'Black Mirror' Is Back, Reflecting Our Technological Fears - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/10/21/498734538/black-mirror-is-back-reflecting-our-technological-fears <comment><USER2> Black Mirror is really, really, really good. The writing, the cast, it is just incredible.

But it is also incredibly depressing. Maybe depressing is the wrong word. Emotionally exhausting, you might say. Well worth watching once, but I recently could not bring myself to re-watch it because it so dark. And not even dark humor, which I like, just dark. Maybe in the spring, I'll come around...

<comment><USER3> What makes it so good is the fact that it is so believable. I wished I could come up with a 'white mirror' alternative where all our tech is used for good but it wouldn't be nearly as believable. Human nature being what it is you'd hope the future isn't even darker than what black mirror shows, it easily could be.

<comment><USER4> Star Trek TNG is as close to 'white mirror' as we'll ever get. A universe where human nature advances alongside technology. It's obviously way more far fetched and the show hasn't aged well though.

<comment><USER3> I don't find Star Trek believable at all, starting with the 'Warp Drive'. As soon as you add a device like that to a plot it becomes impossible to see it as a possible future.

<comment><USER5> You can reimagine most episodes without it. They're not visiting different planets in a spaceship, just different cities connected by a monorail. Er, hyperloop.

<comment><USER6> Or use wormhole technology to connect planets via a hyperloop like in "Pandoras Star". Interesting read how humanity would conquer other systems if space travel was irrelevant.

<comment><USER7> This is basically the plot of Stargate SG-1.

<comment><USER6> Less ancient aliens, more political backstabbing.

And SG1 had that horrible starship spinoff

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never really enjoyed Black Mirror, I've always found it too sneering and pessimistic (and I speak as someone who has enjoyed Charlie Brooker's sneering all the way back to his prank call days).

So I sat down to watch this series, and in some ways the first episode confirmed all my biases, hitting all the usual notes about technology we use and like actually being a terrible slippery slope and you should all feel bad about yourselves.

But then I got to the San Junipero episode, which is so magnificent in every way that I immediately forgave everything. Character driven, subtle, sentimental but optimistic. And probably, over Stranger Things, the piece of sci-fi 80s nostalgia that I'll remember most from this year.

<comment><USER9> I had the same experience with "Be Right Back", the first episode of season 2. I thought the show was cynical, cutting, ruthlessly executed and a bit too polemical. And then there was this episode, which leaned on a common sci-fi plot device but took it just far enough, and stayed focused on humanity as opposed to technology. The writing displayed obviously genuine respect and empathy for human love, grief, and powerlessness - no cheap cynicism to be found. Astounding what this episode did with all of 44 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is truly a beautifully produced/written/acted series.

They are all eminently watchable. My personal favorite episode?

White Bear!

Please don't google it. Just do yourself a favor and watch it.

So good. The series has lots of future tech stuff to noodle over. It's one of those that sticks with you long after you finish.

Warning: the series can be very brutal at times. No holds barred.

<comment><USER11> It fascinates me - White Bear seems to be the most divisive Black Mirror episode out there. For me it's one of the weakest episodes of the series, but I know others who love it.

Personally, the Entire History of You is the pinnacle of Black Mirror.

<comment><USER12> I'm in complete agreement. I've had long, deep discussions about the implications in Entire History of You. To me, it reaches depths far beyond the other episodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm really surprised by all the people here that like this show. I tried to watch it and found it to be absolutely unbearable. It seemed so trite and utterly lacking in any real insight to me. They just took the most obvious, silly things everyone predicts about the future and rendered them in the most simplistic, stylized ways.

Can anyone explain to me what they like about this show?

<comment><USER14> Have you seen White Bear? It's one of the most terrifying and thought provoking things I've ever seen. Sure you could probably find elements of that episode in other shows/films, but that's probably true of everything.

Honest question: what are you watching that makes Black Mirror trite and obvious by comparison?

<comment><USER15> 2nd this request, what are the names of 2 or 3 shows that aren't "trite"?

<comment><USER13> Well, I suppose the difference between this show and say Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad or something (two shows that I have enjoyed) is that they don't think they're teaching me something philosophical. At least, not overtly. Black Mirror is extremely overt and heavy handed in its moralizing.

I guess it feels sort of condescending, but from a place of ignorance. It's ok to repeat trite cliches and tropes culled from the latest medium articles on futurism, but if you're going to do that, weave it into a compelling narrative, don't try to appropriate those simple ideas and claim them as your own. And that's sort of the vibe I get from Black Mirror - that its writers think really highly of their insight into the interplay of technology and culture, but I find that insight to be pretty shallow. And i'd be tolerant of that shallowness of it was a more background element of a more compelling story (say, The Matrix), but Black Mirror feels to me like it takes it self undeservedly seriously, if that makes sense.

I realize the foregoing was sort of rambling, but it's a little hard to articulate exactly why it rubs me the wrong way. I certainly enjoy plenty of things that could be said to be trite, shallow, or even stupid. But I feel like those things know their place and Black Mirror doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Based on all the talk I've read about this show, I feel like I should love it, but watching the first episode "The National Anthem" so turned me off that I put it down and never gathered up the will to give it another shot.

From what I've read, there's somewhat of a split opinion on that specific episode, but to me it was just too unbelievable and silly, all while taking itself so seriously. And because I couldn't suspend my disbelief, it made the whole concept of the episode seem even more pointlessly lewd and uncomfortable. I don't consider myself a squeamish person, and I get that the uncomfortableness is kind of the point, but it just didn't leave me with the desire to watch any more.

I dunno, maybe I should give it another try.

<comment><USER17> I liked all of Black Mirror, including The National Anthem, but that episode is uncharacteristic in that it has almost no traces of the "sci-fi"/"dystopian near future" flavor that characterizes almost all of the rest. It's completely a political satire without sci-fi elements.

Every other episode has a stronger component of bleak sci-fi dystopia.

<comment><USER18> "The National Anthem" has "sci", but the "fi" of it is less apparent because the tech is already here just not "evenly distributed" yet. And maybe I'm just baseline cynical enough that what you perceived as "political satire" just played to me as the simple mechanics of how things happen.

To put it mildly, I'm a believer in anonymity and decentralization. That episode really takes these (hopefully) advancing qualities and really forces you to confront what tearing down of our society's institutions can actually look like.

<comment><USER19> This episode makes me actually _dislike_ anonymity and decentralization, but I agree with you on this one - I feel this was a pretty accurate portrayal of how things happen, how incentives of all involved parties interact.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, my point was that the episode did a very good job of showing the negative aspects of those things, challenging my views.

A large part of what made Black Mirror so compelling to me is that the stories were so well written I wasn't just reflexively thinking of reasons to write them off. I still don't have a straightforward answer to that episode. Perhaps those types of events are something society will just eventually move past - the shock value will be lost, an individual being forced to do something like that will cease becoming an event, and won't reflect poorly on the institution? I dunno.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This show is definitely the modern day Twilight Zone. All the episodes have great twists that obviously come from well informed writers.

<comment><USER21> The vast majority of them are written by one guy, the shows creator, Charlie Brooker[1]. He's a UK comedian who has written a number of great shows such as "Screenwipe"[3] (a comedy documentary about the TV industry), "A Touch of Cloth"[4] (crime drama satire) and "Nathan Barley"[5] (which pokes fun at the London hipster scene and was co-written by Chris Morris[2] who is another UK TV legend)

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Morris_(satirist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Morris_\(satirist\))

[3] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780206/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780206/) (Screenwipe)

[4] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2240991/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2240991/) (A Touch Of Cloth)

[5] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426654/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426654/) (Nathan Barley)

<comment><USER22> "A Touch Of Clot" is brilliant. It takes off where "The Naked Gun" left and adds more wordplay. It completely saturates every scene with comedy. There is nowhere to go from there.

I have never before felt exhausted by the fast pace of puns in my life.

<comment><USER23> This sounds like the absolute perfect thing for me, and I'd never even heard of it!

Just a quick check, you've seen Police Squad, right? The precursor series to The Naked Gun. It's only 6 episodes, which always amazes me when I think of how many moments I love in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The other fantastic & fantastically relevant contemporary show is Westworld. Setting up to be a masterpiece.

Between Black Mirror, Westworld, Utopia, Mr. Robot we're really hitting a good run of SF.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately Person of Interest (made by the same guy who's doing Westworld now) is no longer with us, but if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it. Personally, I consider it one of the best shows of the decade, definitely the most sensible portrayal of AI in movie history _ever_ , and also pretty uncanny in a way it hits close to home with most of the surveillance things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you enjoyed Black Mirror you have to watch Utopia by Channel 4 in the UK. It's remarkable. Don't search for a synopsis online. It's a sci-fi conspiracy thriller like none you'll have ever seen before.

This is an imdb review that echoed my sentiments:

"First of, I made an account at IMDb solely so that I could submit this review.

Utopia is exceptional. It is a masterpiece. It gets 10\10 from me.

I won't explain what Utopia is about because I don't want to give any possible hint of what is to come, so I'll describe it by comparing it to other things.

Buy the DVD or download the show and your life will get.... stranger. Its rather unsettling how Utopia gets under your skin.

