On Unicode Normalization – or why normalization insensitivity should be rule - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/nico/entry/normalization_insensitivity_should_be_the <comment><USER2> They're right.

I spent the last 5 years trying to get i18n working in a protocol:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-radext- nai-15](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-radext-nai-15)

The working group came to the same conclusion. Whatever crap the client puts in the packet is _inviolate_. Don't change it. You're not smart enough to do that.

Instead, if you need to do comparisons, compare on the _normalized_ strings. You create a "normalized" version of the string, and then use that for comparisons.

I wish the IETF precis working group had a "recommendations" document. It would make everyone's lives much simpler.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having the luxury of only watching Unicode from afar, it looks like a right horror show. As a mathematician I respect how much harder it can be to work over equivalence classes (especially when you don't have obvious normal forms) than to work over mere instances. I am not sure all the Unicode players really appreciate this (though I definitely agree: you can't safely re-normalize externally supplied strings, you do have to work with equivalence classes at some point).

What I keep hoping is the Unicode committees will eventually pile on one bad idea too many and make string comparison as hard as a general instance of the Post correspondence problem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_correspondence_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_correspondence_problem) and thus undecidable. They are presumably not there yet (due to unambiguity, reading direction, and bounded length), but I keep hoping.

The idea is many characters in Unicode have more than one equivalent representation (and these can have different lengths). So, roughly, checking sequences of codepoints represent the same string becomes a grouping problem:

For a sequence of integers 1...t define a ordered sequence partition P as a sequence of contiguous sets of integers (P1,...,Ph) such that:

      1) Each Pi is a contiguous sequence of integers u...v with 1<=u<=v<=t.

      2) Union_i Pi = {1,...,t}

      3) max(Pi) < min(Pj) for all 1<=i<j<=h.

Check for:

       a1,a2,...am
       and b1,b2,...,bn

can the sequence of integers 1...m and 1...n be order sequence partitioned into called A=(A1,...,Au) and B=(B1,...,Bu) such that: the sequence of code points a_{Ai} and b_{Bi} (i=1...u) represent the same equivalent Unicode characters?

What stops this from encoding generally hard problems (NP hard) is lack ambiguity in the code-point -> character dictionaries ensuring there is only one partition of each code point sequence such that all elements are valid code-points. Thus we can find the unique partition of each code point sequence using a left to right read and then we just check if the partitions match.

So all we have to do to successfully encode NP hard problems is trick the standards committee into introducing a sufficient number of ambiguous grouping (things like code-points "a1 a2 a3 a4" such that both "(a1 a2 a3) (a4)" and "(a1 a2) (a3 a4)" are valid groupings). This will kill the obvious comparison algorithms, and with some luck we get a code dictionary that will allow us to encode NP-hard problems as string equivalence.

To get undecidable problems we just have to trick the committee into introducing enough "fix insertions" where "a1 a2 a3 a4" can be grouped into "(a1 x1 a2) (a3 a4 x2 x3)" by the insertion of the implied or "fix" code- points x1, x2, x3. Then, with some luck, we could build a code dictionary that could encode enough instances of Post correspondence problems to make Unicode string comparison Turing complete and thus undecidable. (I need to check if a single fixed code-book is enough, or if we need some trick to allow in many different code-books.)

So I think all we need is some clever design (to actually get a dangerously expressive encoding, not just the suspicion there is one) and stand up a stooge linguist or anthropologist to claim a few additional "harmless lexical equivalences" are needed to faithfully represent a few more languages.

\----

What would I have liked instead of Unicode? Some sort of tagged string-region implementation. Each string-region would have to specify what lexical dictionary (and version of the dictionary) it follows and only one language/lexical context is used for the whole string-region. So each section you are working with has a single set of rules meant to represent only one language (instead of hoping for a universal representation). Some care has to be taken that the region blocks can never be confused with in-block stuff to ensure we can identify the block boundaries before really looking into any region (perhaps indicating that block designations should not be in the string, a lot like when we added length to strings instead of relying on C-style zero ending).</comment>


How to Throw Things Away Like a Grown Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.smaggle.com/how-to-throw-things-away-like-a-god-damn-grown-up/ <comment><USER2> Highly recommended: _The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing_ by Marie Kondō

It's a beautiful philosophy about keeping, discarding, and acquiring new items.</comment>


Using Machine Learning to Predict the Winner of the International DOTA 2 Tourney - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@polats/using-machine-learning-to-predict-the-winners-of-the-international-dota-2-2016-tournament-81b049c7ec64#.nm2awafc2 <comment><USER2> Cute, but nothing really new - still a fun project.

And as someone who plays more Dota than is likely healthy: Na'Vi definitely won't win :)</comment>


Show HN: Pronto – Java, Proto, Mongo Connector - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CaperAi/pronto <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! We've started making heavy use of both gRPC and MongoDB at Caper. When we first started using MongoDB we manually created pojo classes and mapped our protos into Java classes before saving/loading from our DB. This was error prone, very time consumer, and gross.

We built this library so we could have an easy way to describe an API, a database storage format, and with next to no effort plumb data from APIs to persistence and back. This lets us focus on getting our application/service logic correct by leaving the storage/transport of our data as an implementation detail.

The API is messy and needs a lot of cleanup. I have a lot of TODOs in the code detailing what we plan on doing internally. We're more than happy to accept MRs and feature requests from the public.

<comment><USER2> Congrats gravypod!

The codec system in the Java driver is pretty low level and its great to see it could be adapted to this usecase. Thats pretty cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I hope to generalize this to other backends as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Messenger Bot List - <AUTHOR> http://messengerbotlist.com/ <comment><USER2> Next thing facebook files a trademark on the word "Messenger", when did that even happen to be a own "brand".

Anyway, kudos on your site.</comment>


Terror attacks by Muslims receive 357% more press attention, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/20/muslim-terror-attacks-press-coverage-study <comment><USER2> Probably because Islamic extremism is still a big unsolved problem. The world wants a solution. Therefore people take notice and want to know about attacks by Muslims. Non-muslim attacks are not often orchestrated with the background force of religious ideology.

The recruitment and corruption of young minds with hatred-infused Islamic propaganda, is still happening. I caught this doco on TV recently about the Red Mosque, it's disturbing and sad to see young people being corrupted. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4504626/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4504626/)

<comment><USER3> Invading sovereign countries and drone attacts sure are helping in solving that problem. /s

<comment><USER4> Why have we never seen Cubans commit terrorist attacks against Americans because the US "invaded" them in the 50s?

<comment><USER3> So your point is? Everyone should submit like Cubans?

<comment><USER4> The US has "invaded" several countries in Latin America and East and Southeast Asia (Japan, South Korea, Vietnam). Where are these terrorist networks?

<comment><USER3> So you are saying that it's OK to invade (no need for quotes), but it's not OK to resist?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Keynote by John Carmack at Oculus Connect 2014 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqzpAbK9qFk <comment><USER2> I am only 10 minutes into this talk, but John is one awesome speaker. No PR talk at all, he is speaking his mind freely and in fact started with shortcomings of the product. The segue between different sections is so smooth. I do not have background in VR, but he explains things so smoothly. He is just freely talking about supply chain, and what the product constitutes. And he has been standing in the same spot. What a genuine speaker. Also, looks like Facebook's influence has been minimal. There is just no iota of bullshit in him. I like him already. My first John Carmack video, and I am already hooked. Now onto watching the full video.

<comment><USER3> If you liked his talk, definitely check out his QuakeCon keynotes and his talk about physically based lighting.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt- iVFxgFWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyUgHPs86XM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyUgHPs86XM)

<comment><USER4> I've watched the one on lighting twice, just cause it blew my mind so much. I finally (think I) understand light.

<comment><USER5> When I first read that, I thought "lighting" was some kind of mind altering drug. It is, if you do it right! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love it when John Carmack talks, because he doesn't do marketing speak, and he doesn't dumb down his content. It's just a brain dump of technical info until they (almost literally) kick him off the stage.

<comment><USER7> I also love his enthusiasm for whatever he's talking about. Every time I listen to him I suddenly feel motivated to go and write a bunch of code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Carmack has been a hero of mine since the mid 90s. He was also the inspiration for me to go into computer science. Always a pleasure to listen to such a technically dense talk on the cutting edge of a subject dear to me. I highly recommend his quake-con keynotes as well for those of you who like this video.

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps even more impressive than Carmack's technical chops is his ability to stand in a single spot for hours on end.

<comment><USER10> He moves but, is too fast for the camera speed.

<comment><USER5> He takes bathroom breaks during vertical refresh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Michael Abrash's keynote is worth checking out! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4yEyt5Qes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4yEyt5Qes)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the link. I'll probably end up watching this. I watched the Carmack talk as well.

Small note, but some things that kind of annoy me:

1\. Audio sync issues -- the mouths and the words don't line up. I may just download the video and use the Audio Delay tool in VLC to watch it.

