When should you build your own ecommerce site? (Never) - <AUTHOR> https://theptrk.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=372&action=edit <comment><USER2> Can't seem to visit the URL without having to login.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow sorry about that. Thx for the heads up

<comment><USER3> And, still, asks me to log in.

<comment><AUTHOR> ouch, i linked to the edit screen, and theres no way to delete submissions. this will be here forever haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tony-allan Try [https://theptrk.com/category/shopify/](https://theptrk.com/category/shopify/)</comment>


Can Microsoft and Twitter save the dying Urdu Nastaliq script? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/stories-that-matter/9ce935435d90

<comment><USER2> It is a shame, as it is a very beautiful script. But alas, I think globalization will inevitably lead to an essentially universal writing system used for almost all languages.

</comment><comment><USER3> this might turn out to be a local setback - i can imagine font rendering capabilities improving to the point where devices can once more start rendering nastaliq with the same ease that they now render the more utilitarian scripts.</comment>


Native or hybrid apps – go for user experience [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ready4s.com/blog/native-or-hybrid-apps-go-for-user-experience/ <comment><USER2> A previous employer refused native, no matter how many times I argued their merits. The reply was always, "but it costs more". Which on paper, sure you're doing it twice. What they always failed to take into account was the headaches that doing a hybrid app would cause down the line when you needed to get a specific feature in place, but the hybrid solution just couldn't bridge the gap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree with you completely. Yes, maybe if you are doing a small app for use for a really small group of people, the user experience isn't as much important to you as the money. But with that kind of thinking you will never be able to conquer the mobile app market... Native is always better, period.</comment></comment>


Hacking wireless presenters with an Arduino and Metasploit - <AUTHOR> http://blog.teusink.net/2010/07/hacking-wireless-presenters-with.html <comment><USER2> That's scary, since you could do _much_ more vicious things with it than damaging Steve Jobs' ego. Get yourself an Amazon box, put a hacked wireless transmitter inside of it, then ship it to somebody at Google, Microsoft, or any other large organization. It doesn't even have to be somebody that exists. Their mailroom is probably not in a Faraday cage. There are thousands of clients within the firewall and you only need one to have a vulnerable USB attachment on at the moment to root it. It is essentially a way to get physical access to the machine while actually being on a different continent. Physical access means root.

(If you wanted to make it very spy movie-ish, you could actually put a cell phone and microprocessor in there, and execute arbitrary code, but just waiting for your rooted boxes to check in is likely to work fine.)

Your wireless bomb will probably be mailed back to you, to boot. (In the unlikely event it is opened, it will look like somebody mismailed a piece of consumer electronics.)

<comment><USER3> Damn, Patrick, between this and the Quetyzcoatl post, I'm beginning to think that your real calling is as a screenwriter, and the Bingo thing is just an elaborate cover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This makes me wonder.... The dv6000 series (and probably others) have an infrared receiver on them to use with a little remote that comes inserted into the thing. Now the IR port isn't exposed as an actual IR device, because pressing buttons on the remote just sends keystrokes, so you can see where this is going...

The dv6000's are pretty common, I see people with them all the time, and although you'd need line of sight to send keystrokes, your target wouldn't need to be using any dongle, just a particular laptop. Now that's scary.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is the story with Bluetooth keyboards/mice better or worse?</comment>


What Kind of Person Calls a Mass Shooting a Hoax? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetrace.org/2015/12/sandy-hook-mass-shooting-hoaxers/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: People who have their own mind made up so firmly that no evidence from actual reality can change their mind. And, as a consequence, total jerks who will tell a grieving father that his son never existed, that it was just a fake death from a government false flag operation.

Disgusting.</comment>


Show HN: A React component to zoom images on hover - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LeoNero/react-img-zoom <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! I created a React component to zoom images when they are hovered (and the zoom follows the mouse!)

You can check out a live demo here: [https://react-img- zoom.netlify.com/](https://react-img-zoom.netlify.com/)

Now, I have two main goals: 1\. make the component accessible 2\. figure out the best way to make the component work in mobile devices

Any help on how to achieve these two goals is appreciated!</comment>


How would you add 'reputation' to what people post? - <AUTHOR> SF often talks about reputation systems as part of a society's culture. True, it's a big hairy problem, but how could some person or group make an initial attempt at doing this? It'd be great to have web pages, tweets, and various posts tied somehow to a measure of the author's current trustworthiness (based on previous behavior). Even a high/medium/low/unknown rating would help.
No matter how imperfect the implementation might be, it'd be great to have anything that exposes to the general public the idea that people need to consider the source of anything that's posted on the Internet.
What would you try doing? <comment><USER2> Most systems seem to ask others to rate what they consume - up/down, like/dislike, etc. If we're talking about content that competes for eyeballs, like a news feed, you might add the concept of having a person "stake" some of their reputation to move something to the top. If it is universally pilloried, they lose reputation, and vice-versa. Bonus points for a system that makes it so my reputation to you doesn't have to be the same as my reputation to anyone else (if you have been "Up-voting" my content for a while, my rep with you is higher than with somebody seeing my post for the first time).

