Absolute Scale Corrupts Absolutely - <AUTHOR> https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190819 <comment><USER2> > "What is corruption? On the Internet, it's botnets and DDoS attacks."

While I don't disagree these are problems, it seems like the real corruption is misinformation. To follow the flow of the article, the cheaper and faster information flows, the more likely it is to be wrong. Think of how major news networks having "breaking news" that ends up being flawed or wrong. (I'm struggling to find it, but someone watched "breaking news" a couple of weeks after it broke, and tried to figure out how accurate news reporting was. Huge eye-opener for me). It used to be a small number of people knew how to make web pages and host them. Now anyone can comment on any number of social media platforms with maybe even more than one account.

To quote Dogbert: "Do you know how hard it was to spread rumors before the internet?"

And it's the people that are spreading the information, although some botnets seed it. People are very diverse, and are a great transmission mechanism, since they change it in any number of ways.

Also, I remember DDoS attacks and botnets were around and thriving long before most people knew what they were. Anyone remember WinNuke? This isn't some magical new problem, it's just that more people are affected, and therefore more people have heard of it.

I think the real problem with the internet isn't that it's too big, or has too many people, but now it basically mirrors the real world. Many people and companies are on the internet, trying to do what they were in the real world on the internet. That invites criminals and troublemakers to also do what they do on the internet.

The real problem is human nature, and that system is definitely large enough to be corrupted. And it has been, for a long time.

<comment><USER3> The point being made is that it's some mathematical thing, more fundamental than human nature, things that aren't human mediated behave this way too.

Think of the transmission of a disease as the percentage of the population immune to it decreases. Island infections isolated by being unable to reach new susceptible victims fizzle out. But above a certain susceptible percentage, the infection can leap from group to group along the edges where they touch, and it becomes a pandemic.

It's no just that the internet mirrors the real world, although it does. It's that it breaks down isolation barriers in the real world which used to passively defend against the spread of all sorts of unrelated corruption, everything from Nigerian prince scams to bitcoin wallet stealing to nation state disinformation.

<comment><USER4> >It's that it breaks down isolation barriers in the real world which used to passively defend against the spread of all sorts of unrelated corruption

You've just put into words the loosely formed thought that's been trying to escape my brain. Nature has a mechanism for limiting the positive feedback effect of new corruption forces: geographic isolation. It's as fundamental to diversity as evolution. Think e.g. the species that survive on the Galapagos islands that would otherwise have been wiped out.

The internet has no circuit breaker; no way to attenuate positive feedback cycles amplifying a signal (whatever that signal might be).

I'm no economist, but it seems to me that free market economics has the same weakness: unfettered amplification without counterbalancing isolation removes diversity. And leads to the small number of dominant monopolies in given industry sectors. FANMAG[0] in the tech sector being just the latest example.

That's probably also why we shouldn't be hopeful about the author's proposal as it's likely to end in one of two results:

1\. A failure 2\. A new monopoly

The idea of a "network of networks" is intuitively appealing at first sight, but it's difficult to see how that serves society well if one company runs them all. Another reason, perhaps, to treat the underlying network as a utility.

[0] Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon, Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> Wouldn't it be nice though? If you could have servers, like you did in the 1990s, with the same simple architectures as you used in the 1990s, and the same sloppy security policies developer freedom as you had in the 1990s, but somehow reach them from anywhere? Like... a network, but not the Internet. One that isn't reachable from the Internet, or even addressable on the Internet. One that uses the Internet as a substrate, but not as a banana.

> That's what we're working on._

So... They are working on a VPN then...?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Sounds like an overlay network like zerotier to me.

<comment><USER6> Which is.. a network.. that is virtual.. and private :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title is pretty click-baity and I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion. The author raises a lot of good points about large systems being subject to corruption.

However, I think the internet is self-regulating. Eventually, users will choose new products, companies, and services that align with their values.

I think we're at the tail end of the first phase of internet mega- corporations. In the past 15 years we've learned a lot about how people interact on the internet, and how it's rife for abuse and misinformation. We've created systems that negatively influence the quality of our lives and relationships.

I don't believe that this is necessarily the status quo. There's certainly momentum and money on the side of existing incumbents, but I think the public is slowly catching on to their negative effects on society.

I'm actively working on what I think is the "second-generation" of social networking and I hope users will eventually vote with their dollars and time.

<comment><USER8> Claiming the internet will self-regulate is no less of an empty claim as assuming any other industry is capable of regulating itself.

<comment><USER9> More like assuming society is capable of regulating itself

<comment><USER10> Well, we do tend to set a bad example for the kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > For computer viruses, maybe we can have 10 operating systems, but you still > don't want to be the unlucky one, and you also don't want to be stuck with > the 10th best operating system or the 10th best browser. Diversity is how > nature defends against corruption, but not how human engineers do.

Hold up. I'm not sure what "the 10th best browser" even means. There isn't some absolute scale of browser quality. The web browser that more than half the world uses is kind of lousy in my eyes. That's why these alternatives exist.

Even if there were a single "best", you'd be much less likely to "be the unlucky one", because if everyone is using a system with tiny market share, you're each much less appealing to attackers. And the distribution falls off really fast.

What's the 10th most popular OS today? NetBSD, maybe. I searched the CVE list for "Microsoft Windows", and see 61 issues in 2019. "macOS" has 44 this year, and NetBSD hasn't had any since 2017. The NetBSD developers are smart and careful, I'm sure, but at least part of that has got to be because they've got <0.1% market share. Nobody wants to spend time attacking NetBSD because then you've got the problem of _finding_ a NetBSD system to actually attack! I wouldn't use obscurity as my only security, but I'm not going to discount its value, either.

> In fact, a major goal of modern engineering is to destroy diversity. As > Deming would say, reduce variation. Find the "best" solution, then deploy it > consistently everywhere, and keep improving it.

I disagree. Software engineering (real engineering, not "I built a webpage over the weekend") does indeed use diversity as a tactic. Avionics famously has multiple independent implementations, and checks results between the units.

"Find the best solution" is great for general problem solving strategies, but not good for sourcing implementations. When I'm building something, I don't want to use a hardware component that was only available from one supplier. Standardize the interfaces and requirements, but then make sure you can meet those in more than one way.

<comment><USER12> > Avionics famously has multiple independent implementations, and checks > results between the units.

We studied this at university and it turns out even independent implementations tended to have the same errors. So it's even more work than expected, and non-intuitively, they should be slightly less independent for that reason.

<comment><USER13> source?

<comment><USER14> It was Nancy Levison with this article having a few links:

[https://leepike.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/n-version- programmi...](https://leepike.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/n-version-programming- for-the-nth-time/)

Levison's a brilliant, influential person in software safety:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> People intuitively know this. That's why they invented gates and exclusivity. Take e.g. rich people who want to have their own exclusive areas or ultra high cost metropoles. These act as natural gatekeepers for outsiders to keep the corruption away. At least that's what they hope for.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an old argument. In the engineering world, it's been long known as SPOF (single point of failure). SPOF exists in many forms. It can be a physical part but can be protocols or people's beliefs. Google is kind of a SPOF for many people as well as your ISP. A media is a SPOF in many political systems. Some countries have only one national assembly, which is a SPOF too. I would call Euro (currency) a kind of SPOF, but people might disagree, etc. etc.

It's an engineer's job to reduce SPOFs when it comes to engineering, but people in other fields are doing it too. It's just not called SPOF but crafting those systems should be equally respected as engineering.

</comment><comment><USER17> > most interactions should not be Internet scale

Metcalfe law's shadow: the risks in a network are proportional to the square number of people connected to the network.

<comment><USER18> Is this a thing, or just something you're suggesting here?

I think I like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, where some parts of the universe have > much better connectivity than others and it doesn't go well at all.

That's not a particularly accurate description.

The problem was the level of technology, and accepting intelligent data packets from infected sources. The suggested way to prevent infection was to convert through a less-powerful intermediate format, still preserving the meaning and amount of messages.

</comment><comment><USER20> Isn't there a similar, sort of inverse pattern with laws and enforcement?

The name escapes me, but it's about the fact that once, even though laws were passed, it required personnel to enforce it, so there was a sort of a natural equilibrium between government and citizens. But now that we have all this technology, law enforcement can enforce even the pettiest of laws...?

<comment><USER2> To quote the Tao Te Ching:

The more laws and restrictions there are,

The poorer people become.

The sharper men's weapons,

The more trouble in the land.

The more ingenious and clever men are,

The more strange things happen.

The more rules and regulations,

The more thieves and robbers.

