Microsoft's mobile Edge browser begins issuing fake news warnings - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2019/01/23/microsoft-edge-mobile-fake-news/ <comment><USER2> NewsGuard gives a red mark for Wikileaks, but a green tick for Fox News. I think we're done here.

[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1084876278065446913](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1084876278065446913)

On NewsGuard's advisory board, 5 of the 7 slots are taken by people who have held high level posts in US Intelligence and other state affairs.

If NewsGuard was just being rolled out to the USA, I'd still consider it horribly biased, but its a complete joke to make it on by default for the entire world.

<comment><USER3> Slanted though it may be, Fox's reporting is generally about as on the level as their contemporaries, and their written articles are a notable step up from their tv coverage.

They've even received some praise from Sy Hearsh for having what he saw as one of the most promising investigative teams in the industry (I'll have to find the interview later today and update the comment with a link).

I do question the wikileaks rating, but wikileaks isn't a news site, and everything they publish ought to be a matter of 'buyer beware'.

I also question Microsoft's decision to include the plugin at all. I'd rather not have an arbiter of truth looking over my shoulders, reminding me what i should or shouldn't read.

<comment><USER4> That's true to a degree, though I still feel like a good portion of the stories are missing details. Their bias really comes out with the stores that they are (and aren't covering).

<comment><USER5> > Their bias really comes out with the stores that they are (and aren't > covering).

Which, in my experience, "is generally about as on the level as their contemporaries", just concerning different stories and the way they're spun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who decides which sites have "real" news and which sites have "fake" news?

A big thing missing from these discussions is the history of propaganda. I think a lot of people who are worried about "fake news" need to research that term.

Propaganda is still very prevalent especially as far as war goes. Do people really think that CNN tells them the real reasons for going to war? They will say whatever the Pentagon tells them. Why? Because no one is going to risk their lives and kill other people for some technical, strategic reason or just as part of a larger military campaign. People risk their lives to fight the "bad guys" who are "evil". They need to believe its a moral cause.

Don't let some giant company (or a small one) dictate what source your information comes from. If I used a Microsoft browser I would uninstall that plugin. Assuming that's an option.

<comment><USER7> Check the Daily Mail, which apparently runs afoul of this plugin, and compare it to the NYT, or Economist.

If you can't immediately spot the difference, you may be a late victim of post-modern relativism.

They also have transparent documentation of their ratings. Example: [https://www.newsguardtech.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/07/rt....](https://www.newsguardtech.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/07/rt.com_.pdf)

<comment><USER8> > _If you can't immediately spot the difference, you may be a late victim of > post-modern relativism._

The claim is not that all news is equally true; that would be ridiculous. The claim is that lists of trusted sources are ripe for abuse by the list-makers.

Consider this evil plan: suppose that I put a grassroots issue blog on the same list as 100 fake publications. Everyone will believe me, because, look: I was right one hundred times! That problem can even arise without intentional evil on the part of the list makers, just look at the history of spam blacklists. People, even teams of people, are not one hundred percent just one hundred percent of the time.

(I just called something evil, and you can't get any less postmodernist than that! ;)

<comment><USER9> > _suppose that I put a grassroots issue blog on the same list as 100 fake > publications_

Worth noting that _PropOrNot_ already exists, and got a lot of positive coverage before people started to get suspicious. Its model was almost precisely what you describe: providing extensive lists of clearly Russia- affiliated sources like Sputnik News, then including a handful of high-quality domestic gadflies like _Naked Capitalism_ without any justification.

This isn't just a hypothetical risk of such tools, its already an active problem on these exact topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the main problem with these sorts of measures is two fold:

a) who gets to decide what constitutes "fake news," would the BuzzFeed story that the Special Council discredited be considered "fake news?" If not, why? How would that story be different than any other that's fake?

b) The idea of labeling "fake news" often emboldens believers of fake news to think of some grand conspiracy to hide the truth.

Another thing is that the "fake news" scare is largely a farce. A recent study showed that people that share fake news are largely older...well, that's what the headlines highlighted. However, in the actual study they found sharing of fake news to be incredibly low and not really even terribly common.

I think the thing I most fear in media, is not obvious fake news sites, it's actual journalists rushing to judgement or being told by and editor they need click/engagement numbers up (this happens, I've worked in multiple news rooms.)

What I call "outrage culture" is largely a corporate creation to drive clicks/viewership and social engagement, because current media models need this sort of thing. If you ever go through media training for cable news (I have) they will tell you to play things up. They also often don't go after level headed people, they want conflict. Conflict gets viewers and viewers get ad dollars.

That to me, is a far bigger threat...not only because it divides us, but because it discredits the media itself in the minds of many, on actual important stories. So in those cases, people do turn to alternative (or overtly partisan) media sources...and that's where "fake news" often breeds and feeds off of.

I think if we really want to battle "fake news" we need to be reevaluating business models of media companies. News should not be something people "hate watch" or "hate click" because what they are watching is so divisive or nonsensical. The media is really its own worst enemy here.

<comment><USER11> _would the BuzzFeed story that the Special Council discredited be considered "fake news?"_

For better or worse, this product judges _sources_ , not _individual stories_. FWIW, Buzzfeed News lets their readers know, right in the lede, that this particular story is disputed by Mueller. As others have mentioned in this thread, a hard definition for "fake news" is hard to pinpoint, but disreputable sources certainly don't own up to mistakes like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anything like this is essentially trying to set up a 'ministry of truth' which is a propaganda operation itself.

The kind of structures and thinking you would need to create this challenge fundamental ideas of dissent, free speech and democracy at which point you should stop and question your objectives, but of course if its not in good faith that won't bother you.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is very interesting. We are seeing a shift of browsers from being neutral tools to actively influencing the content that users see.

* Firefox about:newtab pocket links

* Brave browser replacing ads

* Edge shipping NewsGuard

With this content curation going on, will there be one day a Fox news browser and a CNN browser?

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't include Firefox in this _just_ yet, a lot of people still trust Mozilla (who nevertheless still have to be very careful not to lose that trust)

<comment><USER15> Call me when they actually start caring about end users and ship ublock origin by default and stop their ad 'experiments'. And I am a Firefox user. Since 2006. But because they are the least bad browser (by far). Not because they are good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if this system would have flagged evidence of Iraq WMD's as fake news? Or is it something primitive that just asserts that anything != CNN et. al. is fake news?

<comment><USER6> It just gives blanket credence to everything CNN publishes. That is because CNN is a controlled media. The media is actually an important part of warfare. WMD was the official propaganda for the Iraq war.

<comment><USER17> Which the media reported was exageration

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe we should start thinking for ourselves what is "fake" or not by, you know, independently thinking. Not relying on some "truth-o-meter" feeded to us by the browser by a bunch of people who we know little about.

This is not a good move and it's not the job of the web browser, as others have pointed out.

</comment><comment><USER19> This really isn't the job of a web browser.

</comment><comment><USER20> ITT: a lot of criticism toward NewsGuard. Though it does seem that it has some pretty glaring flaws.

I'm curious what ideas people have to combat the problem more effectively? Solutions like "people should just l2thinkcritically" don't seem practical to me.

I think crowdsourced approaches will just degenerate into partisan feuds. Relying on a central authority just paves the way for the nation- states/illuminati/"globalists"/evil-sentient-penguins to manipulate public opinion on a grand scale. So, what else is there?

<comment><USER21> The fairness doctrine by the FCC had a lot of issues but simply removing it with no replacement sowed the seeds for blatant manipulation of people via media and "news".

There are a scant few independent non-profits I'd consider trusting with determining "fairness" or fact. The US government certainly isn't qualified anymore with how corrupted and disconnected from the people it is, corporations by definition are amoral, and power corrupts. Giving anyone the determination of what is "fake" makes them a vector for exploitation and abuse.

The answer should be you need a new, legitimately representative and democratic government, to oversee regulation on those who claim to be news in order to more closely guarantee honesty. Thats a bit bigger of a problem to approach than the mass-deception and manipulation of a society by monied interests, though.

<comment><USER20>
      The answer should be you need a new, legitimately representative and democratic government

We went from "how do we improve the media situation?" to "we need revolution" awfully fast!

Jokes aside, you might be right. If you are though, it probably means we won't make any meaningful strides towards a better system for quite a while.