Not sure if or how this solves an echo-chamber problem though.

Edit: just also had the thought to help tackle bias problems - the platform itself could produce biased content on either side of an issue from time-to- time to deduce people's positions based on their votes. Then the reputation algorithm has a chance to adjust for ideas that polarize vs ones with general agreement and scale rankings accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER3> The biggest problem of any moderation system is a majority downvoting things they don't like into oblivion. You get a majority with a high reputation taking control of your site. We complain about cancel culture, but it's nothing new because people naturally want to kick out people they don't like. After all, the people they don't like are heartless evil assholes.

I'd add a system to let people identify aspects of the post, and then use reputation to verify that they're a good indicator of that aspect.

Liberals know what is "liberal" and conservatives know what's "conservative" quite reliably (in aggregate), even though those concepts are _very_ fuzzy. And the problem most systems see is that politics being politics, those are frequently gamed. (If you've ever listend to C-SPAN's radio program, you know that half the "republican" callers are democrats...)

Then you have to determine which keywords to use. I think some basic guidance, "don't label a thing 'spam' unless it's someone selling crap" would go a long way to incentivizing a critical mass of users to label a thing honestly.

And then you let readers decide what they want to read.

My other notion (building on another comment[1]) is that discussion should include a team-based element. I think offering a way for small teams to come together and present ideas is more useful than individual commentary. A team allows less personal investment because you are now motivated by a desire from admiration from known peers.

But I've put away good number of beers, so I might just be rambling like a drunk idiot.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289078)</comment>


The cost of higher education for students on the edge of poverty - <AUTHOR> https://story.californiasunday.com/cost-of-college <comment><USER2> I cannot stand these articles. It's time for the whole suburban-liberal "follow your dreams and go to college" attitude to abruptly implode.

Don't waste your time reading this article. I can sum it up for you:

1.) The first subject in this article is a theater major who has been in college for over six years. 2.) The second subject is paying a lease on a new vehicle and had studied abroad in Italy, despite barely earning above minimum wage.

There's no beating around the bush; you can't fix stupid. I have very little sympathy for people who effectively squandered what little they had instead of at least making an attempt at good decision making. To fight and lose is one thing. To say you were doomed from the start and that fighting would be a waste of your time is another.

<comment><USER3> You're asking people who are freaking 17 years-old to have excellent decision making skills and awareness of what industry will be _in_ half a decade when you get out.

WHO IS THAT SMART? WHO IS THAT AWARE? I just got lucky cause I liked computers, was nerdy, and did decently on exams. I assume most other programmers are the same. I didn't know anything about SV (grew up in rural Kentucky) - I didn't know what the industry was like. I just believed Google when it said I would get a job. Don't act like we all thought very hard and carefully, meticulously planned out whether the thing we enjoyed would be profitable. Most people were 17.

If you were 17 or 18 when you decided to go to college, it probably wasn't a very well-thought out decision. The fact that you look at such students with such ire and derision _for wanting a better life and working for that_ is so heartbreaking and pathetic. There are much more productive places to direct your malice than the students themselves.

You don't have to feel bad for people who made worse decisions than you. Congratulations, people make bad decisions. It's more productive to ask ourselves, "Why?" and "How can we prevent this" and "What can these people do now" rather than just getting all "old man yells at cloud" about "suburban- liberals". Lemme tell you real quick. I know people from every end of the damn political spectrum in this situation, so whatever political image you're projecting onto these students is just nonsense. It isn't a "liberal snowflake" or "feminist" problem or whatever else whacked out narrative you have in your head. _The only conclusion you 've come to is that teenagers are make bad decisions._

A lot of students of this generation felt that their only way to success was through college. It isn't because they're dumb. It isn't because they're "lazy". It's because they made the wrong decision. Let's all try and be a little more productive and ask "Now what?".

<comment><USER4> As soon as you become a theater major, you lose the right to the "I just was trying to make more money and have a better life" narrative.

<comment><USER5> Why? If you are an actor on Broadway, your minimum pay is $1,861 per week[0]. So if you're working 40 weeks per year, you'd be making, as a minimum, $74,000. This is higher than many teachers' salaries, and in line with many other professionals. Plus there's a very high (if very narrow) ceiling on those salaries.

You can make the argument "well most actors never make it as a broadway actor". While true, do most software developers make it as a Google developer? And how likely is it that someone whose talent lies in acting is also talented enough to do well at software development? Sometimes, you should play to your strengths, even if the relative bargaining power of your strengths are not as strong as someone else's strengths. That doesn't mean you're not following the best path to "have a better life".

[0] [http://www.actorsequity.org/agreements/agreements.asp?code=0...](http://www.actorsequity.org/agreements/agreements.asp?code=001)

<comment><USER6> I don't think you've met many professional actors. Someone with a role on Broadway, even as a supporting actor with no dialog, is considered to have "made it". An Off-Broadway or regional theater role pays something more like $500 a week. And even if you're good enough to land these gigs there's very limited stability as shows/casts rotate.

