Report linking Bitcoin and Silk Road retracted - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/27/technology/bitcoin-silk-road/ <comment><USER2> Great work by those researchers. They linked Satoshi Nakamoto to Silk Road. Except it wasn't Satoshi, it was someone else. And it wasn't Silk Road, it was MtGox. I think their methods could use some improvement.

<comment><USER3> It's disturbing to think people can cause such a huge ripple and the media will report it up without any skepticism.

<comment><USER4> Reputation counts for something, and reputations can be damaged. A lot of people trust Adi 'The A in RSA' Shamir, because of what he has done in the past. They have to.

It takes a long time to get the background to understand cryptography, or quantum physics. Although you or I might believe we can find holes in a paper (bad stats etc), you have to accept we are less able to judge the merit of a paper than someone with years of study and experience in that field. So we trust people who have done great things.

Now everyone will remember Shamir both by his past works, and this mistake. Next time his paper will hit the news he will be described as 'the father of RSA, who mistakenly accused someone of inventing bitcoin and being a criminal last year'. News sites will definitely say that - it is a really fun addition to the story.

I think Shamir will regret this paper more than most people who have to make a retraction.

<comment><USER5> Nitpick: Adi Shamir is "the 'S' in" Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _But the man that federal authorities have arrested and accused of launching Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, is from Austin too. Given the folklore surrounding Bitcoin and Silk Road, get ready for rumors that Trammell is Satoshi hiding in plain sight._

On that basis, I'm going to start a rumor that Bruce Sterling is Satoshi.

edit - But he hasn't written Bitcoin yet. That happens after he accidentally buys H G Wells' time machine in an obscure ebay auction, thinking that he is acquiring an ornate steampunk wardrobe.

<comment><USER7> After discovering the time machines true purpose, he decides to use it in a get-rich-quick scheme. He goes back to in time planning on buying lots of bitcoins when they were super cheap so that he can sell them in the future for a massive profit _(that he can use to pay of the debt he acquired during the purchase of the time machine)_.

He waits and waits for bitcoins to be invented, but for some reason they don't arrive on schedule. Suddenly it dawns on him, and he knows what he must do...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "After suggesting earlier this week that a link existed between the creators of Silk Road and Bitcoin"

Wait, what? They didn't suggest a link between "the creators of the Silk" Road and "Bitcoin" but with "the creators of the Silk road" and "the creators of Bitcoin"

I see more journalists trying to jump on the Bitcoin train but oh boy...they fail miserably. It's scary when you think this might be the case with all other topics, not just bitcoin.

<comment><USER9> What you're pointing out is your misunderstanding of the authors intended use of language (I'm not saying it's grammatically correct, but their intention is obvious.)

"a link existed between the creators of Silk Road and Bitcoin" === "a link existed between the creators of Silk Road and the creators of Bitcoin".

The "creators of" phrase applies to both subjects (or subject/object, I get those words confused) --- this is a common grammatical construct regardless of my confusion of the words subject and object --- the application of the phrase to both I mean.

<comment><USER8> You make a valid point, but how about the title: "Report linking Bitcoin and Silk Road retracted"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like every attempt at disturbing Bitcoin ends up reinforcing the strength and the interest in the ecosystem.

<comment><USER11> Interest, maybe, but I does it really drum up any actual users? I think most people are sort of waiting to see if it'll fail or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Someone's bull got a double doze of attention.</comment>


Mrauk U, the Hidden City of Myanmar - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/hidden-city-myanmar-180973486/ <comment><USER2> Myanmar is insanely beautiful country. I visited it back in 2008 when military junta was still in power. I have not been to Mrauk U, but spent few days near Sittwe, and also visited Bagan, Yangon, Mandalay, and Kyaiktiyo Pagoda. Not sure about now but back then there were absolutely no ways to use the payment cards so I carried around a thick stack of dirty 1000 kyat banknotes.

<comment> et-al I visited Mrauk U back in 2015 and had to withdraw enough kyat to sustain me for the few days I was there since there was no ATM in the town.

The boat ride from Sittwe up the Kaladan River was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip with its peacefulness. It was just me and one other traveler on the boat.</comment></comment>


McDonald's CEO promises better food - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/04/investing/mcdonalds-turnaround-plan-steve-easterbrook/index.html?iid=Lead <comment><USER2> I'm not snobby enough to never go to McDonald's (a McMuffin aint too bad in the morning after a long night out) but I agree that most of the menu, specifically the burgers, taste artificial. I joke that their burgers don't taste like meat, they simply taste like "McDonald's" as if it's its own patented flavor. Anyway, if only because of their size alone (35k stores) McDonald's can't materially improve better food any more than Sears can compete with Amazon or IBM can become a cloud company.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a bit of blustering from a CEO who is concerned about addressing shareholder worries. I really do not see McDonald's EVER competing head to head with Shake Shack or even Five Guys, because how would McDonald's overcome their legacy of being the go-to place for cheap food? They'd have to require complete re-vamps of their entire process up to and including total overhauls of the kitchens in most locations.

Basically, I'll believe it when I see it.

<comment><USER4> I really don't think it's cheap food anymore (atleast, in Canada). An outing there with my wife and my daughter easily costs around $25. It's not nearly as cheap as it used to be. In that price range, I have lots of other options.

I only go there to give my daughter some play time in their play area during the colder months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there are sea changes going on in food comparable to those that have shaken up the music industry. Pointing to Chipotle and Five Guys barely scratches the surface. Look at rapidly declining sales of Budweiser and Coca- Cola products - there's something bigger happening.

There's probably a book to be written on the topic, but I think social media - Yelp, Instagram, Pinterest - are changing eating by giving good restaurants and food/beverage producers powerful word of mouth marketing. At least in the Detroit area, there's been a blossoming of really good restaurants (ranging from reasonably priced pubs to fine dining). When I go out to eat, even in an unfashionable suburb, I expect I can find a place with good craft beers and decent menu options with ingredients that would have been rare a decade ago.

More to the point with McDonald's, I suspect that it's harder and harder for them to buy mindshare in a world with all of these channels. They can't saturate Facebook/IG/Twitter like they saturated the TV and radio airwaves. It's harder and harder to prop up a mass-produced, mediocre product with a multi-billion dollar marketing budget.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Do you sell veggie burgers?

> No, we don't currently sell veggie burgers. Although, we are always looking > to evolve our menu.

[http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/do- yo...](http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/do-you-sell- veggie-burgers.html)

<comment><USER7> Practically, a lot of vegetarians are not going to want their burger cooked on a grill that is used to cook meat. Which complicates the issue.

<comment><USER8> The BK veggie burger is pretty good. McDonalds will often say "we can serve you the burger without the beef pattie on it"

<comment><USER7> That's what Five Guys does too. My partner the vegetarian is not very impressed and doesn't go there.

<comment><USER9> I've always been curious to know how much of Qdoba's or Panera's business is driven by this phenomenon. It takes only one vegetarian to drive a car full of potential customers away from a place like McDonald's.

That same car full will likely be passing up on Burger King if there are any other options, mind. IMO the BK Veggie is literally tasteless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's also about what you get for the price. In Sweden, a McDonalds burger menu cost about 70 SEK.

If you go to the burger chain Max instead, the price is +- 10 SEK, but the meat is organic, the bun is of high quality corn and the vegetables are always fresh. Plus, they don't store the burgers but make them at request. And they have won taste awards many times.

No wonder McDonalds is struggling when they are no where near the quality of other chains such as Max. And they should be worried, Max is going international.

</comment><comment><USER11> A crazy idea might be to start with better evaluation of potential franchisees. The ones in my area are a comedy of poor management and apathetic employees.

<comment><USER12> It's hard not to be apathetic when your job description has become so stigmatized that it is synonymous with failure ("go get a job at McDonald's"). A math teacher at my old highschool used to hand back McDonald's applications for employment with failed tests.

<comment><USER13> When I see a resume with a "McJob", I'm impressed. It shows me they will work.

My best Unix/FreeBSD admin came out of a crappy Verizon customer support job - he's been eager to learn, works hard, is appreciative and is really nice to be around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They should just re-import Maccas from Australia back to McDonalds in the US. Our menu is really quite good and the food is consistently fresh and high quality within the scope of a hamburger fast food store.

I've visited many countries including the US, UK, France, Norway[0] and Singapore and I never fail to try out the local offering. But I've always[1] found the product inferior to the offering we get in Australia.