There are a few television shows that share some similarity to Utopia.

For example, if you enjoyed Fringe, the X-Files, then you'll be quite at home with Utopia's paranoid wanderings.

So then you cross the weirdness of Fringe and the paranoia of the X-Files with the violence of Kill Bill and the action\suspense of the Jason Bourne series.

Now cross that already bizarre hybrid with a series of scientific TED Talks given by Joesph Mengale, yes, the Nazi who chopped countless pairs of twins to pieces for the greater good.

I'm not sure which is more bizarre. That description or that incredibly, it works.

However Utopia is much, much darker than any of those. It is the darkest TV series I have ever seen. It also as others have said, feels very real.

A note of warning. When I said Utopia was dark, I was not joking. If you suffer from excessive anxiety or you're squeamish, then do not watch Utopia. Because this TV show is nothing like you've ever seen before, it will affect you. You will be thinking about the themes in it long after you've watched it.

The violence in Utopia isn't actually that strong at all, most of it occurs off the screen. But the intense atmosphere of paranoia which accompanies it makes it brutally real.

On the other hand since the governments of the world have apparently taken a leaf out of Utopia's manuscript lately with regard to surveillance, Utopia could well seem prophetic in a few years time. This really is a TV series for 21st century of flying killer robots and universal surveillance.

The Sopranos changed the way I thought about television. I thought television was for lightweights until I watched The Sopranos. It was like thinking books were mostly about erotica and then coming across Shakespeare and entering a world full of subtle complexities on a bunch of levels.

Utopia is nothing like The Sopranos. But the way it'll change how you view television is very similar.

Just one last thing. There is an American show called "Person of Interest" or something like that which has similar themes. Watch this instead.

In a word: this is intense. "

It also has one of the strangest soundtracks you'll ever hear. Listen to this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo)

Warning: Do not watch if you are especially prone to paranoia, depression or anxiety.

<comment><USER26> I wished that they had expanded further on the past as in Utopia S02E01 but they unfortunately didn't. The conclusion was satisfying, though.

<comment><USER25> For me Season 1 was perfection, Season 2 was close to perfection but a little rushed towards the end, and then I wished that they have developed a Season 3 (with a red/blue schema)

Don't you wish you found out what happened with W.W?

The characters were terrific, especially J.H.

The storyline was the very best. There was so much world left to explore and and I wish we'd seen a Utopia derivative/side story from David Fincher's version of it. I think it would have been a perfect fit for the director of Fight Club and still a tall ask for him to live up to.

Like the author of that imdb review I felt it was very real for some reason despite the decor.

<comment><USER26> There's enough unexplored for a season 3 story-wise.

I heard they will make a US version. If it's like Shameless US, I'm all for it, but usually US remakes tend to make a bad copy that also stretches out for no reason. I really like the British and Australian format of a few dense episodes rather than 12 or 22 US episodes where it's 60% filler material. However, if it isn't story driven, then making 22 episodes is ok.

After the bad US copy of Rake tanked, the Australian original got a 3rd season, and it's likely to get a 4th one, so sometimes studio heads make sound decisions.

<comment><USER25> > . I really like the British and Australian format of a few dense episodes > rather than 12 or 22 US episodes where it's 60% filler material.

Agreed. I bought both seasons on DVD and the original soundtrack for both seasons, then sent all my friends a copy of the DVD/Bluray for Christmas. I wish there was a better way to support projects you like though. In particular microtransactions on the Net are total fucking shit, it needs to be built-in to OS or Browser as a universal standard and simple.

> I heard they will make a US version.

I'm afraid not. That was David Fincher/HBO and it's not going ahead.

<comment><USER26> > I'm afraid not. That was David Fincher/HBO and it's not going ahead.

I'm glad they won't, because the risk of ruining it is too high as proven time and again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just watched tonights episode with the wife who was on FB liking and commenting on photos of our friends kids doing ordinary stuff. I called this episodes rhetoric after 3 minutes and she was not pleased to find I was right.

We're going to the zoo tomorrow. I might like a tiger if its not sitting around in the California sun and doing nothing.

<comment><USER19> Watched the first episode while impulsively grabbing the phone to play 2048 game (I do that a lot recently, to pad up the "brain use" to 100%). The episode made me immediately notice and think about what I was doing and why...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm going home, see you in a few hours.

</comment><comment><USER29> I heard the third season was coming out so I checked it out...wow, great show! The first couple of seasons have few episodes so it's easy to catch up. Great writing, but I shouldn't be surprised as it comes from the mind of Charlie Brooker.

</comment><comment><USER30> I remember this, it was an app! People! Made by some douchebags :/

<comment><USER6> I remember the drama. Delicious.</comment></comment>


When the Police treat software like Magic - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/technology/facial-recognition-software-dangers.html <comment><USER2> Police have been doing this for years with "science". Bite mark analysis, blood spatter analysis, lie detector tests, it's all total hooey. They don't care as long as the convictions keep rolling in.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_dentistry#Criticism_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_dentistry#Criticism_of_bite_mark_analysis)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodstain_pattern_analysis#Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodstain_pattern_analysis#Criticism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_analysis#Microscopic_hair...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_analysis#Microscopic_hair_analysis_in_forensics)

Even when the science is good, sloppy practitioners can lead to innocent people going to jail.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/04/20/524894955...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2017/04/20/524894955/massachusetts-throws-out-more- than-21-000-convictions-in-drug-testing-scandal)

Facial recognition can and will be used by prosecutors to send innocent people to jail. Courts will use it as a tool without understanding how it works, based on the testimony of an expert witness that the prosecution will truck in. In my mind it's a certainty.

</comment><comment><USER3> They just follow procedures and processes. It's not magic.</comment>


The trouble with FriendFeed - <AUTHOR> http://streem.us/izaidi/ink/the+trouble+with+FriendFeed

<comment><USER2> If you comments had the same weight as the initial blog you would have a forum. seriously they don't realize that? (read comments on blog)</comment>


What we've been buying during lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/55b70e0f-f505-481a-9ece-1c1f8f7b50cd <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/TwXk4](http://archive.is/TwXk4)</comment>


Coherent OS - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_(operating_system) <comment><USER3> Fun fact - The Mark Williams Company[1], who made Coherent, was founded by Aaron Schwartz father, Robert Schwartz [2].

A couple of friends and I drooled over an AT&T Unix manual that our public library had in 1990 - 1991. Unix seemed really cool but we could never afford a real Unix machine. We talked about pooling our money and buying a copy of Coherent but we never did. Then Linux came on the scene and Coherent was forgotten.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER4> This brings back a lot of memories.

I was an intern an Inetco sytems in Vancouver (circa 1989?). They developed switching software for ATMs that used Coherent running on Intel PCs.

My task was to extend the Coherent shell (a clone of the standard Unix sh) with BSD csh features (history, etc.). I had nothing to go on except the csh man page.

I have since lost the source code (it was called the "wsh"), but I suspect I would cringe looking at it now.

Coherent was definitely my gateway drug into Unix.

</comment><comment><USER5> Coherent was a great option in and around the 1990-92 timeframe. It was a great UNIX clone for $99 (with a great manual to boot). What killed it is they, for some reason, spent time and treasure port XWindows to it instead of working on a TCP/IP stack. It would have been the perfect Internet OS.

<comment><USER6> Just from memory, I can sort of see how they could have mistaken those priorities. Windowing systems (with which X11 was synonymous on unixy systems) were a big deal at the time, while TCP/IP, even networking in general, was still emerging in what probably was Coherent's target market.

Coherent _did_ have UUCP, didn't it? In a lot of cases, that got you much further in small to mid scale environments than TCP/IP. I wouldn't even be surprised if Novell Netware would have been considered more important.

<comment><USER7> > I wouldn't even be surprised if Novell Netware would have been considered > more important.

Speaking as a field engineer from the UK from days of yore... Up until around 1995 IPX/SPX, Novell's default networking stack at that time, was hugely prevalent in corporate and governmental environments. I didn't start bumping into TCP/IP in any serious way until around 1992 in my job as a field engineer. The general kinda setup was groups of departmental Novell Netware 386 servers (I was a Netware engineer since around '87) with loads of DOS and Windows 2/3.x clients running Novell's IPX/SPX stack atop NE2000 compatible NIC's.

Around '95 things changed. Novell Netware 4 (as did NT 3.51 - NT done properly) shipped and the default stack became TCP/IP...the rest is history.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think people forget how prevalent IPX/SPX and Netware was back in the late 80s-early 90s.

Fun anecdote: I used to work on a large MoD site as PC support during that era, and one call I got was to visit a bunch of porta-cabins to fix their Netware network because they wanted to play network DOOM and for some reason it wasn't working.