<comment><USER21> I feel like the history of the United States is a fairly stark counter-example to this thought. The chances of dying or getting robbed in the 1800s Wild West were much higher than they are today. The standard of living and safety has improved more or less monotonically since then, mostly due to more laws and regulations. Even recent history in the last 50 years has seen violence and crime decrease while laws grow.

<comment><USER2> While crime rates have certainly changed, I'm not sure you can easily say that it's because we have more laws. If anything, it seems like a lot of laws are enforced with huge bias to race/class/wealth.

If it was proven that more laws = less crime, then I don't think we would have seen the expanse of crime in the 80's and 90's. Think of the war on drugs, the 3 strikes laws, etc. If anything, I think getting more people out of poverty reduces the crime rate (and also adds safety).

The Wild West I don't think so much was a lack of laws, but the lack of law enforcement.

<comment><USER21> You're right, I can't say more laws are causing less crime. But I can say more laws and less crime are correllated in the US, which is still a counter- example to your Tao Te Ching quote, that claims more laws cause more crime. We know that's not true.

The quote might be true in ancient or modern China, where the laws and restrictions are being made in a dictatorial regime to censor the populace. But that would mean this isn't a quote about the nature of laws, it's a quote about the nature of China in a specific context, and can't really be applied to situations outside that context.

In the U.S., despite the temporary uptick in property crimes in the 80s, it went away again, and on the whole, on average, violent crimes have been in decline for 300 years while the number of laws and restrictions has gone up.

I wouldn't call the war on drugs or 3 strikes to be examples of crime expanding, those are both examples of government campaigns to fight crime. They are both controversial, with a loud and large contingent of citizens who believe those campaigns exaggerated the problems and are wasting vast amounts of tax money without reducing crime rates.

> I think getting more people out of poverty reduces the crime rate (and also > adds safety).

Totally agree with you there. Side note, some people believe the "war on drugs" actually perpetuates poverty: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Creation_of_a_per...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#Creation_of_a_permanent_underclass)

<comment><USER2> Violent crime isn't all crime, and I think the counterexample to what you're talking about is the number of non-violent laws we make:

[https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/1594035229)

We have so many laws that basically the legal system can find something wrong you've done, which makes everyone criminals. It's only a question of if they will charge you with it. You can't have a crime without a law, because a crime is when you break a law.

The war on drugs I would definitely say is crime expanding, as we are taking things that was legal, or more legal (even while dangerous or stupid) and are making them illegal. Now a substance abuse problem is also a criminal problem.

Same for three strikes, because many times you're taking a simple crime and over penalizing it. If the US's crime rate has been dropping so quickly, why do we have such a high prison population?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_incarceration_timeline- clean.svg)

I also am not sure we're making that many new laws for violent crime. I think that is more or less well described.

And just because it's my favorite saying, "correlation is not causation!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Scale reduces diversity which increases vulnerability. Darwin would interrogate this potentiality in the following way(essentially articulating the characteristics and benefits conferred by his evolutionary model) : reproduction can essentially be viewed as scale in this kind of context: a turtle's reproduction produces lots of turtles, rather than a random assortment of lifeforms such as snails and rabbits, etc. In this sense, biological reproduction results in the 'scale' of some particular thing, i.e., 'more of the same', rather than 'different every time', i.e., differentiation, or diversity. The vulnerability produced by scale in this context is that some peril resulting from a change could render all instances of the scaled thing extict. Nature produces the differentiation required to increase survival chances in such circumstances by mutation taking place in the course of reproduction. What the OP's concern seems to introduce, at least from my perspective, is an argument for exploring the options and practicalities for considering the possibility of somehow contriving something akin to a 'mutation imperative' into the design policy leading up to the development of scaling processes, in order to introduce at least some potential for the level of differentiation to constitute a potential for adaptation and thereby confer a potential for survival in the face of what might otherwise be an extinction level event. It's kind of like advocating applying some kind of 'resilience theory' to 'scalable innovations', no? I don't know if anyone has already proposed or even implemented this approach elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very good thoughts, although I feel a little weird about it subtly being a plug.

Also, re: the plugged company, I don't really see how this product is different from a VPN.

<comment><USER24> It's different from a VPN because it includes a notion of identity (you don't just know I'm on the corporate network, you know I'm asdfhero). It is very similar to Google's BeyondCorp strategy though.

Given that the team are Xooglers, that's presumably not a coincidence.

<comment><USER25> VPNs also have a notion of identity. You don't join the network just because you know the IP address of the VPN server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great article. A few minor points:

"How did the Capital One + AWS hack happen"

They didn't care enough to make it a policy to spend money on mitigations and practices that consistently work across known classes of attacks. Aka they didn't care about it. They figured they'd litigate it, it wouldn't cost much, it would happen to the next CEO/CIO, etc.

"It shouldn't, in short, be on the Internet. On the other hand, properly authorized users, who are on the Internet, would like to be able to reach it from anywhere. Because requiring all the employees to come to an office location to do their jobs ("physical security") seems kinda obsolete. That leaves us with a conundrum, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be nice though? "

High-assurance guards [1] w/ VPN's, link encryptors, and/or leased lines running separation architectures using older nodes and designs for untrusted interface to beat the hardware vulnerabilities. DiamondTek LAN built them into PCI cards w/ Ethernet ports. Today, it could be an on-board chip connecting the external interface. Such architectures been doing great in NSA and DOD pentesting for decades. It's what they use internally for TS/SCI at many sensitive sites.

Alternatively, simple hardware running OpenBSD on embedded box in front of (device/service here) mediating it according to (policy here) with mediation done memory-safe w/ input validation and fuzzing. That's the cheapest solution that should stop most attackers. Also, throw them a donation if you do it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_(information_security)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_\(information_security\))

" the horrors of IPv6, "

On Twitter, apenwarr also said:

"I had a connectivity problem, so I enabled IPv6. Now I have two connectivity problems."

Haha.

</comment><comment><USER26> I take some issue at calling natural predatory animals like Lions, Sharks etc. a Cancer - ecosystems collapse without a predator.

<comment><USER27> Yes, I also noticed that example as something not like the others.

</comment></comment><comment> denton-scratch Galactic-scale corruption: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep) The story introduces The Net Of A Million Lies, but the large-scale corruption I'm really thinking of is The Blight.

</comment><comment><USER28> Frictionless systems run open-loop.

Lacking feedback, they go unstable.

Nothing about the Information Age makes it immune.

The sun also rises on the east.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't get the message. Is it "Problems scale up when something is growing"? It's not new by any means. So do Solutions. Is there evidence that Problems scale faster than Solutions?

<comment><USER30> There are an astounding number of people who think that 'economies of scale' applies to information technology.

Labor costs might not scale faster than customers, but everything else does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> >It's also why you shouldn't allow foreigners to buy political ads in your country.

Apparently, the author still needs to learn a thing, or two about the internet.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's not fair to put predators (and diseases) in the same bucket as deliberate abuse of a security vulnerability. Lions and plagues cannot be "good" or "bad".

Only humans (and data) can be corrupt. Nature is the system operating at the most massive scale and as far as we know nobody has breached gravity or friction.

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8GXw6IQJgY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8GXw6IQJgY)

</comment><comment><USER34> Security by obscurity works.

<comment><USER35> if it didn't we wouldn't be using passwords ...

<comment><USER36> Passwords use secrecy not obscurity. The difference is obscurity is discoverable via public information.

Think a captcha which is just "please type '5371' in this box."

Basically, benefiting from an unusual protocol not a hidden protocol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wow, i never really thought of this before, it took me two seconds to understand it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reading the elevator pitch on the product website (tailscale.io), it's just an undeveloped version of Cloudflare Access. (or, name your equivalent product)

It doesn't stand a chance.

Also, being the proxy between the user and internal applications isn't the hard part of zero-trust.</comment>


OCaml for the Skeptical - <AUTHOR> http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/ocaml-class/ <comment><USER2> This page is 10 years old and is quite outdated.

These days, the official OCaml site is quite good: [http://ocaml.org/](http://ocaml.org/)</comment>


IL-2 Sturmovik and Oculus Rift - <AUTHOR> http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/09/06/best-of-gamescom-il-2-sturmovik-and-oculus-rift/ <comment><USER2> As a Rift owner, the most immersive demos I've tried by far have been ones where you are sitting in the cockpit of a ship or car. It's much easier for my brain to "believe" those demos, probably because it's not getting psyched out by the lack of 3 dimensional spacial tracking or the 'floating head' feeling you get when playing FPS's.

<comment><USER3> The moments I saw what the rift was capable of I was thinking of simulations Renaissance.

Mechwarriors, Descents, Freelancers - anything where your in game "avatar" isn't tied to the camera can benefit immensely from the technology.