<comment><USER21> Its why anything political, which ends up being just about everything, feels like a distraction. All these problems fundamentally trace back to a lack of representation and influence in government by the commoner, and that requires radical alterations to the government to give them their voice/back. Everything else is just speculative hearsay about what ifs and could bes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Business Insider has a nice article that simply shows the summary for a whole bunch of common sites (NYT, Fox, WP, Guardian, WSJ, National Review, NY Post, Daily News, Federalist, Economist, Breitbart, Daily Kos, RT, Times of Israel, BI, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, MSNBC, AP, Daily Beast, TMZ, Splinter, Vice News, Forbes, LA Times, Time, and BBC)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-web-browser- fake-n...](https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-web-browser-fake-news- how-it-works-2019-1)

Looking over the results for those sites, it seems reasonably fair as far as left vs. right goes. I see both liberal and conservative sites covered, and in both groups see sites with perfect ratings and sites with terrible ratings and site in between.

Edit: Implementation wise, this thing is really well done. I installed the Firefox version, and when I visit a site that it has info on, the green/red summary shows up, and clicking that gives details, as would be expected, and that was all I expected.

What I didn't expect is that when I'm in Google news, it puts the indicator beside the source name on each story. It also does this on Google search results. It's also working with Bing search results.

</comment><comment><USER23> Found this reply to the wikileaks twitter post*

"So let's educate people that the green tick means fake news and red means trustworthy"

This is what we're dealing with folks - people who push conspiracy theories to the detriment of society. It makes sense coming from the wikileaks crowd but it's infecting the entire culture.

See also those that oppose/reject the Polio vaccine.

*[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1084876278065446913](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1084876278065446913)

</comment><comment><USER24> It feels like the time is right for a snopes.com for daily news, but it would need trustworthy gatekeepers and a big budget.

I think wikitribune.com is doing something interesting: providing permanence to news stories. Most media cover "breaking news" as quickly as possible, with whatever facts are available, but have no time or space for follow-up or analysis. (Hey, remember that big story from last year (whatever it was)? What happened to those people?)

<comment><USER25> The issue is likely speed; it takes much longer to debunk a fake or incorrect story than to publish the story to begin with. And in a world where social media is seen as a primary news source (unfortunately), a story is basically seen as 'settled' approximately X hours after being published, if that.

You would need an absolute ton of resources, and even that probably wouldn't be enough to fact check the entire online media in anything close to real time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A related item is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977365) , on NewsGuard's "nutrition label" for the _Daily Mail_.

</comment><comment><USER27> Twitter is full of endless fraud phishing ads. I report and report but they pop up back again.

If we can detect fake news, why can't Twitter detect fraudulent ads?

<comment><USER6> They can't detect fake news. Its just a way to put a rubber stamp on government-controlled (when it comes to certain stories) media sites and suppress sites that are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This could actually have a big impact as the ones who believe fake news are likely the ones using Edge.

</comment><comment><USER29> What's to stop powerful or wealthy people from pressuring, or subverting this?

</comment><comment><USER30> How surprising NewsGuard runs fingerprinting scripts on their homepage.

Very trustable.

</comment><comment><USER31> You can't just "enforce correct news" because people will just accuse it of being part of the left-wing media conspiracy (which is, largely but not completely, a fallacy).

EDIT: Not sure why downvotes (currently at -4). Here is what typically happens when I try to point to "facts" (linked assertions) that invalidate someone's point:

1) Person says bullshit

2) I show person link from credible source that seems to invalidate the bullshit

At this point one of 5 things invariably happens: A) The source I linked to is not read, wasting my time B) The goalposts are now moved to some OTHER bullshit assertion C) The source is accused of being "bought and paid for" (this literally happened to me when I was blocked by someone on Facebook for using factcheck and politifact links). D) "Wikipedia is editable by anyone!" E) "That's just MSM conspiracy talk!" [https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/74/Conspiracy_Theory)

We have a situation where the far-left and the far-right (but mostly the far- right) are basically being gaslighted by their sources of media.

Maybe the solution is not to enforce The One And True Source Of Facts, but to _teach people how to fucking lose an argument gracefully._ Or at least, to "compete" on rational/empirical grounds. And gracefully win or lose on those grounds, and not just on "what I believe".

And, for the record (and to my point), regarding the "news is slightly left- wing-biased" claim, third-party media bias reviewers have all rated the major news sources, at least in the U.S. (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) as left-leaning, save for Faux News of course.

[https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nbc-news/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nbc- news/) [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/abc- news/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/abc-news/) [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbs-news/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbs- news/) [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cnn/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cnn/)

<comment><USER32> I was happy when the Fake News stuff started to take off. Then I saw politicians use it anytime they wanted to discredit something, especially legitimate criticism.

<comment><USER16> Thats how I feel about russia-gate. "Criticizing the corporate democrats and exposing their records? You must be a russian shill!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am terrified of Microsoft going this route, since they make my OS of choice. I could expect Google doing this kind of stuff, like deciding what sites I can visit or what people I can contact using Gmail (examples that have yet to happen, but wouldn't surprise me), but Microsoft? They've always been uninterested in politics, or so it seemed. What if they decide to push this kind of political stuff in their OS?

<comment><USER34> The biggest problem with any large corporation being a arbitrator of truth, is the only truth they truly believe in is they should always make more profit at the end of the day. With whatever technical and political means they have, they will make that happen. With the massive amount of data collected at an individual level they have a large amount of potential power when it comes to influencing others towards their will.</comment></comment>


For the game designers and players: this is the best list of well-designed flash games - <AUTHOR> http://goodexperience.com/games/

<comment><AUTHOR> Be careful, there's enough here to keep you busy for days.

<comment><USER2> Great list - thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For some really well-drawn, original games (simplistic gameplay, but I think that makes them fun and lighthearted - besides, what do you want from a Flash game?), there's <http://www.orisinal.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely -- my favorite one on the Good Experience list is this one. <http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bugs.htm> The comment on Good Experience is "Elegant and soothing".

<comment><USER3> Actually, that's the one I play most often, too. (For some definition of "often"; I don't play games much.)

A couple other good ones I've played are <http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bauns.htm> and <http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bells.htm> (apropos of winter time). Honestly, most of them are really worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best one is in Java:

<http://ishi.blog2.fc2.com/blog-entry-161.html>

...or the most surreal, anyway.</comment>


No one is talking about the biggest problem with Slack - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1641708/slack-doesnt-care-that-you-cant-block-a-workplace-harasser/ <comment><USER2> I agree with Slack's position on this. Muting or blocking a co-worker is not a long-term solution. These types of issues in a work environment need to be resolved, not ignored.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. And the right solution in this case would have been to contact HR and file a harassment complaint. (Or alternatively, tell the harasser that if they don't stop immediately, HR will be notified.)

If Slack is being used as an office communication system, the company needs to make sure that people treat it as part of their office (like corporate e-mail), not as some kind of social network.

<comment><USER4> In practice how this is works is that the person being harassed goes to HR, HR does nothing, and then that person quits. Nothing usually happens to harasser. The point of HR is to protect the company from its employees, not help mitigate disputes.

<comment><USER5> This is untrue. Most HR, while the companies agent first, sees harassment as a huge liability and loves to be able to take action with sufficient documentation.

<comment><USER6> What about when the documentation is incomplete and it's one person's word against another's on a subjective body of messages and actions, and where the aggressor is often of a higher rank?

Sexual harassment often lacks sufficient documentation, and that's precisely why HR is usually not seen as an ally to the victim.

<comment><USER3> In some cases evidence is scarce, but in the story told in this article, there would seem to be a set of messages recorded in Slack, so it wouldn't just be one person's word against another. If the person being harassed wanted to make a really strong case, they would have sent a Slack reply saying "Don't ever send me this kind of message again!" to have a record of it.

This also makes it scary for HR, since if they do nothing and the victim sues, the Slack messages could turn up during discovery.

(I'm also guessing that this kind of behavior suggests that the aggressor is not of higher rank. Someone with real power over the victim probably wouldn't just stalk them on Slack, and any manager would be acutely aware that you don't want to say things like that in writing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> She should talk to her company's management. It's not a social network for meeting people, it's a work tool. If someone was harassing me in person at work, I would speak to my team leader. Same if they did it on Skype or Slack.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think there's a difference between asking Slack to police it, versus just having the ability to mute a conversation or limited do not disturb.

There are conversations where you need to be more or less involved, and choosing your level of involvement on a per conversation basis, rather than on the entire account would be helpful.