<comment><USER7> Haha, this sounds familiar :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember the magazine ads for it: [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vfzVzVxKynE/To2Hu97jlLI/AAAAAAAAAD...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vfzVzVxKynE/To2Hu97jlLI/AAAAAAAAAD8/oo15jOBz0JY/s1600/Coherent+4.0+OS+32-bit+which+runs+on+80386+and+80486+machine+advert.jpg)

</comment><comment> nils-m-holm In case somebody did not know yet: Coherent is officially free software now. You can download disk images with the whole system, including full, self- replicting source code, here:

[https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/ftp/vms/](https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/ftp/vms/)

Udo's Coherent pages in general are worth a visit:

[https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/](https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I met about Coherent thanks a small article in the spanish edition of ComputerWorld[1]. I was 13 y/o and all my computer knowledge was about Basic, Pacal, DOS and Win3.1. Good times. I still remember the accompanying picture in the article, showing the windowing system with an astronaut picture in a window, some terminals and a file explorer. I think that picture inspired my view of what operating systems should be, more than everything I've seen since then.

Also, I recently stumbled upon Idris[2], which, as far as I know, predates Xenix and Coherent in the PC scene.

[1] [https://www.computerworld.es/archive/omega-anuncia- coherent-...](https://www.computerworld.es/archive/omega-anuncia-coherent-un- clonico-de-unix-de-bajo-precio-y-facilidad-de-uso) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_\(operating_system\))

</comment><comment><USER7> Back in the day (early 1991) just before Linux appeared I convinced my company to pay for a copy of Coherent and they agreed. It was $99 and I learned a decent amount of Unixy basics on my el-cheapo clone 386 PC. In summary it _was_ a pretty decent learning tool. I managed to get it to connect to my ISP and get some basic text based internet kinda things done.

I eventually filched a copy of SCO Unix from a customer (which is what I had to support way back then - along with SCO Xenix) with a license key and ran that for a bit and once Linux became a bit more stable (for me it was Slackware circa 1994/1995) I started running that instead.

I kinda wonder what would have happened if MWC had open sourced Coherent back then (provided they owned all their own code, or the third party code was compatible with GPL/MIT/et-al)?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is only based on playing around with it in a VM and poking at its source code after it was open sourced with a BSD license in 2015, but to me, Coherent seemed like a quite well put together system. Enough that it made me a bit sad that it's now an OS of the past.

<comment><USER10> Coherent's misfortune was that it was released at the same time that Linux was.

All through the 90s as I progressed from Coherent to AT&T Unix to Novell's Unixware to Sun's Solaris, I used to to look at Linux every six months or so. I was always gobsmacked at how quickly Linux (actually Gnu/Linux) was moving ahead in leaps and bounds.

By the time that 2001 rolled around, it was time for me to put away my Solaris and switch to Linux fulltime.

<comment><USER11> While Linux would have certainly killed Coherent eventually, that's not quite the case. First Coherent was out long before Linux. Coh was around long enough for AT&T to have sent Dennis Ritchie to Chicago to inspect the code and evaluate it for copyright claims. Coherent ran on the PDP11 and on the 80286. Linux became a real force in the Unix market around 1998. MWC went out of business in Feb 1995. The first round of layoffs at MWC happened in Oct, 1994.

A perfect storm of several things killed Coherent The two biggest problems were:

The customers dinging Mark Williams Company in the newsgroup mainly complained about the lack of TCP/IP networking. This happened because MWC had done a customer pole to see what big feature should come next? TCP/IP or X11. X11 won.

The real or perceived drop in quality of the product. This one is hard to explain. Coherent 3.10 and 4.0 had been solid V7 Unix clones with V7 sensibilities. When 4.2.05 shipped it included a really nasty disk driver bug that basically destroyed your file system beyond the ability of fsck to fix. The bug was triggered when your drive when into a very common thermal recalibration mode. This mode was rare or hadn't existed during the days of MFM/RLL/ESDI drives but became common with ATA drives especially as the market got flooded with cheap 504MB drives. While the bug was fixed somewhere between 4.2.10 and 4.2.14, the damage to Coherent's reputation was done.

<comment><USER12> > The bug was triggered when your drive when into a very common thermal > recalibration mode

As the person responsible (alas), my specific recollection of this particular bug was that the root cause wasn't thermal recalibration, but rather UDMA signalling errors.

Prior versions of Coherent using PIO mode had excruciatingly slow access, and when adding support for UDMA I also added support for the disk driver to recognise sequential access and issue multisector transfer requests; this boosted performance fairly massively, something like 3-4 _times_ for some common things, and it was run for a fairly long time in-house and by beta testers with no trouble before it shipped.

The problem though, was a small - literally one line - arithmetic error when the drive end of things reported a UDMA transfer error had occurred in the middle of a multisector operation; the error-handling code that set up a retry of the operation didn't compute the start kernel address correctly when a whole bunch of transfers had been merged (and some subset had worked).

The primary problem with the UDMA modes was sensitivity to correct cable termination - <USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Cable_select](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Cable_select) for some of that; basically, signal reflections from parallel ATA cable runs that didn't have terminating resistors made things electrically marginal and some systems would have really excessive numbers of UDMA CRC faults as a consequence, and given sufficiently high error rates and really bad timing that could end up polluting the buffer cache with stuff that was skewed by a sector :-(

The big thing (on top of not having any in-house hardware that triggered this specific bug) was the sheer volume of work required for those releases, since getting from what was basically a fairly vanilla Seventh Edition UNIX to where it needed to be to start running large pieces of third-party code expecting POSIX was a big lift. Since there weren't many people, everyone was having to wear lots of hats; for instance, aside from kernel work I did a huge amount of work for POSIX.1 and .2 compatibility and on top of doing the underlying code changes (which ranged all over the system, particularly for some of the stuff we ran into Autotools scripts relying on) all of those needed documenting, too.

[ Fred Butzen did amazing work writing the actual manpage text and making it really easy to understand - he justly deserved the credit for the quality of the manual in terms of its readability. But the scale of the changes needed to bring so many parts and pieces from V7 to POSIX meant lots and lots and lots of work trying to iterate over docs for technical accuracy at the same time as having to redesign all the affected parts and pieces. It was, in a word, exhausting. ]

<comment> nils-m-holm Thank you for sharing the story! Even these days I enjoy hearing about the company that produced the first Unix system that I used at home (Coherent 3.0). It was my main operating system for more than 10 years and, looking back, I have never enjoyed computing more than in those days.

Regarding the driver bug, I guess I was lucky, because I still used a MR-535 MFM disk in the late 1990's. I think I later upgraded to a 100MB IDE disk, but was still lucky.

Personally I was not even happy about the move from V7 to POSIX, because I enjoyed the simplicity of V7 very much, but things started to change and supporting POSIX was certainly a neccessity at that time.

Anyway, thanks for contributing to a great OS! I still keep a VM with 3.2 around and use it regularly.

<comment><USER12> > I think I later upgraded to a 100MB IDE disk, but was still lucky.

Well, it really wasn't luck as much as keeping with the electrical specs. Do that, you'd never see a problem, and the later IDE "cable select" schemes did really help to mitigate a lot of the damage from improperly terminated cables.

> Anyway, thanks for contributing to a great OS!

Well, other than living in infamy due to introducing that bug, I didn't start there until the push to turn 4.0 from a tech demo into a real product. So really all the credit for 3.2 and earlier which set the foundation for Coherent belongs to the other guys, many of whom were long gone by the time I got there like Dave Conroy (who wrote the MicroEMACS I loved to use) and Randall Howard (who went on to found MKS). There were some great people from the earlier days still there though, like Norm Bartek, Hal Snyder and La Monte Yarroll who where there when I joined and of course Steve Ness who was the sole man behind the MWC C Compiler (much as Fred was responsible for that remarkable manual).

Also worth a mention, among all the other notable characters I remember fondly is one of the support/QA folks at MWC: Jim Leonard aka Trixter, who became a notable demoscene figure - [https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph- we-break-al...](https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all- your-emulators/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My dad (or maybe his work) bought Coherent for him to learn UNIX and we had a setup in the garage with serially-connected VT100-like terminals.

It was my only time knowingly using a UNIX-like OS until a few years later when I installed Slackware.

</comment><comment><USER14> Almost bought it after seeing the stunningly low price. $99 for a Unix like OS? It seemed too good to be true. At the time my housemate and I ran a small multiline BBS we wanted to make into something bigger. Coherent would have been to run Picospan after seeing how well M-Net worked. Someone we contacted at the Mark Williams Company said they didn't think Picospan would work with Coherent's memory model. No idea if that was correct but we went with MajorBBS instead for our big upgrade. Still thought about buying it to play with but Linux showed up before I had the spare money for Coherent.

</comment><comment><USER10> Coherent was my entrance to the wonderful world of Unix back in 1991. Thanks to Coherent's introduction I never ever had to endure Windows as my everyday personal desktop environment.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ran this on the Ithaca Intersystems Z-8000 based rig in the early/mid '80s - it was remarkably command compatible with V7 for the basics, even built a MicroAngelo based 3D graphics system on it.....the biggest problem the box had wasn't Coherent, it was the fact the socketed logic on the custom MMU S100 card kept trying to walk out of the sockets because of thermal issues

</comment><comment><USER16> These days (as another poster has already pointed out) it is under an Open Source license.

The author of this page:

[https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/index.html](https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/coherent/index.html)

previously worked for MWC and has put some quite detailed notes on setting up various aspects of Coherent running under Virtualbox there.