Sure, not everyone works at Google, but the people who don't can still land jobs at a million different companies for a living salary. An actor who's not landing roles is working a survival job (waiter, barista, etc) so they can afford to spend time auditioning. And remember we're talking about somebody on the verge of homelessness -- they're going to have to compete with actors from wealthy families who paid for their rent and a degree from Juilliard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The brand-new white Hyundai Elantra was $17,000; her monthly payments, $262.

Wow, that's more expensive than the car I bought (and felt guilty about) as a newly employed software developer. I wonder if we should be offering financial counseling in addition to financial aid.

<comment><USER7> For a brand new car that's not the a lot, the problem is she bought a brand new car.

Americans are being groomed to think in monthly payments rather than the total cost which leads to silly decisions like buying a brand new car instead of a getting a used car.

<comment><USER8> It's a myth that a brand new car is a bad deal. Brand new cars are way superior to used (1-2 year old). However, this is only true if you own it until it no longer works. This is where most people go wrong. If you don't own it for its entire working life (~20 years) you're better of buying a 5 or 6 year used model and saving ~40%.

<comment><USER9> I'm going to need to see a spreadsheet or something for that claim. 1 year is about 19% depreciation. but only ~5% of life of car

<comment><USER8> I'd have to dig it up, but it's the warranty that makes the difference.

<comment><USER9> I see. I imagine that math is going to depend a lot on brand/model and one's skill at identifying and fixing problems themselves.

<comment><USER10> Jack Baruth wrote a great article a few years ago about how owning cheap used cars is a privilege reserved for people who have the skills and time to fix their own cars: [http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/02/no-fixed-abode- gott...](http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/02/no-fixed-abode-gotta-rich- cheap-car/)

It seems that he was partly inspired to write this by "the TTAC reader whose response to Bark's article on subprime buyers was to straight-facedly suggest that a working father swap his own minivan transmission in his apartment parking lot."

I used to own beater cars when I was in college and shortly after. I never paid more than $3k for one, and I did all of my own work, including replacing all of the brakes on one of the cars myself. But I like working on things, I already owned the tools, and I had access to good public transit when my car broke down. I would not recommend beater cars to most normal people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article says she had some "poor advising" at the community college and she is currently trying to get a degree in music theater.

Liz spent 6 years enrolled at a community college without getting a degree and then transferred to a school to work on bachelors where she thinks she'll need to spend another 2.5 years. It doesn't really give the details of what happened during those 6 years, but if she was able to stay enrolled for 12 semesters without getting an associate degree there seem to be problems that go much deeper than a lack of resources to go to school.

If the advisors were seriously giving her advice that would prevent her from getting a 2-year degree in 6 years (even allowing for her trying to figure out what she wanted to study) the school should be liable.

<comment><USER12> From the article:

> Like many students, she took classes she didn't need, partly due to poor > advising and partly because she was feeling her way toward a major.

I taught at a community college. A lot of people there are really just feeling around for what to do with their lives. A lot of them also didn't do so well in high school and needed to skip ACT/SAT requirements to get in to a 4 year school to do what they really needed. This translates into lots of general ed classes/GPA boosters.

When a student doesn't know what they want to do, it's hard to give them good advice. And if they didn't take school seriously in high school, it's harder for them to start doing it more seriously now.

Combine that with not knowing where you're sleeping that night, or trying to concentrate on an empty stomach, and yea, it'll take you a while to dig out.

I learned a lot of empathy teaching at a community college. Now, sure, we could talk about "personal responsibility", but there are a lot of things at play here. Lots of responsibility to share.

<comment><USER13> >I taught at a community college. A lot of people there are really just feeling around for what to do with their lives. A lot of them also didn't do so well in high school and needed to skip ACT/SAT requirements to get in to a 4 year school to do what they really needed. This translates into lots of general ed classes/GPA boosters.

Then I think we need to stop expecting that there's going to be some special path they'll ever take in life that's specific to them as individuals, at least work-wise. We should instead set up a general path that someone can take to earn a living without needing a personal drive in any particular direction, and let them be a unique individual _outside_ work.

<comment><USER11> I think that pretty much describes an Associates degree in pretty much anything. You graduate with a 2-year degree of mostly general ed, but a few classes in something you think you might be interested in. If you want to get a 4-year degree you should have a much better idea of what types of things you'd be willing to spend another 2 or 3 years learning. If you don't go on for a 4-year degree you at least have an associate degree which is a huge step in employability above just having a high school diploma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a person who almost didn't attend a school and dropped out from university, I can confidently say that many (if not most) schools and universities across the globe are completely useless. You may think I'm kidding or exaggerating. But seriously, what exactly they are "teaching"? For most part, I've seen school/university teachers who _never_ care to explain _core ideas_ , instead their so called "teaching" is mostly about _mindless memorization_. Since I was a kid, I always frustrated how stupid my teachers were.

I ended up studying practically everything on my own (except reading/writing/elementary math which my grandpa taught me). I learned myself how to write programs when I was 10/11 years old. My parents were not programmers, so I had no help.