Of course it looks like a minor "feature request" but I'm sure rolling that out would actually be a bit of an under taking. I know that I had to cull the channels I was in and other conversations so that the alerts I was receiving were actually pertinent to me, especially on the mobile app. Not as much of a problem on Desktop, but none the less.

</comment><comment><USER8> How would a mute button make her situation better? That will not make the problem (the guy's behavior) go away. He'll realize she muted him, and find other ways. Tell HR.

Slacks response is entirely reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER9> I agree with the other commenters, Slack shouldn't be responsible for managing workplace harassment.

But on another note, does Skype for Business, Webex Teams, or any other workplace IM application allow blocking of other users? The author should be comparing Slack to those instead of social media that you can easily opt out of. You can't really opt out of corporate IM.

<comment><USER7> I just checked and Skype for Business actually does, but I was surprised. That's not a tool you should ever need in the workplace.

<comment><USER10> It's sort of common in the older generation of more enterpisey chat platforms. Ethical firewalls are a huge requirement in some industries, and a lot of them are implemented as just block lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The ability to mute would be useful for more than just the harassment example. I frequently get useless notifications from Slack bots, which either give me useless tips on how to use Slack or ask me some useless gallup questions. It's mind boggling that Slack not only thinks these constant interruptions to everyone's workday are somehow beneficial -- but also that people shouldn't have the ability to turn them off.

</comment><comment><USER12> a co worker is harassing you on a fully logged corporate platform? there _might_ be another solution than "blocking" (aka ignoring)

</comment><comment><USER13> Non-native widgets? Insanely laggy UI if you have more than one workspace signed in? 9GB of RAM just to keep the thing running?

Oh, it's a people thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> The biggest problem with Slack is that you're sharing your company's internal communications with a third party.

</comment><comment><USER15> In this context (corporate), this is an HR problem. I don't think I can mute fellow employees on Teams either. But yes, Slack gets used in other contexts which really do need a block function.

</comment><comment><USER16> In the most respectful way possible, the argument of this article is dumb. And clickbaity.</comment>


WordPress based multi user online journal - <AUTHOR> https://www.goodnightjournal.com/ <comment><USER2> In other words, WordPress?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on your perspective. I see it as a product built on Wordpress. Techcrunch.com = WordPress? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work! Not something I'd use, but I am a fan of building on WordPress as a platform--it's highly underestimated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand the description, this is a wordpress theme?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a free online journal website where people can write private or public journals. And yes it has it's own theme :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it is being marketed as a journal than I think this is one of the worst ideas someone could have. It would be all of the information someone would need to social engineer their way into ruining your life gathered into one place.

<comment><USER4> Take it easy. This was someone's hard work.

<comment><USER5> I'm not criticizing the implementation, I'm talking about the marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm assuming you are talking about the way I wrote about the site here. I'm actually new to Haker News and still not quite sure how to use this forum properly yet.

<comment><USER5> I'm talking about how you are offering your service as a private journal.

I think it would be cool to see this talked about as a blog, I love to see new competition in that space, but saying that it is private will, in my opinion, would be misleading to the average user.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you google "online journal", you will see a bunch of sites offer a very similar service. If the word "private" freaks you out, you will be very surprise how the other competitors are advertising their private journals ;) (totally secure, always secure and etc...) GoodnightJournal.com actually warns the people to be careful with personal data rather than just saying it's secure cause I believe nothing is 100% secure if the idea comes out of your head. ([https://www.goodnightjournal.com/aboutprivacy/](https://www.goodnightjournal.com/aboutprivacy/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems the idea is similar to the old "Storylane"...

<comment><AUTHOR> Had to google Storylane but no way to see what it was like since Facebook acquired them. Thanks for the info tho!</comment></comment>


Gravity doesn't leak into large, hidden dimensions - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencenews.org/article/gravity-doesnt-leak-large-hidden-dimensions <comment><AUTHOR> LIGO provides observations simultaneously at the smallest and largest scales. This kind of experimentation is going to lead to theoretical advances.</comment>


Ask HN: Did you remap the Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard? - <AUTHOR> I just recently picked up the Kinesis Advantage2 and was surprised at the placement of the arrow and {} keys.  I searched already and it looks like some have remapped [] & {} so that shift doesn't need to be used for {}.  And some vim users remapped caps lock to esc.  Just curious what worked for other people before I get too far along with regard to muscle memory.  Right now I'm leaning toward sticking with the QWERTY layout but only because I can't be unproductive for forever. <comment><USER2> Yes. Some of my remappings have to do with my use of Dvorak, for which certain choices of the Kinesis Advantage's punctuation keys didn't make sense. Other remappings would make sense for anybody. Let's start by pretending I use QWERTY.

The first remapping is to make Ctrl and Alt modifier keys more accessible. I put Back Space on Caps Lock and hit it with my pinky. Then Ctrl goes on the Back Space key, Alt on the Delete key. Delete goes on left Ctrl.

The second remapping is to swap Home with Page Up and End with Page Down. The reason for this is, if you want to scroll down a web page with your keyboard, you can hit Space or hit Page Down. This lets you do that with either hand.

The third remapping is to swap right Ctrl with the Windows key. The Windows key is useful in Linux for some keyboard shortcuts, and this makes it more reachable.

The fourth remapping is in software, with xmodmap (or whatever) because it doesn't swap entire keys. It's to switch parentheses with square brackets. So now you press Shift+9 to insert '['. The reason here is that typing ") {" is so common in C++, and moving from the top to the sub-bottom row of the keyboard is really hard. Making parentheses the primary function of a key is also useful in general. The remapping is in software because at least on the 1st generation Kinesis, using the remap functionality to map something to Shift+9 was glitchy.

Because I'm a Dvorak user there's a few other remappings of punctuation. You'd want to put [{ and ]} back on their labeled keys at the bottom, and then you'd want to put /? back to the right of P and the best location for =+ is to the right of 0. Then `~ goes left of 1. The bottom left backslash key remains backslash. The bottom left `~ key goes unused.

I don't think this is a good opportunity for you to switch keyboard layouts. The muscle memory will map over after a brief adjustment period.

I just plugged in this Advantage into the Mac I'm writing this post on to double-check what my mappings were -- I'm used to using it on Linux. If you're on a Mac I'd recommend putting Delete on the left Alt key (instead left Ctrl as described above) and finding whatever way suits you to make left Ctrl behave as the option key.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Sam this is the sort of feedback I was thinking of when I posted the original question. Do you find the switch (to Dvorak) was worth it in the end? Were there any surprising issues?

<comment><USER2> I can't remember much about the switch -- I switched when I was a freshman in college (13 years ago) and the main reason for doing so was to be l33t. It was difficult for one homework assignment but I got myself acclimated to it by playing a video game that required rapid text-based communication with teammates. I'd been trying to switch and had practiced the layout in high school.

The main issue with it is that if you're typing one handed, Qwerty is actually better. Because of the iPhone and iPad, I'm used to using Qwerty on a touch screen, which means I need both layouts enabled when using a Windows tablet.

Sometimes annoyances come up, like Ubuntu's installer having you type your disk encryption passphrase before configuring the keyboard layout. You don't realize what happened until you've booted into your new system, and now you've got to figure out how to type on a Dvorak layout your passphrase that you'd defined using Dvorak on a Qwerty layout.

Another annoyance is every single freaking time you have to setup the layout.

An underacknowledged advantage of Dvorak is that underscore is on the home row.

I could switch back to Qwerty any time I wanted (I'm typing with it right now just to make a point of it) so I guess that means I believe Dvorak is worth the minor annoyances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Right now I'm leaning toward sticking with the QWERTY layout but only > because I can't be unproductive for forever.

As opposed to what?

If you don't have strong QWERTY muscle memory using this keyboard yet, it may be a great opportunity to learn something else.

Really, any thoughtfully designed layout will do. Dvorak, Colemak, Norman, Workman, _anything_. Typing well with QWERTY means constantly contorting your hands, which I assume is something you would like to avoid.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have QWERTY muscle memory with _this_ keyboard but I do have muscle memory. I guess I was thinking individual keys being remapped. I've never given any serious thought to switching to Dvorak / Colemak etc maybe I should. I agree now would be better than later but I concerned about being productive at work. What is best from an ergonomics standpoint?

<comment><USER3> > What is best from an ergonomics standpoint?

