design and a good design when you hire a UX designer, Its the difference between a design generated by someone who isn't a UX professional (but probably is willing to read up on the elements of successful design) and a UX professional who.... possesses no real qualifications or mechanism to distinguish him from the non-UX professional save his assertion that he "has an eye for design". You could hire a High school graduate with an interest in technology, offer to pay him 25k/yr to sit in a comfy chair and write out jquery + html and be absolutely stoked about it, how much more of a value proposition do you get out of a "UX designer"?

I want to clarify this isn't a dig against people who truly provide value and make a difference for users - Theres some UX & UI people out there who are changing the face of their businesses by the work of their own hands and their untamable passion for the human enterprise. But those people would have likely kicked ass anyway.

So I suppose lastly, I'd be distrustful as a rule of most people who claim to generate value through soft, rather than hard means. Historically you would not be unwise to bet on the success of Mathematics and the failure of subjective analysis in virtually every field ranging from analyzing human emotions to machine translation, even fields traditionally decried for being approached mathematically (Because surely a human can only understand what makes up being human?) have been absolutely revolutionized by using an approach that has been working for the past 10k years of human history - Application of cold logic and lots and lots of hard work.

So whats someone who isn't a "science person" to do in an era that increasingly marginalizes those who cannot do hard mental labor? Well you do the only thing you can do with nothing but time on your hands - You market yourself.

[P.S - If you want UX/UI people who aren't full of their own shit, a truly excellent ex-coworker of mine - Sam Asante @ <http://samasante.com/> is currently looking for a job in San Francisco]

<comment><USER4> _So I suppose lastly, I'd be distrustful as a rule of most people who claim to generate value through soft, rather than hard means._

I'm sympathetic to you, because I'm the "hard" science guy. When I studied CS, it was about hard science, because there generally weren't consumer facing jobs to be had.

But now most of the successful apps, and the ones talked about on HN aren't technically difficult. The reason things like the Thiel fund even are on the radar is because most apps, whether mobile or web, could be coded up by a modestly bright 13 year-old. Seriously. The part that separates great from forgotten is the UX and design.

There was once a popular saying that went something like, "Well he's no rocket scientist". I think its fair to say that we'll likely not hear people say, "Well he's no computer programmer". In fact if anything quite the opposite -- "Anyone can learn it... it's like programming".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a designer, inventor, developer and entrepreneur who spends much of his time trying to improve user experience, I have to say I only noticed this "UX" label being used about a year ago. A few years ago there was HUI engineer, HI designer, interface designer, and cognitive scientist, all different names for the same job just like a job where you develop software might be called software engineer, developer, programmer, programmer analyst, architect, designer, etc. Now we have the term UX. I wonder what other labels there are floating about in the field of interface design.

Until today reading this post I thought UX is just the hip new word for HUI. Now I find that HUI has been split into two different specialties.

More and more people being added to each part of the task is not a good thing because the interface needs to be consistent and coherent, not broken into pieces each designed by a different group with a different philosophy. Oh sure there can be some document saying what the philosophy is supposed to be; but mission statements are not designs.

The greatest interfaces I have seen there was exactly one person in charge of deciding how everything works and that was guided by his personal philosophy of design.

<comment><USER6> It's a great work division if you just want to get a paycheck. You get to do mockups, wireframes, user interviews, write-ups and research. You make 6 figures without having to have studied anything rigorous like engineering or design. You don't have to do any tedious programming or really anything that resembles work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> \- There are designers who care more about the user's experience than the beauty of their graphic design. They obsess about clarity of design, action flow, and how the average person will view or interpret their graphics and layouts, rather than something that is purely elegant or attractive. They work around technical limitations rather than ignore them. Of course, some people simply call these _good designers_.

\- There are front-end engineers who care more about how the user perceives the product than how fellow engineers might perceive their architecture. These engineers obsess about things like UI responsiveness, framerates, and page loading times. They take user studies with a grain of salt, but they deeply respect them. They do not like it when other designers or engineers complain about "stupid users" that just don't understand their interface. They understand when it's time to scrap a month of work on a UI that just doesn't seem to be clicking, and get on with the next version instead of digging in their heels. Then again, some people just call these _good front-end engineers_.