<comment><USER4> Wow. Can we please have a mechwarrior / descent renaissance?

<comment><USER5> Retrovirus was okay-ish, and despite 6DOF very nice to use with a mouse. I hope they make a sequel and include Rift support.

The Descent1/2 source is freely available, so some brave soul will probably add Rift support.

<comment><USER6> The first experience I ever had with a stereoscopic head tracking display was with the original D1 in '96 or so, so some sort of stereoscopic support must already be in the code.

Coincidentally the second game I tried with it that day was Mechwarrior 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like a dev environment to be made in oculus rift. Why simply limit ourselves to games (though very cool and fun)? To me it seems like the oculus allows for an entirely separate reality to be created. Imagine putting on the rift and instead of your desktop you can have a wall with 100 monitors in it? Move you editor to the side have a build above you etc...

<comment><USER8> It is a great idea, but I think the Rift will need to get a wildly better resolution. A 1920x1080 real screen isn't going to be able to show you a very good virtual screen in 3d space.

<comment><USER3> With smartphone ppi pushing above 400 it will be solved in the second or third generation. It will be possible today too but you have to jack up the price threefold.

<comment><USER9> You also have to think about the latency, and if I'm not mistaken they already want 60 FPS as the default, and I know Carmack wants 120 FPS eventually, because framerate is apparently a lot more important in that kind of virtual environment, because it's more obvious when you have dropped frames. So 120 FPS is probably "ideal", but not practical yet (the screens aren't there either).

Add to that 2x or 4x (4k) the resolution, and you're going to need really powerful hardware and very fast cables. HDMI 2.0 and Thunderbolt 2.0 barely support 4k @ 60 FPS, but I suppose that's getting pretty close. There are probably other bottlenecks, though.

<comment><USER10> 120Hz monitors are already standard equipment for professional PC FPS players: apparently it makes aim significantly easier. It does seem to usually take some drastically lowered settings to get anything resembling 120Hz minimum from the video card, though. Of course there's also the problem of getting 120Hz panels at the sort of DPI that Oculus needs. (The 120Hz LCDs were apparently an unintended by-product of the LCD manufacturers' drive for 60Hz 3D.) This is one area in which LCDs are still playing catch-up to CRTs, by the way.

<comment><USER11> it doesnt make "aim" easier. it reduces the perceived latency.

<comment><USER10> It reduces the perceived latency, thus making aim easier. If you want to make a habit of being rude to strangers in public, you should be very, _very_ careful to have your facts exactly right before you do it.

<comment><USER11> woot, getting threats on the public HN!

reducing latency doesn't make aim easier, it makes prediction easier. aiming is pointing at the right pixel at a given moment. since i figure there can be confusion, i put quotes on "aim", too.

if you were playing FPS at a high level you'd also probably make the difference between prediction and aim itself, because they're 2 different skills that you train differently.

my words were actually too exact for your sake, ironically - and not actually rude but honest.

So, now that you have been, I'll just let you know that you, sir, are just a random asshole. (note: i still have my facts exactly right)

<comment><USER10> > woot, getting threats on the public HN!

Excuse me? I didn't threaten you in the least.

> reducing latency doesn't make aim easier, it makes prediction easier. aiming > is pointing at the right pixel at a given moment. since i figure there can > be confusion, i put quotes on "aim", too.

> if you were playing FPS at a high level you'd also probably make the > difference between prediction and aim itself, because they're 2 different > skills that you train differently.

I have repeatedly heard/read high-level TF2 players describe 120Hz as improving their 'aim' \- their choice of words. This applies to hitscan as well as projectile aim, and most certainly includes flick hitscan aim, where any kind of prediction is at a minimum. While we're at it, here's a Q3 professional [http://www.stermy.com/shoutbox.php](http://www.stermy.com/shoutbox.php) :

> Yes, 120hz LCD are WAY better than 75hz LCDs and will improve your > aim/accuracy quite alot.

On the other side, I think I've yet to see an FPS pro refer to 120Hz as improving 'prediction' as such (though no doubt it does).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The more I read about the Oculus Rift, the more I want to try one.

When the first generation of a technology looks this good, it really makes you excited for the 2nd and 3rd generation.

<comment><USER8> I've had my doubts about the Rift, but most of those were centered around problems I see with using the Rift in games like FPSes. The author of the article has totally sold me on the Rift for simulator games though. I want one.

<comment><USER13> I can't understand how are you going to reach for the controls though. In all simulators you need use the keyboard extensively - power up the engines, flaps, landing gear. Then you need to remember weird hotkeys for radios, autopilot or rarely used functions. You need to type in a lot of numbers when doing routes or changing frequencies. I don't know how can you type with this thing on your head. And then you will need to find you mouse/stick to resume flying normally. Something is still missing here.

<comment><USER14> Realistically serious full-sims are going to be facing a lot of problems. Light-sims that can play on an XBox gamepad and thus won't require the full keyboard should fare much better, and likewise sims that fit nicely onto a standard flightstick+throttle controller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fact that simulators work so well lead me to believe that there _has_ to be some semantic hack to get an FPS-like game feeling right. What sits between MechWarrior and Quake? How about Adventures of Professor X?

That said, regardless, space sims are going to be insanely awesome. I'm looking at you, Star Citizen.

<comment><USER16> Could it just be that in mechwarrior / car sims your avatar is 'sitting' and so your brain expects your body to be sitting at the same time?

<comment><USER17> Easy to test. Someone needs to make an FPS mod in which players are moving in electric wheelchairs or something similar.

<comment><USER15> On that note, I feel like the OculusVR could provide for a really illuminating experience as to what it's like to go through life in a wheelchair in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When playing the old IL-2, I remember looking around with a joystick hat taking me out of immersion right away (and being a really hard way to get situational awareness, too). As soon as I heard descriptions of Oculus Rift, I knew I'd want to play similar games with it, but I didn't realize IL-2 itself was getting a remake. Very cool.

<comment><USER19> In the meanwhile I've heard that TrackIR works really well with sims (some saying it being almost as essential as a joystick)

<comment><USER18> Interesting. Never heard of that before. Looking at a video, the only thing I can see that might be a problem is the motion scaling (where rotations are scaled up, so that a normal monitor will stay in your field of vision even while you look "behind" you). For people who've tried it - is that something that's easy to adjust to, or does your brain nag that things aren't quite right?

<comment><USER20> As an avid flight simulator enthusiast, here's my experience with head tracking:

At first, the motion scaling and latency are awkward, but you still use it just because it frees up your hands.

After a few hours, though, you adjust to it, and it feels natural and immersive, like you're actually looking around outside.

For simulation games, head tracking is less important than having a joystick, but only just.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Rift owner here as well, I haven't tried Sturmovik but I have been playing a similar game called Warthunder which I found to be really immersive. First 15 minutes of playing brought that child like wonder out of me that I haven't had since I stood in an aisle of 'Toys R Us' watching someone play Super Mario 64 (first 3D game I'd ever seen).

The last few days I've been having an absolute blast playing Half Life 2. Hands down the best experience I've had in the Rift so far. While some say FPS are a difficult fit for head tracking I'm finding it to be very natural/immersive.

And this is all with the first generation low-res dev kit so I'm really excited to see what next generations bring.

<comment><USER22> It's pretty cheap to pick up IL2 on gog. I think I got it for around 10 bucks. Worthwhile!

<comment><USER10> That's an old version though, IL-2 1946, while the article is about the sequel, IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad, which is still in development [http://il2sturmovik.com/](http://il2sturmovik.com/) . Fortunately it seems that someone has got both 1946 and WWI sim Rise of Flight working with the Rift: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ConJqygVOqE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ConJqygVOqE) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the first time I've seen "rhubard" used as a verb.</comment>


FutureMe: Write a letter to the future - <AUTHOR> https://www.futureme.org/ <comment><USER2> A prediction: This site will die within single digit year, with a high chance nobody will get their letter in a year.</comment>


Closing is for losers and benefits don't work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=1044

<comment><USER2> So I spent 6 months or so sitting in a room with 3 really good salespeople selling solar power systems to homeowners (anywhere from $20k up). The things I noticed, listening to their phone patter, etc.

\- Building trust is the most important thing in getting to a close. The buyer has to feel like you're working for them, and that your knowledge is valuable. In the end they should feel that you've done such a great job helping them figure out all the options and pitfalls, that they're very happy to pay you a commission.

\- Feeding and monitoring the pipeline and allocating your time matters. You get many people with just casual interest. You have to serve them well, but also not misallocate time, as you have to devote the majority of time to people who are closer to the actual sale. So you have to be able to judge how serious people are. CRMs (i.e. Sales Force) are your best friends.