</comment><comment><USER17> I ran this on a 386SX for while in 1991. It came with a very comprehensive "Unix" manual. A couple years later I switched to Linux...

</comment><comment><USER18> Did Linux deal with any of the same legal scrutiny?

<comment><USER19> Yes, for years...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO–Linux_disputes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO–Linux_disputes)

<comment><USER20> SCO was a farce. Microsoft used a company called BayStar to fund SCO's lawsuits, which had absolutely nothing to them; SCO wouldn't even _release_ the evidence it claimed to have proving code copying for a suspiciously long period of time, and when the evidence was released, it was nothing of the sort. Ultimately, the legal merits of the case wouldn't have mattered, in that a bad lawsuit can still drown an opponent. What mattered was that Microsoft waited too damn long to try it: One of the players on the other side was IBM, which by then had a serious business in Linux on mainframes, and a two-bit nuisance suit jumped up with some venture capital wasn't going to sink the damn Nazgul.

[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2547289/baystar- exec-s...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2547289/baystar-exec-says- microsoft--guaranteed--sco-investment.html)

<comment><USER21> >Microsoft used a company called BayStar to fund SCO's lawsuits

Your article suggests otherwise. It seems like some over-eager Microsoft exec promised that BayStar's investment would be 'guaranteed' by Microsoft. That exec was subsequently fired and nothing was formalized. BayStar ultimately lost money on SCO. But even that much is suspect as this account is hearsay and comes from a managing member of BayStar who has cause to deflect blame for his or his company's dumb investment in SCO.

<comment><USER22> MS claimed to have changed their minds, but it's hard to say what really went on there. Due to the nature of the whole enterprise people would be very conscious of what to put on paper / email. It seems plausible that the SVP was just paid a lot of money to quit and not refute the blame placed on him after the rest of MS decided to wash their hands.

(And in any event, actions by the responsible executives are actions of the company, and going back to say "it was just this guy, not MS the company" is not really the right way to think about it)

<comment><USER21> Again, you're taking the words of a BayStar managing member at face value. Why? He has a reason to lie and deflect blame. There is no other supporting evidence.

Nothing else rings true about his story either. Like for example, you don't make a big investment as private equity firm based on flimsy (at best) guarantees. Regardless, had that guarantee actually happened and BayStar really believed it, they would have sued Microsoft just to embarrass them and force a settlement.

I'm sure Microsoft was applauding the lawsuit but that doesn't mean they funded it as OP just outright stated.

> It seems plausible that the SVP was just paid a lot of money to quit and not > refute the blame placed on him after the rest of MS decided to wash their > hands.

Only if you're conspiratorial minded because that doesn't seem plausible at all.

I think your dislike of Microsoft clouds your judgment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> in 1990, while working for an insurance company, we were looking for what UNIX to port a multi user database to, We looked at SCO, Microport, Cohernet and Sperry. The company chose Microport, and the Sperry went back, so I got to keep SCO and Coherent. Loaded and ran both, liked SCO a tiny bit more because of it successfully compiling a few programs, and heard about the UNIX Copyright controversy.

Coherent installed, and ran, but had a few incompatibilities with our software, but ran solid as hell. The documentation was very good too.

</comment><comment><USER24> I remember using Coherent along with Xenix around the same time. I think I tried everything I could get my hands on :) I even used 386BSD heh.</comment>


Ask HN: Music while coding? - <AUTHOR>

What kind of music do you listen to while coding? <comment><USER2> It depends on my mood and the day. Sometimes I need silence to focus. Other times I want driving hard rock to get my blood pumping. Sometimes I like traditional Irish fiddling and ballads. Other times pop-rock or folk. Really it varies as much as my general music listening does. As long as I know the music well enough, it will fade into the background -- lyrics or no. So it all depends on mood.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't generally listen classical music but when it comes to coding/hacking; post classical romantic era (1815–1910) European art music is the magical ingredient of productivity for me.

Action: Tune in to `Frédéric Chopin' or `Franz Schubert' channels on Pandora/Last.fm

Result: at least 2X productivity compared to sans music environment.

</comment><comment><USER4> Techno. The repetition gets me into a rhythm. I can listen to the same song on loop for hours. Each time finding some little nuance that I missed before. I suppose the same effect can happen with anything without vocals. But techno (for me) drives concentration.

</comment><comment><USER5> I listen to <http://www.stereomood.com> \- pretty useful app. Songs are tagged by "moods" (happy, relaxed, sleepy, ...) which make it easier, for me, to choose which kind of music I want to listen to.

</comment><comment><USER6> First, we put the Russian Anthem in the office to motivate everyone (it really works ahah) Then, everyone listens to their own stuff on PC. I'm now fan of Chinese pop songs! The lyrics are super-lame but it makes me full of joy ahah

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't like to listen to music while coding because I'm not smart enough to think of two things at once.

But when I'm done, I'll pop in some Bone Thugs & Harmony.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is good: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jw31Howgqg>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would think that instrumental is a bit more conducive rather than music with lyrics which could be distracting. Yes? No?

<comment><USER9> Absolutely. Explosions in the Sky and Monkey3 are favourites of mine for coding.

It's also easier to deal with lyrics in foreign languages, simply because my mind can't latch on to what's being said: Sigur Ros (an Icelandic band) are also on the coding playlist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh man. I forgot about Sigur Ros. I know I have at least one of their albums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Biosphere, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Piana, Kobol

<comment><USER11> You might want to check out my friends music blog - he's the former owner of Neptune Records.

<http://www.oystered.blogspot.com/>

<comment><USER10> Interesting stuff, thanks

<comment><USER11> NP. Give a few different posts a listen as he tends to pick a theme and run with it. Also jump back a few months, he was in a super ambient (aka, Biosphere-esq) phase for a while there and that might work better for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pink Floyd, Megaherz, Eisbrecher.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bassdrive.com smooth liquid dnb!

</comment><comment><USER14> Rinkadink or Infected Mushroom

</comment><comment><USER15> Absolutely none. I need to get my shit done, dude! :p</comment>


DuckDuckGo searches increase by 50% in a year - <AUTHOR> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/10/12/0419219/pro-privacy-search-engine-duckduckgo-hits-30-million-daily-searches-up-50-in-a-year <comment><USER2> The Slashdot page links to [https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/pro-privacy- search-engine-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/pro-privacy-search- engine-duckduckgo-hits-30m-daily-searches-up-50-in-a-year/) (discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18194452](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18194452)) which more or less is a summary of [https://duckduckgo.com/traffic](https://duckduckgo.com/traffic) (discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18100243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18100243))

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's a good sign as people get more and more aware of being able to search privately and duck duck go is a great search engine</comment>


Why the Happiest States Have the Highest Suicide Rates - <AUTHOR> http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/25/why-the-happiest-states-have-the-highest-suicide-rates/

<comment><USER2> @jayfuerstenberg They don't touch the Japan issue because there are traditions, viewpoints and religious believes connecting the need to commit suicide in case of failure to restore family honor especially in old established families. On the other hand suicide rates are almost close to zero in societies that are very religious and their religion forbids suicide by banning them from a proper burial.

A) I have lived in Sweden for some months, and I have some conclusions (just my personal opinion). People while caring for community are more independent than most other nations at a truly admirable level. They close in to themselves and deal with their own problems, they won't easily bother you with them. If they feel lonely for example they won't pester other people until they become accepted, they are proud and conscious (except when they are drunk). They are like fully autonomous units functioning in a coordinated society. Furthermore they usually don't blame their mistakes on others and because their society functions relatively well they cannot blame the system.

So maybe it is a mixture of self-awareness, pride and loneliness.

B) If you are fighting for survival, you don't have time to reflect on your problems. Everyday issues occupy your thinking time. Imho it is dangerous to prescribe inequality as a remedy for suicides, the goal (from a social standpoint) is to reduce despair not suicides. A U.S. citizen cannot afford to suicide and leave the rest of his family to a living hell, a Swede can.

C) The green box at the end gives another excellent point there are no miserable beings to look down to and feel better.

D) Something that is wrong in the article is about the research on the baboons. If I remember correctly (i have affiliation to the field) the alpha male has very high levels of stress hormones as do the low tier counterparts - because he needs to be on the lookout for possible usurpers, the best place to be is 2nd or 3rd, not first if you are a baboon concerning about your health.

</comment><comment><USER3> Odd that Japan got no mention in this article.

Japan is ranked 5th worldwide for most suicides per 100,000 people according to Wikipedia.

( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate) )

<comment><USER4> I guess that's because Japan is a counter-example for that "more happiness == more suicides" hypothesis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> because all the sad people are dead?

<comment><USER6> Yes, I think this is what happens when you take the mean of a one tailed distribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This study doesn't seem to compare it to anti-depressant use. I wonder what the average percentage of people in Utah and Hawaii that use anti-depressants vs New York is.</comment>


The Mall Lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.full-stop.net/2016/05/25/features/essays/alex-cocotas/the-mall-lives/ <comment><USER2> I just returned to the USA after two weeks in Singapore, and I found this article quite poignant.