I lived in Uzbekistan, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands. I'm working as a software engineer since 2009 (I started my career working at internet-club in 2002/2003).

I can confidently tell that most of "experts" (in whatever field) who have so called "higher education" diploma don't understand a damn thing.

 _Cost of education = cost of books, nothing more!_

If you have _luxury to have internet access_ (no sarcasm, I didn't had internet access till 2002/2003), then add cost of your personal computing device (again no sarcasm, I had _only_ 8-bit ZX Spectrum till 2000!) and internet access subscription.

Peter Thiel has a similar view on "higher education" system:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvBlOFU3ry8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvBlOFU3ry8)

<comment><USER15> > most of "experts" (in whatever field) who have so called "higher education" > diploma don't understand a damn thing.

While this is generally true of the charlatan fields like psychology and sociology that can't even replicate their own results, I'd hazard to guess that Moore's Law is entirely reliant on Ph.D.-level work in materials science, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The most astounding thing reading the comments are from people that are pretty well of condemning some poor folk that are making mistakes. These people have not seen success, therefore it very difficult for them to come out of these situations. Countless articles have demonstrated how a majority of poor kids going to college have a tough time graduating. I am so happy to be living in a state where these issues are getting discussed.</comment>


Brexit multiplied the number of Finnish travelers to London - <AUTHOR> http://metropolitan.fi/entry/brexit-multiplied-the-number-of-finnish-travelers-to-london <comment><USER2> It was also the week that a lot of Finns start their summer holidays so presumably a seasonal expectation as well. I'm sure a weak pound plays a part, but hardly breaking news.

<comment><USER3> Also, a Finn (Henri Kontinen) is doing pretty well at Wimbledon, so a bunch of people may be coming to watch him play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is from "week to week" \- shouldn't it be compared to the same time last year instead?

Initially, I would think that sales would go up in mid-summer anyways.

<comment><USER5> Well, a weaker pound can also help to bring in more tourists for sure.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying that can't happen - I'm saying the metric they're using is flawed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't really massively newsworthy or particularly insightful -- however Brexit and it's consequences are though.

The only underpinning piece of insight at play I can gather from this piece is that when a currency drops in value it attracts tourists of which I think is fairly basic economics and something that most of HN already fairly au fait with.

I mean this article would be fairly low down on Bloom's pyramid for me. Am I missing something here perhaps?

<comment><USER7> I'd suggest the current frenzy surrounding Brexit means that many news outlets are looking for articles to write about it, regardless of whether they're insightful or not. Hopefully things will calm down after Article 50 is invoked and the financial markets stabilise.

<comment><USER8> Why would they stabilise after triggering article 50? At the moment it seems they are going up in hope that no one will trigger article 50, but actually doing it will send them into another plunge once again? No?

<comment><USER6> >Why would they stabilise after triggering article 50?

Introduces certainty. No one knows when exactly they'll invoke it or if they will currently just that it seems very likely.

Additional knowledge/information changes probabilities. More information means less risk. Less risk, less volatility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A friend of mine joked that buying from amazon.co.uk now has a site-wide 20% discount.

<comment><USER10> I looked up a few things to check if they are worth buying.

Nope, no real discount. Already priced in :(

<comment><USER9> Amazon's vast AI reacts very quickly to negate any advantage meatware thinks it has.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They all come to prepare moving stuff over to the eu :)</comment>


DevOps Technologies: Fabric or Ansible - <AUTHOR> https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/devops/2015/03/devops-technologies-fabric-or-ansible.html <comment><USER2> I really feel like fabric is much more natural. If you know Python, then fabric is wonderful to work with. I'm very familiar with Python and learning ansibles way of doing things just doesn't seem appealing to me.

Am I missing anything from ansible that I can't do with fabric?</comment>


Ask HN: How to mask voices and keep them from carrying to ensure privacy - <AUTHOR> I am looking for ways to keep my voice and conversation from carrying to other rooms in a house.<p>When I am working remotely, I feel uncomfortable having my work conversations carry across the house. My doors and walls aren't the greatest. Is there anything that can inject white noise (in a directional way ) so that my conversation is muffled for everyone else in the house. <comment><USER2> You could use the empty egg cartons to cover your walls, creating (eventually) an anechoic chamber! Do a search for --> anechoic +DIY That will present you with LOTS of ideas. Even using heavy drapes/curtains/carpet COVERING 2 of the 4 walls (NOT opposites) should give a good result.

</comment><comment> cannot-remember Introducing acoustic absorption to the room like an anechoic chamber isn't going to do much for sound isolation. If you want to prevent sound getting out you should seal up your room to make it as airtight as possible. This usually means sewing up the weak points such as gaps around doors / windows. You can also introduce more background noise in the areas where you don't want others to listen but ultimately you might not have control over those spaces

</comment><comment><USER3> I use this for sleep, maybe could put outside your door.