\- There are managers who prioritize the user experience above all else. They make sure the people under them do as well. They personally try out and approve all major product features and liberally cut, prune, and edit where they think things are too confusing. They make the hard decisions. They throw away hard-earned features that just don't quite cut it. They understand that the quality of the final product is _their responsibility_ , and the quality of a product is increasingly being judged almost solely on the quality of its user experience. Sometimes these are just called _good managers_.

IMO, a UX person is just _someone who cares_. More about the user than about themselves.

That said, I think there _is_ a valid new profession somewhere between designer and front-end engineer. Static mock images don't let you explore certain kinds of very dynamic interfaces (touch-based ones especially). The ability to actually program a _demo_ that moves provides incredible insight into the design process, but most designers are incapable of doing so. I don't know what to call such a person, even though I am one.

</comment><comment><USER8> So basically what I understood at the end, is that your UX developer role... is fun!? and exiting?!

Let me tell you what a UX developer is. UX developers are people that couldn't find themselves neither as designers or as developers and got stuck in between. Those became so many over the years; people interested not in being perfect at doing one thing, but at being intermediate in everything. Others are project managers who gained some experience in handling projects, but got bored of all the wire-framing, analysis and actually doing nothing (at least the majority), so they decided to get more involved in projects on a technical/creative level.

The first group, the stuck-in-between, become UX designers/developers with a few technical tricks. The second group, the managers, became UX analysts and experts.

So, in reality, your job as UX designer/developer, is to make real Designers dumb, by not letting them learn how to create usable designs, but designs that follow your lead and your wire-frames which eventually affect real Designers creativity. Or maybe real Designers are too dumb to learn how to offer the user a good experience! The UX developers, on the other hand, don't have an actual role. So if you're doing the wire-framing, the analysis, the content management, the information architecture, can you please specify what is a project manager doing? Plus, if your skills enables you to prototype certain features, what if you're involved in a super complex project, who's gonna prototype now? I know, the one who actually does the prototyping and is actually a real Programmer that knows his language very well and knows its actual limitations. Not the ones UX developers heard about.

The real definition for your job is ripped of from something every human should learn how to do and that's communication.

<comment><USER9> I can't down vote this but I really wish I could. As someone else pointed out this comment seems driven by malice more than anything else...

"Let me tell you what a UX developer is. UX developers are people that couldn't find themselves neither as designers or as developers and got stuck in between."

While I find your tone particularly hateful, this is about as close to being the best definition of how I see a UX developer/designer, without the derogatory tone of course. They are people who want to be involved in the earlier stages of a project, and want to know about the technical aspects of the problem and the design or brand constraints, and are suitably equipped to deal with the people whose job it is to solve the intricate details.

If you are a developer who can turn out a decent user interface, (maybe on a web app you were left to do the settings page), or a designer who can prototype in Javascript to show how modals windows work - congratulations, that is UX - converging the different disciplines to create a whole. Someone who works more in doing that and deals less with the nitty gritty of one or the other is just doing it more, (and probably better for the time and experience they have). Thats not to say because they don't do the nitty gritty that they can't, (although I'll admit my design skills trail off before my technical skills do), its just they are more interested in leaving it to others.

[Aside: I am a technical guy who has moved much more towards doing prototyping and UX work. I find alot of the comments in this thread pretty insulting since they all are assuming I am either a shite designer or shite developer.]

<comment><USER8> You can read something written the way you want; No I don't like people with titles because eventually they're over-paid to do nothing. User Experience, the way its spreading now and the way UX people are trying to force things, is a way to make things look alike. A strategy created by big corporations to make their work easier. Where are the customization features every website had a couple of years ago, where people can create their own UX? Ah, someone thought he can tell us how to "experience" better. Sorry, I'm too sarcastic but that's how I see UX. Can you convince a Chinese not to eat with chopsticks because you think that people that eat with forks and spoons are having a better experience? Think again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm getting old, thought he is a HP-UX developer...