2\. Start time of the talk: in this video you've just linked, the presentation doesn't even begin till like 6 mins in. Somewhat similar issue on the original video...

EDIT: Download link for the Abrash video: [http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/pwvblTMb/123146223/](http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/pwvblTMb/123146223/)

Download link for the Carmack video: [http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/ecJvSoeC/123169959/](http://www.clipconverter.cc/download/ecJvSoeC/123169959/)

EDIT: Here's the "Bar/Far" video clip that Abrash showed, it was badly out of sync for me when I watched the presentation, but you can see it here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=64](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=64)

And here's the side-by-side: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=149](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ#t=149)

Pretty amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just finished watching, I am impressed at how low-level/technical he can get without boring or confusing the audience.

I have some experience with technical speaking and its very hard to make a technical point without dumbing it down for the audience.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was in the room - he is a truly dynamic speaker and obviously a super- intelligent guy. I think he went off the rails a bit with the suggestion of interlacing as a potential solution. That makes little sense to me. It's, at best, a short-term solution once you get fast enough displays and rendering. (And as an old-time video guy... just... god, please... no...)

<comment><USER15> I feel you in the pain of dealing with interlacing, but Carmack was envisaging a more flexible solution than plain two up interlacing. In particular his solution also made HDR imaging possible, which sounds like a worthwhile win to compensate for the pain of interlacing.

<comment><USER16> Patents for interlaced HDR techniques are out there for the capture chain and probably for the display side also. I think it's premature to take everything Carmack suggests as solutions as gospel as to how things will end up. Speaking from alot of experience in straddling software and cutting edge hardware development, solutions that make sense on one side often come out differently on the other side. And sometimes the best solution is biting the bullet and doing it right without the hacks and then optimizing the cost down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While listening to all of the mitigation strategies that Carmack proposed for the technological challenges, I wondered if you could hack the user. What about drugs? Is there something that can reduce our sensitivity to low- frequency displays and yaw lag? At the very least, motion sickness drugs?

<comment><USER18> I'm sure there is, anti-emetic medication like Valoid really helps with nausea, and Cannabis can alleviate nausea and discomfort tremendously. But ideally we want to solve these problems in hardware, rather than wetware of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sorry for the somewhat lame question, but is he always that still?

I'm 10 minutes in and I don't think he moved his feet once, and his right hand just a couple times.

It feels very weird for me to watch and I just noticed it now, is there something wrong with me?

<comment><USER20> Yes, its usually like that. He might sit down after a couple of hours though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> John Carmack is great technical speaker. His interesting thoughts flows in a continuous stream and as a listener its almost impossible to get distracted.

I wish Carmack does an interview like the one in "Coders at work" format where we can get some insight on

How he approaches debugging,

what tools he uses apart from visual studio.

How does he approaches already existing large code base?

What is the optimal duration to code without interruption.

What techniques does he use to get in to flow state e.t.c..

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice use of keynote to directly present requirements to engineers throughout the display supply chain, especially in large companies like Samsung.

</comment><comment><USER23> This keynote was by far the highlight of the entire conference for me

Second were the amazing demos on the Crescent Bay prototype

</comment><comment><USER24> Nothing Carmack does is ever boring. This man is a huge inspiration for me.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can anyone tl;dr the new stuff in this version of the oculus prototype ?

<comment><USER26> Lighter, higher resolution, higher frame rate, better lenses, larger tracking volume, 360 degree tracking, and built-in headphones. The resolution and frame rate are likely close if not identical to what the first consumer Oculus headset will have next year.

<comment><USER27> Not just built-in headphones, but also built-in positional audio APIs (possibly with hardware acceleration?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone's got a link to the slidedeck ?

<comment><USER29> There are no slides, as per usual for Carmack talks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> it becomes its own form of marketing speech, carmack was the reason i got involved: financially, temporally, and mentally; and i think the organisation understands this as common for a number of people.. especially 'developers'

the oculus is digital stereoscopy

which is hard with simple stationary fixed objects(i), but combine it with inferred spherical screen encapsulation and it becomes a real challenge, probably a fun one too

you let carmack wax poetic on his interesting ideas to fix this tech and he will talk about latency and hertz and i'll listen with bated breath because i like hearing people talk about solutions to problems

but then i put the headset on and i realise these are hardly the problems befallen the proposed goal

i want someone to address that piece of a person that is lost when they put the headset on for the first time, it almost appears physical when you see it waft out of them

i lost it, my gamer friend who already preemptively developed a defensive cyncism to the tech lost it, the eleven year old i introduce hacking to lost it, and that last one was probably the most signifigant for me to see

i had been using the object sitting on top of my bookshelf as an incentivising mechanism: 'finish your project and i'll let you use the oculus'; last week he pushed his finished project but i had other obligations the following week so he had to wait 'two! whole! weeks!' to get to use the oculus

when i picked him up the following week, uncharacteristically early this time.. we both are lax in our punctuallity but he refused to let me be late today so he came directly to me fifteen minutes early.. he went on and on about how he has been 'scared' all day:'scared, but like happy scared'; i tried to explain to him the concept of anxiety but his mind was hurling itself around all of what he was about to become witness to

i put the headset on him and he had fun with it, but when he took it off he became suddenly very pragmatic in his demeanor, he told me he thinks it hurt him, his head, his eyes, something.. he needed a glass of water, i explained that that was because instead of being a virtual reality in which he was transposed to the thing exploits an optical illusion which means your brain is doing a lot more work than it usually does trying to rectify the inconsistencies, if you've ever been frustrated by trying to see a sailboat in a magic eye you know what it feels like to use the oculus

i asked him his opinion:'honestly? ..well, unfortunately a little dissappointed';

i see my position as creating a safe environment for him to develop his ideas so naturally i challenged him to explain himself by defending the technological feat that he was holding in his hand, but the only thing we could talk about quickly became anything other than what we wanted to talk about

so we talked about the tech, i started going all carmack on him and we had fun talking tech but the conversation was clearly avoiding talking about the 'experience' one develops when wearing the headset

i wanted to know what he lost, and asked him to describe the thing he thought it was going to be, he was unable:'i don't know, just different, like? more 3d`ish'; in fashion i told him to explain himself explicitly stead superficially:'but what does that mean? what did you think it was going to be? describe that to me';

'i don't know anymore'

this i understood, but my experience was different, after wearing the headset i started to dream up better ways to do what i thought they were trying to do before i put it on, ways to do what i wanted from virtual reality, they are dreams and some built on the sort of technological feats of dreams but this was and still is my reaction each time i wear it

so yes john, tell me all about your brilliant ideas for fixing latency issues because this stuff is fun, but please acknowledge the baseline of this research is fundamentally flawed as it pertains to the proposed goals

i've stopped calling the oculus virtual reality, the oculus is digital stereoscopy

.

.

.

. (i) the first thing i did with the oculus was pull up two terminals, cat out some of my writing, align vertically, then slowly move one terminal into the field of view of the other eye until the text seemed to stop wonking my brain and really pop out at me

the experience was profound

so, i threw together a little browser playground with two 117px squares, one blue and one pink, i aligned them vertically then again slowly moved one into the field of view of the other eye, and i waited until those two distinct colors overlaid in my mind as a single purple

herein lies the problem: there was a multi pixel range where my brain would close the gap manually, out of my control and rather forcibly; it was impossible for me to find the perfect distance between the two divs, 340pxs worked but so did plus or minus 4px from 344px, the perfect'exact`preferred`innate distance was undiscoverable because of the exception handling in my brain's interpretation of my visual input

.. edit:: gramm`err

<comment><USER30> john,

11:58~ :: resolution issues :: you mention comparing 1080 to 1440 saying 'you have to look kind of carefully or interact with it for a long time to determine the difference in quality' those are the exact two things you do with the screen when using the oculus.. first thing i found myself doing was counting pixels, because i could, because the screen is on my nose tip, and interacting with it a long time is physically painful: after a two hour film my eyes had bags under them but white bags as if my eyes were starved of blood for that whole time cut off by the goggles pressing to my face; but this is what i wanted: i wanted a digital workspace! terminals flying around me, above me below me, stacked in front of me, i want my development marathons to be done in a virtual space

.

18:00~ :: interlacing scans :: why do the scans have to be left to right? i like the multi line gap interlacing idea: each individual gap creating its designated frame; but i wonder if you've considered scanning the lines from the middle out in both directions.. is this possible? hardware changes? one upsetting realisation with the oculus was the importance of both neck to skull mobility as well as eye rotation mobility, if my vision is focused at the center and blurred in the periphery i need something moving both with my pupils as well as my skull, but since your tech has yet to offer a way to do this it could easily exploit its own limitations by just scanning those lines from middle out as it already assumes i am looking straight ahead at the screen, also at 33 minutes you talk about the importance of resolution..?

.