Look at their latest idea -- [https://mcdonalds.com.au/create-your- taste](https://mcdonalds.com.au/create-your-taste) \-- and tell me that's not _awesome._

[0] Curiously the poorest eating experience was in Norway despite topping the Big Mac Index[2]. I had a beef burger that was dripping with grease and a chicken burger that tasted like an oversized rubbery chicken nugget in a bun.

[1] Honorable mention goes to McDonald's in Hong Kong which had a Wasabi Filet-o-Fish limited time menu item. Seriously kick ass.

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

<comment><USER14> Related coverage

[http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/mcdonalds-rolls- out-...](http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/mcdonalds-rolls-out-create- your-taste-in-custom-experiences-push/story-fnkgdftz-1227289494851)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > But at the end of the day, it all comes down to the food.

Indeed, and this is why I never go there except in one instance: I'm late for work and I need to eat a sausage and egg sandwich while driving, or be distracted by hunger until lunch.

I never go there in anticipation, and I never go there on the way home when I'm too lazy to cook, because there are so many better choices. I just never go there, except in the one scenario above.

When I was younger I used to go there a lot, and it actually tasted good. The patty looked like a hamburger patty I might grill at home, and the taste was juicy and, well, tasty.

Now all the taste and enjoyment has been synergized and efficientized out, and we're left with a grey, tasteless slab. Bleah. Who would want that, if they knew there was something better at comparable price elsewhere?

Instead of "innovating," they might look at just making their foundation menu tasty. Healthy ingredients that people want would be good too, but just start with tasty. And not "tasty in the test kitchen in Chicago," but tasty that survives by default in every McDonalds in existence.

<comment><USER15> Here's the taste test for any burger.

If it's tasty without putting anything on it, then it's worth eating. If you hate it unless you put a bunch of vegetables and condiments on it, then it's defective.

You may actually prefer your burger with all that stuff on it, and that's fine. I'm just describing the minimal acceptable experience. If you _have to_ (as opposed to want to) hide the burger to make it edible, then it's defective.

McDonalds burgers are defective.

<comment><USER16> Funny thing is, they weren't that way a long time ago.

I worked the grill back in the late 1980s when they had the old system of hand-grilling the burgers and assembling the sandwiches right there as the patties were pulled off.

A freshly-made plain double cheeseburger, right off the grill, was an incredible thing. It was damned good.

I'll be the first to say that the whole Modular Holding Cabinet system they changed to wrecked their products completely. But it also stopped waste, which was a massive downside to that old system. I'm sure over the decade the quality of the products has changed too, but knowing what went into a McDonald's burger back then they never tried to cut corners with substandard materials.

<comment><USER15> > Funny thing is, they weren't that way a long time ago.

> A freshly-made plain double cheeseburger, right off the grill, was an > incredible thing. It was damned good.

You're right, they were great. Now they're a disappointment at best.

> I worked the grill back in the late 1980s ...

And I ate what you cooked in the late 80s. And the late 70s. And the late 60s. Really great.

Harumph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The truth is, there is very little McDonald's can do to reshape their image in the short run. They've been racing to the bottom for years now, but their food is not inexpensive enough to warrant ever going there. It might take a generational shift for people to come back around (or another economic collapse). Competitors are making far better products at a similar but somewhat higher price point. If a competitor's burger is, say, twice or thrice as good as McDonald's food at only 1.3 times the price, consumers' value per dollar increases substantially when buying food at competitors. As the U.S. economy improves and incomes increase, eating at McDonald's is an increasingly inefficient way to increase one's satisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER18> McDonald's had a huge impact on how beef is produced in America. If they start demanding higher quality ingredients I can't help but think it'll raise the minimum quality of food for the whole nation in general.

EDIT: I've removed my comments expressing my antiGMO beliefs because it's already turning into a whole thread-debate-topic on its own. All I really wanted to say here is that McD's has a huge influence on America's method of producing food. If they demand higher quality, it'll raise the mininum quality for the whole nation. I specifically think of things like beef & corn. That is all. Think whatever you will of GMOs, that debate seems just as volatile as debating Crossfit's health benefits. I hope that at least we can all agree that McD's was/is making near minimal quality of food and them raising the bar will raise the bar for all of USA.

<comment><USER19> Can I ask you why you are anti-GMO? It seems like a lot of people on the internet hate Monsanto and just lump GMOs in with them.

If we didn't have GMOs we would have far more starving people than we currently do on this planet.

<comment><USER20> There is good GMO and there is bad GMO.

Altering the organism to improve its nutritional profile, such as by growing rice with vitamin A, that's good. I'm totally behind golden rice.

Altering the organism to resist herbicides or express pesticides that have potential toxicity to humans is a matter for some concern. The alteration itself may not even present a threat directly, but may enable an agricultural practice that causes harm.

For instance, herbicide resistant crops may absorb the herbicide, the safety of which was determined based primarily on inhalation and skin contact, and become the vector for an unforeseen risk from ingestion. Some people have made some provocative unproven claims that the symptoms of gluten sensitivity are actually adequately explained by glyphosate poisoning, mainly from crops that have been chemically dessicated prior to harvest. Obviously, glyphosate- resistant crops would not be dessicated pre-harvest with glyphosate, but they would have been sprayed with it during the growing season. I can't say for certain whether that particular chemical would be retained or degraded in any given plant. But I know that a tiny, tiny amount is present in much of what I eat. Is it dangerous? I don't know. I don't even know how I would prove it if it was. I always have the option to eat different foods, or differently cultivated foods (i.e. organic), if I so choose.

But the primary reason I'm mostly against GMO is the brutish nonsense surrounding _patented seeds_. The slow accumulation of possibly barely-toxic chemicals in my gut is less of a concern to me than the lawyer that orders a person to pay a license fee on each kernel of corn that he or she intends to plant. _That guy_ is manipulating the entire market for food, changing the whole business model for farming, and that scares the insoluble fiber out of me.

The primary threat isn't in the _genes_ ; it's in the _laws_.

<comment><USER21> Nice write-up. I might reference it for future debates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't think many people here realize just what a gargantuan feat it would be for McDonalds to change their menu.

If they went organic grass feed beef one day they would need the entire 20 years of the entire US organic beef production to fill their first year needs.

When they roll out a new topping, like spinach, they have to build up reserves for months ahead of time so they don't affect the market.

The down side of being McDonalds is that they are so mind boggling huge that they can raise or lower the pirce of pretty much any vegtable by adding it to their menu.

The upside of being McDonalds is that they are so mind boggling huge that they can change the course of American farming by decreeing that they will only use certain types of vegetables or vegetables only produced under certain conditions.

Think about the intestinal fortitude you would need to change McDonalds menu in any drastic way. McDonalds is 4 things:

1) One of the largest derivatives players that isn't doing it as their main source of revenue, ie they aren't a hedge fund. You will directly affect the commodities market.

2) One of hte largest property holders in the world, if your bet goes wrong you'll screw up what is in effect one of the worlds largest REITS.

3) an employer of a mind boggling large number of people. Make the wrong move and you just put a alrge portion of the lower wage community out of a job.

4) a company worth 94 billion by market cap. When you run a company that large you don't get to make brash decisions without the boards approval.

So if you make the decision to improve the quality of food you serve, you'll have a few side effects.

1) you'll shock the commodities markets, maybe this is good or bad, not sure. But it will take you a minimum of 3 years I'm imagining before you can see meaningful change as food contracts are usually long term.

2) you'll run a very real risk of pushing someone else out of the market as there is only so much of each food substance produced. ie if McDonalds announced they were only going to use a better quality of chicken and beef then the first thing I'd do is short chipotle, and short them hard, as if a supplier has the choice of upsetting McDonals or Chipotle, they will short change Chipotle every single time.

3) you run the risk of alienating your bread and butter customer, lower income people who are price sensitive to hamburger prices going from $1.50 to $3.

4) You are a dividend paying company, which means the market doesn't expect growth in any area expect your dividend. Fail in this regard and you will be punished heavily. If you fail in your better food quality push you may just shave off 20 Billion in market cap.

TL/DR it takes alot of courage to change the MCDonalds menu!!

<comment><USER23> The other thing I find interesting is that McDonalds is a common dietary substitute for those with a low-income. If they were to increase quality (nutritional content) or increase price, it could have a meaningful effect on obesity.

<comment><USER24> _McDonalds is a common dietary substitute for those with a low-income_

It is really hard for me to understand this line of reasoning. I lived in Canada as a foreign student a few years ago and it was way cheaper to cook for yourself than to eat at a McDonald. Maybe the situation is different in US, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER25> > I lived in Canada as a foreign student a few years ago and it was way > cheaper to cook for yourself than to eat at a McDonald. Maybe the situation > is different in US, but I doubt it.