<comment><USER11> Cripes, who would admit that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I will definitely keep this link handy the next time I have to explain myself :P

I have found a degree in Computer Science, and the skill set of a developer, to be more of a handicap than a blessing when looking for the right jobs. Outside of the startup world, people tend to think that if you can code, you are best put away in a murky corner and left alone while other people determine the direction of the product. Interaction and User Experience design is then left to people with a background in graphics design.

Just because you cannot code, does not mean that I cannot design.

In the end it is more about skills than about roles though. I think having some passion about design and your user makes you a better developer and having some years of programming experience under your belt makes you a better designer.

</comment><comment><USER13> >> "It's our job to help translate their vision to the development team in a way that they can understand and accept."

>> "Similarly, we need to speak on behalf the developers to help reign in the designers, at times. If they are coming up with concepts that will be extremely difficult or time consuming to implement, we can explain the limitations of the technology and the complexity involved in implementing their designs"

I dislike this stereotype that developers can't communicate and work side-by- side with designers, and vice versa. It seems the writer thinks developers can't communicate or speak and need someone to translate for them, like they're a machine. It's quite disparaging, actually.

I also see a danger in having a middleman, so to speak. Things can get lost in translation.

<comment><USER14> I'd say if your organization is large enough to differentiate between "UX Developer," "Traditional Developer," and "Designer" then yes there are going to be communication problems. It shouldn't be disparaging to either side.

Also it doesn't have to be a middle-man. 3-way communication usually works fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is what I am, and I call this a front-end developer. UX traits are needed.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think that he just describes the hybrid between a developer and a product designer. A mix that isn't always good: you shouldn't implement what you design. But for startups it's often the case.

Regarding @geebee "putting developers into a box where they are simply executing specs" I think that the "developer driven culture" has gotten us to the point where we have forgotten that there need to be _a single_ person in charge of designing the product. Otherwise it will be impossible to keep the product integrity. Read The Mythical Man-Month.

Also, the "spec" isn't some kind of pseudo-code. It can be the user manual, a design document or a prototype. Actually, it MUST NOT include any implementation details, since that is up to the developer to decide. It's his domain, he knows that better than anyone else. If the developer feel that he misses out on something, maybe he should try to be a product designer instead. But for the sake of the product, he shouldn't be both.

</comment><comment><USER17> A developer who cares for UX is just a _good developer_. No need for the fancy title - it's more for showing off (and maybe trying to have some authority over designers) than anything else. "UX Designer" is already a controversial term.

If we go this route we'll have Business Programmers, Performance Designers and the like :)

</comment><comment><USER18> This key distinction they're trying to make in this articles isn't about UX, but rather "UX developer". My understanding of UX is knowing the users & market and producing a flow.

The key benefit of a _UX developer_ is the prototype and product are one and the same, and are created with useable code rather than mock-ups. This allows refinement and iteration all the way through production. We're not so focused on UI, because that's easy to create with static mock-ups. UX development takes the next step to determine how the different static UIs work with actual code and users.

A key difference between UX dev and UI dev: the UX dev won't worry about skins and other design parts. It's more about the layout, functionality, and ease of use. Once that's worked out, a designer can make it clean.

</comment><comment><USER19> seems appropriate: [http://ieatpaste.com/2010/10/if-you-have-ux-in-your-title- yo...](http://ieatpaste.com/2010/10/if-you-have-ux-in-your-title-you-probably- suck-at-your-job/)

</comment><comment><USER20> There's been times I'd give my right kidney to have a good UX developer. -sigh- Well, maybe not quite that much.

At a previous company, I tried over and over to get them to hire a 'front-end developer', when what I really wanted was a UX Developer. I don't think knowing the term would have made any difference in convincing them, though.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a job that's incredibly hard to describe. Well done.

The other hard bit is making companies understand why they need one.

<comment><USER22> "Oh, you're a technical manager. Go get the programmers to talk to the artists again."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How is a user _experience_ developer different from a user _interface_ developer? I know how you develop an interface, but how do you develop an experience? (Or any other abstract noun for that matter. It's like someone saying they're working on "implementing happy".)

</comment><comment><USER24> You're a wizard Harry...

</comment><comment><USER25> That's right, it takes skill to make pretty wizzy things that don't scale.