In the downtown area near Suntec/Raffles city, it feels like everything at ground level is a mall (aside from a few historical buildings). Below ground level, there are extensive malls connecting large buildings in the area. As a pedestrian, it's nice to get out of the sun and skip the long waits at the crosswalks, but I did not relish all the time spent in a mall atmosphere.

I stayed in a different neighborhood for the second half of the trip and it was nice to get away from the glitzy, high-end malls of downtown. I ended up encountering even more malls though! They were smaller, older, and more run- down but they were numerous and packed in tight. Many of the construction sites I saw there were for new malls.

The malls do provide a refreshing air-conditioned space when it's unbearable outside, but it was hard for me to get excited about them other than that. If you will be traveling to Singapore soon and you don't enjoy Western malls, good luck in your planning.

<comment><USER3> Exactly what I saw during my stays in Singapore for the last six months or so. How can there be so much retail? The only thing I could figure is that maybe there is nothing else to do ...

You can't work around the house on the weekend (because you can't afford a house). You don't go RV-ing for the weekend (because the are no RVs or places to take them). You don't go to the lake cabin (because you can't afford one).

I don't know, I must be missing something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found this article to be way too long and rambling. I could be wrong, but I think the author also suffers a bit from focusing on too small and unique samples. You can use New York, LA, San Fran, (even a suburb of Tel Aviv) etc, as examples, but these are not representative samples of your average American community (be it any community large enough to (at least previously) support a mall). Even in areas where there is no true urban center, or the urban center remains essentially deserted, Malls are still dying at a phenomenal rate.

The Internet and technology, has largely killed the mall. Teenagers, for example, no longer need to go to the mall to exchange gossip and be "seen." They also have high amount of disposable income. (see: millennials and car usage for similar changes in a market) And Shopping online has become too easy for many people.

The malls that have been able to survive is due to the fact that they are more about entertainment (including shopping as a form of entertainment, such as "build-a-bear" and the like) rather than any other reason. This is one of the reasons that the city centers that have been re-developed have been successful. They're not urban shopping centers, they're urban entertainment centers that happen to have shopping.

There are other reasons that malls have been struggling as well (Suburban sprawl is a big one, especially due to factors such as in part, the Concentric Zone Model [0] (as housing stock gets older, and population increase, many persons move further out to newer/better/larger housing stock, and the previously housing is then taken up by a lower socio-economic class, which may no longer be able to support the local mall. So far, this has been repeating for the past 50ish years.)

The Mall may live, but they're on life support.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model) note: There are problems with concentric zone model, but it's a model, it can still be good for explanations, especially in this case.

<comment><USER5> > Even in areas where there is no true urban center, or the urban center > remains essentially deserted, Malls are still dying at a phenomenal rate. > The Internet and technology, has largely killed the mall. The Mall may live, > but they're on life support.

Is this true? Current data largely supports the opposite argument.

There's no trend of malls (in general) going away, but of _old_ /overbuilt/poorly-located malls dying (or their market dying) while new malls (or new types of malls) are being built. Most major markets are experiencing retail growth (net positive total retail sqft market-wide), despite many bad malls dying off.

> They're not urban shopping centers, they're urban entertainment centers that > happen to have shopping.

Malls have always had a significant amount of entertainment. Nearly every major mall has had (and still has) a movie theatre and multiple restaurants. Some of folks may even remember a time when almost every mall had an arcade in it.

[http://www.costar.com/News/Article/As-Retail-Finally- Enters-...](http://www.costar.com/News/Article/As-Retail-Finally-Enters- Recovery-More-Investors-Backing-Malls-High-End-Shopping-Centers/177006)

[http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/may/08/costar-...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/may/08/costar- strip-malls-retail-recovery/)

The "dead mall" story is a lot like pointing at Detroit or Flint or Baltimore and saying, "look at all those boarded up homes. Housing is dead! People hate having a place to live.". That may certainly be true in those specific areas, but most markets are actually experiencing modest-to-insane amounts of growth.

<comment><USER6> Malls (at least in the traditional form) really are going away in the US. There hasn't been a new enclosed mall built in the US since 2006. ([http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-dying-breed-the-american- shopp...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-dying-breed-the-american-shopping- mall/)), and many have closed and are closing. Retail isn't going away of course, but not using the mall model. Typical of what is popular now is the "Power Center" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_center_(retail)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_center_\(retail\))).

<comment><USER5> A strip mall (or "power center") is still a mall.

<comment><USER6> Not culturally. The idea of a mall as a pseudo-public space where people would go on weekends just as a place to kill a few hours needs the enclosed part. A "strip mall" is a place where you park, go to the one store you want, and drive off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sort of article makes me wonder whether the 'decline of malls' is more to do with the culture and geography of the US than anything specifically related to shopping malls themselves. Because they're also (at least from what I can tell) doing pretty well in Europe as well, with the popular ones in the UK seemingly just going from strength to strength and quite a few new ones opening up thanks to the Westfields brand.

Indeed, in parts of London (and quite a few towns in outer London), the shopping centre basically is the high street.

</comment><comment><USER8> Compare this to coverage from the Times about the decline of malls in America:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics- and...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics-and- nostalgia-of-dead-malls.html)</comment>


"I'm feeling lucky" no more - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-im-feeling-lucky-easter-egg.html

<comment><USER2> If you add &btnI to the end of a query link, it makes an "I'm feeling lucky" link.

I used it recently in a RSS feed I was making for events where I didn't have websites for the events. I made queries with the title, date and location and added &btnI to the end. It's not perfect, but pretty good.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=Tall+Ships+Race+2012+-+Day+1+...](http://www.google.com/search?q=Tall+Ships+Race+2012+-+Day+1+Thursday%2C+23rd+August+Dublin+%28various+locations%29++Dublin&btnI)

The feed for those interested/those in Dublin: <http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreeDublinEventGuide>

I had to roll back changes which added descriptions due to the timeouts when retrieving the data. I'll improve it eventually.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish Google would integrate "I'm feeling lucky" into Chrome.

For example, I Google "bootstrap" a few times every weekday. I know Google's first result will be correct. I'd love to be able to shift-enter or something in chrome after entering a search term to skip the Google SERP entirely.

<comment><USER4> In Firefox I can create a bookmark to [https://www.google.com/search?btnI=lucky&q=java+6+%s](https://www.google.com/search?btnI=lucky&q=java+6+%s) with the keyword set to jd then by typing (say) "jd Collections" in the address bar I get directed to the first Google result for "java 6 collections"

I gather you can emulate a similar behavior in Chrome using its 'edit search engines' function.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty awesome, and it works _exactly_ the same way in Chrome.

I just modified the concept for my own use by making a custom search engine for

      https://www.google.com/search?btnI=lucky&q=%s+site:developer.mozilla.org+docs

linked to the keyword "mdn".

So I can type "mdn settimeout" or "mdn border radius" and I'll be taken to the respective pages!

<comment><USER6> As a rather shameless plug, using DDG allows you to do the exact same thing if you add an exclamation mark without even having to make a custom search engine.

<comment><USER7> DDG = duckduckgo.com (some of us who've been reading HN for a long time probably know this, but I imagine that the majority of readers doesn't)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember the first time my mother used Google. She saw the "I'm feeling lucky" button, thought it was an ad for online gambling, and became upset that I was directing her to use such a tool.

I really wouldn't miss it if they got rid of it entirely.

<comment><USER9> While I never use the _button_ , the underlying functionality is incredibly useful for special-purpose search shortcuts to things like reference documentation where the top result for a specific key word or phrase is very likely to be the one you're looking for. The example I use dozens of times a day is "universal context-sensitive help": for instance, I have Alfred.app set up with a shortcut mapping "msl SOMETHING" to the the "I'm feeling lucky" result for "site:msdn.microsoft.com SOMETHING", so, e.g., "msl CreateFile" will, with very high probability, take me to the reference page for the Win32 CreateFile function, and — here's the important bit — I can set up similar shortcuts for _any_ documentation site in about a minute.

<comment><USER10> One case I found at my last job where the interstitial Google search result saved the day was when searching for the MFC class CString. As it turns out, the most popular thing out there called a CString has nothing at all to do with programming, and if I'd done an "I'm feeling lucky" on it, well, no doubt my boss would have walked past at just the wrong moment...

<comment><USER11> if a site:msdn.microsoft.com search comes back with the other type of cstring results then something has gone very wrong over at Redmond.

<comment><USER10> Clearly, but I didn't used to bother with typing that since it's twice as long as my actual query and most of the time it was the top result anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like an odd change (in the UX sense). I wonder why they didn't just remove it altogether.

<comment><USER13> Most likely because people expect to see it but few use it. So now the few who still use it will be surprised (pleasantly or otherwise), word will spread, and people who didn't use it before will start using it again with the new functionality. So instead of removing a classic UI element of the classic Google homepage they just changed the functionality. I think that's logical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> And here comes the backlash. The last remaining people who use that button and those who are just upset because they were alerted to a change anywhere will all come out of the woodwork to try to convince us all that Google is evil, stupid, etc. because they use the button or they somehow know better.