[https://www.walmart.com/ip/LectroFan-Sound- Machine/45825724?...](https://www.walmart.com/ip/LectroFan-Sound- Machine/45825724?irgwc=1&sourceid=imp_QY80b5TKMxyJWbtwUx0Mo34VUki0DHxWuQ6VTo0&veh=aff&wmlspartner=imp_197432&clickid=QY80b5TKMxyJWbtwUx0Mo34VUki0DHxWuQ6VTo0)

</comment><comment><USER4> Try this: [https://www.plantronics.com/us/en/product/voyager-5200-uc](https://www.plantronics.com/us/en/product/voyager-5200-uc)

The gain is high enough that you don't have to talk very loudly.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://talktech.com/stenomask-steno-sr/](https://talktech.com/stenomask- steno-sr/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Folks, thanks for the information</comment>


Show HN: Camelot – PDF Table Extraction for Humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/camelot-2 <comment><USER2> See current discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199708)</comment>


Startup Growth and VC Returns: What We Found When We Analyzed 1000s of VC Deals - <AUTHOR> https://angel.co/blog/venture-returns <comment><USER2> In a move that surprises literally no one, angel.co recommends investing in startups across the board. Shocking I know.</comment>


Now IPCC hurricane data is questioned - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/15/hatton_on_hurricanes/

<comment><USER2> The errors cited are absolutely trivial. They are in vague statements like "there are suggestions that" and "it is more likely than not". The overall conclusion of the IPCC was that "there is no clear trend in the annual numbers of tropical cyclones." Far from contradicting the IPCC, the cited study confirms its conclusion.

<comment><USER3> _In 2005, the National Hurricane Center's chief scientist Chris Landsea resigned his post in protest at the treatment of the subject by Trenberth.

"I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4."_

Do you think that's absolutely trivial as well?

<comment><USER4> Not to contradict your statement, but this is an often misinterpreted letter. If you read the letter in its entirety, it is very clear that Landsea is talking about the very specific issue of hurricanes and global warming. He mentions global warming several times and never once questions the reality of global warming. It certainly seems to me like he's just taking global warming as a given. The reason he gives for resigning is:

"My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy."

In other words, he thinks global warming science should influence policy debate. In this instance, he feels the IPCC made a statement it shouldn't have, and it will hinder future efforts to affect policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Statistically speaking, no one in the climate change debate has read the IPCC reports and journal articles at issue. This is far from ideal, but totally understandable if you've ever taken a look at the damn things.

People are obviously interested, though, and I can't believe anyone (again, statistically speaking) actually thinks it's better for the debate to be limited to purely symbolic posturing over cherry-picked details.

How hard could it be to write some software to (nucleate a community to) track what's disputed and what's not, how much variance of opinion there is, etc?

<comment><USER6> Very hard. The infrastructure to do it simply doesn't exist. Some of the station data and instrument runs are not actually connected to anything, they're on a human retrieval basis.

<comment><USER7> Human retrieval adds a lot of noise. It's not just how well people do readings, its when (during the day) they do them. No, they don't necessarily read them the same time each day.

Moreover, even if we had automated retrieval at the correct time, there are issues with the stations.

"The story is the same for each one. The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."

That's from John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article702...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece)

<comment><USER6> Just to be clear, you're not making the heat island argument, right?

There is definitely concern over absolute accuracy in the collection of this data. However, it doesn't seem like these concerns have somehow debunked AGW, and certainly haven't even put a dent in current estimated global climate change. I get very frustrated when people see the sausage of science being made and suddenly get angry. "What? Scientists are not right _all the time?_ Well then they must be right _none of the time!_ "

<comment><USER7> I'll repeat the quote "The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."

If the apparent temperature rise was actually due to other factors, what's the basis for the claim that there is warming?

> certainly haven't even put a dent in current estimated global climate change

So what? It's an estimate, one that happens to be wrong. If the estimate and the reality are different, why should we pay attention to the estimate?

As the leaked emails said, the models don't predict what's actually happening. Why should we act as if they do?

<comment><USER6> The leaked emails did not say that. Please stop suggesting they actually had any significant impact on the science in question, because they did not.

<comment><USER7> > The leaked emails did not say that.

You can keep saying that, but you're wrong. They did. They said that the models' predictions didn't correspond to what they thought that they were seeing from the measurements.

Christy's work appears to be post-leak and wasn't considered in the e-mails. He says that the supposed temperature increases, which the e-mails admit were less than what the models predicted, aren't real. What's your basis for claiming that he's wrong about the actual measurments?

> Please stop suggesting they actually had any significant impact on the > science in question, because they did not.

How about telling us what you'd take as a statement or evidence that AGW wasn't happening?

Note also the difference between statistically significant and scientifically significant. Phil Jones is currently hanging his hat on the former and staying very quiet about the latter. However, the latter is the hockey stick.

<comment><USER6> > You can keep saying that, but you're wrong. They did. They said that the > models' predictions didn't correspond to what they thought that they were > seeing from the measurements.