UX Designer: Here's the mockup.

App dev: Did you notice the page layout falls apart when you resize the browser? You need to add a few float clear divs to fix it.

UX Designer: Oh. Uh, how do you do that? Can you fix it?

App dev: Yes. Now go away.

<comment><USER26> I've done hundreds of CSS layouts and never ever used a clear div. And even if one is used it is not usually visible, so UX Designer has nothing to do with it.</comment></comment>


Cyprus savers lose 10% of money after shock bailout - <AUTHOR> http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/cyprus-savers-lose-10-of-money-after-shock-bailout-588134.html <comment><USER2> This seems pretty morally hazardous to me. It penalizes good savers and lets debtors go scot-free. The message it's sending is that taking on an excessive loan or mortgage is fine; on the other hand you could be screwed if you live within your means and save up for a rainy day.

I'm not familiar with Cyprus' particular situation but I'm guessing that if they need a bailout, excessive spending and debt are factors contributing to that problem to begin with...

<comment><USER3> Savers are not good for the economy. People should either spend the money they earn, or invest it. Economically speaking, of course.

<comment><USER4> What's the difference between saving and investing?

<comment><USER5> In investing you SPEND your money.

If you're conservative in your investment you'll get them back. If you're lucky, you will get more than you put in. If you are unlucky, you might lose it all.

<comment><USER4> What do you think banks do with your money? They certainly do not keep it in a vault. Hint: bank runs are possible.

<comment><USER5> > _What do you think banks do with your money? They certainly do not keep it > in a vault. Hint: bank runs are possible._

No matter what they do with your money, they are expected to keep it as it was, at least nominally (maybe with a little interest).

Bank runs and bank defaults can be possible but are far far far far rarer than yourself investing and losing your money.

So your argument is like:

"You think chainsaw-tied-on-your-head-skiing is dangerous and you'd rather stay at home? Do you know how many people die at their homes?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant clarification:

        People with less than €100,000 in their Cypriot bank
        accounts will have to pay a one-time tax of 6.75%,
        those with more will lose 9.9%.

        The measure is expected to net €5.8bn in additional
        revenues, Mr Dijsselbloem said, greatly reducing the
        country's financing need.

Nevertheless, this sounds insane.

<comment><USER7> Really? I think it's a valid move. If people in a certain economic zone are using one of the countries as a tax shelter, and that is causing problems with regional stability, then an adjustment is required. The saying "we're all in this together" comes to mind..

Even though the tax shelter is legal, it doesn't change the fact that if the regional governments are going to step in and provide bailout money for the country that was the tax shelter in the first place, then the financial residents (so to speak) of that country should be made to chip in..

If Cyprus didn't have such an imbalanced tax and banking system (that led it to be a shelter in the first place), they wouldn't have needed the bailout..

<comment><USER8> It stems more from EU governments generally abhorring tax competition. Cyprus was in too weak a position to negotiate.

<comment><USER9> "tax competition" sounds like an euphemism for tax evasion.

<comment><USER10> Not really. It's more like, say, Ireland's corporation tax being lower than the EU average (though not as low as Cyprus's...), in order to encourage companies to set up there, rather than somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Roundup of news stories at <http://www.linkfest.com>

(project of mine - sort of crude proto-HN for finance)

Tough choice... banks are busted, so do you make depositors whole and bail out Russian mobsters with German taxpayers' money? (Cyprus is a big offshore money laundering center, much of the deposits are from offshore)... or create a precedent where money in EU banks is not safe, raising the specter of bank runs?

Bank runs it is... distinct possibility Cyprus could be the Reserve Primary Fund of the EU crisis.

(When Lehman failed and that big money market mutual fund broke the buck, everybody started withdrawing money from money markets, and the US had to guarantee all MMMF and bank deposits.)

(going to further speculate...Germany and the EZ said we will only pony up X, depositors have to take some of the hit... no one in these banks or the Cyprus government was eager to be the point person advocating the mobsters taking a bigger hit by exempting locals or small depositors...so the small local depositors got sucked in.)