Google doesn't just make changes at random. There must be a very compelling reason to change the "I'm feeling lucky" button. The simplest explanation is that no one uses it anymore. Good for them. The few who do use it will survive and continue using Google despite claims to the contrary. I think what they've done with it is cool. Why keep a UI element in place that no one uses?

<comment><USER14> You couldn't even click the button anyway! As soon as you start typing, Google Instant kicks in and takes you to search results. So there is _no_ use case for the button anymore.

<comment><USER13> Right! I mean, are you disagreeing with me because I'm completely in agreement with you on this.

<comment><USER14> Right :) I'm just being more specific about what the "very compelling reason" is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This still works for those who use the browser search engine functionality in modern browsers:

[http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=%s+rotten+tomatoes...](http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=%s+rotten+tomatoes&btnI=Im+feeling+lucky)

I've setup 'rt' as a search engine keyword when i quickly want to look up a movie on Rotten tomatoes.

You don't even have to type in the full movie name. Make google's algorithms sweat for your laziness.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm Feeling Ducky.

</comment><comment><USER17> Still feeling lucky ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> Testing?</comment>


Tell HN: New Year Resolutions? Shorter Iterations Needed - <AUTHOR>

Do you use a waterfall methodology for your coding projects? No? Then why use it in your life? Just sayin'... <comment><USER2> "Practice makes" has been on my mind lately. Not 'practice makes perfect' but simply that whatever we repeatedly do is what we become good at. That includes bad habits.

I've been using the "Seinfeld method"(1) in making sure I commit /something/ toward personal apps every day, and it's definitely helped me not only keep the apps going, but I'm sure that I've learned more in the last few weeks than I've learned in months.

My resolution: Keep producing something, anything, since it's all progress.

[1] [http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity- se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

</comment><comment><USER3> My new year resolution is to set 28 day goals. Every 1st of the month I set a something as my goal, then work on it for 28 days. I have to make sure I do not deviate from it. Then after 28 days, what ever time is left in the month will be "relaxation" time. The cycle repeats.</comment>


Centenarian misidentified as 1 year old by govt identity tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/12/home-office-tells-man-101-his-parents-must-confirm-id <comment><AUTHOR> Facial recognition double check disabled because it incorrectly determined he was a youth, previously.

I suggest a lack of records in the UI about judgements which the software made, worsen the error.</comment>


YC sending weird traffic? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone else noticing weird traffic from YC recently?  A couple of my blog posts have been posted recently - none got much real traffic but i'm now getting +75 hits from expired YC URLs daily.
example: http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=bu1a8HSpa3 http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=w0rxaX4D1c
am i missing something? is there some link sharing thing that could be sending these hits legitimately?  otherwise i'm guessing something weird is going on.  i would have searched for this to see if it had already been commented - hopefully not a rerun.. <comment><USER2> You probably just had a popular post on the second page of news (the page you get if you click on More at the bottom of the front page).</comment>


Annotated ECMAScript (Javascript) 5.1 specification in HTML - <AUTHOR> http://es5.github.com/multi.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Just happened across this, it is a very complete reference/specification of the latest version of ECMAScript (which most of us here probably use in the form of Javascript).

It doesn't include the Document/DOM methods that are present in browser Javascript, because ECMAScript is the general "core" language that Javascript is based upon. Adding DOM methods and `document` and `window` objects to ECMAScript is basically* what turns it into browser Javascript and not, say, ActionScript or Node.js.

It does provide detailed descriptions and specifications of the new properties and methods in ES5, such as `Array.forEach` and `Function.apply` and such.

And in case you were wondering what's the new features in ES5, there's an overview of that in this article: (which is where I got the OP link in the first place)

[http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introducing- ecmascript-5-...](http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/introducing- ecmascript-5-1/)

ES5 is currently supported by all major browsers: Opera 11.60, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4, Safari 5.1 and Chrome 13. With some minor caveats for IE9 and Safari, see the article for details.</comment>


Mobile First: It is time to persist, not pivot. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shoutem.com/2012/12/11/mobile-first-it-is-time-to-persist-not-pivot/

<comment><USER2> Saying no to mobile is insane, it's like saying no to change and the future... Who ever can't see that is blind, simple as that.

I think it's amazing how mobile OS like iOs and Android are taking over, especially the Internet consumption. Saying no to mobile is like saying no to fax or email back in the day...

[http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/03/mary-meeker-releases- stunn...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/03/mary-meeker-releases-stunning- data-on-the-state-of-the-internet/)</comment>


Cool Abstract Ubuntu Wallpaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.streetread.com/swirley-ubuntu.jpg

<comment><AUTHOR> Got bored last night and thought my desktop needed some ubuntu spirit. Used photoshop to blend in a nice subtle ubuntu logo and thought you guys might like it.

The original wallpaper (w/o logo) can be found at -> [http://uribaani.deviantart.com/art/Revours-Wallpaper- pack-86...](http://uribaani.deviantart.com/art/Revours-Wallpaper- pack-86876151)

I didn't create the original wallpaper.</comment>


SpaceX bootster falls off OCISLY while returning to Florida - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/spacex-finally-landed-their-falcon-heavy-booster-on-a-ship-only-for-it-to-topple-over <comment><AUTHOR> This was a question I have always wondered about, how does the booster stay on the recovery ship as is sails back to port? Apparently it can fall off :-(. The interesting thing is the Octograbber is a pretty cool device that they are changing to be able to hold on to F9 Heavy cores as well.</comment>


Google releases Docs and Sheets apps for iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/30/5668608/google-docs-sheets-slides-apps-launching-for-ios-android

<comment><USER2> This is definitely the way to go. You can create documents while offline, and they'll get uploaded to Google Drive the next time you connect to the internet.

If you _must_ send a doc via email as an attachment, it will be converted to a .pdf (at least on my Android 4.1.2 device).</comment>


Target Confirms Point-of-Sale Malware Was Used in Attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/target-confirms-point-sale-malware-was-used-attack <comment><USER2> These systems are usually windows machines - typically "hardened" to various degrees (lock out USB keys etc) and protected by enterprise anti-virus solutions (mcafee, etc)

The windows build is typically a single "golden image" with a known checksum that can be blasted down to machines over wan/lan during the evening.

Source: I used build and deploy the image to many thousands of POS systems at Dixons Store Groups retail chains (UK)

<comment><USER3> Doesn't DSG use their own custom made EPOS system? Eclipse? Do you have any experience with it and their security policies?

I've had quite a few experiences as a customer at PC World when they've had "till failures" \- ironic for a computer store. They often blame head office for overnight updates gone wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In many ways this isn't surprising and has just been a matter of time. PoS systems are some of the least thoroughly engineered and least well protected yet critically important systems in existence. Hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions are processed through these often half-assed engineered systems.

<comment><USER5> Not commenting directly on your assessment of the state of PoS systems, but how does a software vendor (not OS or sys admin) protect against targeted malware that is able to get access rights to your RAM space from scanning for well known track signatures?

I agree more can and should be done, but protecting against targeted malware by a sophisticated attacker is a very difficult problem. The amount of money at stake is large, so the resources expended by the attackers is also large.

Personally I believe that the current credit card system is broken and needs a significant change, but this is a very difficult process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Two questions:

1\. How do you get 40 million cards in a day from scraping RAM? Wouldn't it be limited to live transactions? 40m seems like a huge number of transactions for one day. An average ticket of $50 would make it a 2 billion dollar day.

2\. Why does the card data need to be decrypted on the POS system? Why can't it be sent to a central service and decrypted there and an authorization code is sent back?

<comment><USER7> From Target's press release, this happened between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, so it's closer to three weeks. Dec. 15 was just the first day they confirmed the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anybody know what kind of operating system is running on the devices?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's likely a windows-based platform, as Windows has been almost exclusively the platform targeted by memory parser POS malware.

<comment><USER9> Target is yes as far as I know a windows shop. All the staff computers are Win7, all the PDAs and wall mounted price scanners are WinCE.</comment></comment></comment>


Poor Schrödinger's cat: Entangled particles can now be in 103 states at once - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/03/27/poor-schrodingers-cat-entangled-particles-can-now-be-in-103-states-at-once/ <comment><USER2> Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment used to point out how bizarre the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum effects was.

I suppose this cements that idea.</comment>


16GB IPhone 4S with Rare Flappybird Installed Onsale For Over £6m - <AUTHOR> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-iPhone-4S-16gb-Rare-Flappy-Bird-Installed-/151229097917?pt=UK_Mobile_Phones&hash=item2335f4e7bd

<comment><USER2> Scam. Everyone knows that these auctions end and no one pays, and no one gets in trouble. On a smaller scale, it's the one thing most people come to hate about eBay. They should end this auction.</comment>


As homelessness surges in California, so does a backlash - <AUTHOR> https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/10/21/breaking-news/as-homelessness-surges-in-california-so-does-a-backlash/ <comment><USER2> There are multiple sides to this issue. On one side, homeless people often seem to feel entitled to live wherever they want to without paying a penny in rent or taxes, while actual residents in California are paying through the nose in both those categories. People like myself don't believe people have the right to live wherever they want regardless of ability to afford it. This obviously creates tensions.