McDonald's isn't cheaper than cooking for yourself, but time constraints (consider a single parent with multiple jobs) and/or the up-front costs when bits of your cooking infrastructure is lost, broken, damaged may make the _marginal_ cost of getting the next meal from McDonald's cheaper than the cost of repair plus the next meal. Given that the poor may have limited access to additional credit and litte-no reserves, that marginal cost difference may make McDonald's the only affordable choice, even though the long-term cost is higher.

<comment><USER24> The time constraint I could understand. However, the _cooking infrastructure_ argument doesn't hold water two people eating at McDonalds once a day could easily spend $600 monthly. You can buy some cheap, second hand, fridge and stove easily with this amount.

<comment><USER26> Dollar Menu...

<comment><USER24> Try to eat this for a month ...

<comment><USER26> Try being poor and eating for a month on whatever you have. You learn to be a bit less discriminating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> No the first time they've promised this. But who goes to McDonald's for "good" food?

<comment><USER28> > But who goes to McDonald's for "good" food?

Nobody. But plenty of people don't go to McDonald's due to its bad food.

It's not even about the unhealthiness of it, but its low quality. McD's around me have the shittiest meat ever cooked while their prices are still not very competitive compared to good, tasty burgers in proper restaurants (around 8€ for a menu in both). McD's is losing to proper restaurants/bars (which aren't really their competitors but actually compete against them) and to other fast food places.

The only advantage McDonald's offers in my country is they're open 24h on weekends so you can eat it after a night out, where the shitty taste is obscured by the client's drunkness... and kebab places are slowly taking their piece of the cake there too.

<comment><USER29> Plenty of people go there because its cheap and convenient, not because it is particularly good, tasty, or well, healthy.

I prefer McDonalds when my only other obvious choice is a Chinese xiao chi that might be using recycled gutter oil. The xiao chi will be tastier, but I can't really afford to risk my life like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They tried that already, and failed. The Angus burger wasn't a great burger, but it was a better burger than anything else on their menu. It was discontinued due to lack of sales.

<comment><USER23> It's funny hearing about, what I assume to be, McDonald's in the US. There are two Angus beef burgers is still available in Australia. Once they introduced them, Hungry Jacks (Burger King) did the same.

It's actually pretty tasty... [https://mcdonalds.com.au/menu/grand- angus](https://mcdonalds.com.au/menu/grand-angus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's easy to hate on McDonald's, but this is a company that actually does a fantastic job of responding to their critics. They have changed their packaging, updated the design of their restaurants, eliminated trans-fats from the fry oil, changed how they market to kids, added salads to the menu, posted calorie counts and nutrition info, etc. Despite all the hate, they listen and respond.

Even though I don't personally like their food, they are not a company that I would bet against in the long run.

<comment><USER20> Don't forget a unilateral decision to increase the wages of their lowest-paid workers. Their business is much more than just their product line and supply chain.

Their mission is not to serve the best meal, or the cheapest meal, or even the best quality per unit price. They aim to provide a uniform, consistent customer experience, at every point of sale, around the entire world. As a result, their first priority is to _always protect the brand_.

As a result, the food itself is almost inconsequential. They could buy their beef from anyone that can raise enough cattle to make it worth the corporate buyer's salary. But on the other side, they are the only company that can sell the "McDonald's Experience".

That's why you don't bet against McDonald's. They have removed the element of uncertainty from eating at a new (to you) restaurant. If you go to any city in the world that has a McDonald's, you can eat there with the psychological assurance that the food there will be no worse than the McDonald's in your very own home town. But it will also be no better. That's the tradeoff.

As a result, every other restaurant has to exceed McDonald's in some specific niche of the market if they want customers. If McDonald's is starting to focus on quality, every place that competes with them by having slightly better ingredients had better take notice and respond.

<comment><USER16> _Don 't forget a unilateral decision to increase the wages of their lowest- paid workers._

Ah, but that was just for the _corporate_ owned stores. Franchisees, which are 4/5 of the operations, make their own salary decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The reason most of you don't shop at MCD is because you're above the class they sell to. They need to sell cheap food to those who are on a tight budget, and cheap food unfortunately, is also the lowest quality and unhealthiest of food (hence why it's cheap).

<comment><USER33> As others have pointed out though... they really aren't that cheap.

That's my complaint. I don't mind subpar food once in a great while. But I went there for lunch a few weeks ago and it was over $8 and I felt nasty and was hungry a couple of hours later. I could have gone to the grocery store deli and gotten a hot lunch combo for $6. Or a tasty burrito from the local Mexican place for $3.50 and an iced tea from the convenience store for $1.

In short, it's not just that their food isn't that great (it's not)... it's that it's too expensive to be that bad.

<comment><USER34> The dollar menu is cheap... everything else is just low-quality food at unimpressive prices.

<comment><USER35> Don't you mean the "Dollar Menu and More" (tm) menu? RIP original Dollar Menu.

The McD app has coupons that can get you some decent quantities for food for pretty cheap, or at least it did when it first came out. I haven't used it in a while so they might have cut back on some of the deals they were offering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Consumed fast food this weekend (the specific chain shall remain nameless) and while I was able to deal with the low food quality (just barely), the cleanliness of the restaurant, and poor management (no management?) of the staff made the experience much worse.

</comment><comment><USER37> McDonald's sure as hell _would_ have incredible headroom for making quality improvements, if that were what this is all about. But it isn't. MD just looks stuffy compared to competitors.

</comment><comment><USER38> Just bring back the jalapeno burger and I'll be happy.

</comment><comment><USER39> The French McDonald's (McDo) are quite nice. Maybe the supply chain won't allow it, but establishing/converting a few McCafe's like that in trendy locations would help their image among people like us (which will trickle down to the plebs). Kind of like Blue Moon and Coors.... <p> [http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-in-france-is- better...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-in-france-is-better-than- in-america-2015-4)

</comment><comment><USER40> So the solution to their overpriced bloated menu, is to add more stuff to the menu? Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER41> Quality isn't in their DNA. They can promise all they want, I'd never trust them enough to put what they make in me.

</comment><comment><USER42> You need to innovate more, eh? Three words: Soylent Shamrock Shakes.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'll stop my one-man boycott when they end the "love" campaign. It's quite disturbing that they're trying to substitute a cheap hamburger for love. It's a microcosm of what's wrong with this culture.</comment>


Apple Watch in 3D - <AUTHOR> https://sketchfab.com/models/0c8a4b3c56e74036ba5ffd3907cc1aa2

<comment><USER2> Is there any 3D animation for the iPhone 6?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that was fast! Nice animation...</comment>


FLAC Support in Firefox 51 - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1195723 <comment><USER2> The wierd thing is that this has been supported for years. Firefox has a compile-time flag that allows it to use operating system codecs, it is just not activated in the official binaries. (I think it also uses a codec whitelist on some OSes, and you have to comment out a line.) On Windows, it used DirectShow codecs, on Linux GStreamer, and on OS X probably quicktime. It's great to be able to just point the browser to a file on the local net and be able to play everything the system can play (and even if it couldn't load the system codec, it could load a MPlayer plugin).

I used this for a while on Linux when there was a codec war between Firefox and Chrome (forgot the details), but I could play videos that normally only played in Chrome without problems.

Browser vendors cite usability problems (if one person's browser supports more codecs than the default, then it is confusing for other people with the default browser... and the person with more codecs might create websites that depend on this), and stability problems (plugins in any form have a bad reputation, but actually the default OS media player codecs are of pretty good quality as they are excercised thoroughly). But honestly, I think it is mostly politics that this is not enabled.

<comment><USER3> One big concern is security: code like this is notoriously prone to exploits and once shipped everyone is exposed whether or not they use it.

That doesn't mean new formats can't happen but it should encourage some careful assessment of the benefits relative to the need to support it for years.

(This is one of the stated reasons why Firefox never shipped JPEG 2000 support despite some demand)

<comment><USER2> True, but there is no intrinsic reason why code from one vendor (Mozilla, Chrome group at Google) should be more or less secure that from the OS developer (e.g. MS, Apple).

In fact, for probably everybody except large browser vendors, you should never roll your own codecs (security, networking libs...) if it is not absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER4> I disagree with this idea in the specific domain of Web Browsers. If a vulnerability is discovered in a codec that ships with Firefox, Mozilla can have a patch out within 24 hours. They only have to test that codec against their own browser software.