<comment><USER12> Off topic and unsolicited request: Can you make the font size of the article titles larger than the surrounding text? I'm getting a 'wall of text' feel from the design that is making it hard for me to delineate where one news item begins and ends.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, will add it to the list! definitely looking for feedback, feel free to ping me offline via the contact form, or linkfest (at) linkfest.com !

( also hackers who might want to work on this sort of thing )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is baffling to say the least. This is the worst move any country/president can make in my opinion. You are teaching people how not to trust and work with the system.

By having money(wealth) stored in banks, you can control the economy. You'll have more control over inflation, taxes, leverage... By having money stored in people mattresses, you'll lose this control.

It'll be even hard to estimate the amount of money in the system, and if it's even moving. The EU is handling this crisis all wrong to protect their interest.

<comment><USER14> Doesnt their interest include trade? It's aggravating how we got to this point, but I'm not sure yet whether this story is bad behavior or bad PR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1\. isn't Cyprus considered some sort of Tax Haven?

2\. this is a terribly non-progressive levy

Edit.

From: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/03/cyprus- bai...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/03/cyprus-bail-out)

> That idea had been in the air for a while, not least because a lot of those > uninsured deposits came from outside Cyprus, and from Russia in particular. > The politics of saving wealthy Russians with money loaned by thrifty Germans > were always going to be tricky.

> What had not been anticipated was a 6.75% loss for savers with deposits in > Cypriot banks below the insurance ceiling. Cypriots woke up this morning to > find bank branches closed to them. By the time they will be able to get at > their money, it will be too late. The offer of equity in banks to replace > the value of their savings is meant to be a balm but it's not a choice they > would have made. Why this decision was taken is not yet clear. The most > plausible explanation is that the Cypriot government itself preferred to > spread the pain rather than wipe out non-resident depositors and jeopardise > its long-term prospects as an offshore financial centre for Russian and > other money.

Interesting.

<comment><USER16> 3\. it proves that it's better to spend spend spend, than to be a sucker and save

<comment><USER17> It is true, though. Money is currency, not a store of value. Buy durable goods or invest in growth projects. Working to accumulate pure money is just piling IOUs on people. If you do that, you are going to face inflation in the future, which you deserve , because your non-spending took away other people's opportunity to create things of value. (Or, if they produced in excess of demand, then prices will drop in the future, and conpensatory inflation is no problem to you.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For people who like me are not familiar with the debt problem Cyprus is facing and would like a little more info: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/business/global/in- cyprus-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/business/global/in-cyprus-a- national-quest-to-shore-up-teetering-banks.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER19> There's going to be a major demand in Cyprus over the next few days and weeks for a non-bank store of wealth.

<comment><USER20> bad luck: banks are closed over the weekend and monday is a holiday. By tuesday the new tax will already be in place and the respective amount in all accounts frozen.

<comment><USER21> Well hopefully people will demand the money the only way they can.

At the point of a gun, a sad way to go for decent people but only fair.

<comment><USER19> More likely they'll take the hit now, then if the crisis passes, launch lawsuits against the government to claim it back. Or a political party will adopt a manifesto pledge to return the stolen money upon election victory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And this is one of the reasons I look forward to bitcoins - the state can't steal them.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is going to get standard in Europe. Already happened in Hungary, has happened in the UK and will happen again. Even Germany is going to suffer for this. As they already do with their fucked up taxes.

Sweden has started to screw with pensions which are basically savings.

It's fucked up. I can't stand it. High tax countries not being able to handle it and tax even more from savings/pensions.

It's unsustainable. And recently there were many articles praising "the nordic model"... fuck it's a joke.

As far as I've seen the only countries managing their economy is Singapore. They got a sustainable model.

Don't spend peoples money. Low taxes means that whatever they spend it's not coming from the people.

<comment><USER2> The nordic model works for Norway, mainly because they have a gusher of oil money coming in.

<comment><USER22> Hah yeah, Sweden does not have oil (but minerals) but what they do have is fucked up taxes. Robbing people of their money to cover up for stupid ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One has to admit, EU politicians (and their financial advisors), are cunningly smart... First, they force Greece to default, now they force Cypriot banks to default, but they never actually call it _default_ , so the reaction of the financial markets is quite tame.