On another side, California's housing policies at both the government and NIMBY homeowner level have been so asinine for so long that it's impossible for lower-income people to afford rent in major metro areas and people are finding themselves on the street after being priced out of their own homes on a regular basis. Then they stay in the same area, homeless, because of reason #1 above.

On a third side, Californians have been paying a huge amount of money for homeless programs, rehab programs, education programs, and I don't even know what else (it's hard to keep up with all the ballot measures) for quite some time with limited visible effect. Now there are measures to build homeless shelters not in places where residents wouldn't complain, but in extremely high property value places like Marina del Rey. Again, see reason #1 above.

And on yet another side, articles like [1] like to downplay the effects of homeless immigration from other states, but at least 13% of SoCal homeless people came from somewhere else. Politicians at the federal level like to tout dropping national homeless numbers as something to be proud of, but in reality Californians are paying, at least in part, for other states' refusal to deal with their own homeless problems.

[1] [https://www.politifact.com/california/article/2018/jun/28/di...](https://www.politifact.com/california/article/2018/jun/28/dispelling- myths-about-californias-homeless/)

</comment><comment><USER3> At some point, I began skimming, but this article doesn't even seem to list the worst stuff.

I archived the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide (and started Street Life Solutions as its replacement) I part because of a string of murders. Someone was setting tents on fire.

There was also a deadly Hepatitis outbreak disproportionately impacting the homeless population and other things that factored into my decision, but some of the backlash against the homeless in California literally includes murdering some of the homeless.

</comment><comment><USER4> The government of California has been systematically attacking its own housing market for years and this is the entirely predictable (and predicted) result. Regulations and zoning discourages new housing construction while rent control drives housing providers out of the market.</comment>


Show HN: Happierco – Employee-Centric Performance Management Solution - <AUTHOR> https://www.happierco.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I'm Ulrich, co-founder of Happierco. We're building the first employee-centric performance management solution.

We help our users turn their company culture into a competitive advantage by enabling the empowerment of rank-and-file employees to drive business growth and effect change in the company.

The numerous solutions in the market all see performance management from the lenses of managers and are just trying to build better tools for managers to collect information.

With Happierco, we want to go further. We are bringing more value by increasing positive interactions between the employees, enabling transparency and faster employee development, which in turn benefits the company as a whole.

Performance management is frequently a source of frustration for employees across every industry, especially creative ones. So I guess it'll be a subject of great interest here on HN. I am looking forward to the discussion!</comment>


How I Start: Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://www.howistart.org/posts/erlang/1 <comment><USER2> BTW this is the author of Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good

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

I just wanted to say that both this write-up and in the whole book you can see passion, and excitement for the topic. They say cliches like "work of love" but if anything that defines it I think.

It is the little humorous bits, the additional "Don't Drink Too Much Koolaid" parts, the visuals. It is a fantastic resource.

I think this post is a partially the response to "Why Cool Kids Don't Use Erlang" topic we discussed recently. There was a lot of "Too hard to get started" and I think Fred took the initiative and did something about it. That is great. Thank you Fred!

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the write up, especially the part on relx was enlightening. I've been toying with Erlang, and have three questions I have not been able to find good answers to. Maybe someone could elaborate?

1) How well does Erlang deal with multiple VMs on a single machine? Are there any upsides to using a single VM per machine? (So, run your own code along side a RabbitMQ instance for example, if that is even feasible.)

2) What is a good way to have run-time mutable configuration data? I was looking into Mnesia to store user / password combinations, but it seems a bit overkill. Ideally a solution that lets you add / remove config data from a running node on the fly.

3) How do you handle access control to the node, while preserving the distributed Erlang features? VPN all machines and then only listen on the private interface?

<comment><USER4> 1\. I've tended to see slightly better overall performance running multiple VMs (nodes)/server.

2\. We use zookeeper and cache locally with an ETS wrapper. It's not-erlang but there are a lot of nice zookeeper tools and the ezk module for erlang is very solid.

3\. we typically don't do vpn as if the vpn goes down it is a disaster. dual nics are ideal. i don't always configure that way due to limitations of the environment (non-VPC AWS, for instance). but what are you trying to control? access to the node even if you know the cookie?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the pointers. Regarding 3), access control was probably not what I was thinking about. More like, how do I use distributed Erlang without allowing everybody access to the node (even without knowing the cookie) and how do I prevent a MITM to snoop on my Erlang traffic. [1] seems to have some decent info on in, I should have researched some more.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/890938/howto-encrypt- erla...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/890938/howto-encrypt-erlang-rpc- calls-and-mnesia-replication-and-other-traffic)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a really great project that could really make going from zero to "productive" with a new language so much quicker and more fun. I can't wait for Rust and Elixir to happen :)

<comment><USER6> +1 Exactly what was required. It's hard to find opinionated guides on the web for this sort of thing and can be sometimes overwhelming for someone just starting out. Great project!

Is there a way I can subscribe for updates via email? Thanks a ton!

<comment><AUTHOR> Not currently. I've setup a twitter account where I'll post updates [https://twitter.com/how_i_start](https://twitter.com/how_i_start) and you'll see updates here [https://github.com/howistart/howistart](https://github.com/howistart/howistart) before they go live.

Depending on how much this picks up I may expand to having an update subscription list.

Python and Elixir are next up. Those will hopefully be out by the second week of July.

<comment><USER7> Just curious, what do you use Erlang for? I can think of neural networks as a possible use case but I don't hear much in the way of that.

<comment><USER8> Any time you need to do multiple things at once, erlang (or elixir) is often the best choice.

EG: If you have a website and want to serve more than one request at at time. If you have multiple people chatting or sending mail, or instant messaging, or voice communicating, erlang is a good choice.

If you have a search engine with many people searching, while spiders crawl the web, erlang is a good choice.

The only "downside" to erlang is new syntax and that its "slower" on a given node. But this last one isn't really a downside-- you can scale a process to 20 nodes with erlang a whole lot better than, say, node.js or java or go. None of those really support concurrency properly (of the ones who even try.)

This makes erlang unique.

I think many engineers try to tell themselves that the JVM or node.js or Go can be concurrent, but they are really just making excuses for the fact that the erlang syntax is a bit of a hurdle for getting started.

I'm fine with that- it makes a great hiring filter!

If someones learned erlang, you know something that makes them better than most of the rest of the programmers out there who are happy to believe rationalizations that let them get away with not learning erlang. (And if you're not thinking about concurrency you're even further behind.)

<comment><USER9> What would you say about Clojure, then, where one of the big selling points is concurrency?

<comment><USER10> Completely different definitions of concurrency. For Clojure what ships in the box as concurrency is multi-thread, single process concurrency(aka built around shared memory). Erlang devs knew that would never scale beyond a single box so they didn't bother going after it. They built single-thread, multi- process concurrency as the core of their concurrency model(share nothing). This means by default Erlang concurrency primitives work beyond a single node, Clojure's don't.

<comment><USER11> > They built single-thread, multi-process concurrency as the core of their > concurrency model(share nothing). This means by default Erlang concurrency > primitives work beyond a single node, Clojure's don't.

Well actually Erlang is not single-threaded it is multi-scheduler and multi- process. CPU or OS based threads are used for scheduler and processes (possibly hundreds of thousands of them) run on all of them.

Moreover processes are very small memory wise (only a few K) and _most importantly_ have isolated heaps (yes, all while running in the same OS-level process.

What you are mentioning there is called "distribution". This is what allows you to send a message to another Erlang process, running on a different machine, different continent and have it look like Pid ! Msg which is exactly how you'd send a message to a local Erlang process as well.

<comment><USER12> > Well actually Erlang is not single-threaded it is multi-scheduler and multi- > process.

I think the parent and you are talking about separate things.

Erlang the language is single threaded. Erlang the language has no concept of threads. That's what I think the parent was referring to, since he writes "concurrency model".

The BEAM Erlang VM, on the other hand, uses multiple schedulers and multiple threads, pretty much as you describe. Most people regard that as a characteristic of the VM _implementation_, not the concurrency _model_.

<comment><USER11> > Erlang the language is single threaded.

How so? Isn't it closer to multi-threaded with threads having isolated heaps? Can execute lots of spawn(...) statement and now there are multiple threads of execution running.

<comment><USER10> > Can execute lots of spawn(...) statement and now there are multiple threads > of execution running.

You would end up with lots of processes running. Sure they are implemented differently than OS processes, but that is an implementation detail. If you had an OS that could keep up with Erlang's demand for processes you could implement Erlang processes as system processes and see no difference in behavior.

The point was more Erlang processes can talk to processes on another box fairly transparently. Clojure can not, their concurrency primitives are intra process only with no way to reach out to another box without developer effort. If your definition of concurrency is limited to a single process(and call Erlang processes threads) then Erlang and Clojure are about equivalent. If you drop the single process requirement(still calling Erlang processes threads and running multiple copies of the VM) from your definition then Erlang supports more types of concurrency than clojure does. It can support inter process concurrency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wrote the second article, which is on Ruby: [http://www.howistart.org/posts/ruby/1](http://www.howistart.org/posts/ruby/1)

I'm psyched to see more articles here.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I'm eager to see the project get more lift and more tutorials with time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very cool! I think detailed examples like this are much more conducive to getting a feel for a language when you're just starting out than the typical "sift through the official docs then build a Hello World example." I'm going to set aside some time to work through this (and then go through the official docs.)