That's hard to say. I use Workman, because the focus on digraphs really meshed with me, and I like the feel of it.

It definitely took a solid effort to learn another layout, especially since I spent the time choosing a favorite. I feel like it's absolutely worth it, though.

> but I'm concerned about being productive at work.

I'm honestly not sure what to say to that, considering you _will_ be _very_ slow at the beginning. You may be able to keep using QWERTY at work, and practice a new layout in your free time, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Thomas. I really appreciate hearing your experience. I looked up Colemak / Dvorak last night and it seemed from the articles / discussion I found like it was a mixed bag [1][2]. I think you've inspired me to at least dip my toes in so we'll see how it goes. As far as productivity I guess it is what it is but I've been struggling with Carpal Tunnel for a bit so was already at reduced productivity and now with the keyboard switch and possibly completely layout change it will be reduced even further. I think at least initially I'll do QWERTY layout and as you suggest do an hour or so a day of some other layout. Again thanks for your input.

<comment><USER3> > I really appreciate hearing your experience.

You're very welcome.

As a last note, I would like to mention that I am not any faster (maybe a bit if I focus on speed) with Workman than I was using QWERTY. I _am_ , however, _much_ more comfortable. I don't have to contort my hands at all (except to accommodate the popular staggered physical layout, which your new keyboard explicitly fixes).

So far, thankfully, I don't have any carpel tunnel, so I don't really know what that is like, but I can imagine a better layout helping about as much as a better keyboard.

> I think at least initially I'll do QWERTY layout and as you suggest do an > hour or so a day of some other layout.

Good luck! I hope things go well for you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ARAMIS or the Love of Technology (1996) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://dss-edit.com/plu/Latour-B_Aramis-or-Love-of-Technology_1996.pdf

<comment><USER2> This is _really_ a great book - one of my favorite studies of technology, written with lots of verve.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just rediscovered it after it was recommended to me by a professor some years ago. Still relevant after 20 years, concerning the relationship of technology and people.</comment></comment>


Does Google use its search engine for industrial espionage? - <AUTHOR>

Does Google use its search engine for industrial espionage?
Let's assume you're working for a company (start-up or industry dinosaur doesn't matter) on a secret project. Well at least nobody outside of the company should now about it. You're an engineer and of course you're using search engines for your daily work. Let's assume you're using one particular search engine very often (e.g. Google).
Now Google receives your search queries AND as a part of your request YOUR request IP.
With tools like MaxMind's GeoIP (www.maxmind.com/app/locate_ip) it would be easy for Google to find out your location and the business you are working for. Combining this information with all the search queries, which you and your colleagues triggered via Google, would allow insight in what you are currently working on.
If I look up "industrial espionage" in Wikipedia it states: […] Industrial espionage describes activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery, blackmail, and technological surveillance. […]
What do you think? Do you think this is possible? <comment><USER2> It's definitely possible...and I would say probable. The idea that they need something like MaxMind's product is laughable, though...they have much better tools at their disposal.

Google as a company _may_ not engage in industrial espionage, but I believe individual employees at Google do abuse their data access occasionally. I would think that having the power and data access would have to tempt some employees to be evil. (I know of at least two lawsuits involving a Google employee allegedly using AdWords data in an inappropriate way, for example.) I would be curious what, if any, monitoring systems Google has in place to prevent abuse/espionage by employees. I have a friend that works for Google that has commented on _my_ ad spend and keywords (and he is in systems, not AdWords.) It was innocuous enough, but it made me wonder about what safeguards they have in place.

I'm not much of a tinfoil hat type, but the fact that Google seems bent on entering _every_ information business (which is, to be sure, _every_ business these days) make me nervous. The fact that they have fingers in so many pots makes it almost inevitable that they will eventually become too arrogant and abuse some of their power. There was a post in the last couple of days about possible 'downfall' scenarios for Google, and I think them becoming known as "Big Brother" is probably the most likely. Paranoia amongst searchers could be more potent poison for Google than a new search startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are mentioning very interesting points. I haven't thought of the fact that Google employees spend one day per week on their own projects. I don't know much about the safeguards at Google to prevent single employees to evaluate such data in their own projects. If lots of people search for things like "how to trick google adwords" I think Google would be interested to find out where's these people are working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Of course it's possible. The question is, is it likely? Consider the sheer volume of search queries that hit Google. I find it unlikely that they could manually filter them, and I also find it unlikely that one could programmatically find those queries. Even looking for outliers (very uncommon queries) would probably yield far too many false positives.

Also, what would Google's incentive be? They are doing pretty well, as far as I can see, and they have great people. What would they gain from spying on startups, when they could just innovate inhouse, or buy the startup outright as it emerged?

<comment><USER4> For example: to find early promising startup, which will be more costly to buy down the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you imagine the effort behind figuring out things like that; I don't think it would be possible to get any sensible data very often.

I think your question is biased in it's title; yes with a lot of effort they could do. Are they? A lot less likely.

<comment><USER4> Its enough to use some of G's server farms power when their normal load is lower.

<comment><USER5> maybe - but I imagine it's not something you can entirely computer process :) somewhere along the line you have to interpret the searches (unless it's along the lines of "how do I make super-secret-foo project" :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ideas doen't matter. The implementation does.

<comment><USER7> Funny thing here, the searches can probably divulge more about implementation than the ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We know the NSA told AT&T and the telcos to give them access to tap the Internet backbones many years ago, so how do we know the NSA or even the CIA hasn't had a similar secret agreement in place with Google? In-Q-Tel, the CIA's Silicon Valley venture fund, has had a few business relationships with Google, going back to Google's origin—just google it. Perhaps a little quid pro quo here and there?

Given that Google is the de facto entry point to the web, imagine how valuable it would be watch any of the few million names on the terrorist watch list, and log their search queries and all their user activity across Google's major products? In this day and age, how could any terrorist cells even form a TV worthy plot without using a tool like Google to gather information?

I think this kind of surveillance is child play however, since terrorism is really about something else entirely. Imagine being able to watch the queries and traffic of dissidents from enemy nations? If you're a spy agency, you have two goals: recruit human assets, and fake out enemy intel agencies. Since you want to find well placed people who will assist you in secret, what better way to find them than to wait for them to reveal themselves via their Google searches?

You might now say "hey wait a sec, this could turn into tinfoil hat crazy talk!" But there's an even further spin to Google espionage to consider. If our gov't doesn't do it, certainly foreign gov't intel agents will try it. How many Chinese software engineers does Google employ for instance? Russian? Israeli? Our national security cannot afford to have double agents working within Google to pass this data to foreign nations. Hence we must to do it ourselves, in order to dis-incentivize other nations from doing it. Which ironically forces the arms-race. You've got to love Prisoner's Dilemmas and the logic of destroying the village to save it. Believe it or not!</comment>


Blockchain for elections and voting - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/09/blockchain-could-be-about-to-change-how-you-vote <comment><USER2> Yeah, another dumb try of applying timestamping (blockchain) to something totally unrelated and ill-suited. Ever heard of digital voting protocols and the list of their necessary properties? No? Then go learn properly cryptography first.</comment>


Astronomers may have found giant alien 'megastructures' orbiting star - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/forget-water-on-mars-astronomers-may-have-just-found-giant-alien-megastructures-orbiting-a-star-near-a6693886.html <comment><USER2> Just finished reading the paper. It's worth reading - it's well written and they've already put a lot of effort into characterizing the star, and modelling/ruling out any explanations they could think of.

The thing that makes this star _really_ peculiar is the lack of any excess infrared - if there was as much material (dust, asteroids, debris) orbiting the star as you'd expect from how often/how much the star is being occulted (that is, there should be a lot more material on orbits that don't intersect with our line of sight) - then there should be quite a bit of excess infrared radiation from all that material, but we don't.

The most plausible explanation they could come up with is comets - but the profile of the occultation events doesn't match comets very well (sharp dip initially corresponding to the optically thick head of the comet, then a slower rise back to normal from the tail).

My question regarding the comet hypothesis is - could there even be enough material in the oort cloud to produce the amount of occultation we're seeing? Given that Jupiter apparently only occults our sun by 1% and we're seeing 22% occultation here, it seems unlikely.