<comment><USER23> Where's the default? I don't read anywhere that Cyprus is defaulting in part of its debt.

EDIT: Why the downvote? Please explain what percentage of the debt is being defaulted, that is, what is the percentage of Cyprus debt that isn't going to be paid at all?

<comment><USER5> Having the dept repaid by stealing deposited money, is close enough to default in my books.

Especially if that only repays a tiny amount.

Same thing with Greece. The dept is always the same as it was, and the default is only avoided by getting a quick additional loan every X months. Which is essentially a default in "life support".

<comment><USER23> That's not a default, it's a new loan. Answer this question: What percentage of Cyprus debt has been defaulted? That is, what percentage isn't going to be paid at all?

<comment><USER5> > _That's not a default, it's a new loan._

A new loan that can never be repaid, and its only purpose is to prevent an immediate default, it just as good as a default in my books.

Maybe not from the point of view of the creditors (they will get some of their money back), but still having very similar consequences to the debtors: difficulty in loaning new money, financial destruction, a take-over-of-control by the creditors' intermediaries and the liquifying any valuable state assets.

It already started with indiscriminately stealing 6% from the bank account holders and can only go downhill.

> _That is, what percentage isn't going to be paid at all?_

Lots of it. Following the same process as with Greece et al, there is definitely going to be a "haircut".

<comment><USER23> > _A new loan that can never be repaid, and its only purpose is to prevent an > immediate default, it just as good as a default in my books._

That's quite a stretch of the term "default". A default is when a debtor declares that he can't pay and therefore he won't pay. Getting into a new loan doesn't qualify as default.

> _Maybe not from the point of view of the creditors (they will get some of > their money back), but still having very similar consequences to the > debtors: difficulty in loaning new money, financial destruction, a take- > over-of-control by the creditors' intermediaries and the liquifying any > valuable state assets._

With a real default, there would be less financial destruction. At least the bleed of paying the loans would stop.

> _It already started with indiscriminately stealing 6% from the bank account > holders and can only go downhill._

Agreed.

> > _That is, what percentage isn't going to be paid at all?_

> _Lots of it. Following the same process as with Greece et al, there is > definitely going to be a "haircut"._

Then it will be a (partial) default on the new loans, but it isn't yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what steps they are taking to avoid a complete, Armageddon-style bank run in Cyprus?

<comment><USER3> Why would that happen? Unless you expect more "tax", bank runs aren't reasonable... The article states that you wouldn't be able to withdraw more money than you have (today - 10% tax) anyways.

<comment><USER24> People being human beings and often driven by emotions rather than rational decisions, even if only a proportionally small group of depositors lose their confidence in banks and chose to withdraw their savings, such an event could quickly snowball into a complete panic where the one-off 10% levy is the least of people's problems as if people expect that the banking system will collapse (and once again, rational decisions play no part here, much of the banking system is built on trust) they would desperately try to get hold of their savings even after the levy has been imposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can someone explain to me what happens with money people have in assets?

If someone has an investing account that has money invested in stocks or ETFs, are those assets liquidated partially to pay up to the the 10% of the levy?

Does only not invested money count?

</comment><comment><USER25> Odds that the "connected" types were tipped off and moved their money?

<comment><USER21> As good as the sun rises tomorrow.

This does not increase my confidence in keeping my money in the bank. The usual argument is theft + lack of interest but the banks barely pay any interest anymore and the lack of theft....</comment></comment>


Germany Talking about Banning End-to-End Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/05/germany_talking.html <comment><USER2> As all the comments in the article suggest, there is nothing to see here.

A single legislator proposing an idea that will never get support isn't really the equivalent of "germany talking" in my book.

Politicians in every country submit crazy legislation that never goes anywhere.

This is just clickbait.

<comment><USER3> You mean like indefinite detention for security reasons? Oh, wait...

He's the same party which brought this through a regional parliament.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Despite unprecedented, near all-encompassing levels of surveillance, they have the gall to claim that it is not enough, that as long as we have the smallest scraps of privacy left, terrorists and pedophiles will win.