\- Despite the last point, sometimes big sales appear out of the blue, from customers you thought you lost, or someone you met at a party, or whatever. Network a lot and never burn your bridges.

\- "Hard" selling doesn't work.

\- There's no one "salesman" personality. There's traits you need (especially that you enjoy talking to people), but the 3 guys were all over the map.

</comment><comment><USER3> Spin selling is a great book and the statistical insights are some of the few you'll see in sales literature. However, aggressive closing is usually not the fault of the salesman, but the fault of the sales manager or the CEO. Successful sales teams don't pressure their prospects to buy because their managers understand that "big ticket" sales cycles are long and require multiple steps and multiple parties.

Putting a sales executive on difficult quota will lead to high pressure and terrible closes, even winners curse from the buyer.

Take the pressure off everyone and deals will close themselves.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've spent time selling SaaS products to SMBs and I really like the point about helping the customer sell the product to the rest of the organization. It's not enough to dazzle the customer into saying yes - you need to arm them with the tools to convince their boss/accountant/partners that this is the best solution.

<comment><USER5> it helps to have a condensed "convince your boss"-pdf ready for just that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is top notch advise. Noone wants to be sold to. Selling our SaaS products, I found that the best way to close is to ask prospects to educate _you_ about their problems(related to your product, of course). You don't need to lie, tell them you are trying to learn more on a specific use case for your product - and that they are doing you a huge favor by helping you with that! People usually like to help. If you're asking the right questions, they might actually close the deal for you.

<comment><USER6> It is a cliche, but "I am not a salesman, I am a consultant (problem solver)" goes leaps and bounds between average and top-performer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article recommends a sales book based on research rather than war stories. It sounds interesting, but isn't available on Kindle. I really thought Amazon would have enough sway to get the Long tail of books onto their format. Does anyone know the major impediments to this? Is it publisher reluctance? Is it merely an issue with priority and effort doing the work to get older items into Kindle format?

<comment><USER8> The book was published in 1988, with a mass-market paperback in 1995. Heck, the top review is from 1997. This tells me the publisher likely hasn't even _thought_ about that book for 15-20 years.

Additionally, they probably don't have the book in digital format, making conversion extra effort and time. When you have decades and decades of publishing history, how do you pick which books to spend money on digitizing?

<comment><USER9> Copyright should automatically expire on books not available in digital form.

Would that save any trees?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> a family member of mine did a lot of freelance work for Huthwaite during the .com boom. they had a huge, luxurious "office park" that was a thousand acres of farmland and old buildings in western loudoun. they basically imploded after .com and I honestly thought they had been pushed out of business (they had to, in fact, sell the farm).

everything my family member described about their consulting and business process sounded very BS-full. they would charge tons of money to provide reports of little value to companies that were working with VC money. sound familiar?

</comment><comment><USER11> This book was one of a small list on an informal sales training class that I took. After reading it, I started to get impatient when people didn't follow it. Every time I'd get a monster slide deck sales presentation on a firm, I would think, "They have an hour of my time, and they're not asking what I want."

Great sales really does add value to a customer.</comment>


Mark Cuban: Success & Motivation Series - <AUTHOR> http://www.blogmaverick.com/2005/12/01/success-amp-motivation-redux/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mark Cuban on his entrepreneurship experience.

</comment><comment><USER2> is it just me/my browser/whatever, but all those links to his success series seem to load right to his latest blog posting...

I've tried in safari/opera/firefox. All are redirecting to his mainpage. grrrrrrrrrr time to break out the ole IE for one last attempt.</comment>


In praise of impractical programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/in-praise-of-impractical-programming? <comment><USER2> I also learn to be a programmer with languages like Scheme or Prolog (never really use those outside the classroom).

This experience give you a broader view of the possible solutions to a given problem, let's say it give you a complete toolbox rather than just a hammer.</comment>


Scratchware Manifesto: "There is no shelf space on the Internet." - <AUTHOR> http://www.owenkelly.net/267/scratchware-manifesto/

<comment><USER2> An admirable piece, as it was when it was written in 2007, but it's worth noting that in part a verdict has already been passed on the idea; Manifesto Games, which it touts as its success story, was shut down in June of this year because it wasn't profitable.

See "Shuttering Manifesto", here: <http://www.manifestogames.com/node/5151>

Excerpt: "...Clearly, we haven't succeeded in realizing that vision. There are a host of possible reasons why; perhaps we launched with an excess of naïve optimism, through of course a surfeit of optimism is an entrepreneurial necessity. We did not achieve the critical mass of support by independent developers that we had initially envisioned (some of whom, bizarrely, viewed us as a competitor), though we appreciate the strong and enduring support we received from some. We always knew that the essential problem we were trying to solve was a marketing one, but we never figured out how to crack the marketing nut, at least with the minimal financial resources we had available. We failed to raise substantial venture money, despite engaging with many VCs over time. And of course, the recession doesn't help."

<comment><AUTHOR> The piece claims to be originally from 2000: "This is a reproduction of a manifesto drafted anonymously in the year 2000."

It's also somehow not surprising that a business founded on the principle of making games in a not business-like fashion failed as a business.

However, "scratchware" still wins, in the form of freeware games like N, Cave Story, or La Mulana that become sold on consoles, the now donation funded behemoth Dwarf Fortress, or as the directly commercial games like World of Goo or Braid. The piece touts "scratchware"; it was only the introduction that touted Manifesto Games.</comment></comment>


Bill Gates to Create New Toilet Technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2082509,00.html

<comment><USER2> Why does it not surprise me that Germany is helping with new toilet technology.

</comment><comment><USER3> we heard about windows 8 already. just kidding guyss dont hate :D</comment>


Break-In at Y-12 – the vulnerability of America's nuclear-weapons sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/break-in-at-y-12 <comment><USER2> Lots of good points and good history in the article, but it's poorly organized and rambles on and on. The author was probably paid by the word.

Bottom line is that security at this particular site was laughable. E.g.:

       The Plowshares activists did set off an alarm.
       But security officers ignored it, because
       hundreds of false alarms occurred at Y-12
       every month.

After cutting thru three fences and then spray painting the walls of a building, the protesters waited around and sang religious songs for a half an hour before they flagged down a passing rent-a-cop patrol car.

The protesters were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to years in jail.

</comment><comment><USER3> The last few sentences are a great summary:

"The prison looked like an image on an old postcard, a haunting, uniquely American symbol of state power. And a thought occurred to me: the walls of the penitentiary guarding this pacifist were taller and more impenetrable than any of the fences at Y-12."

</comment><comment><USER4> the article reports that 80,000 were killed in the Hiroshima bombing; that's a common misconception, it was easily twice that if you include those who died of cancer in the following decades - for the most part thyroid and leukemia.

<comment><USER5> Easily twice? 1 minute of Googling found already this, suggesting the true number would be mere fraction of that:

[http://www3.cancer.gov/intra/dce- old/pdfs/ciabp.pdf](http://www3.cancer.gov/intra/dce-old/pdfs/ciabp.pdf)

If someone knows better sources, please do post!</comment></comment>


Nudge4j is Serverside Java on the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lorenzoongithub/nudge4j/blob/master/n4j.in.action.gif <comment><AUTHOR> [https://lorenzoongithub.github.io/nudge4j/](https://lorenzoongithub.github.io/nudge4j/)</comment>


Show HN: XFiles – FOSS File Manager and Archiver with Root Support for Android - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pgp/XFiles <comment><USER2> The amount of hassle there is to actually get a view of this without installing it is quite a bullshit task.

From the readme, you have to navigate to an entirely different repo, which contains only contains a handful of preview files.

Even then, they are all gifs, so if you wanted static content you're out of luck, as gifs are pretty much the incorrect format for lengthy content such as this. Files average 6-10MB each, so if you're actually on mobile, github won't preview them (how nice, they think of my data plan).

Consider ShareX [[https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX](https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX)], who quite some time ago did strip out their entire readme for putting more information on their own website, but they still have a gif showing a majority functions from their application. It's less than 200kb, because someone decided to optimise their content to an acceptable extent

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your suggestion, I'll add some static previews in the main repo README.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> calling it XFiles when it doesn't run on X, ahhh, that really irks me for some reason...

<comment><AUTHOR> actually, the native library does use X11 for showing the hashview window on Unix systems :D

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The project was born by the need to centralize in one application several file-explorer related capabilities, since I used to use: \- jrummy's Root Browser for generic file management: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jrummyapps...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jrummyapps.rootbrowser.classic) \- RAR for Android for compressed archive support: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rarlab.rar](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rarlab.rar) \- AndFTP for SFTP transfers: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=lysesoft.andft...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=lysesoft.andftp) \- Superbeam for device-to-device transfers (till four years ago, the app was broken since Android 5) Moreover, I don't like ads very much, and each of these applications (at least in their free flavours) are ad-supported, so I started building my own application with the needed features.