Microsoft and Apple _can technically_ roll out a similar patch within 24 hours, but will rarely do so except for major bugs, which have significant baby-punching abilities, as they have to test all of the rest of the operating system software against changes to system libraries. (Linux users get to update their libraries independently, so my argument doesn't really hold water there.)

Since my web browser is one of those bits of software that I regularly expect to load code that I will not vet, from developers whom I don't necessarily trust, I feel like I'd rather have it loading codecs that were designed with the web in mind. I don't think I trust it running my OS codecs, especially for more complicated formats.

This still doesn't mean I'd expect Mozilla to write their own codecs from scratch; certainly they should pull that codec in from an open source, well written and well supported library. But I think they're in a better position to respond to threats and patch domain-specific issues out of that library than my OS vendor is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally!

I wonder why this took so long. The assumption that no sane site would want to stream in lossless when lossy codecs were starting to be really good (and obviously much smaller)? Lack of expertise, manpower? Priorities? [1][2] Does every FF feature has to be 'parity-chrome'?

It's even more interesting that Chrome also sat on this for ~5 years [3] and are just now about to release it also.

Like the Firefox thread insinuates, will pundits credit TIDAL for lighting the fire under browser vendors to support lossless streaming? No such link appears to exist, aside from TIDAL already streaming to Chrome using NaCl [4], but when we look back in 10 years and see both of the major browser vendors adding FLAC support _now_ as opposed to any other time in the previous 5 years, what will people think?

[1] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514365](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=514365) [2] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586568](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=586568) [3] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=93887](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=93887) [4] [https://support.tidal.com/hc/en- us/articles/202654692-HiFi-O...](https://support.tidal.com/hc/en- us/articles/202654692-HiFi-Option-is-Greyed-Out-Not-Selectable-)

<comment><USER6> > I wonder why this took so long.

Because supporting lossless audio streaming is as useful as supporting TIFF images or UTF-32 text encoding. Nice to add to the spec sheet; mostly useless in a practical setting.

The only purpose that comes to mind for delivering lossless audio within a web page is to build, somewhat ironically, a lossy codec comparison tool which would in turn demonstrate why lossless audio isn't necessary.

<comment><USER7> > lossless audio isn't necessary

As an audio engineer, I must point out what is wrong with this statement.

Sure, the average listener cannot discern between FLAC and a well-encoded lossy audio file. However, with the Web Audio API making big advancements, the need for in-browser FLAC support is becoming quite apparent.

People are building all sorts of web apps for creating, manipulating, and processing audio. For this use case, working with lossy audio is out of the question. Supporting FLAC means the ability to follow signal flow best practices [0] without requiring the user to work with much larger PCM files.

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

<comment><USER8> I think this is the most reasonable argument for supporting FLAC natively. We have support for lossless images in the browser already - TIFF isn't the image analogue, but rather PNG.

<comment><USER9> Except that PNG is by far not sufficient in professional image manipulation: it's compression scheme is good and 8uc{3,4} is lossless, but beyond 8bpc you're out of luck.

I'd love to have a wide-supported float32 format with reasonable lossless (and maybe lossy) compression options.

Conversely, FLAC supports different resolutions and sampling rates, so it does do the job for the sound processing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fifteen years after the initial release of FLAC – have there been any significant developments in the lossless compression of audio since then?

I know there's FLIF[1] for lossless image compression and Zstandard[2] for general purpose lossless compression that have recently hit the Hacker News front page. Are their adopted techniques not suitable for audio?

[1] [http://flif.info/](http://flif.info/)

[2] [https://code.facebook.com/posts/1658392934479273/smaller- and...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/1658392934479273/smaller-and-faster- data-compression-with-zstandard/)

<comment><USER5> Let's see:

\- Wavpack [1], which is a rough contemporary but offers three tiers of presets (normal scale, high scale, extra high scale) and an innovative (and optional) lossy/hybrid mode

\- TAK [2] which compressed better _and_ decoded faster than either, but was initially closed-source until the dev was persuaded to open it up

\- LossyWAV [3] which isn't lossless but chops off least-significant-bits while using noise shaping to pre-process audio and make it compress better when fed to a lossless compressor

Most of these developments were first publicized on Hydrogenaudio. But as for innovations in the last two years, not that I'm aware.

[1] [http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=WavPack](http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=WavPack) [2] [http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=TAK](http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=TAK) [3] [http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LossyWAV](http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LossyWAV)

EDIT (for some more background): generally in lossless audio compression you want to use linear prediction to predict an approximate signal for the next few samples, then encode the difference between your predicted guess and the actual signal in some entropy coder, like Golomb-Rice codes or Huffman or Arithmetic coding. Although most of Zstandard's improvements are algorithmic or implementation-related and not related to data theory, the part that could show promise is the tANS entropy coder [4] used in Zstandard; but Golomb-Rice codes perform well for data that comes from linear predictors; so I'm not sure what to expect [5].

[4] [https://github.com/Cyan4973/FiniteStateEntropy](https://github.com/Cyan4973/FiniteStateEntropy)

[5] 'Benchmarks' section under [4]

<comment><USER11> Golomb-Rice with base M is prefix code optimal for approximately geometric probability distribution Pr(x) ~ sqrt(2)^(-Mx). Arithmetic coding or FSE/tANS would allow to use the actual probability distribution. The question is how large the gain could be - how far from Shannon is Golomb-Rice for this specific type of data? If this probability distribution varies, maybe it's worth thinking about adaptive rANS, like in Oodle LZNA and BitKnit: [https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/rans-in- practice/](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/rans-in-practice/) ps. Is M fixed or adapting?

<comment><USER5> Sadly my enthusiasm for compression greatly exceeds my math knowledge.

The linked resources from the RAD Game Tools people are really interesting; they've been pushing the state-of-the-art for many years but mostly avoid the limelight.

I found one paper [1] that muses about switching from CABAC to Golomb-Rice in video compression, and by doing so they reduce decoding complexity while achieving comparable compression efficiency. So I'm not sure if it'd be worth going the other way, and whether adaptive codes are a good fit (for LPC residuals).

[1] [http://iphome.hhi.de/wiegand/assets/pdfs/2011_09_ICIP_entrop...](http://iphome.hhi.de/wiegand/assets/pdfs/2011_09_ICIP_entropy_cod.pdf)

But I almost want to cook up some interactive 'build-your-own lossless codec' testbench where you could pick your transform, pick your linear predictor, and pick your entropy coder, and tinker until you're satisfied with the result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a little odd to me that they're adding new codec code in C++ when they have this little memory-safe language in their back pocket waiting to be used for exactly stuff like this.

<comment><USER13> Rust is still very new. So far the only Rust code added to Firefox was a drop- in replacement for some other code. They haven't written any new features in Rust yet, and most FF devs wouldn't be fluent in it yet.

<comment><USER12> It seems to me that Rust would be perfect for a tiny, mostly irrelevant, self- contained feature like this. :-)

If it works, you don't need most FF devs to have fluency because the code base simply doesn't need fixing. The API surface is tiny. And the impact of it being broken is pretty low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the point in this exactly? FLAC is useful for selling lossless audio, so you'd be able to re-encode it into any other codec when needed. But to play something on-line (which browser support implies), you can as well use lossy codec like Opus at transparent bitrate, and save the traffic in the process.

That said, it surely doesn't hurt to have that support in the browser, I just don't see it being very useful.

<comment><USER15> FLAC is useful for listening to high quality music which hasn't been filtered and compressed. It sounds significantly better than lossy audio. Iscit so hard to comprehend that as more bandwidth comes online all the time, people won't want to compromise on sound quality the way they were forced to in the past?

<comment><USER6> > It sounds significantly better than lossy audio.

Lossy audio _can_ be completely transparent. If you disagree, you need to provide some objective evidence, because all objective evidence points in favour of good lossy compression being indistinguishable from lossless at sensible bitrates.

Look, I've no problem with LAME being supported, but don't make it out to be "significant" in terms of sound quality. Try AAC at 256kbps (what iTunes Store has used for the past decade) or better yet, Opus. Do a serious blinded test and amaze yourself with the results.

<comment><USER16> It all depends on how sensitive you are to these things, I've done such blind tests, and to my ears the fall in quality was significant, even painful.

<comment><USER17> Blind tests comparing lossless against what codec at what bitrate? How many runs and how often were you able to correctly identify lossless?

<comment><USER18> Why to bother with various tradeoffs if you can get the best?(i.e lossless). You can make the same argument on video technologies(i.e HDR). The truth is that people usually adapt so "painful" audio or video quality stops being painful after a while.

<comment><USER6> If it was even remotely painful, it would sail through an ABX test.