You'd have to assume an average object size to calculate % occultation -> mass of occulting objects, but we should be able to make a reasonable assumption on that from observations in our own solar system. And apparently our own oort cloud has been estimated at a few earth masses, so if that's typical we've got a rough upper bound for the amount of material available. I wonder if anyone's done that calculation yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to the paper [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10386214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10386214)

</comment><comment><USER5> Phil Plait's take on it:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/10/14/weird_st...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/10/14/weird_star_strange_dips_in_brightness_are_a_bit_baffling.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> As much as I'd like to believe it, another case like the faster-than-light- neutrino incident is more likely than alien megastructures.</comment>


Netflix was experiencing issues - <AUTHOR> https://help.netflix.com/help <comment><USER2> Really looking forward to read about what happened. I know they have great resiliency measures in place, I'd like to know if they worked, in what measure, how they failed or how they weren't enough. Or if there was anything they could have done.

<comment><USER3> Great resilience measures? Like depending on AWS that's seemingly going down like one full day per year?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that one the one hand i see netflix having lots out outages, on the other hand being celebrated as some sort of thought leader on resilicency/high availability. Good tech/open source marketing goes a long way in certain crowds, it seems.

It's not like doing lots of stateless transactions/distributing read-only content is a really hard problem by now. Akamai has done it well for ages. Yet Netflix while being celebrated primarily for their tech marketing in this area is struggling.

<comment><USER4> During the evening hours, Netflix represents over 35% of _all_ internet traffic in the US. That is an insane demand to be able to service, but they've done extremely well in my opinion. Much of their tech is open-sourced leading to much better practices industry-wide and they're transparent when things go wrong.

Here's an example of their preemptive work to deal with the loss of AWS/ELB regions:

[http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/12/active-active-for- multi-...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/12/active-active-for-multi- regional.html)

An an example of their post-mortem after deploying Node.js with a bad handler:

[http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/11/nodejs-in- flames.html](http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/11/nodejs-in-flames.html)

Is there any other service with a library well over a petabyte in size that delivers multiple terabits/second worldwide to millions of customers with better reliability? Maybe YouTube with the backing of a company worth $300B more than Netflix?

<comment><USER3> Again you are confusing openness with availability. I do agree they are open. I don't really see the connection between their openness and their performance though.

<comment><USER4> I think my last paragraph was pertinent to your question, is there anyone providing the volume of traffic to millions of worldwide customers comparable to Netflix who is more reliable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Podcast where Adrian Cockcroft goes into the philosophy and technology behind scaling at Netflix: [http://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian- cockcroft...](http://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcroft-on- the-modern-cloud-based-platform/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Worked fine from my iPhone over LTE but not Wii over wifi.

And apparently it started right before my son's designated Sesame Street time. Boo.

<comment><USER7> > And apparently it started right before my son's designated Sesame Street > time.

Something to be said for local copies of programs that really matter.

<comment><USER8> Something something offline viewing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> AWS status is all green so this is a first. Monkey gone wrong ?

</comment><comment><USER10> Rise of the simian army? I suspected netflix was hiding the "good" AI somewhere (because they haven't been using it on my recommendations).

</comment><comment><USER11> Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 503 (Service Unavailable: Back-end server is at capacity) [https://support.netflix.com/en/rest/views/popularbytopcat.js...](https://support.netflix.com/en/rest/views/popularbytopcat.jsonp?args\[0\]=131&limit=3&callback=jQuery1830988649561535567_1423010486399&_=1423010486506)

<comment><USER11> From their Twitter: [https://twitter.com/Netflixhelps/status/562760983790485504](https://twitter.com/Netflixhelps/status/562760983790485504)

We're aware some members are experiencing technical difficulties on the web site in all regions. We hope to resolve this asap.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm watching House of Cards right now, but it took a few tries for it to start and not throw an error.

</comment><comment><USER12> Planet of the Apes? Eager for the postmortem.

</comment><comment><USER13> i have been getting the issues warning and a limited movie selection on and off for days now.

</comment><comment><USER14> Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 503 (Service Unavailable: Back-end server is at capacity)

</comment><comment><USER15> Chaos monkey strikes?</comment>


The Worst Interface Ever: The Self-Destruct Switch (2004) - <AUTHOR> https://asktog.com/columns/065WorstInterface.html <comment><USER2> The follow-up post is a must read: in the panic ensuing after a failed switch flip, they made a series of disastrous mistakes that almost caused a fatal road accident.

The animality of the human mind is fascinating, all it takes is a small change in the perception of external threats to drive people utterly bonkers. Puts all kinds of things from wars to conjugal murder into perspective - what is utterly nonsensical to a calm and rational individual may appear as the only way to go for someone who is distressed.

<comment><USER3> Where is that post?

<comment><USER4> [https://asktog.com/columns/067PanicCaseStudy.html](https://asktog.com/columns/067PanicCaseStudy.html)

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of when PCs came with a voltage switch. With one flick of a switch... goodbye PSU. Of course the difference is it only needed to be set once.

<comment><USER6> I blew up a PSU like that a few months ago after moving to Europe. Didn't realize it wasn't auto-switching. It actually blows (loudly, and with smoke) the moment you plug it in.

<comment><USER7> If you're especially lucky it'll catch fire with the fan running. I've seen that happen to someone once, panic would be an understatement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is why when I got my RV I also got a Jeep wrangler to go along with. Its one of the few vehicles left that can be towed "4 down" without significant modification.

It has no steering wheel lock and you simply put the 4wd transfer case in neutral, no transmission lubrication issues.

Mopar even sells a wiring harness that ties into the rear lights directly to properly operate the brake lights from the RV.

The jeep is also a great vehicle for sight seeing especially in remote areas.

</comment><comment><USER9> Slightly off topic, but in the current context of environmental awareness, let me get this straight: They're travelling across the continent in what I can only describe as the vehicle from Meet the Parents, and for what I presume are short local trips, they bring along... a Lexus RX !?

This is the standard European solution to the same problem: [https://www.watling- towbars.co.uk/motorbike_scooter_carrier....](https://www.watling- towbars.co.uk/motorbike_scooter_carrier.html)

<comment><USER8> I have an RV and tow a 4 door Jeep behind it, the difference in gas mileage towing the jeep vs not is maybe 1 mpg(6.5 mpg vs 7.5 mpg).

I have two kids, towing just a scooter would not be that useful. The jeep works really well for sight seeing, including off-roading while at the destination.

A large RV is not the efficient way to get around regardless of towing a smaller vehicle, but it is a great way to see the country. I am somewhat torn about the environmental aspect of it, I am not sure how clear cut it is vs air travel and hotels and related infrastructure.

<comment><USER9> For those outside the US: 6.5 us mpg = 36 l/100km ... it's funny how different fuel prices have given radically different local optimisations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was expecting something like [https://www.kali.org/tutorials/emergency-self- destruction-lu...](https://www.kali.org/tutorials/emergency-self-destruction- luks-kali/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Another anecdote about an arrogant technician and UI's. When Ebay was a young company, I decided to give it a try. There was an auction status notice that was supposed to appear on the screen that I missed. My tech support session went something like this:

Me: I didn't know that such and such occured because the status messages appear on the right of the screen, and my monitor is too small to show the right-hand side.

Technician: You are correct. I suggest you adjust your Windows DPI setting so that more fits on the screen.

Me: I already tried that, but it makes the characters too small in general. It's hard on the eyes. I'm using a fairly old monitor.

Technician: I suggest you buy a newer and bigger monitor then.

Me: Other users may have the same problem; not everybody has new monitors. Can't you move the status messages so they are not on the far right?

Technician: Sorry, we can't do that. Please buy a new monitor if you want to use our site.

I stopped using Ebay for a while. At least back then you could easily talk to an actual technician who knew the system. Now you'd probably have to go through middle-ware AI and script-reading minimum-wagers who may be diplomatic yet useless.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would seem to me pretty simple to interlock the switch with the starter so that it would be impossible to start the car with the switch in the wrong position.

<comment><USER13> That still wouldn't stop you from towing the car with the switch in the wrong position, which also destroys the transmission.

<comment><USER14> Correct me if I am wrong but with the switch off (i.e. in position for driving) the lubrication does not occur same as if the modification had not been added. So wouldn't it still be an improvement as functionality is just as good as before and 50% of the failure modes are eliminated? Obviously you want to find a solution for that other 50% but at least you've made an improvement without any regressions.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, a 50% solution is definitely better than nothing (but you'd still need to be very careful since a mistake could still fry your transmission).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To read the article:

        document.body.style.maxWidth = '800px'
        document.body.style.margin = '0 auto'
        document.body.style.font = '14pt Georgia'

<comment><USER16> Or reader mode in Firefox. But agree, there's something hilarious about a guy complaining about bad design interactions - meanwhile his website is almost unreadable on a desktop PC, with whole paragraphs stretching the length of the window.