The main dependencies the app uses are: \- The Botan TLS library, for checksum support, private key generation for SFTP identities, and for establishing a TLS channel for device-to-device file exchange: [https://botan.randombit.net/](https://botan.randombit.net/) \- p7zip 16.0.2 (with a few modifications) for archive management: [http://p7zip.sourceforge.net/](http://p7zip.sourceforge.net/) \- SSHJ, for SFTP client support: [https://github.com/hierynomus/sshj](https://github.com/hierynomus/sshj) \- Apache MINA for exposing a FTP server, if it's needed to share files with other platforms not running the app: [https://mina.apache.org/ftpserver- project/index.html](https://mina.apache.org/ftpserver-project/index.html) \- Apache Commons lang for escaping urls in the builtin HTTP server implementation (same purpose of the FTP server): [https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons- lang/](https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/) \- (work in progress) SMBJ, for SMB client support for accessing remote shared folders on Windows: [https://github.com/hierynomus/smbj](https://github.com/hierynomus/smbj)

The main features are: \- File explorer for local filesystems, with dual backend, namely the Java API-based one, and a native one relying on an external C++ executable (Roothelper) that can be run as root if root permissions are available; \- Supported file ops: copy, move (cut/copy + paste) for local, copy supports interactive file conflict resolution on local filesystems; copy only for remote file transfer; soft and hard linking where supported, mkdir, create file (both empty and with random content and custom size) \- List view and grid view visualization, two-tab main browser view (ViewPager, slide from one tab to the other), with multi-step sort feature (e.g. sort first by date descending, then by name ascending, etc...) \- Multi- selection feature, also with a continuous variant (similar to what you would do on PC by holding down left mouse button, opening a selection rectangle, and moving till needed items are selected); select all/none/unselect all/none/filter selection options as well \- Compressed archive listing and extraction (7Z,ZIP,TAR,GZ,BZ2,XZ,CAB,RAR), and creation (7Z,TAR,ZIP), with some archiving options (password, encrypt filenames, compression level) \- Hashing support, even for multiple files and multiple hashes at once, for the following checksums: MD5, SHA1, SHA2 variants (SHA256,SHA512...), SHA3 variants, Blake2B-256 \- Remote device to device file/folder sharing for Android, via a custom application protocol (XFiles Remote Explorer, XRE) backed by TLS with end-to-end visual verification (like the one Telegram does for private chats and VoIP calls in order to ensure MITM-proof end-to-end encryption, essentially a visual hash) \- Search files feature, only by name for now (search-within-content feature is planned) \- A favorite manager for storing locations, both on local and on remote filesystems (XRE,SFTP) \- An integrated URL downloader with customizable destination path and filename \- A widget for XRE server, and "Share with..." protocol handling, for making device-to-device sharing more immediate and ergonomic See the Demos page for a quick idea of the GUI and what can be done with the app (animated GIFs illustrating use cases): [https://github.com/pgp/XFilesDemos](https://github.com/pgp/XFilesDemos)

Some consideration about the native component, Roothelper, which source is hosted on a separate repo: [https://github.com/pgp/XFilesRootHelper](https://github.com/pgp/XFilesRootHelper) \- It is a local file operations server running on Unix Domain Sockets, the Java code of the Android app communicates with it through a client class, which sends op requests and receives op results, and incremental progress for file transfers. I didn't use JNI because of the lack of the possibility of operating as root user, and in general because I believe JNI is a heavy interface layer (not talking so much about performance, but rather about code readability). \- This executable also implements the remote transfer feature via TLS, and hence it can be run in two modes, ordinary (recive commands via local socket, not available if building for Windows), and standalone -- by exposing a XRE server for exchanging files with Android devices running the app. \- It has been written with portability in mind, it actually builds and works on Windows 7 and above (x64 only, but you can play with the build scripts in order to allow also 32-bit builds), Linux x64, OSX x64 (tested on High Sierra, XQuartz is recommended), FreeBSD, and iOS (built just for testing, running it in a terminal emulator, on iOS 6.1, not tested on more recent devices). Of course, the Android supported ABIs are x86, x64, armv7, armv8a (the apk embeds all the four library variants). Build scripts are cmake based for any platform (CMakeLists.txt), with the exception of Android for which Android.mk legacy build system is used. My choice of the TLS library went on Botan, because it was the only one I managed to build successfully on all the above-mentioned platforms (I really had a lot of trouble with OpenSSL build attempts...)

This product, being born for personal use, and only in a second moment re- thought for the community, is still in alpha stage, so use it with caution on sensitive files. For this reason you won't find it neither on the Play Store nor on F-Droid; however, the prebuilt, self-signed APK is available in the Releases section of the Github page: [https://github.com/pgp/XFiles/releases](https://github.com/pgp/XFiles/releases)

<comment><USER4> Do you have some pictures of the UI (which is arguably the worst thing about most OS file managers for android)? From the spec-sheet this looks great!

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find the UI in the GIFs that illustrate some uses cases in the Demos repo: [https://github.com/pgp/XFilesDemos](https://github.com/pgp/XFilesDemos)

I want to emphasize that I'm not an Android UI expert, so the solutions implemented for some UI interactions may seem a little tricky.

<comment><USER5> Can't view those pictures with my phone, github says they're too big.

<comment><USER6> Spoof desktop and it works fine. There's an option in the context menu in Firefox. Not sure about Chrome or Safari though.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, didn't occur to me that they meant view size and not file size.

<comment><USER7> File size probably, limit for mobile view is different from desktop's

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the app store there already are several called xfiles - remember the TV series with the same name? There is also the x-plore file explorer. Maybe they reconsider the project's name.</comment>


A Rocket to Nowhere (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm <comment><USER3> I think I tell this story every time there's an article about the STS on here. When I was a precocious space cadet, I followed the development of the Shuttle as closely as a kid could before the Internet. I remember the initial promised launch cost of $50/lb into LEO. Young theothermkn weighed himself and worked out how much that would cost, and even tried to guess how much a capsule would weigh, and how much of a group capsule's weight that he would be responsible to pay for. Tough, but doable.

And then the price went to $100/lb. Okay, tougher, but still within reach. And then $500/lb. Ugh. And then $1,000/lb. Oh, well. Maybe a later version will be cheaper. Economies of scale! And then the newscasters stopped talking about the cost at all, except to note how far we were from the initial cost.

The Space Shuttle set spaceflight back 40 years. Years later, I got an aerospace engineering degree, and promptly left the field when I graduated because I didn't want to work inside soul-crushing aerospace institutions without even the hope of doing anything good.

We may never recover, given that all our eggs are in the SpaceX basket.

<comment><USER4> > given that all our eggs are in the SpaceX basket.

What do you mean here?

<comment><USER5> SpaceX is currently the only credible organization with a low-cost launch system of sizeable payloads capable of reaching more than a tiny fraction of the energies needed for orbit. For example, Blue Origin's vehicle is capable only of an exoatmospheric hop, which is optimistically 3% of the energy capability needed to get to orbit. Given that the rocket equation says that the floor of the the remaining costs are proportional to exp(sqrt(remaining 97% of the orbital energy)), Blue Origin amounts to a rich boy's hobby or lifestyle tourism business.

Advances in space launch technology and improvements in cost are thus concentrated in one basket, and one that is additionally weighted with electric car and solar power ventures of dubious long-term financial viability.

<comment><USER6> Blue do have a plan for an orbital launch vehicle. And seem to be fairly far advanced with developing an engine for it (BE-4 -- also planned for use on ULA's new "Vulcan" launcher)

They've got a launch site at CCAFS, and have started building a new factory there as well.

I'm a SpaceX fan, and definitely consider them to be ahead at the moment -- but certainly wouldn't write Blue off completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The Shuttle even helped Reagan inadvertently bankrupt the Soviet Union, as > the Soviets decided they needed a rival orbiter, and cloned the vehicle at > terrific expense

Yeah that line of reasoning is pretty popular. "Soviet Union collapsed because of Reagan's masterful tricks. Look how great we are, we beat them"

Reagan didn't have any measurable effect on the collapse. But I guess it makes us feel better saying "We won the fight". Even though in reality the opponent's cancer finally got to him and he collapsed in the ring.

Russian shuttle Buran was in some way more advanced than ours: it could land itself automatically. It used an interesting programming and guidance system. There is even a vestige of it alive today:

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

[https://drakon-editor.com/](https://drakon-editor.com/)

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Also, there's a meme that "the Russians beat us to space in the '50s because they were cutting so many safety corners".