<comment><USER19> It may sail through months long ABX test.

<comment><USER6> Artefacts that can only be discerned after months of sustained listening? Sounds like you're clutching at straws.

<comment><USER19> Not an artifact, but loss of variance in music. Same patterns are activating same neurons, so they are tired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Meanwhile, the ChromeOS release of Chromium has had support for FLAC for a long time, but it's still feature gated on mainline Chrome.

4 year old issue: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=93887](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=93887)

<comment><USER21> Shouldn't casting FLAC on Chrome to a Chromecast be a priority? I may be a curmudgeon, but I have way too many CDs in storage in those 80 litre Rubbermaid bins that I only ever see as FLAC files on the media server.

<comment><USER5> The Chromecast can receive and play FLAC since 2015 (I can't find the exact dates on any release notes but [1][2]).

This is about adding audio/flac decoding into Chrome; meanwhile the Chrome -> Chromecast communication is entirely proprietary (notwithstanding the APIs), so Google controls both ends. Since so much of the Chromecast is about handing off content [3], there's little need to implement FLAC encoding in Chrome because the Chromecast can just be told to load the native (original) stream itself.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/3n1to8/chromeca...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/3n1to8/chromecast_1st_gen_now_supports_flac/) [2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/3n3epm/flac_is_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/3n3epm/flac_is_now_supported_officially/)

[3] (Annoying ad warning but good content) [http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/chromecast- features/](http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/chromecast-features/)

<comment><USER21> Thanks for bringing me up to date. (1st gen Chromecast)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For other browsers, you can use flac.js: [http://github.com/audiocogs/flac.js](http://github.com/audiocogs/flac.js).

</comment><comment><USER23> I never understood why flac isn't more widely supported.

<comment><USER24> DRM? The project discourages implementation of DRM:

[https://xiph.org/flac/developers.html](https://xiph.org/flac/developers.html)

>Anti-goals - Copy prevention, DRM, etc. There is no intention to add any copy prevention methods. Of course, we can't stop someone from encrypting a FLAC stream in another container (e.g. the way Apple encrypts AAC in MP4 with FairPlay), that is the choice of the user.

<comment><USER25> The existence of DRM in a format is usually the reason something _doesn 't_ get supported, usually due to licensing or patent issues on the DRM, if not because of philosophical/political/social issues around supporting DRM itself.

Do you mean to suggest that Mozilla would be/should be/are subject to third- parties who want to restrict access to only DRM-supporting formats (I honestly don't know if they are, but it seems unlikely)? It's not like Mozilla has a music store and needs access to publishers/distributors that will only get on board if there's DRM. Support for more formats can only serve to help Mozilla's users and their market penetration (even if supporting more formats is more of a burden, development- and support-wise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I dont't see why people would want to use FLAC. The file sizes are huge and the audio quality difference is bearly noticeable compared to an encoding like .aac

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER27> > The file sizes are huge

35-70 MB it's not that huge, especially if you have a gigabit Internet connection. And if you have a good pair of headphones you can hear the difference between flac and aac.

<comment><USER28> Yeah. Even with a 100 megabit internet connection the size does not matter at all. The playing starts instantly when you push the play button and it still uses less bandwidth than a normal youtube video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've never encountered this format. It was never relevant for me. I know about it but that's all.

Meanwhile there are other formats that seem to be more important. What about WebP?

At work we are currently developing a kiosk system based on a big ass touch screen in UHD running in Google Chrome. I suggested switching to WebP for the pictures and it is saving a lot of bandwidth compared to JPEG.

<comment><USER5> Incidentally Firefox is also adding support for WebP. Posted on HN 12 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338170)

Bugzilla: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1294490)

WebP is far from state-of-the-art but outperforms JPEG because JPEG is missing the filtering step (where adjacent pixels are being run through a delta-coder) entirely. An alternative is JPEG squishers like Dropbox's Lepton [1] that tries to retrofit this deficiency in a clever meet-in-the-middle way, serving as an additional lossless compression layer while decoding into a perfectly- normal JPEG.

[1] [https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/07/lepton-image- compress...](https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/07/lepton-image-compression- saving-22-losslessly-from-images-at-15mbs/)

<comment><USER30> The most exciting parts of WebP, for me, are alpha transparency in lossy images, and animation support. This means transparent photos won't need to be in PNG, and perhaps animated GIFs could be replaced with a more efficient format (while still working in <img> tags and retaining their infinite loop when downloaded).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> But where is my ipv6 link local address support?

</comment><comment><USER32> awesome!

</comment><comment><USER33> Web browsers prove once again that they are still the new Emacs.</comment>


Reflection on Brent Yorgey's Haskell Class - <AUTHOR> http://limdauto.github.io/posts/2015-12-13-reflections-brent-yorgey-haskell-class.html <comment><USER2> The class: [http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis194/](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis194/)

Related discussion about the class: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6119783)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a guy names Chris Allen. He thought many Haskell and collected+reviewed many free online resource --for the purpose of making it easy for people from different background to pick the right material-- over here: [https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell](https://github.com/bitemyapp/learnhaskell)

He's currently writing a book, that will cost money ($59 I think), which has beta-access and is IMHO already the best resource out there for most learners of this wonderful language. More info on this here:

[http://haskellbook.com/](http://haskellbook.com/)

<comment><USER4> Chris and Julie are doing a great job -- I've been enjoying working through it.</comment></comment>


My (Successful) Letter of Appeal to UC Berkeley - <AUTHOR> http://huff.to/Yb74KD

<comment><AUTHOR> I had never shared this with anyone except my parents until today. Thought I'd share with the HN community. :)</comment>


Show HN: Hacker Experience 2 – Open source hacking simulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hacker-experience-2-open-source-hacking-game--2 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

We are working on an open source game[0] which has the main goal of teaching non-technical players concepts about Computer Science, security and encryption. We want them to take a second look at how our privacy is at risk, learn what is VPN, HTTPS, GPG etc. and get them to use these tools in the real world.

We decided to take this goal to the next level by creating the project "Let's Build a Game", which focuses both on technical and non-technical users. We believe that by submitting a small contribution and seeing it get released to a game they love, will bring a unique sense of accomplishment to these contributors. With this practical experience we want to foster Computer Science education among young students.

In other words, we want to create a welcoming open source community for first- time contributors. Open source projects tend to be intimidating even to experienced programmers, and we want to change that.

I know the HN crowd is definitely non non-technical, but you can also be a part of the project. The article shows some examples on how you can contribute. Our stack is very exciting! Backend is mostly Erlang/OTP + Elixir[1], and the UI is in F# + C# with MonoGame for cross-platform support[2].

We are also undergoing a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo[3], and the success of Let's Build a Game greatly depends on it.

Happy to hear suggestions and feedback about the project and answer any questions you might have. By the way, we are a startup and are looking for investors, sponsors and partners. Feel free to ask for our business plan. You can drop me a line at firstname.lastname@example.com.

\--

[0] - [https://hackerexperience.com](https://hackerexperience.com)

[1] - [https://engineering.hackerexperience.com/post/7/systems_arch...](https://engineering.hackerexperience.com/post/7/systems_arch..).

[2] - [https://engineering.hackerexperience.com/post/9/desktop_web_...](https://engineering.hackerexperience.com/post/9/desktop_web_..).

[3] - [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hacker- experience-2-open-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hacker- experience-2-open-..).

</comment><comment><USER2> Sweet, love it! Was thinking about building a mmorpg with elixir and elm. Instead I'll just tag along with your project (great background story btw). I've signed up, can't wait to get started

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks interesting. I am still not over getting banned for actually scripting a game about hacking tho.</comment>


What Is Obedience? Understanding Obedience to Authority - <AUTHOR> https://www.verywell.com/what-is-obedience-2795894 <comment><USER2> It's interesting that those experiments have been reproduced, many times even. That's not a given in the social sciences which indicates there is indeed something going on.</comment>


How police stops are life-and-death experiences for people of color - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/07/justice_sonia_sotomayor_s_dissent_in_utah_v_strieff_and_the_killings_of.html <comment><USER2> More dangerous rabble-rousing. The fact is that the police shoot more white people than black:

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/21/police- kill-...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/21/police-kill-more- whites-than-blacks-but-minority-d/)

The problem seems to be more to do with gun ownership and trigger happy police (perhaps understandable if the person in front of you might be reaching for a gun), rather than racism.

<comment><USER3> > Based on that data, Mr. Moskos reported that roughly 49 percent of those > killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 were white, while 30 percent > were black. He also found that 19 percent were Hispanic and 2 percent were > Asian and other races.