23:00~ :: position tracking :: vision purity is a heartbreaking itch.. i've spent very little time thinking about the issue of position tracking.. i left the tracker unplugged for a long time in the early days of using the device, i only really plugged it in in order to assume a position of solidarity with the project as it is, hopefully only for now, in its entirity.. only thought i've had is embedded seems necessary.. i'll be looking at a blade of grass and as i get closer to it, getting down on the ground to really look at and around then suddenly i will leave the field of view for the tracker and be jarringly thrown into some default position until i adjust and i'm picked up again and placed back at my actual position

.

33:00~ :: resolution :: interesting to come back to this later and from an opposing position.. i think this sort of developmental focus contradiction is necessary to simultaneously improve multiple aspects of the experience

.

40:00~ :: stereo pano :: this sounds like me arguing with my math teacher in highschool how calculus is 'just a hack', a practical hack that has giving us signifigant comforts from the technology it affords, but most assuredly a hack.. the head tilt problem sounds like an area for fascinating research, also sounds like a capture problem, the photographer, that when figured will become a display problem, the stereo display tech.. perhaps you could usurp the capture solution by messing around with light field cameras like lytro? and solve the display issues before capture shows you you have them

.

42:00~ :: stereo pano cirque demo :: i like the incorporation of positional audio, this reminded me of the scene in guardians when rocket is disciplining a defeated drax:'we've all got dead people'; this was the first scene in a 3d movie where i felt like the set was built with 3d in mind, the practical effects seemed to catch up with the digital, shedding their historic bindings to the theatre, and i was impressed and excited about the future of 3d movies for the first time

.

48:37 :: benchmarking :: 'i'm sure i could write a benchmark that could win relative to something else'.. that is the single most hilarious and excellent sentence in regard to benchmarking that i have ever heard, love it

.

50:00~ :: cardboard :: cardboard is interesting, i read it the first time as a sort of commentary`derision`joke by googs to bacefook for buying oculus, but the execution was so well done and thought out that it almost redeemed itself, and in reality the cardboard makes you appreciate the oculus more.. i think stereoscopy is innately flawed and with the cardboard you can see the limitations and shortcomings outright which effectively shows how well the oculus hides its flaws

.

1:06:00~ :: thermal :: the thermal seems a greater problem for gear than oculus, why the gear placed a shell around the phone stead some clip in feature seemed to aggressively deny this as an issue, but hearing how much you are concerned and interested in thermal issues makes me wonder if samsung's agreement with oculus has tied you all to their gear interests or what are your motivating affects? i understand the whole whats good on mobile is great on`for pc but still..

.

1:10:00~ :: up vectors :: 'breaking what we want to accomplish in vr'.. i'm sorry i disagree with you on this one, hard coding any elements of the experience is going to make for a bad user experience, have your interests as defaults but allow users to use it as they want, i want to lay on my back and have my virtual up vector orthagonal to my meat space up vector, sometimes, sometimes we make unreasonable descisions but i want to be able to.. like laying on my back watching a movie, thankfully the whirligig player allows me to orient the screen to whatever angle regardless of the positional trackers' understanding of my virtual orientation

.

1:11:40 :: async time warp :: 'you win arguments by showing an existence proof', excellent

.

1:22:00~ :: eye slicing :: un chien andalou

.

1:27:00+ :: questions

. 1:35:00~ :: lenses :: i look forward to seeing your non-circular lens implementation, the idea of rendering more than throwing away the excess is the optimal way to develop

.

thank you for your time, and effort

.

.. edit :: gramm`err</comment></comment>


One Day One Job – How a pissed off CEO became a startups biggest revenue stream - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/02/one-day-one-job-how-a-pissed-off-ceo-became-a-startups-biggest-revenue-stream/

<comment><USER2> If you have any questions about One Day, One Job, I'm happy to answer them.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a really great scrappy startup story. Keep up the good work.</comment></comment>


Artur Bergman (Wikia) on SSDs at O'Reilly Velocity - Fuck NoSQL, Sharding, ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.livestream.com/oreillyconfs/video?clipId=pla_3beec3a2-54f5-4a19-8aaf-35a839b6ecaa

<comment><USER2> SSDs remind me of the old "the russians used a pencil" joke [1]. Artur's presentation was funny, and maybe a little ridiculous in its presentation, but 100% true. We all spend a whole lot of time fighting IO on our infrastructure when we could spend a few bucks and fix the problem at it's core: spinning magnetic platter storage sucks.

1 - Yes, I know it's not real, but it's funny and it makes a great point.

</comment><comment><USER3> yup.</comment>


Konstruktor Inc. - <AUTHOR> https://konstruktor.com <comment><AUTHOR> We help you to realize your dream. We help to create and collaborate more efficiently what leads to a faster implementation of your dreams. For this we create an environment conducive to: removal of all kinds of boundaries; acquire knowledge; the exchange of information; ability to communicate; find resources to implement all kinds of artistic, scientific and other projects.</comment>


Mudflap: Pointer Use Checking for C/C++ - <AUTHOR> http://gcc.fyxm.net/summit/2003/mudflap.pdf

<comment><USER2> I really wish I could use Readability on all these Scribed PDFs.

<comment><USER3> Seriously. Why do people publish to PDF anyway?

<comment><USER4> In a lot of cases, like the one here, it's because they're publishing for a conference or journal that takes submissions as PDF, not for the web. Then they just put the same PDF on the internet.</comment></comment></comment>


The man responsible for passwords says advice was wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4771194/The-man-responsible-passwords-says-advice-WRONG.html <comment><AUTHOR> Posting this purely for the way the Daily Mail has written this up in their 'usual' way...

But hey, at least normal users are being made aware of the problem!

<comment><USER2> The daily mail is a terrible rag and should not be given page views.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. Submitted for the humour factor.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mobile devs who added Apple Sign In, what conversion changes? - <AUTHOR> Curious if adding apple sign in substantially affected conversion rate for mobile apps, thanks. <comment><USER2> Haven't done anything with Apple sign in, but I worked with a lot of other providers before. If you have multiple options, users might forget what service they used. This becomes an even bigger problem if the paid for a service with a different provider and can't find their purchase. If you do use something like this, only having one provider (only Apple) makes things less confusing.

<comment><USER3> I worked on the design and rollout of multiple sign in providers on a popular app. There are best practices that avoid these issues (users forgetting which service they used), but they are rarely implemented.

The trick is to be very forgiving: If a user tries to sign in using provider X, and we discover an email address conflict with an account that uses provider Y, we would simply ask users to confirm by clicking a button to sign in with provider Y. From that point forward, both provider X and provider Y can be used to sign into the account.

So many apps miss the importance of this and cut corners by only allowing an account to be associated with 1 sign-in provider, or forcing users to create passwords for these accounts, or differentiating between login and signup.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Wouldn't that allow someone to sign up for service Y with an email address associated with an account in your system using service X, in order to get access to the account in your system?

Maybe there's something I'm not seeing, but it seems dangerous to rely on the identity provider's email address to authenticate the user.

<comment><USER5> It's assumed that, if you're signed up for a service with an email address, you control that email address.

This is generally a reasonable thing to assume, and can be verified for whatever account providers you support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On one consumer iOS app with email and apple sign in as the two available options, 34% opt for apple, 66% for email. No meaningful change in conversion rate, but this generally isn't an issue 90%+. The prior arrangement wasn't just email, though, it was email or phone sign up, so take what you will.

<comment><USER7> 34% actually strikes me as pretty good for a new and not-particularly-well- advertised service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not a dev but a consumer in this question and I'd just say a service or site that has Sign In with Apple and Apple Pay available on the web is and instant use on my end. I will continue to vote with my paltry wallet for these technologies to take off even more, especially Sign In with Apple.

I don't want to give my actual email out. I like the relay aspect. And it should make logging in and user management and single sign on and all that much easier no?

<comment><USER9> What apps are using Apple Sign In, anyway? I haven't run into any and kind of just assumed it died or hasn't launched yet.

<comment><USER10> Originally Apple set a very aggressive due date for this feature and the dev's fought back. So the due date was pushed back to April 2020. Moving forward you should start to see it appear on almost any app that already has social auth.

[https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09122019b](https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09122019b)

[https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/#sig...](https://developer.apple.com/app- store/review/guidelines/#sign-in-with-apple)

<comment><USER11> Yesterday they announced that requirement (among others) was pushed back to June 30, presumably due to COVID-19.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hate technologies like this. Not because I don't think they at least contribute some benefit to end users.

I see it as oblivious executives trying to monopolize whatever they think they can monopolize.

The future is in yubikey-style authentication.

<comment><USER13> Yubikey-style is dead in the water since you can't back them up or exfiltrate the key. It will never appeal to more than a handful of users willing to jump through those hoops.

Just needing to have every hardware key on hand to register with each new service is so bad I thought I was misunderstanding the UI. I never used them again.

The hoops might be worth it for a critical service that holds your $millions. But hardware keys are never going to compete on the 99% of services that people use, from the trivia app on their phone to Uber.