It didn't correspond to _tree-ring measurements_. Which is already an unreliable and lossy sort of data, so they applied corrections for other phenomenon. And if it were a primary line of evidence in the case for climate change there might be a problem. But, as it stands, they were not and it was not.

Further, at this point, all the work they did is replicable. The orignal data was not lost, it simply wasn't kept at that facility (for a variety of reasons). The IPCC is investigating any serious wrongdoing and having an independent group check the results.

> How about telling us what you'd take as a statement or evidence that AGW > wasn't happening?

Sort of like asking, "What you'd take as evidence that evolution isn't real." At this point it'd need to be fairly extraordinary, since there is a LOT of data (both observed and modeled) that supports the hypothesis.

So I dunno. Do you have anything better than, "One statistician disagrees with Al Gore's movie from 4 years ago but agrees with the IPCC?" Or maybe, "These people did something with data that I don't understand and called it a trick, I _knew_ those guys were up to something!" Maybe something to counter the EIS footage? Or perhaps data to argue against the basic tenants? Is there actually much less CO2 in the air than claimed?

What evidence would you take that it is happening? Epochal records of CO2 content in the air? We have that. Clear evidence of sharp and sudden environmental change in temperature sensitive areas? We have a ton of that; some of it is incredibly dramatic. Decade-term data that still shows overall warming trends? We've got that and its far more reliable than the extreme longterm data. Clear chemistry explaining what should happen? The base science backs this up.

Do we have absolutely conclusive proof yet? _No._ Do we have enough evidence to start taking this seriously? _Yes, I believe my threshold is met._ Do post- industrialized nations like America stand to gain a lot financially by embracing this? I think we have much more to gain (and a lot to lose if we let China continue to outpace us in renewable energy research and production). So not only do I see a lot of science backing this notion, but I see a lot of opportunity. That's enough for me.

<comment><USER7> > It didn't correspond to tree-ring measurements.

Wrong e-mail. I'm referring to the "it's embarrassing that we can't account for the recent measurements" e-mail. They weren't talking about the tree stuff, which has its own problems, but is not recent.

> Further, at this point, all the work they did is replicable.

Phil Jones disagrees.

> The orignal data was not lost

They can't produce it, so what definition of "not lost" are you using?

> Do you have anything better than

I have the person who did the IPCC's work on temperature measurement. You found his work compelling when you agreed with it.

> Sort of like asking, "What you'd take as evidence that evolution isn't > real."

Yes, exactly. There are many possible observations that would contradict some/all of evolutionary theory. We don't see them, but they're very easy for an honest scientist to imagine.

> At this point it'd need to be fairly extraordinary, since there is a LOT of > data (both observed and modeled) that supports the hypothesis.

You're overstating things. The recent temperature data is broken and even then contradicts the models. The "tree data is good when it supports the AGW but not when it doesn't" argument is weak. Jones admits that the arguments for ignoring the medieval warming period have problems. The hurricane stuff was wrong. The glacier data is far from conclusive (and overstated anyway). Arctic ice isn't behaving as predicted. And so on.

> Epochal records of CO2 content in the air? We have that.

Yup. It shows that with significantly higher CO2 concentrations (2-10x), we didn't see significantly higher temperatures.

> Clear chemistry explaining what should happen?

Actually, CO2 chemistry, or rather its physical properties, doesn't predict the magnitude of AGW. AGW requires feedback from other things.

> Clear evidence of sharp and sudden environmental change in temperature > sensitive areas?

The AGW theory is that CO2 is causing climate change. Since climate changes constantly anyway, it would be surprising if we couldn't find such things now. The problem with using them for evidence of AGW is that we can find them from pre AGW eras as well. In other words, they occur independently of AGW.

> I see a lot of opportunity. That's enough for me.

Good for you - spend your money. I hope that you get rich.

However, the current state of AGW research is no where near good enough to impose those beliefs on anyone else.

<comment><USER6> > Wrong e-mail. I'm referring to the "it's embarrassing that we can't account > for the recent measurements" e-mail. They weren't talking about the tree > stuff, which has its own problems, but is not recent.

Please link this email then?

> They can't produce it, so what definition of "not lost" are you using?

They cannot personally produce it, but they can list where they got it and then you can do those sources.

But here's the key thing to keep in mind: neither you nor I know the full story there. There's not enough evidence to suggest fraud, only enough to warrant an investigation. You'are acting as if the science is discredited, but it seems to me like you _want_ it to be discredited so you're preemptively declaring it so.

> I have the person who did the IPCC's work on temperature measurement. You > found his work compelling when you agreed with it.

I found _the whole body of work_ compelling. Only a few individual pieces of work are truly compelling on their own, and Phil's never was one. And by the way, I was skeptical until about a year and a half ago. Now that physical observations are starting to replace pure models and showing similar (if somewhat less aggressive) temperature gains, I am less dismissive of it.

> You're overstating things. The recent temperature data is broken and even > then contradicts the models. The "tree data is good when it supports the AGW > but not when it doesn't" argument is weak. Jones admits that the arguments > for ignoring the medieval warming period have problems. The hurricane stuff > was wrong. The glacier data is far from conclusive (and overstated anyway). > Arctic ice isn't behaving as predicted. And so on.