30% of deaths but only 12% of US population suggests something's up.

<comment><USER4> The police are definitely racist. However, there is a reason beyond racism that police react differently. 40% of officer killings are by black suspects.

[https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...](https://www.fbi.gov/about- us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/table_47_leos_fk_race_and_sex_of_known_offender_2005-2014.xls)

<comment><USER2> >The police are definitely racist.

And you have evidence about that from....?

>However, there is a reason beyond racism that police react differently. 40% of officer killings are by black suspects

Unlikely, considering that police are less to kill black suspects than white ones (read that Washington Times article I linked). So it appears that white police are racist against white people. Let's start a "white lives matter" organization!

<comment><USER4> Just ask black people you know, observe what happens on the street in a black neighborhood. It's different. The amount of leeway and benefit of the doubt you get as a white person is different than as a black person.

Some of this is probably due to preexisting racism. Some of it is due to the experience of the officer causing him to form what a bayesian would call a prior, and an activist would call a prejudice. I can tell you that policing an inner city neighborhood exposes you to the worst society has to offer on a daily basis, and it can lead to police forming some ugly opinions. Everyone is entitled to equal treatment by the police, and police should be held to this standard. However police are human beings, and will make judgments based on available data even if they're told not to, especially when they perceive that their life is in danger.

BTW, you linked to a Washington Times article. That's a very different newspaper from the Washington Post.

<comment><USER2> >Just ask black people you know, observe what happens on the street in a black neighborhood

Have you asked any white people who live in deprived neighbourhoods, or latinos? I can tell from first-hand experience that a lot of white people hate the police. No racism was involved though. It has more to do with gangs not wanting the police to interrupt their crimes, high crime in general in those areas, real danger to the police putting them on edge, etc.

> I can tell you that policing an inner city neighborhood exposes you to the > worst society has to offer on a daily basis, and it can lead to police > forming some ugly opinions

I think this is the key problem. Not racism. Blaming it on racism just causes further problems. I'm sure there is some racism, but it doesn't appear to be the main problem.

>BTW, you linked to a Washington Times article. That's a very different newspaper from the Washington Post.

Fixed, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why U.S. Women Are Leaving Jobs Behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/upshot/us-employment-women-not-working.html <comment><USER2> Something I don't quite get is why we seem to think that two income households should be the goal. Seems to me that the net effect of multi-income households is to make housing more expensive which in turn forces families to have two incomes and in the end everyone is just working a lot more for the same thing and a lesser quality of life.

<comment><USER3> Two income households is a goal for my family because it 1) reduces the cost of living so that money can be used for other things; and,

I would encourage my life partner to pursue their dreams, especially if that includes having a career because, as my mother has put it, being at home all the time for some people is boooring

<comment><USER4> What are you going to do if your life partner wanted to stay home with the kids and found value in that? Sorry but you have just insulted any stay at home mom, which is shameful.

<comment><USER5> I don't see the insult. It seems to me they would support the decision to stay home, but their partner clearly prefers to work.

I'm in a situation right now in which only I am working and my wife's at home with the kid. This is for visa reasons (H-4). My wife's self-esteem has plummeted because of this situation. She indeed complains it is extremely boring to stay home all the time. I completely support her desire to get back to the workforce, and I really look forward to the added benefit of our combined income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I identify with a lot of the issues this article brings up -- I might work a part-time position with flexible hours that allowed me to be there for my son both before and after school, but full time work would take me away from my family more, and the cost of daycare (and potentially housecleaning help) would offset a lot of the financial benefits of extra hours. So I choose to be a full-time stay-at-home dad instead.

I also find it interesting that this article uses the terms "ahead" and "behind" to describe much of Europe compared to the US, but the details show a much more ambiguous picture. European women are more likely to be in the workforce, but European women in the workforce are much more likely to be working in low-level positions with low wages, limited hours, and reduced opportunity for advancement. So it might be better to say that Europe and the US have chosen differently on the tradeoff between number of women working and the quality of jobs women hold.

</comment><comment><USER7> "taxation of individuals instead of families, which encourages women's employment."

They mean "enforces" women's employment because the family has less money and needs the additional income. Yay for women's liberation. Yay for "careers" as waitresses and Walmart cashiers. Yay for not recognising time spent with children as worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm in favor of remote work as a partial solution. I work remotely from Myrtle Beach, SC, and my wife is currently unemployed and seeking remote employment leveraging her nursing degree and background along with her interest in technology. It's hard. Even tech companies who have remote positions which are a great fit, which she qualifies for, and they want to interview her... End up not working out for one reason or another. Example: twice now Flatiron Health decided they didn't actually want the position remote after they screened her and began the interview process.

</comment><comment><USER9> The opening paragraph of this article is a stunning victory for anecdote in its long war against data. Reading this, you are left with an impression exactly opposite reality:

"Since Kerry Devine, 32, and her friends began having children, she has noticed a stark difference between her female friends in Auburn, Wash., where she lives, and those in England and Cyprus, where she grew up. In the United States, they almost all stopped working outside the home, at least until their children were in school. Yet, she says, she can't think of a friend in Europe who left work after her children were born."

First of all, let's remember that men are also leaving the workforce, and the decline of men in the workforce is a much older trend than women leaving the workforce:

[https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/wlfp1.j...](https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/wlfp1.jpg)

As to Europe, please see here:

[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS)

Let's start with overall female participation rates in the workforce:

France: 51%

Germany: 54%

United Kingdom: 56%

USA:57%

By this measure, the USA rate seems a little elevated, but not dramatically so.

Europe is catching up, but has not yet caught up:

[http://www.thefinancialist.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/fe...](http://www.thefinancialist.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/female-europe-participation2.jpg)

A few Scandinavian countries exceed the USA rate, but most of Europe lags behind:

[https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/images/women/Gene...](https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/images/women/General/Women_in_Australia/2009/fig3_1.gif)

But what about mothers with kids? There the reality is the opposite of the one suggested by the quoted paragraph. Women with kids are more likely to work in the USA than in Europe. Look at the high rates of women with kids in the USA in this graph:

[http://www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/meetings/archive/4-17-07/boushey.h...](http://www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/meetings/archive/4-17-07/boushey.html)

It is true the peak of the trend was many years ago, but the numbers are still high. The USA has a very high level of single moms, much more so than in Europe, and most of these women need to work, so the number of women with kids working will probably remain elevated in the USA.

Figure 1 shows that in Germany the rate remains below the USA level until the children are 10 years old:

[http://www.public.asu.edu/~abick/bick_childcare.pdf](http://www.public.asu.edu/~abick/bick_childcare.pdf)

This is the pattern in most of Europe: as children get older, the percent of mothers who work approaches USA rates, but if we talk about mothers of young children, the USA has the highest participation rates in the world. Again, this is driven by single moms, and the lack of welfare benefits in the USA, compared to the richer social safety nets in Europe.

This article offers some insights about the USA:

[http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-working- mot...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2012/us-working-mothers-with- children.aspx)

"In recent years, more mothers of young children have entered the paid labor force. While the share of mothers with children under age 6 in the labor force has risen sharply, the rate for all working-age adults has remained relatively flat. The recent economic recession, the steady decline in men's real earnings, the growth in single-mother families, and the increase in women's educational levels are some of the factors likely contributing to the growth in the proportion of mothers of young children in the workforce."

Also here, scroll way down to the graphs:

[http://www.frdb.org/upload/file/paper_delboca.pdf](http://www.frdb.org/upload/file/paper_delboca.pdf)

Again, you can see that the Scandinavian countries are ahead of the USA with both fertility and women working, thanks to more supportive policies for women, but most European countries are behind the USA rates.

<comment><USER10> There is no "Europe", especially not in these matters that are so strongly, if not almost exclusively, determined by cultural and economic factors in _sovereign_ nations.

Please stop doing that, comparing the USA to some fictional country called Europe to prove a point. I agree with many of your arguments, but where the author of this piece is generalizing based on anecdotes, you're generalizing based on stats. And opportunistically picking and mixing stats from different countries on top of that.

For someone who likes to throw around stats and pretend to make a scientifically based argument, what does a conclusion like " _most European countries are behind the USA_ " even mean? Europe has countries the size of a few football fields. It has large, thinly populated countries, small, densely populated countries and everything in between.

I would really appreciate it of people would stop using this fictional Europe for their ideological political arguments about the USA.