<comment><USER14> I think we will see most client devices natively implement something like WebAuthn with their onboard TPMs. Enrolling new devices for a service would then by a matter of approving the attempt from an already-enrolled device, iCloud style.

<comment><USER15> [https://krypt.co/](https://krypt.co/) Does something like this now by leveraging your mobile device as a security token for desktop logins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple Sign in to be mandatory by June 30th for certainuse cases (source: Apple WWDC update email from a few days back).

Along with a number of other enforcements.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm looking at adding this into a new app I'm developing, and assumed I'd do a default apple login on IOS and google login on Android (with the option to go see more login options on other devices)

Anybody think this is a bad idea for some reason?

<comment><USER18> Remember that google login works cross platform. So it makes sense to show Apple for only iOS/Mac users, but you shouldn't hide the other options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm about to embark on a new iOS built with SwiftUI. What backend would you recommend for authentication (server side) when using Sign In with Apple? Do you all use Firebase?

</comment><comment><USER20> I will never use the same service to sign into multiple things. It's a single point of failure. If Apple ever decides to close your account you're S.O.L.

I made the mistake once, had an account closed, got royally screwed. It wasn't Apple but it doesn't matter. I learned my lesson. Don't tie things together.

I don't follow that for everything but for anything important I do as well as anything involving money.

<comment><USER21> Similarly if your Apple (or other SSO) login is compromised the blast area is much bigger as all linked sites are now compromised

You could make the same argument if your password manager is compromised, but definitely worth being aware of

<comment><USER22> Just to expound on what you're saying, won't there always be a single point of failure? For example, for the majority of people there are only a few options.

1\. Use the same password for all logins because you don't know how to manage unique passwords for all your logins. Obviously this is about as unsecure as you can get.

2\. Write your unique passwords down somewhere. This can be in a notebook, or a password manager (1password and the like). In this case, there is still a single point of failure (as you pointed out) if someone finds your book or compromises your password manager.

3\. Use some sort of SSO service. Still a single point of failure (Apple, Google, Facebook).

I feel like using Apple SSO with 2-factor authentication is just as secure as any of these options.

Is there any "secure" system that doesn't have a single point of failure?

<comment><USER5> You. You are the single point of failure; if you are compromised, then all your accounts can be accessed by the compromisor.

If you're looking for a point outside yourself, then memorising all your passwords would be an option.

But beyond that, I don't think your criticism is warranted. There's always a single point of failure - sure - but we can still consider gradations of _how_ centralised that point is, and how likely it is to fail.

With a hosted password manager, you're at the mercy of their server code; specifically, at least for 1password, I think they have a 'dead man's switch' which lets you get at the encrypted content without the master password. This is more likely to fail than a password manager which stores all its content locally and really encrypts it (e.g. keepass). In this case, human error outside of yourself can't compromise you. But technical error can, which is why there are more steps that can _meaningfully_ increase your level of security. Like running your password manager on a separate, air-gapped computer; or sandboxing everything you run a la qubes.

Are any of these especially likely to compromise you, as a user? No, but reducing centralisation and dependency still improve your chances, and are definitely worth considering if you are e.g. running a drug smuggling ring.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do we have a package manager problem? - <AUTHOR> Nowadays, every big software project seems to need its own package manager: programming languages, os distributions, virtualization and sandboxing solutions, text editors, programs with plugins... Do they really all have significant different needs? Will we ever have the 'git' of package managers? <comment><USER2> It's not generally that bad unless you want the latest and greatest. For example, on Debian, you can easily install Perl modules from APT instead of CPAN (which I've found temperamental in practise). The only trouble is that the modules are often older than those you can get through the dedicated PM channel (since obviously the maintainers have to package up their release in line with Debian standards).

Package management is still a much better idea than manual dependency installation - even NuGet for .Net is an improvement as it supports automatic restoration of dependencies at build time. However, as we are immersed in so many different platforms and technologies, it is extremely difficult to have a one-size-fits-all PM. Linux PMs are probably the closest.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is "the git of package managers"? One thing that a very loud group of people claim is the second coming of jesus without any knowledge of the alternatives?

I think we have that already with NPM.

Edit: to clarify, I'm not suggesting npm is the 2nd coming. I'm suggesting people _act_ like it is, ( much as they do with git )

<comment><USER4> Then i could say we have that already with Rubygems.

I always cry a little when a nice looking small tool is distributed trough NPM. Why? I really dont want and will build those dependencies just for a stupid mini tool.</comment></comment>


Ethics and investing: Is exercising your stock options unethical? - <AUTHOR> http://ru-linux-geek.livejournal.com/30616.html Should people defer exercising options while the government is doing very disagreeable things? <comment><USER2> I guess, then, making money at all is unethical too. This is a ridiculous argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ability to defer the income from stock options, opposed to other forms of income, clearly differentiates it from most income.</comment></comment>


Why Does Google Hate SIP? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=286b02abe37dd4cf&hl=en

<comment><USER2> I don't know if turning off access to a clearly in-progress and not meant for public use SIP project that somehow got stumbled upon means Google hates SIP. I think it means they are working on something and will release it when it is done.

I mean, c'mon, Google is building SIP support directly into their phone OS. They aren't against you. Be patient.

<comment><USER3> > I mean, c'mon, Google is building SIP support directly into their phone OS. > They aren't against you. Be patient.

According to this [1], SIP support already exists in Android 2.3. I don't know how far this "support" goes (I suppose it's not hooked up to the Google Voice app, at least). And I wonder how many carriers, once they are shipping Android 2.3, are going to leave that code in place and accessible to the user.

I don't want to be too much of a conspiracy theorist here, but I do wonder if Google is dragging their feet on SIP support because of conflicts of interest with Android.

[1] [http://android- developers.blogspot.com/2010/12/android-23-pl...](http://android- developers.blogspot.com/2010/12/android-23-platform-and-updated-sdk.html)

<comment><USER4> I don't think the conflict is as strong as it once was. Mobile carriers have already begun to 'pivot' to be data providers instead of phone providers with data on the side. I think they'll find a way to get their margins either way and data, including voip calling, might end up being cheaper for them in the long run anyway. I guess that's contingent on if they can innovate fast enough to keep their networks from being crushed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would also love to see SIP connectivity for Google Voice. That said, the discussion seems to center around the _if_ , and not the _why_. I suspect that the reason that Google hasn't offered SIP support already is regulatory:

Some time ago, AT&T accused Google of violating telecom regulations by blocking access to certain high cost numbers[1]. Google was able to defend against the accusation by pointing out that they did not actually provide a telecom service, as usage of Google Voice required a normal phone line[2].

I suspect that if (once?) Google provides SIP support, this distinction can no longer be made. What would be the difference between Google Voice and any other SIP provider?

[1]: [http://www.att.com/gen/public- affairs?pid=14048&goback=g...](http://www.att.com/gen/public- affairs?pid=14048&goback=group01&article=home)

[2]: [http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/response- to-a...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/response-to-at-letter- to-fcc-on-google.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> While SIP is widespread and the only commonly accepted VoIP standard (besides death protocols such as H.323) the whole protocol is just one big mess.

Google's open XMPP-based Jingle protocol does a much better job at common use- cases. Unfortunately there are only few applications that support it (although Google released the relevant parts as open-source).

<comment><USER7> This isn't my field at all so I could be wildly off base here, but it seems like Skype does a lot better in the ugly, consumer, ad-hoc real world using TCP. It feels like this is only becoming an even bigger deal in an unpredictable, soupy carrier grade NAT world of IPv4 exhaustion, or do solutions like STUN and ICE hold up? Are there any IETF type standards tracks that take a Skype like approach and support unmanaged mobility, or are we stuck until IPv6 has a significant presence?

<comment><USER8> It's not about the protocol construction really. SIP is ok and should deal with most NAT problems with ICE support.

Simply because the SIP protocol looks simple and is easy to inspect... a lot of hardware/software will get it wrong. And I mean wrong like not implementing some feature on the phone thus bringing the common supported feature list down, implementing ICE in a wrong way then dropping the product support, breaking basic SIP transactions in a way that the phone doesn't even work without a NAT, etc.

Then router producers come in saying - we're doing home routers - let's help and solve it by doing SIP-ALG and active rewriting on our side. And they get it wrong again. And then they don't think of implementing a way to disable the SIP-ALG (looking at you speedtouch).

All the protocols are there. As long as you stick to one single manufacturer, it's ok. As long as you don't need custom features, it's ok. It's when you want to be good to everyone and support everything - then SIP networks fail because you simply cannot support everything at the same time.

Noone tries to analyse Skype and they control all the clients and servers. Whatever problems they create - they can solve. That's why they do better in many cases. Because you can't even "try" to fix their traffic.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. It seems like it's Skype's tunneling prowess that I'm impressed with instead of the protocol itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't say they are exactly steaming along on this project. It's been OVER 2 YEARS!</comment>


$100k donation to the Internet Bug Bounty - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2403-helping-secure-foss-and-the-internet-our-100-000-donation-to-the-internet-bug-bounty <comment><USER2> Like folks giving money to open source projects? You should apply for a Mozilla OSS award ([https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS](https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS)) -- deadline is July 31!