Bullshit. Not only is it not true, it's not even a good story to teach your kids. "So, you're saying if I cheat I could win?" Good job, dad.

Reality not only has the advantage of being, well, real, but the story is that much better. The Russians won the first round because they were laser-focused on the goal, while America was twiddling its thumbs. They had a genius engineer, Sergey Korolev (pronounced: _Karalyov_ ), who was like von Braun and James Webb put together, only better, and was dreaming of sending people to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond. They had a forward thinking leader in Nikita Khrushchev, who was a passionate supporter of the space program, and would give Korolev nearly a blank check each year. And they never put any airgap between military rocket research (ICBMs) and civilian space programs - <USER2> & Co built both. It also helped that Korolev was an excellent leader who could motivate his teams to crank out 80 hour weeks and love it and be proud of it. Kind of like Elon Musk, come to think of it.

So of course they were first to throw Sputnik 1 up into space, and the first to send Gagarin on a world tour in orbit.

And then in the mid-60s Korolev died, and Khrushchev got sacked and replaced by stuck-in-the-past Brezhnev. Political will disappeared, funding dried out. They didn't have money to do proper testing on the N1 (their Saturn V equivalent, the Moon rocket), so they did all their testing "in production", during real launches - with results that you could sadly very well imagine.

And meanwhile JFK gave his famous speech ("this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth"). And billions of dollars started pouring into the industry, and the sleeping american industrial complex giant woke up.

And we won the second round, the race to the Moon, fair and square.

It turns out, if you are 100% focused, and you work really hard, and you're passionate - you win. Who knew? And it worked for both sides in that race, but during different rounds in the game.

And only afterwards did the Soviets start cutting safety corners, and only then did Vladimir Komarov crash after re-entry.

Always tell true stories. Bullshit doesn't help anyone in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Author here, thank you for lifiting this up from the mists of time.

Is there a readable summary anywhere of the last few years of progress towards Constellation (or whatever it's called now)? I find the situation confusing and have trouble figuring out what's still slated to happen, what got changed, and what missions are still on the drawing board.

<comment><AUTHOR> NASA cancelled Constelaltion program. Now, Space Launch System (SLS) expendable launch vehicle is the planned replacement for Space Shuttle program. SLS aims to provide heavy cargo lifting and human spaceflight (via Orion capsule) capabilities.

[http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sls_octo...](http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sls_october_2015_fact_sheet.pdf)

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_\(spacecraft\))

Progress updates: [https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/sls/](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/sls/)

<comment><USER10> SLS is a reconfigured version of the larger rocket from the Constellation program (Ares V); renamed for political purposes. The 'Senate Launch System' will take humans nowhere useful, and its real purpose is to preserve the employment status of the people developing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> gene-h So I once saw a talk by one of the Steve K. Robinson, a mission specialist on the STS-114 where a gap filler came loose from one of the tiles and was protruding near the front of the shuttle. Accord to him, this was a very scary situation. The reason being that the gap filler could trip the flow near the front of the shuttle from laminar to turbulent.

This would be very very bad. So if you haven't taken fluid dynamics, turbulent flow transfers heat a lot better than laminar flow and once flow becomes turbulent it tends to stay that way. So what this meant is that pesky gap filler could have made almost all of the flow trailing it turbulent, creating a region of increased heat transfer across much of the shuttle, which could have destroyed the shuttle.

And unfortunately poor Steve knew about all of this because he did some work on hypersonic flow in grad school. So NASA engineers went all apollo 13 and macgyvered some procedures on how to turn the hack saw aboard the station into filler slicer-offer. Steve Robinson himself decided to perform the mission, this was the first and probably only time a spacewalk was performed under the shuttle's heat shield. This was a very risky mission where a small mistake could do more damage than the gap filler could do. Luckily in the end, the gap filler was loose and easily removed by pulling.

All that caused by a tiny piece of ceramic sticking out about a centimeter! Now the interesting thing is that a couple missions later, NASA engineers decided to put a turbulent trip on the shuttle on purpose, because we don't understand hypersonic boundary layer transition all that well[1]. It was near the end of the shuttle, so the region of increased heat transfer couldn't do much damage, but still performing such an experiment on the shuttle, almost right after the Columbia disaster, was pretty nuts. Necessary though, because experiments on hypersonic flow are difficult to perform in wind tunnels.

One of the reasons capsules are so compelling is that there is less distance for this laminar to turbulent transition to occur.

[0][http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/crew/EVA_gapfiller.html](http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/crew/EVA_gapfiller.html) [1][http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2011001...](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110013660.pdf)

<comment><USER11> >Necessary though, because experiments on hypersonic flow are difficult to perform in wind tunnels.

At my dads old place of work in the early eighties was a hypersonic wind tunnel. It was made out of a WWI era battleship gun barrel. With 6000 psig tank of hydrogen and pebble bed heater at one end. A shaped charge at the other. And a window with a schlieren photography setup pointing through a window in the middle.

The way it worked was an explosive disk would be blown releasing the 6000 psi hydrogen. Which would flow through the pebble bed heater heating it to 2000 deg F[1]. Then into a nozzle where it would accelerate to hypersonic speed and head down the barrel. Meanwhile at the other end the shaped charge would fire blasting the pencil eraser sized model down the other end. If everything went right take a picture through the window in the middle as the model hurled into the blast of hydrogen.

[1] 2000 deg F so that when it expanded from 6000 psig it wouldn't liquefy.

<comment><USER11> Found an Ames Research center link.

[http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4302/ch2.11.htm](http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4302/ch2.11.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "with each Shuttle mission now bespangled in a dazzling assortment of scientific experiments, like so many talismans against budget reduction."

Now that's a beautiful line.

<comment><USER13> I was hoping Maciej would make the following crack, which of course he did:

> And of course, there was John Glenn, monitored inside and out, blood tested, > urine sampled, entire organism analyzed for signs of accelerated aging. > Close observation of the Senator suggested that there might not be any > medical obstacles to launching the entire legislative branch into space, > possibly the most encouraging scientific result of the mission.

Bravo.

<comment><USER14> The replacement rocket to nowhere, the SLS (senate launch system) should be able to lift them all at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you'd like a lot more detail on the process described here by which the Shuttle program went from what it could have been to what it ended up being, I've found NASA's own history, "The Space Shuttle Decision", to be quite thorough and comprehensive. You can find it here: [http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/contents.htm](http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/contents.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> It makes you wonder what a shuttle program unencumbered by political compromise would look like.

A space station on an orbit where it could be used as a way station for manned exploration further afield.

<comment><USER17> I seem to recall that one of the drags on the Shuttle's performance was the Air Force insistence on a larger cargo bay and requirement that it be able to reach polar orbit.

<comment><USER9> I go into this a bit in the article. The worst thing about the polar requirement is that it means adding 1000 miles of cross-range gliding capability to something that really, really, really doesn't like to glide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The ISS itself, is the same kind of boondoggle as the Shuttle.

Imagine a US space program that put unmanned probes front and center. We could've had video feeds crawling over every moon of Jupiter and Saturn, and inside the Martian caves. We might've settled the Mars and Europa life question. And two Shuttle crews would not have died.

Humans don't belong in space. Robots do.

</comment><comment><USER19> Lovely piece on the Soviet shuttle "Buran" [http://www.astronautix.com/b/buran.html](http://www.astronautix.com/b/buran.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone offer an explanation of why the shuttle used a horizontal launch stack (booster alongside the orbiter) instead of a vertical launch stack (booster beneath the orbiter) like every other launch vehicle I know of? TFA hints that it was related to the requirement for polar orbit capability, but offers no details.</comment>


What's it like being a venture capitalist? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/03/06/whats-it-like-being-a-vc/

<comment><USER2> Suster mentions that success is measured in years. How do you measure success consistently in such a rapidly evolving industry?

Any regrets on those 'missed companies' that are making it after being denied financing?</comment>


Calibre: Python 2 Is Retiring - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107 <comment><USER2> the python2 vs python3 debate is over and i don't wanna see it again.

python 3 wins.

if 12 years is not enough for anyone that is serious about python (or any evolving software for that matter) then nothing will help.

they can fork the project if they want. we will ignore them.</comment>


The new fast.ai research datasets collection, on AWS Open Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.fast.ai/2018/10/16/aws-datasets/ <comment><USER2> We also have made all of these datasets available as torrents, particularly to support Chinese practitioners and other places with connection issues. Thanks to Max Pechyonkin for helping with this.