Full disclosure: I happen to be from a country in Europe that has higher participation rates for women than the US, is not Scandinavian, doesn't have particularly strong supportive policies (better than the US, but that isn't saying much) and on top of that: despite these stats women in this country are leaving the labor force in large numbers when they get kids, which particularly shows up in a lack of women in senior leadership positions. These things vary wildly _per country and culture_.

<comment><USER11> > _Please stop doing that, comparing the USA to some fictional country called > Europe to prove a point._

There IS a place called the European Union, which tries to unify things in those regards though. Sure, the European Union is not Europe, but that's like saying "America is not the US, it's the whole continent" (that is, correct, but nobody cares, people will still use the name).

> _Europe has countries the size of a few football fields. It has large, > thinly populated countries, small, densely populated countries and > everything in between._

So, sort of like the states? New Hampshire is not really the size or population of Texas or California. And not all of them have the same rates and policies.

Besides, he did gave listings and talked individually about different european countries.

It's not that big of a stretch to then check the aggregate, and speak of how "Europe" is doing. The European Comission does exactly this all the time.

<comment><USER12> > Sure, the European Union is not Europe, but that's like saying "America is > not the US, it's the whole continent" (that is, correct, but nobody cares, > people will still use the name).

I think that is a bad comparison. When anyone says "America", they almost always mean "USA". There are also a lot fewer cases in which most people want to talk about _the Americas_ as a whole, and each continent tends to be denoted by South- and North-. "Europe", on the other hand, seems to always refer to the whole continent (people can disagree about where the Easternmost point is, but other than that the usage of the word is very crisp). I don't see how conflating the EU and Europe is appropriate at all, and I haven't seen much of it.

<comment><USER11> > _I think that is a bad comparison. When anyone says "America", they almost > always mean "USA". There are also a lot fewer cases in which most people > want to talk about the Americas as a whole_

Perhaps that's a bias from being in the USA? In Latin America it's far more often to want to talk about Americas as a whole (or about North/South America as a whole).

<comment><USER12> > Perhaps that's a bias from being in the USA?

That can't be the case for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Her story would have played out differently, she said, if she had been > living in her native England. Like many European countries, Britain offers a > year of maternity leave, much of it paid, and protections for part-time > workers, among other policies aimed at keeping women employed.

If the US had better policies for maternity leave and part-time workers, then it seems likely to me that we'd have many more women workers because employment would "avoid upending their family life".

If the US had better immigration policy, then we wouldn't be turning away thousands (tens of thousands?) of diverse, highly talented, tax paying tech workers from pushing forward innovation in our country.

I'm sure you could make similar statements about our healthcare policy, education system, political system, the grand jury system, etc. Why isn't every single police officer wearing a camera while on duty yet? Why does changing (fixing) these things take so damn long? The worst part is that the people who are in control of really fixing these things and the entire system itself don't seem motivated enough to do so (to me at least, please correct me if I'm wrong).

<comment><USER14> > Why does changing (fixing) these things take so damn long?

Because:

a. Established interests profit from the current arrangement or worry that their interests will be compromised if things chang.

b. Our system is set up to resist rapid precipitous radical change.

c. Changing institutions takes a long time and requires much political will, or at least alignment with social forces in play.

d. Change has costs; even if the existing system is wasteful, dysfunctional and cruelly indifferent to the pain it causes to some subset of the people in contact with an institution. The costs of changing that institution are unknown and unknowable and the argument against from fear of the unknown will always have weight with decisionmakers.

e. Institutional change always has winners and losers, and often the ones with the most to lose are close to but not at; the top of the hierarchy.

That's the short version. The long version involves quantitative social science and figuring out which nodes of the power network have the capability to drive change and which must be routed around to effect change and which ones are likely to be obstacles to change. Modeling the political economy of even a small institution is a considerable effort; and since it's hard to get people to precisely quantify their biases and predilections even if they are cooperative; a large amount of it is guesswork or inference from extremely thin sources ( like trying to divine someones political allegiances based on the corpus of emails that are sent to internal mailing lists ).

And since Psychohistory is bunk, there is no plausible way to predict second or third order effects ( the response to the response to the change you are trying to achieve if it were successful ).

There are only a few organizations that have the mathematical ability, computational power and access to significant communications between decision makers to even attempt to do this at scale. In fact I can only think of one that could attempt to do so at a global scale; and it's a TLA whose initials start with N, end with A, and have an S in the middle. But they wouldn't try to manipulate their host society like that; or would they?</comment></comment>


Study of protein folds adds to evidence that viruses are alive and ancient - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/study-of-protein-folds-adds-to-evidence-that-viruses-are-alive-and-ancient <comment><USER2> I thought the definition of life was a matter philosophical, not scientific, debate. How does one "find evidence" to support an open philosophical argument?

<comment><USER3> Nothing specific to the article here, but in general I believe philosophical question tends to be explain or made obsolete by scientific discovery rather than philosophy itself. Look at the discussion on "life substance" (I forgot the term) before we learn how to synthesize organic compound as an example. Otherwise, the concurrent philosophical text on conscious and intelligence would be another case where answer would likely be explain by science.

<comment><USER4> This is a common view amongst people who have never studied philosophy. Everyone is engaged in philosophy, including scientists themselves, and mostly poorly.

Scientists in considering what data signifies life are themselves taking as given some concept 'life' \- ie. their first step is philosophical (as ever). You may say whatever a decision a scientist makes on concepts such as these is obviously the best - but then history would show you totally incorrect.

It is possible to refine the method of judging the best concepts, and of refining the questions which lead to these judgements, and of the method of making the best deicisons with respect to them. This task is philosophy. And "incorrect philosophy" of the past such as the vital force was a philosophy of an incorrect science - not somehow a "pure philosophy" that had gone wrong.

A philosophy of a better science produces a better philosophy (and a better science).

<comment><USER5> Comes across as pedantic and somewhat bitter, possibly after having read Neil deGrasse Tyson's comments on philosophy.

<comment><USER4> Imagine engineers drawing landscapes and calling art dead. This is what we have with the naive popularises of science today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whether viruses are classified as life or not doesn't matter and wouldn't change anything. The important and interesting thing is that viruses probably evolved from cells.

<comment><USER7> We should probably just accept that life (a particular class of self replicating systems) is not the same concept as being alive.

Then one wouldn't have a problem with accepting that viruses are life, albeit not alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If viruses are alive, is a zygote within a woman yet a human being?

<comment><USER9> No; being alive and being a human being are not necessarily related. Your hair is alive; your hair is not a human being.</comment></comment>


Black triangle: a useful shorthand and metaphor - <AUTHOR> http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2004/10/black-triangle.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like no one told them about the iceberg:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html>

 _You know how an iceberg is 90% underwater? Well, most software is like that too -- there's a pretty user interface that takes about 10% of the work, and then 90% of the programming work is under the covers. And if you take into account the fact that about half of your time is spent fixing bugs, the UI only takes 5% of the work. And if you limit yourself to the visual part of the UI, the pixels, what you would see in PowerPoint, now we're talking less than 1%.

That's not the secret. The secret is that People Who Aren't Programmers Do Not Understand This._</comment>


I Hate Being Single and It Doesn't Make Me Weak - <AUTHOR> https://dose.com/i-hate-being-single-and-it-doesnt-make-me-weak-80dd14c168 <comment><USER2> "So in the course of that newly-found alone time after the divorce, I joined the gym, took up yoga and went full vegan. (OK — I needed a hard shove from my doctor to go vegan, but I did it.)"

I have a hard time believing his doctor "shoved" him to be vegan.

<comment><USER3> The Portfolio Diet [1] is vegan, doctors know about that, and it's reputed to do really well at lowering LDL. Although I think it's more common to recommend the Mediterranean Diet.

[http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol- management/features/portfol...](http://www.webmd.com/cholesterol- management/features/portfolio-diet-lower-cholesterol)

<comment><USER4> The Cleveland Clinic is large enough that they've got at least two different groups that manage this. One group (Caldwell Esselstyn's group) relies on a low-oil vegan diet, then there's another one that relies on the Mediterranean Diet. I don't think either approach is particularly unusual in the "you need to change your diet right now" realm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course wanting a romantic relationship doesn't make you weak, not any more than, for example, wanting a pet dog.

</comment><comment><USER6> To me it just sounds like he needs more friends to fill the gaps. Why can't he bring a friend to the zoo? Why does it have to be a girlfriend? I've had long stretches of my life where I was single but I was rarely ever lonely. I was aside from some rare moment rather well surrounded.

<comment><USER7> Asking your friends to hang out after a certain age just feels juvenile.

<comment><USER8> Inherently, or just due to societal expectations? I'm guessing it's the latter.