</comment><comment><USER5> Encryption will only become more important as information systems flood the world with (meta)-data. We need dynamic P2P architectures and open standards to prevent the extraction of personal information for profit and surveillance.

The EU election is next sunday, vote accordingly and discuss these issues with others.

</comment><comment><USER6> This does seem like the natural next step, given the existing bans on whispering and curtains.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is quite surprising to me. Even though I'm aware that European governments regulate tech companies more severely than we're used to in the United States, this topic brings things to an unprecedented level.

<comment><USER8> What? You realize it's relatively mainstream thought among US politicians that key escrow and law enforcement access to encrypted data is something they want to exist? Germany is far more privacy conscious than the US. This is one politician. It's not mainstream.</comment></comment>


In This Doctor's Office, a Physical Exam Like No Other - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/science/precision-medicine-overtreatment.html <comment><USER2> I'm really conflicted. I don't think this approach will necessarily mesh with how we traditionally treat medicine. There are many cases where we consider something a disease, and then we find people who live with it with no issues for decades. What if, even though those people technically have diabetes, they're still fine? I guess you have to define what "fine" even is. How much disease can someone have before they're sick? How good is someone supposed to feel?

Thinking about this more... I don't think this was a well written article. They could have gone much more into the larger issues.

It would be nice of general practitioners had better tools though. It should be trivial for them to see which drug will work best based on someone's genes, for example. And the way we measure blood pressure these days is stupid. People's blood pressure goes up just because they're in the doctor's office. Giving people a glucose monitor, heart rate tracker, and blood pressure monitor to wear for a week should probably be standard.

<comment><USER3> From an outside perspective:

Imo as a society we should reframe the question from 'how to we cure people?' to 'how do we make people's quality/quantity of life better?' It feels somewhat as if there is a gradual creep of what qualifies as a 'disease' and is therefore worthy of treatment.

It also seems like there is an archaic adverseness to non diagnostic related measurement and data. The argument e.g. if we detect something that might be a tumor in a full body scan we have to instigate a series of painful and probably unnecessary biopsies. Imo (again) this represents an overly simplistic view of what the appropriate treatment should be. To say nothing of the dearth of information we have about the day-to-day and hour-to-hour variation in biomarkers in both the healthy and the sick and all the good that information might be used for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the main point from the abstract:

 _We discovered more than 67 clinically actionable health discoveries and identified multiple molecular pathways associated with metabolic, cardiovascular and oncologic pathophysiology. We developed prediction models for insulin resistance by using omics measurements, illustrating their potential to replace burdensome tests. Finally, study participation led the majority of participants to implement diet and exercise changes. Altogether, we conclude that deep longitudinal profiling can lead to actionable health discoveries and provide relevant information for precision health._

While this is an interesting study, I agree with the critical. "Clinically actionable health discoveries" does not mean that acting on those discoveries actually prolonged life or improved quality of life. Given the economic incentives in US medicine this has the huge potential for over-treatment.

<comment><USER5> That's true, but I think there is a lot of open space in the idea of evaluating "does discovering this health issue actually help people". Discovering prostate cancer often doesn't help because most prostate cancer grows so slowly you'll die of old age before it matters - but then some people have faster growing kind.

But I'm following my own health. I have a condition which can be treated well with simple cheap pills. If I hadn't known about it in my family, I wouldn't have pushed for blood tests early in my life. For most people that blood test wouldn't have mattered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For several years now I've wondered why we don't have "Health Closets" (terrible name, I'm sorry) in our homes.

An HC would be a small room dedicated to measuring all the things that can serve as indicators of health. I'd love to have a room I could step into that would take high res photos of my skin to send to my dermatologist, analyze various samples of fluids, maybe take retinal photographs, etc.

With the advent of ML driven diagnosis in medicine there is the potential that if we collect a huge amount of data it can be processed automatically. In addition data could be aggregated for population wide analysis.

While this could be correlated with my full genetic profile, I'm much more interested in how regular measurement with lots of low cost sensors could impact healthcare.

<comment><USER7> Because over-testing leads to over-diagnosis, which leads to over-treatment, which doesn't lead to longer or better life and often leads to reduced quality of life.