[http://academictorrents.com/browse.php?search=fastai](http://academictorrents.com/browse.php?search=fastai)

<comment><USER3> Off-topic, but is academictorrents being spammed by some authors? There are a lot of single PDFs on there, for which torrents don't seem particularly necessary. Search for "biofield energy healing" for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great work, really useful.

It also helps to have pretrained models that you can use as a starting point for transfer learning. This allows individuals to also do meaningful work.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Now it's set up it's easy for me to add more datasets, or make changes, so feedback is most welcome.</comment></comment>


Why You Don't A/B Test, and How You Can Start This August - <AUTHOR> https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/why_you_do_not_ab_test <comment><USER2> I hope no-one minds me touting a free course I'm offering on bandit algorithms:

[http://noelwelsh.com/data/2013/08/05/why-you-should-know- abo...](http://noelwelsh.com/data/2013/08/05/why-you-should-know-about-bandit- algorithms/)

I was literally working on the post when Patrick's email arrived. It's more focused on the algorithms and will, I think, be a good compliment to what Patrick is offering.

<comment><USER3> I upvoted you from zero, in the interest of HN remaining a supportive and congenial place for people who are doing stuff to move the industry's state of play forward.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I appreciate your support, especially given you don't agree with me on the benefits of bandit testing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've now started flagging these kinds of submissions on HN, for the simple reason that they are little more than ads for something vaguely specified that may or may not even exist yet. There is absolutely no directly actionable content in this article that I can see, nor any other original ideas that anyone following HN doesn't see several times a week on the front page alone.

I post this only so I can note that this is not intended as a criticism of Patrick, just a view that the hero worship and endless reposting of A/B evangelism has far overstayed its welcome IMHO. If people want to read the fluff as well, then as we get told every five minutes they can sign up for Patrick's newsletter. Please, for the love of all that is holy, spare those of us who have chosen _not_ to do so the endless join-my-mailing-list spam that is starting to dominate HN, and save the HN submissions for substantial content.

<comment><USER5> Flagging is for stuff that's inappropriate for this site, like political articles, the latest injustice, politics, news stories, conspiracy theories and so on.

For stuff like this that you may not happen to like, just don't vote for it, and ignore it. I tend not to vote up patio11's stuff these days even though it's good, just because it gets so much attention.

But it is 100% on topic for this site and does not deserve to be flagged.

How much time has patio11 spent giving free advice and information here? So what if he also sells some stuff? That's what businesses do, sheez!

<comment><USER4> _Flagging is for stuff that 's inappropriate for this site_

I don't think almost completely content-free promotional material _is_ appropriate for this site, whoever writes it and whatever it is advertising.

I don't flag many submissions, and following the FAQ, I don't normally comment at all when I do. However, I don't know what actually happens when something gets flagged, so in this case I made an exception because I'm aware that Patrick himself is wary of submitting pieces like this. I didn't want anything to imply a personal attack, nor general criticism of links about A/B testing if they do offer new/interesting material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing that unnerves me about A/B testing is that you can't test for evilness. How much of this glossary[1] do you think is intentionally designed? I doubt that all of these changes were intentional, it's just that those changes showed objective results.

A/B testing can't test for morality, and you may very well be implying something with your B design that you didn't mean to imply, which none the less rates higher in your test.

In a business setting, it becomes awfully hard to argue morality against objective numbers. It's hard to do that anyway. Many business operate with a profit first motive. So once a dark pattern is in, how are you going to get it out?

Don't get me wrong, A/B testing is a tool, and like all good tools it can be used for good or evil. It just worries me that A/B testing, despite good intentions, can lead to evil results. I don't see anything on this page about how to avoid evil results.

1\. [http://darkpatterns.org/](http://darkpatterns.org/)

<comment><USER7> I can see how you don't want to be in a situation where you are holding in your hand evidence that Shady Marketing Tactic X is proven to convert better. But I think the solution is simple: Don't A/B test shady features. If something makes you uncomfortable or seems like a dark pattern, don't test it, because you would never want it on your site anyway.

I don't think this is a failing of A/B testing. That someone can get numbers that show "evil" tactics can make money is not materially different from someone coding "evil" HTML in Notepad and getting results. As you said, it is just a tool.

<comment><USER6> The problem is you might not be aware you're making a shady feature. As an example, if you are making an ad for your app fooer. You A/B test some banners on an ad distribution network. You find that a simpler ad with a "download now" hyperlink graphic proves effective.

No big deal right? People are going to be seeing these banners on places like news sites right? It's not tricking people. It's also pretty reasonable right? People are used to clicking on hyperlinks, it overcomes the resistance to click on images. A reasonable move for a banner ad to make.

Except the ad distribution network serves content sites like softpedia as well.

You saw the spike because you emulated the download button right under the mirror list, and people were confused. They downloaded your application under the pretext of getting something else.

Or what about if I want a "Hey you should sign up for notifications for other job offerings in this field" message box? I'd love to have one of those in my application. I A/B test to see that this message box drastically increases signups.

Except it was because people thought it was a paywall.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Consider this case about the Weebly blogging service: [http://minimaxir.com/2013/05/overly-attached- startup/](http://minimaxir.com/2013/05/overly-attached-startup/)

They were A/B testing messaging for first week signups. This hyper aggressive and insane route was actually considered. Do you think they're black hat? I don't think so, but what if this had become standard practice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know exactly why we[1] don't A/B test.

It is because I don't want to serve the people that it would be effective on.

If you're marginally buying / not buying my product based on color scheme or (buzz)word order or some other piece of puff, we're all better served if you just moved along.

[1] You know who we are.

<comment><USER9> Is your desire to only serve certain people based in the long run on profit motive (i.e. you think your fewer customers will be more valuable and stick around longer), or is it just out of principle even if it means less profit in the long run?

<comment><USER8> It is done out of principle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're looking for things to A/B test, please check out my post:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6163397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6163397)

It details 19 A/B test ideas that have worked for us in the past. I hope HN finds it useful!

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm interested to see the sample size calculations. Those numbers don't jibe with any calculations I've ever done.

<comment><USER11> Nor me, to collect a 1% change:

       > power.prop.test(p1=0.1, p2=0.11, power=0.8,sig.level=0.05)
         Two-sample comparison of proportions power calculation

                  n = 14750.79
                 p1 = 0.1
                 p2 = 0.11
          sig.level = 0.05
              power = 0.8
        alternative = two.sided

       NOTE: n is number in *each* group

Edit: so that's 30,000 samples. To do the same with a 5% change in the same area is still 1300 samples (alpha=0.8, p=0.05)

<comment><USER2> I normally consider relative minimum discernable effect. Your 5% absolute change is a 50% increase is the base rate. I also typically go for a higher power (e.g. 0.9). Under these conditions 60K samples is more typical.

Sample size calculator here: [http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample- size.html](http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample-size.html)

You'll need to change the defaults to match the above to get the figures I mention.

<comment><USER11> You're right. That's a bit more reasonable, so back to my 10% change in base rate (1% abs.) but with a 90% power:

      > power.prop.test(p1=0.1, p2=0.11, power=0.9,sig.level=0.05)

         Two-sample comparison of proportions power calculation

                  n = 19746.62
                 p1 = 0.1
                 p2 = 0.11
          sig.level = 0.05
              power = 0.9
        alternative = two.sided

      NOTE: n is number in *each* group

Requires about 40,000 samples per test. I would strongly recommend anyone serious about doing this look in to MAB testing, as A-B testing is way too expensive for reasonable scale testing (unless you have a strong a priori hypothesis to test).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

<comment><USER11> Why are you suggesting A/B instead of multi armed bandit approaches?

<comment><USER12> A/B testing is a catch-all term for multi-variant experimentation. Multi-armed bandit is a specific approach to testing[1], and even though most frameworks provide A/B/N testing -- that is, not necessarily just two variants -- it is easier to say 'A/B' instead of 'A/B/N'.

[http://analytics.blogspot.ca/2013/01/multi-armed-bandit- expe...](http://analytics.blogspot.ca/2013/01/multi-armed-bandit- experiments.html)

<comment><USER13> Indeed Google Analytics has added the multi-armed bandit approach in Content Experiment. It's quite slick btw, but definitely more difficult to implement than traditional split testing. My 2 cents:

[1] the sample size calculator (How many subjects are needed for an A/B test?): [http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample- size.html](http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/sample-size.html)

[2] <unashamed plug> easyAB: a jquery plugin for easily start A/B testing using Google Analytics. [http://srom.github.io/easyAB/](http://srom.github.io/easyAB/) </plug>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The bit about 37signals reminded me of their timelapse video, "evolution of a homepage"[1], which shows just how many things they try before sticking to something (albeit shortly).