<comment><USER9> Mostly spouse, children and lack of free time or energy after the abovementioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not a lot of content here and it's debatable HN material but if there's a key takeaway for this audience it's that you should save some of yourself for your relationship if you are in a couple.

It's very easy to go "all in" on your startup or project (as th author did with his book), but 9 times out of 10 if you take it too far you're going to end up single, quickly.

I've seen it happy to many of my married programmer friends who took their job commitments too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm probably living in a bubble but it seems like most 30 somethings are single and loving it.

<comment><USER11> 30 somethings are single and _want you to think they 're_ loving it.

<comment><USER12> Doesn't everyone want you to think they're loving it?

<comment><USER11> Yea, but we were talking specifically about 30 somethings.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Reddit Reddit Reddit - <AUTHOR>

Probably the last time I'll bother posting, or visiting.
I am seeing about 90% of the same stuff over at reddit, first, then typically shows up here a few hours, and sometimes days later... even the comments have went reddit style.
The only differences here, are the occasional call for YC submissions, and the outcomes.
Used to love this site, but I think it's lost its uniqueness, unless of course your looking for a bit of start-up capital.
Later. <comment><USER2> Your account is 311 days old so this applies:

 _If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)_

Later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Both this site and Reddit(or at least /r/programming) cover tech news it would be sad\weird\strange if things didn't make it to both sites. As far as the comments go they are what you make of them, the quality improves if you stick to the less redditish article titles.</comment>


Do the FBI want you to to keep your content unencrypted? - <AUTHOR> http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/02/deconstructing-calea-hearing.html

<comment><USER2> An excellent article by a top-flight law-and-technology expert.

We're just about to discuss this on the Twitter privacy chat -- <http://cdt.org/twitterchat>

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have nothing to hide then why encrypt what your doing, but honestly anything you do can be possibly misconstrued in some way and you never know what can come bite you in the butt later on.

"The FBI knows that most services are not going to be using full end-to-end encryption, and as such, there is not much to be gained by fighting a public battle over encryption backdoors."

Either way, I rather have the FBI have to get a subpoena in order to get the non encrypted data sitting on a hard drive on the other end then to easily be able to listen in on what im doing just becaue they "suspect" that something might be going on.

It allows me and the people to haver their right to privacy.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. The "if you have nothing to hide" canard glosses over the significant fact that we all have something to hide, at least from the truly malicious.

This isn't new. Just consider the infamous remark by the notorious Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), as quoted by that other monster of the State, Henry Kissinger; "Give me six lines written by an honest man, and I will find something in it with which to hang him".

The nasty thing about truly nasty people is that literally anything you say can (and will) be used against you - provided they retain room enough to maneuver. Sensitive information is simply that which has the greatest propensity for abuse in the hands of the abusive. People like this tend to dislike strong and open courts, where they're sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under penalty of perjury.

Needless to say, Cardinal Richelieu was careful to avoid accountability of that kind. Kissinger too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's not really anything the FBI could've done in this case. Nowadays all you have to do is be able to use Google - you can find complete guides on how to set up encrypted hard drives, email servers, etc. Stopping a semi- intelligent criminal from doing so would be very difficult.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, incriminate math, that's the way forward.

<comment><USER7> I think I missed the part where the FBI wants to incriminate math. What are you talking about?

<comment><USER8> Implying that cryptography is just math and the FBI somehow wants to criminalize end-to-end. Which I don't think is the case...

Does anyone think totally encrypted storage and transport for files and email has a market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When did you stop beating your wife?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question> <http://www.fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html>

<comment><USER10> Not really, a simple "No." in response to this question isn't negative.</comment></comment>


GPT-3 pricing for API usage announced to beta users to go in effect from October - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/GPT3/comments/ikorgs/oa_api_preliminary_beta_pricing_announced/ <comment><USER2> Beginning October 1st, 2020

Free tier: 100K tokens

$100/mo tier: 2M tokens, $0.08 per additional 100K tokens

$400/mo tier: 10M tokens, $0.06 per additional 100K tokens

<comment><USER3> I hope there will be resellers. There is room for a lot of markup in the small volume.

<comment><USER4> Resellers sounds like something that would be explicitly against the terms of service.

<comment><USER5> Anyone selling access to a GPT-3 based product will be a reseller, strictly speaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not looking forward to undetectable spam emails. Aaahhh.

On the other hand, maybe Interseller can integrate this and I can send slightly different emails in a sequence automatically.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that the whole point of gating it behind an API?

<comment><USER8> There will always be a spammer with connections to a large company or university.

<comment><USER7> It's not only having the connection, it's that they are presumably able to audit your usage and reserve the right to cut you off if they find out that you're using it for something nefarious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OpenAI but with propietary code... They don't deserve that name

<comment><USER10> Training those models are extremely expensive and it's gonna find a way to recover that cost through one way or another...

<comment><USER11> The issue here isn't the cost to run the service, it's the name.

An analogy would be a restaurant called "free lunch" that charged money for lunch because food supplies are expensive.

<comment><USER12> I thought the model was publicly shown? You can take that and do your own training and make your own API, right?

<comment><USER13> No. GPT-2 is available to the public, at least up to so many millions of parameters. GPT-3 has so far been released exclusively to a small number of beta testers with strict rules on what you can do with it.

<comment><USER12> Bear with me, I am a ML amateur. What is this then? [https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could someone clarify what exactly are those tokens ?

<comment><USER15> Length of given text after encoding it with their BPE. In general, you can expect it to be 1.2x-2x the len(words) in your text.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Screenshot of the pricing grid: [https://twitter.com/sonnylazuardi/status/1301045589619040256](https://twitter.com/sonnylazuardi/status/1301045589619040256)

</comment><comment> d--b is there any non-malignent use case for gpt-3?

<comment><USER6> I used talktotransformer.com to write stories for myself. Some of them were great inspiration material. The bot's pretty good with ideas.

<comment><USER16> "This demo (talktotransformer) is turned off for the moment." It appears to have been replaced by [https://inferkit.com/](https://inferkit.com/) . I don't know how the usage limits for inferkit compare to talktotransformer. The pricing page can be found here [https://inferkit.com/pricing](https://inferkit.com/pricing) .

<comment><USER17> TalkToTransformers was free when the hardware is really, really expensive to scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's the best way to gain access as an european?

</comment><comment><USER19> I thought this was openai not AIASS (AI as a service)

</comment><comment><USER20> I propose a new Turing test:

API Fees for GPT3|N < revenue earned from Amazon Turk Hits.

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be really cool if the GPT-3 pricing page was generated with GPT-3 :)</comment>


Alternate-day fasting compared to daily calorie restriction - <AUTHOR> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2623528 <comment><USER2> What a joke of an interpretation.

      Participants in the alternate-day fasting group ate more than prescribed on fast days, and less than prescribed on feast days

So, the stated constraints _weren 't even properly applied_.

 _Nevertheless_ , the alternate day fasting group lost 12% more weight. How is that not significant?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The outcome: Alternate-day fasting does not produce superior weight loss or weight maintenance compared with daily calorie restriction.

I found this study after seeing an article on CNN titled "Eating in a 6-hour window and fasting for 18 hours might help you live longer".

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this group too small? 100 participants divided into 3 groups, + attrition from dropouts.</comment>


Show HN: Demeter – Organize your tasks - <AUTHOR> http://demeter.heapseven.com <comment><USER2> In what ways is this different from the gazillion task list managers already out there? I'm sure it's beautifully designed, and superbly implemented, but what is there that differentiates it?

Who will say: That's _exactly_ what I need? And why?

Why should I spend time even to evaluate it?

Note that I'm not criticising it, because I haven't even looked at it, because I see no reason to do so.

Convince me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Colin,

It doesn't completely change the game in that field (task management), but still, today there are 2 features that you can find interesting. First, your tasks have a status ('todo', 'waiting', 'cancel' or 'done'). That list is not configurable for now, but it might be something that can be added later if needed. Second, you can have multiple tags on your tasks which you can easily filter later in the tag view.

Those are the 2 features that I will find most interesting if I'm looking to manage my tasks. For the rest of the features, of course you will find them in the competition too, you can't deviate too much of what is expected (for example, organize your tasks within projects, search, due dates, etc.).

I might add the simplicity (not bloated) on that list. I have lot of ideas, and I can already see where to put them.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello hackernews, I'm Jean and I founded Heap Seven few months ago on a side project. I've finally be able to release something solid to the public. It's a simple task management system.

I will be hanging around here today. If you have any question, I'm here!</comment>