<comment><USER8> I find this argument hilarious because it is literally admitting widespread iatrogenic harm, and the solution is not to do less harm, but to keep information away from the patient. How else would like to prove that the AMA is a regressive guild with state protection and financial support through the insurance industry? The only reason many doctors don't like diagnostics is that it undermines their witchcraft, similar to how second-rate mechanics hate consumer OBD-2 port readers, while first-rate mechanics love them. The argument for less diagnostics is laughable. Diagnostics do not cause harm. The harm is being caused by doctors.

<comment><USER9> Because there aren't any systematic perverse incentives baked into US healthcare or anything.

Like, say, many if not most preventive measures being unreimbursible while treatment (especially Stone Age chemo protocols) are reimbursed at profitable rates.

Nope, it's those fucking physicians greedily trying to gut medicine. Like so:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/health/private-equity- der...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/health/private-equity- dermatology.html)

Oh, whoops, my bad, it's the usual malevolent actors and their stooges.

Yes there are shitty doctors (I've worked with plenty). However, I would propose that the majority of the rot in the US system is structural. Socialized or properly regulated private systems do not have these scale of problems.

Last but not least, I'm guessing you haven't added up the cost of running a Snyderome per person. It's not sustainable on a large scale at current prices. That is why cruder methods of risk stratification that cost less are the norm.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FB, Google and other tech giants are about to face a 'reckoning,' state AGs warn - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/15/facebook-google-other-big-tech-giants-are-about-face-reckoning-state-attorneys-general-warn/ <comment><USER2> "Mississippi, Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood has sued the company for its handling of students' data. For years, the two sides have warred repeatedly, with Google at one point suggesting that the Democratic attorney general had wrongly targeted the company with the aid of its foes in the movie industry."

It's actually true: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141217/06353329462/attor...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141217/06353329462/attorney- general-downplays-ties-to-mpaa-despite-letter-he-sent-google-revealed-as- written-mpaa.shtml)

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141212/12142629419/leake...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141212/12142629419/leaked- emails-reveal-mpaa-plans-to-pay-elected-officials-to-attack-google.shtml)

State AGs are politically driven scumbags through and through.</comment>


10 Startups to bet your career on (on one page) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/10-startups-to-work-for-2012-4?op=1

<comment><USER2> btw, we (ifttt) are hiring. There are only 5 of us right now. We're looking for an iOS guy and someone who's good at scaling & evented systems.</comment>


Opening external links in new window? - <AUTHOR> http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2005/03/target-blank/

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but I have to disagree that it is always wrong to open links in a new window. There are many sites (and more to come) of the "web app" variety that carry a lot of state in the current window, and opening a link in the same window would destroy all of the state once the user clicks the Back button. On highly dynamic sites (like the results page on Twitter Search), navigating away from the page for even a few seconds will change the results when reloaded, so the user's "mental state" of the page has been destroyed. I contend that opening a link in a new window/tab makes sense in these cases.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The web has changed a lot even since 2005 (when the article was written).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you read all of Nielsen on the topic, he actually makes an exception for PDF's and the like: anything where users may believe they've opened another application instead of just another page. In that case they're likely to close the window to get back to you. If you didn't open a new window, they've now closed their way back to your site.

Working with users, I also have found that many prefer and expect links to other sites to open in a new window. This is 100% not my preference, and indeed I almost find it insulting like the author at trilithium.com, but only one of my users is me. With some reluctance I have taken to opening new windows for PDFs, Flash apps, and on some sites any external link.

</comment><comment><USER5> Every time I've conducted informal polls of my readers, the results have been about 50/50 on this topic. It's not as cut and dried as the article suggests. Many users even prefer same-domain links to open in a new window automatically.</comment>


Apple's new MacBook Pro may be the world's fastest stock laptop - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3136714/data-storage/apples-new-macbook-pro-may-be-the-worlds-fastest-stock-laptop.html <comment><USER2> So disk speed is now the metric for "fastest"?

<comment><USER3> Fast disk paging can provide extra head room for those that need more than 16 GB of RAM.

<comment><USER2> Not sure if sarcastic

<comment><USER4> Or if genius</comment></comment></comment></comment>