<comment><USER17> I'm willing to cut the website some slack. It's 15 years old and still online. It's also only 35KB and loads fast. By comparison to the cesspool that is any modern monetized website, this was a joy to read.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, fair enough. In 2004, I think I was still running 1024x768, so this would have been less of a problem then, and newer articles have a better layout: [https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction- design/](https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/) (2014)

<comment><USER15> Snake text (ie, copying existing learnings from newspaper column widths) was already a thing in 1996

> The column was the first example of what the Web magazine Salon > (www.salon1999.com) dismissed as "snake text," meaning the story ran in one > long, narrow column. While the reader has to constantly scroll through snake > text, the narrow width is far easier to read than, say, oh-I-dunno, Salon's > ripped-from-a-magazine page format.

[https://www.wired.com/1996/11/web- dreams-2/](https://www.wired.com/1996/11/web-dreams-2/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So a key element in this story appears to be the role of _fear_ in switching off the brain and reverting to old behaviour while skipping the checklist. And twice it seems to be caused by the human environment: middle America seems to be a hostile place?

</comment><comment><USER19> Sometimes we get the interface we deserve.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Calling the company was of no help. The engineer who answered responded that > nothing was wrong with the design of the switch that extremely careful > operation would not overcome. He'd been using it for months with no problem.

My blood pressure rose reading this. Absolutely infuriating response. I can't stand it when engineers fail to recognize how human factors relate to the systems they build. Makes me want to grab them by the ear like a child and put them in timeout until they come to their senses.

<comment><USER21> There could be something else at play in the call... they could have been scared that if a representative of Lexus admitted there was a problem with the design, they would be admitting liability.

<comment><USER22> He didn't call a representative of Lexus.

<comment><USER10> True. And TFA doesn't name the company:

> ... but it is a real, aftermarket device for Lexus RX-300 series cars being > sold by a company in Florida.

However, parent's argument applies to "company in Florida".

Also, ironically, to the author of TFA. I'm guessing that it's not an accident that he doesn't name "company in Florida".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SentiNews – Positive News Reader Based on Sentiment Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://sentinewsmob.ml/ <comment><USER2> Maybe you should have an android device on the face of your webpage instead of an IPhone.</comment>


Electric Jolt to Brain Boosts Math Skills - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101104-electric-current-brains-math-science-health/?source=link_tw20101108brain <comment><USER2> In case you're interested, here are other reports of the same story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1869772>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870798>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1871276>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1872308>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875650>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1876231>

None of the submissions have any comments ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I missed all these submissions.</comment></comment>


DigiTimes Says Apple AR Glasses Have Reportedly Been 'Terminated' – MacRumors - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/11/apple-ar-glasses-reportedly-terminated-digitimes/ <comment><USER2> This isn't really surprising. Until we get some kind of advanced GAI that has flawless object recognition, there just aren't really any consumer use cases for AR beyond a couple games and momentary gimmicks. That's why Microsoft completely pivoted HoloLens to be a business tool despite initially promising all kinds of consumer applications, and Apple presumably came to the same conclusion and realized there's no customer experience in AR worth offering right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this related to Jony Ive's departure?

A lot of the leaks stated that a big part of why the watch existed is because Jony wanted to make one.

So was the big part of the glasses because Jony wanted to design glasses? (I can see the appeal of wanting to design glasses that are functional and fashionable, quite a challenge).

</comment><comment><USER4> Regardless of if and when they are released, there is no way in hell that Apple has ditched on-face augmented reality. Inevitably the platform's goal is to get as close as possible to the user's raw attention stream (what the eyes are up to)...

Man, Jony sure got everyone all shook.</comment>


Programmer's Guide to Meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://funwithbits.net/blog/programmers-guide-to-meltdown/ <comment><USER2> At first I couldn't understand how "cache line" index is actually the byte read from kernel.

I could wrap my head around the idea that reading a single bit could be somehow possible, because you only need to know if something is 0 or 1. But reading an entire byte only by measuring time difference seemed impossible to me.

I looked up what cache line is, it seems that if the byte stored at an address we're looking on is in the cache, the CPU will deliver it, if not it will go fetch.

Then it hit me, we're actually able to make the machine read the contents of the kernel addresses, because the CPU evaluates (not execute) code ahead of time.

We create an array that is large enough to represent a byte in its index. We try to access the value of the kernel addresses and use it as an index on our array. This succeeds because the CPU hasn't executed our code yet so, no access violation error was thrown. But it evaluated our code, so our instructions actually passed through the CPU during some branch simulation. So the address we accessed on array whose index represents the byte peeked from kernel is on the CPU cache. If we ask the CPU to retrieve that address it will return super fast. It doesn't matter that we couldn't set the content to something. Because C arrays are just bytes stacked on top of a memory address. So if we want to access the nth element of the address, we can use arrays_base_address+element_index*element_size. Then we probe the address of each element of our array. If the address is in the cache it will return much much faster. The array itself is in the userland so no exception for address violation will occur. Once we find the address, we can determine the byte of the kernel address we intended to find. Because we stored the content of the kernel address as an index of an array, which is a memory address.

I have no formal training in CS, so it surprised me that I could understand how Meltdown works. I might have made a lot of mistakes trying to explain this in my limited vocabulary, but I hope this helps someone trying to make sense of the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot for your input! I'll use it for making that section in the text more clear for the readers.

<comment><USER3> Is there any chance of providing the code for your access_time_to() function? I'm quite curious and I looked at your code that checks for the issue but couldn't make sense of it. Can you provide a simple solution for that? Thanks in advance.</comment></comment></comment>


Explain shell - <AUTHOR> https://explainshell.com/ <comment><USER3> Explain shell is something that has helped me a lot, but the situation of needing it left me baffled for so long... Why can't I search by command + flag? For example, I know what command A does, but I'm not sure what flag C means. I can search for man A, but why can't I search man A --flag C to get only the relevan portion of the manpage?

This has baffled me for years. I'd have guessed that discoverability and documentation would be a core functionality and focus of open source developers.

Also, if I find a command which flag is not explained by explain shell, is there some source I can create PR to? Some DB, where I could propose the addition..?

<comment><USER4> The terminal was not built for that kind of automatic lookup, and I often find that options are only interesting in their contexts, so while it might in many cases be possible to show the docs for one option only I think you would have to write a man pages in a different style to make that really usefull. The best place for you to create a PR is against the original program, it says on Explainshell that everything is built upon the original man pages, or maybe you can create some kind of new service like [http://www.bashoneliners.com](http://www.bashoneliners.com) [https://www.commandlinefu.com](https://www.commandlinefu.com) to add your own documentation for random commands and options..

That said good documentation is a hard problem, what to document, how to do it, and what use it will have down the line. Your goal is not everyone elses goal, I always come to the problem from the other side: "I need this extra thing from this command, do I need to code somehting custom or is there something that can do it for me". So it's mostly a question of refrasing problems that fit the tools I have rather than looking up what one option does.

<comment><USER5> It's not the terminal's fault, it's because man lacks semantic markup.

<comment><USER4> There is sematic lookup, but I've never seen anyone use it except here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15776153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15776153)

> $ apropos -s 3 Va=optind -a Va=optarg > > [https://man.openbsd.org/whatis.1](https://man.openbsd.org/whatis.1)

<comment><USER5> Bad wording on my part -- man doesn't _support_ semantic markup by default.

<comment><USER6> But it does. From OpenBSD's mdoc(7):

 _The mdoc language supports authoring of manual pages for the man(1) utility by allowing semantic annotations of words, phrases, page sections and complete manual pages._

From GNU groff's mdoc(7):

 _The -mdoc package is a set of content-based and domain-based macros used to format the BSD man pages._

I'm not 100% sure when _exactly_ mdoc was introduced, but the earliest appearance I can find is in /share/tmac/tmac.doc in 4.3BSD-Reno [1], whose file header gives it as version 5.9, dated 24 July 1990 (a modified version of this same file appears in the earliest release of GNU groff I could find, version 1.02 from 2 June 1991 [2]). And taking a look at the mdoc language reveals that it is indeed very much a semantic markup, even more so than most markups that otherwise receive the moniker.