<comment><USER3> First it seems to be for any kind of open source:

        Mission Partners

        The Mission Partners track is open to any free software / open source project
        that significantly furthers Mozilla's mission to ensure the Internet is a
        global public resource, open and accessible to all.

But later on it specifies something that aligns quite well with Mozilla's principles:

        Activities which are not sufficient for an award on their own include:

           Writing open source software (notwithstanding manifesto principle #7)
           Building something cool with web technologies
           Translating open source software into another language

And it should be endorsed by someone _well-known_ :

        The specific project activity should be endorsed (on the application form) by someone well-known [...]

Which... is quite hard and not just _any_ kind of open source project. It seems you have to be high profile already to even opt for it, then do something along Mozilla's main principles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wondered for a moment if this could incentive developers to introduce bugs for their friends to "find," but then I remembered that hackers are already incentivized a lot more to sneak vulnerabilities into FOSS.

<comment><USER5> IMHO that would be a legitimate use of the award. If your review and merge process is bad enough that somebody can get malicious code into your releases, then that's a serious bug in your process, and whoever proved that it's there deserves the bounty just as much as someone who found an ordinary bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised their donating this amount. I mean as far as I know they are VC funded and atm don't make a profit? Or am I mixing things up here?

<comment><USER7> They are, but they also host any OSS project for free, which is the only reason I know about the brand "GitHub". I think you severely underestimate how valuable that mindshare can be. Also, they depend heavily on products which depend on OSS projects for their product.

It only makes sense that GitHub would want to reinvest in security for their own supply chain. The only problem is that most other companies _don 't_ do enough of the same.

<comment><USER8> Related blog on why VCs might invest more liberally in projects like GitHub (or npm): [http://words.steveklabnik.com/is-npm- worth-26mm](http://words.steveklabnik.com/is-npm-worth-26mm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Please insert your comments saying how this is bad or not enough below. Let's gather the negativity in a single place.

<comment><USER10> Seriously? You're like the first post. There is no negativity...

<comment><USER11> They're making fun of the overly negative comments that take over every thread about companies doing something seemingly good. It was my first thought as well: "let's see how HN twists this into something bad".

<comment><USER12> The best way to combat negativity is constructive discussion, not snarky unwarranted comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the age of surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/open-inspection <comment><USER2> Really hate to sound like a constitutional fundamentalist but we already have protections about this, at least in the USA, it's just completely unenforced.

Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. The forethought against overbearing government has ALWAYS been there.

Except there's been a massive end-run around "unreasonable". I mean every single hour of every single day, someone's car is being ransacked by the police, despite them not being under arrest.

If they can do that and get away with it, then nothing else is safe or sacred.

<comment><USER3> So while I appreciate some peoples' notions of "living Constitution", this is why I tend toward "originalist" readings of the document.

Also, read up on the Katz test for questions on the 4th amendment. tl;dr it's important that society as a whole places high value on privacy, or else the SCOTUS might not protect it so much.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, the originalist take on the 4th amendment is pretty much that it prohibits the government from doing, without a warrant, what would be trespass if done by a private actor. All of the stuff people want to add, like expectation of privacy in things out in the hands of third parties, or mosaic theory, are living constitution embellishments.

The very concept of "privacy" is a living constitution idea. The constitution doesn't use the word. The 4th amendment doesn't talk about the "right to privacy" the way the 1st talks about "freedom of speech." It talks about searches and seizures of enumerated (tangible) things. It's not like the framers didn't conceive of information or records held by third parties. They were lawyers and bankers and merchants--they could easily conceive that the police might ask a shipper for records of a merchant's shipments or an accountant for financial records.

<comment><USER3> It seems very straightforward to draw a right to be secure in one's papers and property from general warrants, and pretty easily extend that to data on one's phone or computer for the same kind of data. The 4th wasn't written to protect your sheets of paper. It was written to protect your data and your private matters from authorities on a witch hunt.

<comment><USER4> If we're going by the text alone, the 4th amendment protects your _property_ from authorities on a witch hunt: "persons, houses, papers, and effects." All are all property, and can be the subject of a trespass action (trespass to the person, trespass to land, trespass to chattel) when someone uses those things inconsistently with your property right. The 4th amendment doesn't say anything about "private matters" (and the motivating example of the 4th amendment was searches for contraband, not intrusion into "private matters"). "Expectation of privacy" is something the Supreme Court tacked onto the Constitution in 1967 during the Warren Court.

<comment><USER5> > The 4th amendment doesn't say anything about "private matters"

The 4th amendment may not say that directly, but Chief Justice Roberts did in the majority opinion for Riley v. California:

        Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience.
        With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many
        Americans "the privacies of life," Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S., 630.
        The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such
        information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy
        of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the
        question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized
        incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Personally I have a strong anxiety about being surveiled.

In a world where friendships are maintained online, CCTV cameras monitor the real world, and the best jobs are automatically analysing and classifying data, such anxiety is inhibiting and limiting.

I'm extremely grateful to Snowden and others for igniting this conversation, but I haven't truely felt secure post 2012. Even writing this feels like it will become a black mark against my name.

<comment><USER7> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but AIUI, here's what a smartphone is, or can potentially be, capable of acquiring/giving up to persons unknown (in addition to everything willingly given up to FB/Instagram/Tinder/Grindr/Google):

        Your face.
        Your voice.
        Your conversations.
        The faces, voices and conversations of people you associate with.
        Your location at any given time.

At least with the aid of helpful little 'check your health' and 'security' apps/add ons:

        Your prints.
        Your DNA.
        Your health problems or illnesses, if any.

<comment><USER8> Plus the sites you visit and all the bundled information that gives (your interests, orientations, political leaning, hope, fears, desires etc. etc). All the contacts you have plus your relationships with them. Your daily movements, right down to guessing bathroom breaks. Plus information on the connections you use and potentially the devices around you.

The list goes on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That final quote just sums it all up: "The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory."

</comment><comment> norea-armozel The worse of the modern surveillance zealotry is the fact they claim they'll leave people with non-mainstream opinions alone yet I've seen all kinds of arguments that even people who support anarchism should be placed under close observation or in prison. This troubles me because the whole idea that even if you're an anarchist that doesn't mean you are violent or willing to be so disruptive as to become a terrorist. I'm a mutualist anarchist and honestly I don't care if the government exists or not since there's not much I can personally do to it. Just espousing my ideas seems to rub certain people the wrong way even if 99.9% of the time they're purely academic in scope. The fact that technology exists to allow them to spy on me means they can constantly harass me and others like me into silence or complete seclusion. So much for a liberal society, eh?

</comment><comment><USER10> Why http-link when there is an https one? [https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/open- inspection](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/open-inspection)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how long until we have checkpoints at the borders of each state as yet another means of privacy invasion.

I also wonder at what point will the citizens wake up and just say no.

<comment><USER12> Statistically, the majority of people don't seem to care, which puts commentors on hacker news alone and easily listed.

Look at the UK if you want to see our future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There used to be a notion that it is a quintessential right for citizens to be anonymous to the government, even if that just means choosing or even just having a choice of interacting with the Government, but also being able to choose not to and forego some things.

We are ever increasingly accelerating towards what will really be a despotic dystopia where the government has tabs on you at all times even if it is just by virtue of deduction.

<comment><USER14> > There used to be a notion that it is a quintessential right for citizens to > be anonymous to the government, even if that just means choosing or even > just having a choice of interacting with the Government, but also being able > to choose not to and forego some things.

I don't believe that such a notion ever existed in a widespread way, or was a significant part of the political culture. It would effectively be a way to "opt out" of government authority. Care to provide any evidence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If one is being surveilled, does one care about the cultural history of that surveillance? I wonder.</comment>


Show HN: Relative Date Calculator - <AUTHOR> https://www.darklaunch.com/tools/relative-date-calculator

<comment><USER2> Is the idea that eventually the entire C standard library is going to be exposed as a web service?

<comment><AUTHOR> This uses strtotime. [https://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php](https://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php)</comment></comment>


Ninety-year-old man faces jail for giving food to homeless people - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ninetyyearold-man-faces-jail-for-giving-food-to-homeless-people-9838728.html <comment><USER2> This is just disgusting. Shit, if I had been that cop and was being ordered to enforce this law, I'd place my badge on the table.

And those politicians who signed off this law should spend one day on the streets and try to survive. Hint: it's not easy at all, even if you have money...</comment>


The robust beauty of improper linear models in decision making - <AUTHOR> http://andrewgelman.com/2013/08/14/the-robust-beauty-of-improper-linear-models-in-decision-making/

<comment><USER2> I can't see any way uniformly weighted models could be better in the general case unless there are strong universal criteria for model creation. But I'd also bet on Gelman's statistical intuition over my own.