I'm pretty sure the glacier datais not "overstated", anymore than time lapse photography with accurate scales and a simple chart of ice changes can be. It's pretty obvious that several glaciers are retreating at what can reasonably called a "surprising" rate.

> Good for you - spend your money. I hope that you get rich.

You know, I hope you're right. Because if I'm right the next 35 years are going to be shitty for everyone.

<comment><USER7> > Please link this email then?

You're claiming familiarity yet are unaware of one of the passages quoted most often?

Google is your friend. (I missed the phrasing a bit.)

[http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/1128/as- copenhage...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/1128/as-copenhagen- summit-nears-climategate-dogs-global-warming-debate) <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AP3NI20091126>

> > They can't produce it, so what definition of "not lost" are you using?

> They cannot personally produce it, but they can list where they got it and > then you can do those sources.

You're backpedaling. Unfortunately for that position, they were the source of their "adjustments" and they've admitted that they can't reproduce those. And, it's not clear that the original sources still have the data.

> Now that physical observations are starting to replace pure models

You're rejecting them. In addition to rejecting the temperature data, you're rejecting the hurricane data. <http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/>

> I'm pretty sure the glacier datais not "overstated", anymore than time lapse > photography with accurate scales and a simple chart of ice changes can be.

The question isn't whether some glaciers are shrinking. It's whether glacier changes as a whole are somehow different since 1934. They're not.

<comment><USER6> > You're claiming familiarity yet are unaware of one of the passages quoted > most often?

No, I've actually read the leaked emails in their entirety. And I suppose you're talking about the quote: "The fact is we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it's a travesty that we can't." Because that's the only quote from the email in either of your articles that caught my eye as salient. If you were referring to something else, please clarify. Anyways, that's not talking about the general temperature trends. Go read the email it came from. Or you can read the summary with quotes from Trebeth that MediaMatters researched so that you don't have to:

<http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010002>

And before you say MediaMatters is biased, their sources are listed and verifiable. If you're gonna link CSM I think MM is at least fair game.

> You're backpedaling.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

> Unfortunately for that position, they were the source of their "adjustments" > and they've admitted that they can't reproduce those. And, it's not clear > that the original sources still have the data.

That's not the fault of the group you're claiming discarded the data. It's not feasible for every project to keep every piece of data they've ever touched. It might be approaching that in 2009-2010, but when the original work was carried out (and historically, to account for bureaucratic lag) it was not.

You can argue it's bad, and I won't disagree that it's disappointing. It is not damning, though. The endless cycle of claim/proof/verify is what science is.

> The question isn't whether some glaciers are shrinking. It's whether glacier > changes as a whole are somehow different since 1934. They're not.

That's absurd. Have you looked at the EIS data? There isn't enough glacier to sustain that consistent and quick a decline for 34 years. Even lowballing the observed decline in some areas that's _hundreds of miles of glacier_. Even saying this suggests you haven't even looked at this footage. I encourage you to. Even if you do not believe me or the data, the images presented are beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Soon, the British press will print the shocking revelation that there is no such thing as "weather", and never has been.

Edit: ...and I'm at -2. Guess nobody else remembers that the same British press hyping climate denialism now is the British press which hyped the vaccine/autism link a few years ago? Science journalism in general is bad, but the British papers make most others look like peer-reviewed journals by comparison...

<comment><USER9> If you think an argument is wrong, present the logic and/or evidence to support your side.

Meta-discussion doesn't go very far and specifically, _ad hominem_ arguments like discrediting the messenger doesn't do anything to address the veracity of a story -- at least not from the perspective of rhetoric and formal logic.

By way of example (and not to say that "two wrongs make a right"), an argument always used by climate-change believers (is there a better term? I don't want to say "supporters") is that they must be considered in the right because a preponderance of scientists agree with them. Yet recently, we've seen that those books were cooked, and that fewer scientists than they claimed were in agreement. Now, does the fact that we now know they were acting unethically mean that we should simply discard everything they've said? I think not; it simply means that we must apply a greater degree of skepticism.

<comment><USER8> Do not confuse source criticism with the _ad hominem_ fallacy; if certain sources have, in the past, been inaccurate or unreliable, then it is relevant and proper to point this out and to treat such sources with caution. In this case, the criticism is that the sources -- a collection of popular British papers -- have in the past been extremely unreliable in reporting on scientific issues (example: the alleged link between childhood vaccination and autism), and a humorous comment was used to drive home the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's extremely important to realise that the register is essentially on the side of climate change denial. It isn't shy about it and will only ever present articles that reinforce it's argument. It isn't balanced or reasonable reporting.

<comment><USER7> > It's extremely important to realise that the register is essentially on the > side of climate change denial. It isn't shy about it and will only ever > present articles that reinforce it's argument. It isn't balanced or > reasonable reporting.

The "fact" that the register will only report on papers that support a particular view point does not tell us that those papers are wrong, or that they're correct.