Kudos for the Simpson's references; that's one of my favorite episodes :) I look forward to more of these.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey this is really nice. I tried to get into Erlang from reading Armstrongs book (Programming Erlang) and just couldn't grok it. I think the later chapters of that get a bit more 'concrete' and start making real things but I lost interest by that point. Reading this has made me want to try again, though.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Erlang post is fantastic. Haven't read the Ruby one yet. Excellent idea for a site. Thanks a lot.</comment>


Koto.js – A D3 charting framework written in ES6 - <AUTHOR> http://kotojs.org/ <comment><USER2> I'm super surprised there isn't a big chart front and centre on that site! or.. really anywhere on that site.

Nice site though, don't get me wrong

<comment> d--b Same here! No demo, no chart in docs, ...

<comment><USER3> It's a framework around D3, if you want to see what the charts will look like , you can see them on the D3 site.

<comment><USER4> So if there's no differentiator why should I be interested in it? If you have a library that's entire purpose is visual and you show me nothing then that's a failure. I'm not going to clone a repo and spin up some examples just to see if they suck or are awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are the examples, in case you didn't see them. They're not obvious in the site (bottom of the github readme)

Basic Bar Chart (ES2015): [http://jsbin.com/qopuwerixa/edit?js,output](http://jsbin.com/qopuwerixa/edit?js,output)

Basic Bar Chart (ES5): [http://jsbin.com/zutise/edit?js,output](http://jsbin.com/zutise/edit?js,output)

Stacked Bar Chart (ES2015): [http://jsbin.com/nifoxohuxa/edit?js,output](http://jsbin.com/nifoxohuxa/edit?js,output)

<comment><USER6> Those look worse than the first charting libraries I used in the 90s.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but I think the point the author is trying to make is that whatever you can do with D3, you can do with this. But the responses just prove that 'love starts from the eye'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really don't like when subscribers get the instance as an implicit _this_ instead of an explicit parameter. It makes code harder to read if you ask me.

Other than that nitpick, the examples given in the Readme.md are a bit too basic, the author maybe could show it off a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER8> > However, as somebody who greatly depends on the d3.chart framework, I've > gotten concerned that support for the project has dwindled over the past > several months. This has prompted me to write my own reusable charting > framework,

Why not put that energy into contributing to the Miso Project?

</comment><comment><USER9> ...and examples?

(One of the best thing about D3.js (as an approach, not only - a library) is "examples (with working code) first". First both in terms for priority, and exposure.)

</comment><comment><USER10> > Common API for getting and setting accessor functions.

This is a really good idea, and it solves the issue of coupling commonly see in d3.js examples, where the chart needs to know about the keys (properties) of the data.

I usually write accessor functions as part of my model to avoid this coupling but letting the chart component take in accessor is clearly a better approach.

<comment><USER11> yeah, this is the bit I liked. Personal taste: I'd prefer to see this implemented without extending a base class i.e. by composition rather than inheritance, seems more d3-ish to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would wrap such libraries myself, which is rather easy with React and takes out one third party thing that could break.

I made an integration example a while ago: [https://github.com/kay-is/react- from-zero/blob/master/16-adv...](https://github.com/kay-is/react-from- zero/blob/master/16-advanced-integration.html)

I found it much easier to reason about these libraries behaviour if I had one small interface from React to the lib. It makes updates also easier, no need to wait that the wrapper gets updated.

</comment><comment><USER13> I heard you like charting frameworks, so I wrapped your charting framework in a charting framework!

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm having a severe case of js fatigue.

<comment><USER15> there's a framework for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://nvd3.org/](http://nvd3.org/)

<comment><USER17> [http://c3js.org/](http://c3js.org/)

<comment><USER18> [http://metricsgraphicsjs.org/](http://metricsgraphicsjs.org/)

<comment><USER19> [http://dimplejs.org/](http://dimplejs.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> this sucks so bad

d3 is good. let's just use that you genius</comment>


Get recursive file size and dependencies of any NPM module - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/npm-module-stats <comment><AUTHOR> Get the Exact compressed size of any NPM Module without installing / downloading it in your machine. The size recursively includes the size of its dependeny tree till leaf.

Use cases:

At some point, you want to keep your project as small as possible. However if the NPM modules that you use might increase the overall project size. Just in case, if your are curious to know what modules will be downloaded with any NPM module.</comment>


Now you C me, now you don't - <AUTHOR> https://securitylab.github.com/research/now-you-c-me <comment><USER2> > In a nutshell, format string bugs are a class of bugs in which an attacker > provides their own format string data into a formatting function, e.g. > printf(attacker_controlled)

It might be an odd thing to have a strong opinion about, but I consider it poor form to use _printf_ in a C hello world, for this reason. Stick with _puts_ unless you need to use format-specifiers in the string.

<comment><USER3> Printf is perfectly acceptable when a string is being printed without format- specifiers. You are abstracting your limited experience to be true for all situations.

For a simple example, how will puts print a string without a line termination?

<comment><USER4> Hence, use write()!

Not completely joking here, I think everytime I've had to use strings to make two C programs communicate over a network, write() was as easy to use as printf(). Obviously it's not true when communicating with a user.

<comment><USER3> That's not a bad point for many cases. I was pointing out that the coding rule in the upper comment to always use puts, and never printf, is bad advice.

I am glad to hear you mention network coding. More people should do that, so fewer people make statements like, "always use puts for writing strings, never printf."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's still a minefield, and nobody is doing anything against it.

printf %n is known to be dangerous for ages, and the secure variant printf_s which forbids it is nowhere implemented because politics. Almost nobody uses the -Wformat attributes in its declarations, and the wide variants of __attribute__(format(wprintf)) and wscanf are waiting to be implemented since 2008. Patches do exist for ages.

<comment><USER6> For those of us who forgot this odd behavior:

%n: Print nothing, but writes the number of characters successfully written so far into an integer pointer parameter.

<comment><USER7> That's frightening. Is there any legit use case for this in the real world that would stop, e.g., glibc from removing it altogether?

<comment><USER6> I got curious and looked through sources. I'm not sure where it was added, but it appeared between 4.3BSD and the 4.3BSD Tahoe edition according to the man pages. It did not seem to be present in System III. Searching for actual uses, I didn't find any that weren't testing the functionality (unit tests) or hacking the stack.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Modern Web Dev on the JVM – How does the stack and tooling look like? - <AUTHOR> I work as a data analyst and therefore have mostly been dealing with Python and R (both in exploration and to deploy services). We recently switched to h2o as our analytics engine, which lets you save your models as Java objects. Our goal is to create a template for a prediction microservice on the JVM to make using the models in production straightforward (I.e. Save the prediction model, implement the endpoint, deploy).<p>The question is now: What tooling is consider best practice? What JVM language would be most appropriate for small services (that can still easily interface with Java)? Any good micro web frameworks? <comment><USER2> You should check out [http://www.ninjaframework.org](http://www.ninjaframework.org). it's modern, flexible and fun plus the community is awesome!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a look at: [http://sparkjava.com/](http://sparkjava.com/)

It is my preferred java microframework and probably the most used of its kind (in java)

</comment><comment><USER4> I use finatra and scala. I have however heard great things about java and spring. As well as play and scala.

</comment><comment><USER5> Spring Boot!

<comment><USER6> Another vote for Spring</comment></comment>


Discerning the Origins of the Negritos, First Sundaland People - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5597900/ <comment><USER2> The paper suggests convergent evolution as a reason for simularity in phenotype with respect to African pygmies. I find this unlikely, unless they are referring only to stature.

A more parsimonious explanation would be that, their phenotype has just been carried over from their initial out of Africa ancestors, and there were no evolutionary pressures causing it to change much from the basal state.

<comment><USER2> That they are more closely related to eastern Asians on a phylogenetic tree has more to do with their time spent out of Africa, leaving (50-70ka). Which means they would exhibit the same lack of modern African alleles as eastern Asians, the anscestors of which left around the same time. Of course there was gene flow between East Asians and Negritos but my guess would be the genetic relatedness is more indicative of time spent out of Africa than gene flow between Negritos and East Asians

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm writing this comment from Negros Occidental, Philippines. There are Negritos here. Sometimes you see them at the local annual festival selling handcrafts. They tend to be nomadic people and travel widely to sell their wares.</comment>


Hit "I'm feeling lucky" on a blank Google.com/ncr page - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/ncr

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6201814/Google-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6201814/Google- easter-eggs-15-best-hidden-jokes.html) has some other great Google Easter eggs.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sad that the animations peg both cores of my MBP using Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I thought it was just my Netbook and Firefox..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> /ncr always redirects on the mobile browser I'm on so I can't see what you're referring to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any anglo google site (us aus Ireland uk) works too. Ncr is meant to redirect and allows others (such as me currently in Germany) to see the Easter egg

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is especially bright and vivid on the new Google redesign. Nice find!

</comment><comment><USER5> Do not do this if you are epileptic.</comment>