Let's say I'm trying to come up with a model that predicts the price of a used car based on a list of features: age, color, engine size, brand, condition, etc. Can this possibly be claiming that an unweighted model does better than one that weights "color" less than "age"?

I'm particularly interested in this as the IPCC forecasts are done with unweighted combinations of different model results, and this has always struck me as 'broken'. But perhaps it's more defensible than I thought?

(looking at the underlying paper now)</comment>


Svgweb - Scalable Vector Graphics for Web Browsers using Flash - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/svgweb/

<comment><USER2> It's sad that so much work had to be done by Google to get these standards available to IE users. Had IE been open source, a few patches would have been released to the upstream maintainers, and a fix could have been released years ago.

<comment><USER3> _It's sad that so much work had to be done by Google to get these standards available to IE users._

Good point, it's things like this that make me wonder where anyone gets the idea that Microsoft will ever be able to be a serious, long term contender to Google in Internet related tech, search included -- right now, Bing is a (perceived) contender merely because of Microsoft's size compared to Google. Google is able to keep their main product, search, going while actively working to improve other companies' deficient and ancient products. Admittedly, Google has an interest in getting people to use the Internet more and this kind of tech is part of that goal, but these kinds of releases somehow show that Google doesn't really consider Microsoft to be a (serious) competitor, whereas Microsoft does.

<comment><USER4> _"Google has an interest in getting people to use the Internet more"_

And that is why Microsoft is on a hiding to nothing. They're producing search engines and browsers yet paradoxically, they lose power and money as people use the internet more. Something's got to give before they can start pulling in a single direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i dont see any mention of flash involved with this at all. from what i can tell, its a 60k javascript library.

<comment><USER6> Once dropped in you get partial support for SVG 1.1, SVG Animation (SMIL), Fonts, Video and Audio, DOM and style scripting through JavaScript, and more in about a 60K library. Your SVG content can be embedded directly into normal HTML 5 or through the OBJECT tag. If native SVG support is already present in the browser than that is used, though you can override this and have the SVG Web toolkit handle things instead. _No downloads or plugins are necessary other than_ _Flash_ _which is used for the actual rendering, so its very easy to use and incorporate into an existing web site._ [emphasis mine]

<comment><USER7> I'm curious as to why they did not translated it to VML like excanvas does. I guess there may be parts of SVG that's a poor fit to VML, and Flash also will make it possible to have it work with any browser with a flash plugin, not just IE.

<comment><USER8> I think it's because VML is slow, and probably it misses some features to properly emulate SVG.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a $175 covid-19 test led to $2,479 in charges - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/how-a-covid-19-test-led-to-charges <comment><USER2> Check out the book Overcharged if you want a fairly quick read that explains the healthcare scam from top to bottom [https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged- Americans-Much-Health-Car...](https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans- Much-Health-Care/dp/1944424768)

Easiest way to get rich in America is to start a health clinic and start billing Medicare. Absolute trash from top to bottom.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to understand how the basically fraudulent billing practices in US healthcare are viewed as acceptable and nothing gets done to correct things. I know many people who have stories of people being overbilled by not a little but by a multiple of the normal price. Or the hospital bills for things that never happened. That while the patient never got an estimate upfront. There is basically no way to do it "right".

And even when you discover a problem you are expected to spend countless hours on the phone negotiating between provider and insurance.

I can't imagine any other industry getting away with such a persistent track record of bad behavior.

<comment><USER4> This is why I love Kaiser (kp.org) as they are the insurer and the provider. They haven't over-billed themselves with care for me or friends.

<comment><USER5> Except they don't provide adequate mental health care even with the parity law. It takes about a month for your consultation and they funnel everybody into group therapy and/or drugs. Only those with severe mental disorders are given access to a shrink and only every 3-4 months. If you want weekly or biweekly visits to a psychoanalyst, you will be paying out of pocket.

Also, as much as Kaiser likes to call themselves a non-profit, the doctor group is for-profit. Kaiser is actually composed of three separate legal entities: insurer, hospitals, and doctors. Any profit left over at the end of the fiscal year is split evenly by the hospital and doctor groups, with the doctors engaging in profit sharing. There is an incentive to provide less care to those paying out of pocket for the insurance because the doctors will reap a bigger bonus. This is not the case for Medicare and Medicaid recipients because reimbursement is based off both treatment and outcome metrics.

<comment><USER6> A "shrink" means a psychiatrist, and a psychiatrist is how you get drugs. So I feel there is some conflict in your answer where you say they funnel people to drugs and also it's hard to see a psychiatrist.

In my case I went to Kaiser and it took a few weeks to get to see the shrink, who gave me drugs.

If you're looking to have your health insurance cover therapy, I agree that Kaiser is the wrong choice. I also saw a therapist for a while, who was covered by my employer's EAP (a separate benefit from health insurance).

I didn't think most insurers would cover regular visits with a psychoanalyst. I thought they were a pretty rare resource, so if people with insurance had free access, wouldn't they all be fully booked?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I live in Europe and I never understood the in-network and out-of-network concept (I know what it is, I just see it is ripe for abuse).

So I wonder, why hasn't Congress enacted legislation to put a ceiling on out- of-network charges to (say) 2x the median in-network charge?

<comment><USER8> Copying another comment that was downvoted out, because it is 100% accurate:

> why hasn't Congress enacted legislation to put a ceiling on out-of-network > charges

Because they are bought and paid by the same people profiting off the system.

<comment><USER9> >Because they are bought and paid by the same people profiting off the system.

I know broad sweeping characterizations feel good and are easy, but I can't help but feel they help those taking the most money from lobbyists hide from view. And I can't help but feel they encourage giving up entirely on government and voting in outsiders regardless of their actual qualifications, who double down on the problems instead of fixing them.

It takes a lot more effort to name some specifics either rules or people, but broad sweeping statements don't usually help.

<comment><USER8> Sometimes broad problems demand broad statements. We could get into the specifics of the two-party duopoly and the legacy of kowtowing to healthcare and health insurance industries, but the examples are far too numerous and stretch back far too long.

I will provide two examples, one from each party, so as to be less divisive:

Affordable Care Act: Democrats controlled the house, senate, and presidency. They could've passed any bill they wanted. Instead of medicare for all or similar, they passed a bill that required everyone to purchase a 3rd party product called insurance. The overhead and profits of the insurance industry add to the cost of actual healthcare.

National Health Planning and Resources Development Act: Nixon signed this in 1974. It mandates that anyone trying to build a healthcare facility apply for and receive a Certificate of Need. This creates local monopolies for existing healthcare facilities by eliminating new competition. It's a blatant form of protectionism.

<comment><USER10> To pass ACA the Democrats needed 60 out of 100 seats in the Senate and they had 58. To pass it they caucused with two independents, and one of them, Joe Lieberman, specifically would not vote for it if it had a public option.

<comment><USER8> They needed 60 to avoid a filibuster. A filibuster would've required Republicans to obstruct the vote by speaking continuously on why Americans don't deserve healthcare. Democrats had them backed in a corner. All they had to do was propose a bill that benefited everyday Americans instead of corporate backers and they would've made the Republicans look like absolute fools for speaking endlessly against it. A filibuster only lasts as long as the opposition keeps debate open.

<comment><USER10> The Overton window wasn't that far left in 2009. A good deal of the Obamacare messaging was focused around telling middle class Americans that no, they would not lose their existing employer-provided coverage. And even if you could pull out all the data that would show that Medicare for All benefited people more than existing coverage no one would've believed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whereas in most countries on earth it costs the testee nothing directly.

<comment><USER12> The US government should be handing out those tests free.

<comment><USER13> The US government _especially_ should be handling out tests for free, even if other countries or places in the worth charge a nominal amount.

The US though is has two main problems that make any sort of charge ridiculous:

First, there is a larger-than-normal section of the population that apparently believes the entire pandemic is a "giant hoax", and _most likely_ won't get tested anyways. Any charge at all would be s further hinderence

Second, and most importantly, the US medical system has lost all trust when there is any charge whatsoever (such as in the related article), but more to the point, the system has lost all trust when there is any possible way that they could actually bill you.

In the US I don't care if you tell me that something is going to be $5, or $50; if there is _any cost at all_, which means that _they have some way of billing me_, I have to operate on the assumption that I will at some point get mailed a bill for X thousands of dollars.

<comment><USER14> > if there is _any cost at all_, which means that _they have some way of > billing me_, I have to operate on the assumption that I will at some point > get mailed a bill for X thousands of dollars.

At least that particular issue could be avoided by making it a cash transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Freestanding ERs are the payday loan scams of the health industry.

</comment><comment><USER16> "You can't do that. It's insurance fraud for you to pay for our services once we know you have insurance."