And even the unmaintained (and relatively featureless) version of man(1) that ships with my Slackware 14.2 installation supports it by default, via the magic of groff -mandoc:

 _mandoc — Use this file in case you don 't know whether the man macros or the mdoc package should be used. Multiple man pages (in either format) can be handled._

(that's from groff_tmac(5); meanwhile man.conf(5) says that -mandoc is used by default).

A look at the source (in /usr/share/groff/1.22.3/tmac/andoc.tmac on my system) reveals some troff macro trickery to load either the man package or the mdoc package based on which macros the manpage is trying to use, and then reload the manpage with the appropriate package.

4.3BSD-Reno has an equivalent, too (in /share/tmac/tmac.andoc), whose header gives it as version 5.4, dated 28 July 1990—it strikes me as considerably simpler, but the basic idea is the same. Ye olde groff's was similarly simple, so I'm sure there are good reasons for the complexity that's since been introduced.

The point of all this being: man(1) has supported semantic markup by default since before Linux or any of the modern BSDs existed. On BSD it's been the preferred markup for manpages for ages, afaict, but it's never really caught on in the Linux world, despite having been supported—perhaps because it's always been more popular to write manpages in something like POD or LinuxDoc or DocBook or AsciiDoc or Markdown or some other markup and programmatically convert them to roff(7) input, and those formats don't offer the semantic richness or detail for the domain of manpages that mdoc(7) does, so converting to man(7) makes more sense in that case.

\--

[1]: [https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD- Reno/sh...](https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.3BSD- Reno/share/tmac)

[2]: [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/commit/macros?id=...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/commit/macros?id=351da0dcdf702cf243d26ffa998961bce2aa8653)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of:

\- [http://worrydream.com/KillMath/](http://worrydream.com/KillMath/)

\- [https://regexr.com/](https://regexr.com/)

\- [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_symbo...](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_symbols)

\- [https://rpi.edu/dept/math/ms_graduate/resources/SayingMath.p...](https://rpi.edu/dept/math/ms_graduate/resources/SayingMath.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Explains Hell

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of 'expert sex change,' haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834791)

<comment><USER11> Curious, how long is it until it's okay to post a duplicate?

<comment><USER12> That's a frequently asked question!

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

<comment><USER11> Thank you.

> If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill > reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok.

I was embarrassed it's in there and expected a definitive rule. Now I'm not feeling that bad ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Welp, I still don't know what :(){ :|:& };: exactly does, but it sure borked my WSL. Error: 0x80070040 after forking too many processes.

I know comment moderation sucks, but it would be great to have some kind of wiki/comment system/human generated notes on popular commands.

<comment><USER14> You define a function named :, which calls iself and goes in the background. Then you call : at the end and start the neverending chain of :-calls till your memory bleeds.

<comment><USER15> Not really: the function `:` calls itself and _pipes_ into itself.

The difference is - from what I can deduce - that if it were to only call itself, there would be up to 2 `:` processes running at a time, while the bash call stack would grow indefinitely. Using all your RAM but not an actual fork bomb.

Adding the pipe makes the number of `:` processes grow exponentially, and very quickly you reach the limit of 16384 active processes (PIDs, actually) on a Linux box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Inspired by this site, I made a handy shell script[0] for use from cli - <USER2> enough to lookup documentation for options from man/help pages. Doesn't cover all the features offered by explainshell, there are issues with some corner cases and tested only on Ubuntu

[0][https://github.com/learnbyexample/command_help](https://github.com/learnbyexample/command_help)

</comment><comment><USER17> What I like most about this kind of posts. Is that users will share other alternatives and gems. Not disspointed

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great, but the man page for pipes is probably not helpful to the kinds of people who benefit from this tool.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can't view the page on iPhone 6 and safari. Doesn't let you zoom out to see the whole page at once.

<comment><USER20> I'm surprised that some sites just don't load on a 5 year old environment while providing nothing more valuable than sites from 15 years ago. Frameworks just need to do better.

<comment><USER21> Which 15-year-old site is this one equivalent to?

<comment><USER22> I suspect that GP is referring to layout and formatting, not content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=rsync+--progress+-avr+-...](https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=rsync+--progress+-avr+-e+%27ssh+-p47999%27+)

This is really well done, what a neat resource.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is convenient but I still stand by the statement I made here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16085604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16085604)

<comment><USER25> >Bash has a huge number of little shortcuts that are difficult to learn. [snip] it is difficult to Google for its meaning

Everything you could ever ask for is in the manual and also in the man page.

RTFM: [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html)

If you need a tutorial or a guide then try this one: [http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FullBashGuide](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FullBashGuide)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love this so much. Its perfect tool for developers, i don't know how i didn't encounter this sooner, it exists for more then 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER27> There's also [https://www.shellcheck.net/](https://www.shellcheck.net/)

</comment><comment><USER28> A command line version would be great.

<comment><USER29> [https://tldr.sh/](https://tldr.sh/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The only thing one should gather from these threads is that mos people on this site are completely incapable of using the shell and are too lazy to learn it.

<comment><USER9> Or, alternately, most people on this site are interested in learning how to use the shell, and are therefore interested in tools like explainshell, which make such learning easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why is the first example a fork bomb?!?

<comment><USER31> Because it's a good example of confusing shell code?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nicely done</comment>


Ask HN: Why wireless laptop peripherals connect to dongle instead of Bluetooth? - <AUTHOR> Let's use this "Bluetooth / wireless" Jabra headset as an example https://www.jabra.com/business/office-headsets/jabra-evolve/jabra-evolve-75
Despite the misleading product website, the headset will NOT connect to your laptop via Bluetooth - it will wirelessly connect to a USB (A!) dongle.
I did some research recently and I can not find an office headset that will connect to my laptop via Bluetooth without a dongle or a base. Also many wireless mouses and keyboards connect to a dongle, with the notable exception of Apple products. What is going on? <comment><USER2> Doesn't it do Bluetooth, or doesn't it do Bluetooth with your laptop? I kind of suspect the latter, and that's one of the reasons: Bluetooth stacks traditionally are fiddly, not all devices support all modes, ...

For dense offices, custom protocols can also be better at dealing with many devices at the same time. For mouses/keyboards, a dongle can be available before the OS has started and initialized Bluetooth.</comment>


Design Principles for Delightful CLIs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/designing-atlassian/10-design-principles-for-delightful-clis-522f363bac87 <comment><USER2> I disagree with a lot of the advice here, I personally really hate noisy CLIs. It goes directly in the face of the rule of silence.

"Create a reaction for every action" is specifically egregious. If there was no error don't say anything. It shouldn't be a surprise your command actually worked.

[http://www.linfo.org/rule_of_silence.html](http://www.linfo.org/rule_of_silence.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> CLIs are often overlooked by engineers and designers alike. They're not considered "sexy".</comment>


Business ideas: proving ideas are a dime a dosen - <AUTHOR> http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html <comment><USER2> > A village in china that paints portraits of pop culture icons as various dog > breeds. Look, Obama as a GreyHound!

If your ideas are retarded, of course they're a dime a dozen.

<comment><USER3> How does selling ringtones of a frog singing to club music sound as an idea to you? Let me introduce you to Crazy Frog:

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

Retarded ideas make money too.

<comment><USER4> I sure as hell didn't think limiting people to 140 characters was going to make sense.

<comment><USER5> I believe that was originally a technical limitation, and only later did it become evident that there is a business value in offering partially-literate individuals a medium that caters to, while providing plausible deniability for, their slow reading and writing speeds.

Twitter has little or no technical reason to be so limited, of course, but doesn't want to alienate the tldr crowd.

<comment><USER6> Technical limitation: SMS are 160 characters. 20 chars for username and 140 chars for message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ideas are a dime a dozen, but great ideas are not. Some ideas are better than others, and some are much better than others. It would be easy to argue that someone who could consistently come up with the much better ones would be worth just as much if not more than a great executor.

<comment><USER8> Great ideas are only great in hindsight.

<comment><USER7> I really don't think so. If in at least your own mind it is not a great idea then you shouldn't do it to begin with.

<comment><USER8> Why on earth would anyone pursue an idea they themselves didn't think was great?

<comment><USER9> Make money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand all this pooh-poohing of these ideas.