[1] [http://vimeo.com/29088090](http://vimeo.com/29088090)

</comment><comment><USER15> All very good stuff, but this line stood out in particular:

 _" Video makes Waterfall software development look like bugs-in-your-teeth speed, though"_

As someone who is coming to the close of a 4-year work stint on a _short film_ , I can tell you, you ain't wrong.

Indeed, it has gotten to the point that I've started a computer game design project as light relief.

</comment><comment><USER16> > It was a preventable accident.

Was it _really_ preventable? How should we know when to make a quick decision and when to A/B test?

[Clarification: it seems to me that it's better to decisively get things done]

Considering that the most widely known A/B tests are based on 41 shades of blue and pixel-perfection, I'm not sure that this is as obvious as the article claims.

<comment><USER3> _the most widely known A /B tests are based on 41 shades of blue and pixel- perfection_

This is not true among people who actually A/B test for a living. (The 41 shades of blue thing is a test cherry picked to suggest that testing is not material. The only reason the world knows about that test, as opposed to others conducted by Google/MSN, is because someone who believed they didn't fit in a culture of testing called out that test as the _reductio ad absurdum_ of that culture.)

Without saying exactly what it was that the client didn't know at the time, suffice it to say that if you got five A/B testing practitioners in a room and asked them for the top five things to try on that client's site, every last one would have listed the problematic area as something to test. I mean, it wasn't the H1 on the front page, but it could have been.

This is similar to "How do we make our pages load faster?" Are there large amounts of subjectivity and risk involved here? Yes. Trying to outguess your favorite SQL query optimizer sometimes feels like reading chicken entrails. But, if you're not using gzip yet, then you should turn on gzip, because _gzip always wins._

<comment><USER16> I accept that you are an expert and that there is value in this expertise, but I remain unconvinced that it's so obvious where to execute A/B tests (in contrast to page load time, where bottlenecks can be measurably identified).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what the hell is S/J testing? never heard of it and apparently neither has the googles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Steve Jobs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What open-source project should I contribute to? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to give back to the open source community that produced the software that underpin my business (e.g. Linux, GCC, Python, Vim, and a ton of other projects of varying sizes).
I'm pretty strong in X86 assembly, C, Bash and Python (and am competent in a myriad of other languages, but I think I could best contribute in those languages).
I'd like to contribute to a project that sorely needs help, and it would be nice if it were something I don't necessarily use every day.  Any recommendations?  Alternatively, are there any tools or ideas that you would like me to implement? <comment><USER2> CorsixTH is a remake of Theme Hospital. The only C coder so far is the creator, and he's busy at Cambridge. We'd like your help, theres a page on what could be done. The other language involved is Lua, the parts in Lua are active.

<https://code.google.com/p/corsix-th/wiki/ProgrammingIdeas>

</comment><comment><USER3> Scratch an itch that you currently have with a program that you're currently using. Whether a new feature or a fix to a nagging bug it will be more enjoyable working on something that you already use and care about than a random project that you don't know very well. Hopefully once you start you'll contribute to a few different projects.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whatever project you choose, please fix bugs. :-)

Also, if I had a business that benefited from open-source software, I'd consider donating money to one of the foundations (GNU Project, Mozilla, etc, or even Wikimedia).

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that many projects are high-profile (and therefore will have many developers). I want to taret something that could use some help but doesn't necessarily have good developer coverage.</comment></comment>


A bill to allow consumers to control their own devices is pending in Congress - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com/article/3167861/consumer-electronics/surprise-you-don-t-own-the-digital-devices-you-paid-for.html <comment><USER2> Just a reminder: [https://mic.com/articles/167878/barney-frank-heres-how-to- no...](https://mic.com/articles/167878/barney-frank-heres-how-to-not-waste- your-time-pressuring-lawmakers#.wRrguI2xn)

another user's summary:

tl;dr

1\. Make sure you're registered to vote — lawmakers check.

2\. Lawmakers don't care about people outside of their district.

3\. Your signature — physical or electronic — on a mass petition will mean little.

4\. The communication must be individual. Email, Letter, Phone call.

5\. Know where your representative stands.

6\. Communicate — even if you and your representative disagree.

7\. Say "thank you" \- to reinforce the behavior you want

8\. Enlist the help of friends in other districts. - they write their own reps

<comment><USER3> Also as a reminder if you work for a company of a few thousand people: notice how the CEO doesn't care what you think? Now multiply your company population by 5x. Does it really sound like writing heartfelt letters will make a difference?

<comment><USER4> 1\. Employees don't vote for their CEO. 2\. There is strength in numbers. Your message might not get through but if it's the same message as 1,000 others it will.

If you want change, cynicism like yours is crippling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> EFF's page on the bill: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/yoda-bill- would-let-yo...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/yoda-bill-would-let- you-own-and-sell-your-devices-re-introduced-congress)

From the US House press release linked in the above, money quote: _' "The YODA bill, today, I did file," said Congressman Farenthold. "YODA simply states that your device belongs to you. If you wish to sell that device, the software that enables it to work is transferred along with it, and that any right you have to security and bug fixing of that software is transferred as well."'_

</comment><comment><USER6> Wish I could sell my iPad WITH the hundreds of apps I've purchased. It sucks that I can't. Maybe I can.. just sell the email address with the iPad and give buyer passwords. Buyer changes both email and iTunes password and it's a done deal. I used a generic web email to sign up to iTunes, I don't mind losing it. Apple would never find out. I wonder if anyone else has tried this? Edit.. (or maybe just change the iTunes account email address to the buyer's email is enough).

</comment><comment><USER7> Us HNers need to make some noise on Social Media about this. Anyone want to pick a day? Anyone have a connection to an editor over at Engadget or something we could have them highlight this?

</comment><comment><USER8> Please do all you can to support this. Send to your local makers, hackers, and geeks. Also kurig, john deere, and tesla owners may also be very excited.

</comment><comment><USER9> Direct quote from the press release, "Last session, waylaid in committee YODA was."

[http://farenthold.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Documen...](http://farenthold.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399906)

</comment><comment><USER10> While it seems a good idea, how does this even work in practice?

<comment><USER11> >how does this even work in practice?

It will be legal to fix your own tractor. It will also be legal to change the software on devices you own.

<comment><USER12> It is legal to fix your tractor. I work for John Deere (though of course do not speak for them), and we are proud that you can by the repair manuals for every tractor we ever made, and most parts are still available. We are made at the computer industry because some of our newer (We consider a 15 year old tractor fairly new though realistically it is probably worn out) tractors have chips that cannot be bought anymore.

When I challenge people on this I eventually get down to what people really want: they want to disable the emissions controls. A qualified engineer (which most mechanics are not - but I suspect those reading this are) given the source code we don't give out can get our engines a little more fuel efficient at the expense of not meeting emissions, or a little more powerful at the expensive of being less reliable. When you read the above you will begin to understand why we made the engineering compromises we did, and see why we don't really want to give out the requested information. It isn't necessary to do repairs, but it is necessary to do things that you shouldn't do.

That is not to say I'm against the idea of this bill, just that the justification you are being sold is built on a lie. I think this bill needs to be carefully written to address this.

<comment><USER13> If the vehicle owner disables the emissions controls, the onus is on them - ethically this is no different than removing a catalytic converter or other physical hardware.

Don't use this as an excuse to wage war on general purpose computing.

<comment><USER14> There are also other ways to deal with this. If it's reasonable to require that I get my $10,000 car emissions tested every two years to be able to drive it, it should be reasonable to require that vastly more expensive tractors get emissions tested periodically too.

<comment><USER15> Random testing, I guess?

Because owners could just re-enable emissions control until after the test.

<comment><USER16> Hey, it worked for Volkswagen...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this far enough along to have comments from congressmen/senators/Trump for us to know how this will end?

It seems like something most would agree with

</comment><comment><USER18> i feel like we do this every other year?

yet somehow surveillance/privacy laws don't have to be renewed for years on end?

<comment><USER19> Think of it rather like this: if a goal is hard to achieve then there won't exist a surefire solution (otherwise how is it hard to achieve?). Instead, you must work your way towards it consistently and diligently, in order to improve the odds of accomplishing it. Depending on the goal there are probably a lot of factors outside of our control, in this case high level political maneuvering and the fortune that is the unpredictable swings in uninformed public opinion. That doesn't make the effort that could possibly tip the scales wasted though.

Whether all the effort is worth it depends on how you rate your odds and how effective you think your efforts are at increasing those odds. If you want to argue the particulars then that's legitimate, but simply pointing out that attempting something every year in the past didn't yield results doesn't prove it is irrational to continue doing it.</comment></comment>