</comment><comment><USER17> It's unbelievable to think that the government couldn't even roll out the free testing. The most basic part of fighting corona and they couldn't even get that right. At least now we can stop pretending we don't live in a third world country. No wonder the pandemic is so bad here. Literally nothing is being done. If it's this costly and hard to get a test, we have no hope whatsoever other than a vaccine that may never come. Barring that, it's herd immunity and all the disability and death that comes along with that. Great job of the government to protect its people. A police state with some of the most far reaching powers this side of traditional authoritarianism, and they can't enforce mask wearing and business closures. But they have no problem arresting people for smoking weed or murdering people by kneeling on their necks. America has finally become great, the number one country it believes in delusion to be. Too bad that number one position is in the number of corona cases and deaths. Then again, what can one expect from a third world country even its own president called a "shithole"?

<comment><USER18> It's not that the government couldn't roll out testing they don't want to test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Satanically criminal, yet legal in the United States - USA #1? What a sad joke this "united" states is.

</comment><comment><USER20> These articles always leave out whether and how much the person actually ended up paying. Being an attorney, she should not have paid more than $175.

Medical providers get away with playing price roulette under the theory that when you show up and ask for help, they're entitled to fair compensation for their services. Their billing department then goes to work manufacturing a bill that justifies "costs" much higher than they actually incur, and there is no specific way to refute them.

But in this case, she had a contract for those services at $175. The provider can't just decide that they deserve more than their contracted rate and send her an additional bill. That would be like going to the grocery store, paying your total at the checkout, and then receiving a bill in the mail for the cashier's time under a theory that you had only paid for the food.

Since the victim here is an attorney, writing a strongly worded letter repudiating the fraudulent bills should have come naturally. Did she do this? Did the provider then go to court and successfully substantiate their fraud, or what?

edit: I don't know what the downvotes are for.

Reading the article again, I guess she ended up punting to insurance and so far has personally paid $0. Although her insurance states that she may have to pay "up to $600", so the matter doesn't seem over. These stories always lack so much agency, its frustrating.

The cost disease is a problem, and it seems none of the businesses involved have an incentive to reign it in. Apart from the future possibility of single payer, cash payers are currently one of the few checks on the market. But the dynamic is never fully explored - just because someone sends you a bill does not mean you have to pay it!

<comment><USER21> My downvote is partially because you seem to be objecting based on what you think "can't just" happen, rather than on observations of what did happen, or citations of relevant law.

Additionally, you have specific objections based on what you've decided that this specific person should be capable of and what should come natural to them, and also assuming that this action would be productive (rather than costing more than $2500 to see through.) Seeing as the larger question isn't about how much _lawyers_ are charged, but how much _people in general_ are charged, it seems like a irrelevant observation.

I don't think you meant to sound like this to anyone, and I think we're probably on the same side of the issue. To me, getting bogged down in specifics is an enemy to systemic change (only when the specifics don't threaten to contradict the general case - when they do, specifics are of course important.) If I know of a good way for a _particular person_ to get out of an irrationally inflated medical bill, that's really something that I should be communicating with that person. If I see that _people in general_ don't use a good method (that I am personally aware of) to get out of irrationally inflated medical bills, then either 1) the system is broken because it's not automatically funneling people toward that method, or 2) if everybody used that method, it would start to fail, which means that the solution was never a universal one.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for responding. I agree you can go from what I said to "the system works there is no problem", but that is certainly not my intent. Unfortunately flipping between different paradigms (individual action vs collective action) is always going to feel like this, because it is exactly what politicians get paid to do to us. This tendency to judge other-paradigm thinking as justification for corruption is a cause of our polarization.

I have personally been in this situation, but for much smaller stakes ($80 initial quote, $50 agreed-upon xray charge, $120 surprise charge at the end). I complained, they dropped it a bit, and I rolled over and paid it on the spot because I was in the process of administering an estate and didn't need more paperwork to save $70. So yeah, life can certainly get ahead of all of us.

But this isn't a friend telling me her story while I'm telling her she's wrong, but an example that has been elevated to a news article. What is the article's overall point - the healthcare industry is corrupt and Covid is yet another opportunity for a cash grab? We already know that!

To the extent that my basic explanation in terms of contracts is incorrect because there's some Texas statute that allows healthcare providers to engage in surprise billing even when there is a contract, then this article really needs to cite it - scrapping that law would be a direct path to reform!

If there is no such law, and this has just developed by custom, then these articles need to investigate what happens when you litigate this. Imagine widespread form letters to repudiate fraudulent debts - half of these cases would disappear overnight.

Otherwise we're left sitting and just waiting for single payer, which will be yet another corporate cash grab. I do think single payer is the way forward (let patients deal with one bureaucratic nightmare instead of being trapped in between two of them), but if you think it's going to be some straightforward sea change then check out how Medicare Advantage plans work.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Click through licences - <AUTHOR>

Most open source Windows installers will present the licence to you, and make you accept it before installing.
But you can install most software from a Linux distribution without even viewing the licence.
Is either in a better position legally? Can we buck the trend and not make our Windows users click "I accept"? <comment><USER2> What restrictions or enforcements do you want to place on your Windows users? If you are OK with them being bound by laws (copyright principally) then surely you don't need it at all.

I am not a lawyer. You might want to talk to one but know what you want first.

If you want to grant any additional rights you can do it wherever you want and it makes sense with your UI.

If you want to impose restrictions I'm still not sure if a click through is enough but you've got a real chance.

The other common part of a license is a disclaimer of warranty and liability. Unless you software is useful for a dangerous or expensive field (mountain biking, aeroplanes, circuit design....) I would be tempted to take the risk without this.

Are you selling the software or is there another better stage to get license agreement than during the install?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're distributing GPL software for free.

I just saw that the GPL FAQ says users don't need to agree to the terms of the GPL: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ClickThrough>

If they don't need to agree to it, then they don't need to see it! Easy!

<comment><USER2> I think you need to let them know the software is GPL and provide/link the license to let them know their rights but something in an 'About' menu should do although I'm not a GPL expert.

The user doesn't need to agree to it though.</comment></comment></comment>


What is Internet sales tax, and will it cripple e-commerce? - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/99509-what-is-internet-sales-tax-and-will-it-cripple-e-commerce

<comment><USER2> I'll support this just as soon as B&M retailers are required to find out where their customers live and collect sales taxes accordingly as well.

<comment><USER3> Out of interest, what's a B&M retailer?

<comment><USER4> B&M = Brick & Mortar, a reference to their physical stores.

<comment><USER5> "Oh, that's a pretty silly comment then, it's where their store is. Given that people have to supply a card and/or delivery address when buying it's not going to be a massive pain for online retailers."

So why can't it apply the same way to online merchants? Where their business is located?

You obviously don't run an online store. It's not as easy as just charging them tax. There are so many different tax rates (that are constantly changing btw) that it's going to be very difficult for any small retailer to keep this up-to-date.

It would be much easier to just require the customer to claim it on their tax forms (which I believe is already a requirement).

To claim this is "lost revenue" is about the same as when the RIAA claims piracy is lost revenue.

<comment><USER6> What about taxing delivery services instead? If states charged a flat tax on UPS and Fedex, distributed proportionally to cities, would it be enough to fill the gap in state and city budgets?

<comment><USER5> The gap can be filled by customer being a little more honest about what they purchase out of state.

<comment><USER3> Don't be absurd, that's not going to work.

Do you go after 300 million people or do you go after 10s of thousands?

This is a problem with your states, not with the general idea that in the US the internet retailers are getting away with helping people avoid sales tax at the moment.

This was inevitable, if you didn't see it coming you're a fool.

Also this type of 'problem' is easily automated by computers, you're just going to have to pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm familiar with the inter-state sales tax compliance functions at a number of firms and it is a _tremendous burden_. Not only most states, but numerous municipalities impose sales tax as well. As the article mentions, the problem is that Use tax[1] obligations are generally not paid by destination-state customers. This actually makes a great argument for why the federal government should collect a national sales tax, that is then distributed back to the states.

Regarding the legality of states attempts to collect sales tax on inter-state transactions, we can look to the commerce clause[2]. In the courts, one test that has been used is to ask whether a tax creates an unfair advantage for in- state commerce over inter-state commerce[3]. If you take into account the compliance demands created by an inter-state sales tax, I think the answer is almost always _YES_.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_and_use_tax>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause>

[3] [http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/interst...](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/interstatetax.htm)

</comment><comment><USER8> Now I don't really know how well it works in practice but the european model for VAT (the rough equivalent of sales tax) is basically this: if you're a small business, you don't have to collect VAT for the place you're sending the goods; but if you don't, you have to collect it for your own location (rather than collecting nothing). And over a certain business size, you _do_ have to collect it for the destination.

The EU has fairly uniform VAT rates (around 20%), so then there isn't a huge difference to where you charge the tax, and so end consumer prices don't vary by a huge amount.

Maybe the much more variable rates in the US plus what seems to be more easier ability to move jurisdictions would lead to sales tax jurisdiction shopping a more than in europe.