None of them is _great_ , but the point is that every one of 'em (well, all the ones I've read) _could_ be, if executed correctly, a perfectly viable business. Picking out a few at random:

 _Presentation Consulting - Teach companies how to improve their presentations_

That's not a bad idea. Is somebody already doing it? Possibly, but that doesn't mean you can't do it too.

 _Online flower shop with one-hour delivery_

Sounds tricky, and you'd need to restrict it to a couple of major and dense cities, but again there's no reason it's not a viable business. Market it correctly by encouraging men to send their ladies flowers spontaneously, and you could surely make some money.

 _Build Your Own Back Pack Shop_

Damn you, random numbers! I don't much like this idea, but there's gotta be somebody out there (schoolkids, I guess) who would love to build customized backpacks for themselves. Great idea? No. World changing? No. Profitable if you get the product and the marketing right? Sure!

<comment><USER11> > Build Your Own Back Pack Shop

Timbuk2 have a successful business offering customised messenger bags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For what it's worth, here is the subset of the ideas I came up with from that list:

[http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2009/02/68-free- bus...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2009/02/68-free-business- ideas.html)

The point of the exercise is that most people think of five or ten ideas, and then go with the first decent idea they come up with. But if you actually force yourself to come up with 100+ ideas then it's more likely that your idea will legitimately be a good idea. Which is important since the first .1% of the work you do on the project has a large influence on whether the next 99.9% will make you either millions or zero.

Fred Wilson also recently said that he would use one of the 999 if someone made it, in case that means anything to those perusing the list.

<comment><USER13> Quickly scanning the list, I see we did #712 as an intern project: <http://www.elmoreclub.com/> I'll be looking for Fred's steps soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >A paperless hostpital

may as well have suggested an lunar-orbiting space platform that launches rockets to mars...

</comment><comment><USER15> Corollary: Some ideas are vastly more lucrative than others. Which is why it's useful to spend a week listing your top 999 ideas. Execution is a PITA so choose carefully.

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting list but the notion that "ideas are only valuable when someone (like you) makes something happen" can only go so far. If you have a bad idea that you make happen it doesn't automatically become valuable.

This story might prove that ideas are a dime a dozen, but one can argue that good ideas are not.

</comment><comment><USER17> My favorite, #469: "A YouTube VC firm, that will invest money in people who are willing to do stupid stuff on video in hopes that the video will go viral and they will make a profit."

Could happen, in today's angel investment climate...

<comment><USER18> Rebecca Black?

<comment><USER19> She gave money to somebody to film her doing stupid stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have read a couple of hundred of them and thats the most useless ideas I have ever seen.

Most of them seem to be a solution to really mundane everyday consumer quirks. None of them attempts to use basic human needs such as need for communication and approval. Its just "somebody could do my laundry" and "somebody could write something on a website".

<comment><USER21> They are only useless if your goal is to address one of the basic human needs you mention and even then maybe they do. "Someone could do my laundry so I can complete my research paper on curing cancer"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm sure I saw this here first, but "Ideas are just a multiplier of execution." <http://sivers.org/multiply>

</comment><comment><USER23> "Microbrewery with high-octane beers with boutique labels that cost as much as good wines"

32% beer at £35 a bottle:

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

</comment><comment><USER24> <http://flippa.com>, where you get a stream of business ideas that are mostly proven to work. Due diligence required as usual to identify scams, future market demand, revenue/effort, competition, profit margin, etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> This list is actually pretty awesome. I had my doubts, but wow, very nice.

Funny: #120 A travel company that arranges people to stay at others houses.

<comment><USER18> <http://www.couchsurfing.org/> ?

<comment><USER26> or <http://www.airbnb.com/> ?

<comment><USER27> by travel agency he probably meant someone who takes the home-finding job off your hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ideas matter. So does luck, timing and many other things.

Not ideas like "I want to create a backup tool" but rather ideas like "I want to create a backup tool that allow the user to simply drag and drop the files they want backed up into a folder on their machine". In other words ideas that are followed by an insight.

When people walk around saying ideas are a dime a dosen and execution is everything they forget that execution in itself is empty. You need to execute on something and that something is ideas.

</comment><comment><USER29> #8: A gadget to cook beans/lentils/vegetables/rice for the same amount of time (quicker than what can be done in a slow cooker.)

Ah dang, I was just about to re-invent the microwave too!

<comment><USER30> Naw, the microwave is still pretty much a one-thing-at-a-time device. Do one thing after another, and the first is cold when the next is ready; do them together, and you either have to pop stuff in at different times or some stuff will be over/under-cooked when it ends.

Methinks the idea was something crockpot/rice-cookerish which you dump all the stuff into at once, say into different sections of the cooker, and it ensures everything finishes cooking at the same time even though everything cooks at different rates. Lower/higher temps for some things, delayed start for others...

<comment><USER29> ...and twitter integration! Let's get rich!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ideas that are based on making money for the sake of being rich are the worst.

<comment><USER32> But that's kind of the main reason why you start a business, you know, to make a lot of money.

Otherwise you're talking about charities.

<comment><USER33> Really? I've talked to a number of entrepreneurs who are in it because they have an idea they'd like to see happen or they think it's fun or to try to leave a mark on the world or a number of other reasons where the money is only a side effect.

<comment><USER31> Well put, money happens when you scratch an itch that is keeping you from sleeping basically. Many people got lost somewhere in the way and think of ideas as machines that will squeeze wallets and make them rich. All people I know that made money actually solved a personal necessity or where so excited about wanting to see something happen that their own genuine excitement attracted natural attention from people that where at the same time excited to see that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Also see

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

</comment><comment><USER35> 968\. Make a Triple Snuggy.

What exactly is that? I'm scared.

<comment><USER14> Considering there is also the "double snuggy", this idea is pretty much 7 minute abs.

<comment><USER36> The magic number is 6, not 7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My response: <http://www.nbashaw.com/2011/06/09/ideas-matter-too.html>

</comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, but you know they aren't giving away their most valuable idea.

</comment><comment><USER38> Typo. Dosen -> Dozen

<comment><USER39> Not to mention "hampster," regardless of how "Hampster Dance" was spelled

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I built a paper airplane and sold it for a penny. Therefore, airplanes are only worth a penny. Quick, let's all go get our own Airbus!

</comment><comment><USER41> _Rent-a-wife – a woman who cleans, cooks, does laundry, picks up dry cleaning, mail, etc but without the emotional relationship._ I'd rent...

<comment><USER42> This made me lol. They interchanged 'maid' and 'wife.'

<comment><USER41> Yeah exactly, haha. Just one of the more entertaining points</comment></comment></comment>


China is harvesting organs from detainees, tribunal concludes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes <comment><USER2> Sci-fi author Larry Niven has written a number of stories partly exploring the "Ship of Theseus" idea extended to organ transplants and medicine. In one future from Larry Niven's Sci-fi stories, organ transplants could cure almost anything and even extend life. As a result, more and more criminal infractions started to carry the death penalty, in indirect response to the demand for more organs. Such a process would be easier to initiate in a government structure like China's, where there are fewer powerful means of ensuring government accountability, and where individual rights are not enshrined. The current climate in 2019 in the West, where mob rule can result in trial by social media, is also concerning in relation to this scenario.

<comment><USER3> China's social credit score system would be an easy place for them to look for "undesirables" to use for livestock, create an ever shifting minimal level of political servitude to avoid execution.

<comment><USER2> [https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule](https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When the Japanese Nazi doctors did this to the Chinese, medical experiments and murder, that was a huge tragedy, and yet the Chinese have no problem doing this to their own people that don't abide by the party line. How terrible.

</comment><comment><USER5> An independent tribunal sitting in London

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

Doesn't sound independent at all

</comment><comment><USER6> "Repo Man", Chinese Edition.</comment>


Bill to keep foreign-born U.S. grad students here - <AUTHOR> http://www.coons.senate.gov/newsroom/releases/release/senators-coons-alexander-introduce-bill-to-keep-foreign-born-us-grad-students-here-instead-of-sending-them-home-to-create-jobs-in-other-countries <comment><USER2> The timing of this is interesting. I can't help but think that traditional higher-learning educational institutions will wholeheartedly back this bill as they see this as a way to bolster enrollment in their graduate programs.

Certainly makes it more attractive to earn a graduate degree in the US for foreigners now. The only question is whether ANY STEM degree qualifies, or whether this is for 'select' institutions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Based on the headline, I am against it. They should be allowed to leave if they want to.</comment>