</comment><comment><USER9> These laws certainly will not help e-commerce shops, sales will decrease (or more likely continue to increase across the industry but not at such a rapid rate) because the e-comms will now be on a level playing field with brick and mortars.

All of this being said, the biggest problem will be simplicity. If there is not a service to easily distill all of these rules and plug into the bulk of shopping experiences (magento, atg, ep, shopify, etc) this will very much hurt small, up&coming e-comms.

I'd imagine there is very good opportunity for a company to create an API of all of this tax information and monetize it.

<comment><USER6> _I'd imagine there is very good opportunity for a company to create an API of all of this tax information and monetize it._

I hope that doesn't happen. If the government is imposing this burden, there should be a free database available for everyone to allow compliance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a CPA with years of experience in specialized state and local tax issues. I can tell you that sales and use tax is very complex and burdensome. But, at the same time internet retailers have taken advantage of the the law's inability to keep up with new business models, so internet retailers have had an unfair advantage over brick and mortar companies.

Just giving the issue perspective from both sides.

<comment><USER11> What's the "unfair advantage"? If I run a physical store in my town and someone from out of state drives in and buys something, I'm not expected to make sure the appropriate sales tax on that item gets to that person's state or municipal government. I'm only responsible for whatever sales taxes (if any) exist where I physically am.

On the other hand, online merchants with physical stores already have to charge for sales taxes if their online customers are within those jurisdictions.

Requiring online merchants to collect the correct sales taxes for every state and town is either a stupid attempt to increase revenue or a straight attempt to hobble online sales on behalf of physical retailers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have two points:

1\. So the problem of calculating and distributing use tax is complex... That sounds like a business opportunity for a new kind of web service.

2\. I think the issue just comes down to online retailers dragging their feet because they want to enjoy their advantage as long as possible.

<comment><USER13> "2. I think the issue just comes down to online retailers dragging their feet because they want to enjoy their advantage as long as possible."

I wish it were that simple. This bill would have effectively shut down my small business (we're an online retailer). The overhead of paying taxes across many different states and municipalities is, frankly, impossible for smaller teams / startups to deal with. Even if we could outsource this, it would effectively reduce our margins to the point where we couldn't compete with brick & mortar. We already collect taxes and pay them to the states we operate in. This bill wouldn't cause us to pay more tax (we're based in California, so we'd probably pay less taxes as a result), but instead seems like it's more a result of anti-competitive lobbying efforts from B&M retailers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The pretty obvious solution, which I expect the government will eventually luck into, would be for the Federal government to collect a, say, 5% sales tax on all inter-state commerce. Remit 2% to state A, 2% to state B, keep 1% for itself, and everyone is happy. Easy to administer, easy to collect. Lucrative!</comment>


The Story of How I was escorted out from the Apple iPhone 6 release - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/apple-guerilla-speaks.html

<comment><USER2> DOIN IT

</comment><comment><USER3> this is awesome

</comment><comment><USER4> love the hustle</comment>


Resigning from Oracle - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/resigning-from-oracle-george-a-polisner <comment><USER2> haha, someone from Oracle pretending to have morals

<comment><USER3> This is no laughing matter. He might have been the last one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> instead of working to influence the president, Mr. Polisner is choosing to invest in divisiveness. His crisis of conscience may award him laudation from his peers, but it is unlikely to help create good from the Trump Administration. Even Reagan, Bush were influenced. Trump has shown some receptiveness to influence. Mr. Polisner chooses to increase divisiveness instead of build a bridge or contribute to helping the executive branch do good for America.

<comment><USER5> i predict that this divide is unbridgeable, and that all who attempt to help will have no influence on policy, but will merely become political cover for truly bad things.

<comment><USER6> Only time can tell, but given how Trump has treated expert groups before it is highly uncertain of any of them will be able to influence his policies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> so brave</comment>


Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User's Notes - <AUTHOR> http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/installing-linux-on-a-dead-badger-users-notes/ <comment><USER2> I can't believe I haven't seen this before!</comment>


The World's Biggest Tetris Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/video/technology/100000002809966/the-worlds-biggest-tetris-game.html

<comment><USER2> Cool video.

Check out Snake game too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrzY8mBeXg4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrzY8mBeXg4)</comment>


Ask HN: Are you planning on building apps for the Google Chrome App Store? - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore

<comment><USER2> The web vs. app question is a hot topic at the moment. Our startup is building a product that resembles an app-like experience in the browser as much as possible. So, we will definitely take advantage of the Chrome App Store when it launches.

But, we realize the need to make the Chrome app significantly better in performance and feature set vs. the accessible URL of our website, especially if we plan on charging for the app. That's the biggest question in my mind -- how can we best differentiate between making the product available freely to anyone on any browser at anytime with a simple URL vs. submitting it to the App Store? We can remove the product from our website and only make it accesible in the store, but that's a huge risk and shift in responsibility to Google and their Chrome marketing team to generate awareness and use of their store.

</comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely. The game I currently sell in the app stores is built with web technologies and phonegap, so publishing it there will be a no-brainer.

<http://jsway.se/m/></comment>


2014 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=7DRL_Challenge_2014
<comment><USER2> Can't wait to see the results. The term "roguelike" should be taken with a grain of salt of course - many are more like "roguelite" or the other preferred monitor, "procedural death labyrinths."

Between Teleglitch, Nuclear Throne, Legend of Dungeon, Rogue Legacy, Risk of Rain, Tower of Guns, and a few others, the last year or so has been massively fun for roguelike fans as we've seen pieces of the genre applied to other genres, usually with pretty amazing results.

<comment><USER3> Any personal recommendations out of all those?

<comment><USER4> Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) gets updated all the time, sometimes drastically, so in my books it's still a "fresh" (and very good) game: [http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/](http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/)

<comment><USER5> Try POWDER. It's inspired by Crawl, but has enough ideas of its own. In particular it makes Crawl's weapon and god systems look pathetic. And the writing is spectacular.

<comment><USER6> When I type "powder" into Google I get random games, not sure which one you are referring to. Could you give an URL?

<comment><USER7> The only rougelike "POWDER" I'm aware of is:

[http://www.zincland.com/powder/](http://www.zincland.com/powder/)

It's listen along with "a few others" at eg:

[http://rogue-life.ourden.org/powder](http://rogue-life.ourden.org/powder)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
      This seems a quiet, peaceful place.
      ####
      ...#     #######%##%#
      ##.##%%###........!.#
       #..<@..............#
      ##..######....j.......
      ....#    #..........#
      #####    #######.####

</comment><comment><USER9> The first time I heard of this was after finding Powder, which was a cool free roguelike that worked on Nintendo DS handhelds that had ways to play homebrew (as well on other platforms). The author seems to like entering the challenge, as he has a crazy number of 7DL games on his page[1].

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Although some people are trying to participate to both, I think the Cyberpunk Game Jam could have benefited from not running partially concurrently.

*[http://itch.io/jam/cyberpunk-jam](http://itch.io/jam/cyberpunk-jam)

</comment><comment><USER11> Yea, I've tried, but haven't been able to get anything about this to the front page. Wrote a blog post about it: [http://jere.in/lets-make-a- game](http://jere.in/lets-make-a-game)

I wanted to get the word out earlier, but it's not too late to start and still have a whole 7 days! I'm starting tomorrow morning.

</comment><comment><USER12> Oh crap I totally lost track of when it started this year. Dang, I was planning to take the week of it off so I could go completely absurd with it. I wonder if I can do a crunch week at work and 7drl at the same time..

<comment><USER6> Depending on the scope of the project, you might pull it. I just signed up, although I would probably have only 3-4 hours each day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone heard of this one:

[http://www.roguetemple.com/z/hyper.php](http://www.roguetemple.com/z/hyper.php)

A roguelike using hyperbolic geometry. Looking at the screenshots it instantly reminded me of M.C. Escher lithographs.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find this game interesting : [http://roguelikegames.com/star- wars](http://roguelikegames.com/star-wars)

</comment><comment><USER14> Why did they start a contest with a running time measured in hours right before daylight savings time? Are they trying to confuse people?

<comment><USER9> Because not everyone observes DST and the challenge probably isn't meant to be US centric. Even in the US, Hawaii and Arizona don't bother[1].

[1]: [http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/2014.html](http://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/2014.html)

<comment><USER15> And a lot of people (think Europe) observe DST but not on those dates.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter All Your Bash Commands - <AUTHOR> http://blog.unixdaemon.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.pl/geekstuff/twitter_and_bash_bad_ideas.html <comment><USER2> Finally, a use for Twitter: exercise Orwellian oversight on sysadmins.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does the script have the ability to remove all my typos and those sets of commands I run 50 times in a row trying to debug some stupid mistake?

</comment><comment><USER4> Amateur. I twitter my _MOUSE_ position.

<comment><USER5> Amateur. You use a MOUSE?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can not conceive of a more colossal waste of time. In fact, I'd like the brain cells back I lost from writing this comment.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, no refunds.</comment></comment>