However, your assertion that it does tells us how you evaluate evidence.</comment></comment>


My name is Wil Wheaton. I live with chronic Depression, and I am not ashamed - <AUTHOR> http://wilwheaton.net/2018/05/my-name-is-wil-wheaton-i-live-with-chronic-depression-and-i-am-not-ashamed/ <comment><USER2> I encourage everyone to consider finding time for this lecture on depression: [https://youtu.be/TIcf-2AFHgw](https://youtu.be/TIcf-2AFHgw)

It helped me frame what depression the disease is compared to our broad usage of the word in everyday contexts. In particular it describes both the biology and psychology of depression.

<comment><USER3> I absolutely adore Sapolsky, and suggest everyone also listen/watch his human behavioral biology lectures. They were infinitely more interesting to me than my intro to psyc class, and perhaps more informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is a terrible awful fact most people are unaware of: The suicide rate has been going up steadily since 2000 and we are back where we were in the mid 1980s[1]. I found this out by listening to a speech from a mental health convention where the doctor giving the speech was blasting the commonly held idea that antidepressants had solved everything.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/04/22/4748888...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/04/22/474888854/suicide-rates-climb-in-u-s-especially-among- adolescent-girls)

<comment><USER5> The suicide rate for 10-14 year olds has increased over 250% since 2007.

<comment><USER6> This is shocking.

Could you please provide a reference so I may link others to this?

<comment><USER5> Dr. Jean Twenge from UC San Diego and CDC Mortality Statistics.

BTW the 250% number is for boys only. For girls 10-14, it's about 325%.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has- the...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the- smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That must have been difficult to write, but it was also difficult to read. I don't think he needed to lash-out at the adults who didn't understand his illness; how was a director in a weekly TV show meant to diagnose and accommodate depression when he's handling dozens of people to a tight schedule?

Its the same in any context of work, unfortunately. You're just a cog and if the cog jams, add more oil or replace it. That's probably not something a teenager would have understood, hence his frustrated efforts to find answers from adults he held in regard, and I don't know what the solution is. But sniping isn't it.

I am glad that Mr Wheaton is in a better condition and hopefully this essay will help others, but it seemed unnecessarily cruel in places.

<comment><USER8> Surely we can do _much_ better as a society than to defend a system where people are treated as 'cogs', especially when it concerns an industry that is particularly known for abuse of young people?

I've had plenty of jobs where I wasn't just a 'cog', and where my boss treated me like a proper human. I also try to do the same when others work for me. And as far as I can tell this is a perfectly workable approach.

And while I do understand it's easy to adjust to whatever system you find yourself part of, however complicit it makes you, actively defending it as 'just the way it is' and calling its critics 'cruel' just baffles me.

(err, not 'you' as in you. Just people. It's happened to me, so I'm no saint.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This hits pretty close to home. I've been seeing therapists for my anxiety but they haven't really helped much, and occasionally there are times when I just have a pretty bad day.

I have a lot of fear, but there is no physical manifestation of it - it is fear of lack of worth, lack of success, lack of love, lack of acknowledgement. I overanalyze everything that I do and everything others say or do to me.

I could probably point to many things in my past to blame but I'm done trying to retro-analyze myself and just want to fix things.

I'm afraid of trying anti-depressants but I've been seriously thinking about getting a dog (I liked that Wil mentioned that his dogs help him :). I've always wanted one and I feel like at the least doggo would give me some comfort and put things in perspective.

I really appreciate Wil writing his thoughts down and giving suggestions. It definitely helps a lot. I actually keep a running list of tiny things that I've found that help me - things to think about and do, in a moment of anxiety or sadness. One day I hope to share that with others too.

<comment><USER10> > This hits pretty close to home. I've been seeing therapists for my anxiety > but they haven't really helped much

My personal experience was similar - I've seen numerous therapists over the years before finally meeting a therapist who did help very much. It seems to me that finding a good therapist - one who is both objectively good at his job and subjectively fits your needs in his work method and personality - is hard.

I think this is something that gets missed a lot. Any therapist worth his salt would tell you that therapy is a long process which requires time to succeed. And that's true, but it also makes it even _harder_ to find a good fit. None of my non-matching therapists ever told me I should consider a different therapist, even when in retrospect it was the right thing to do after giving their own process a good long chance. While the principal-agent problem may be a factor, I think the main reason is the therapists' sincere will to help (with their own process). But it also means that unless you are already aware of the fact that therapists aren't all similar, given the super-subjective nature of the therapy process, you might incorrectly give up on the prospect of finding a good therapist for you, or be stuck with a non-matching therapist for too long.

I wouldn't usually share something this personal on HN, but I did hoping it might encourage you to not give up on finding _your_ therapist.

<comment><USER9> Thank you! I have heard this (keep trying other therapists before finding one that works for you) before from others but never from someone who went through it. So I really appreciate you sharing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> david-cako The part where he described saying goodbye and playing out that being the last time he'd see someone got me. I've found that health anxiety and irrational fears are by far the worst rabbit holes to start falling into. I've had periods of years where my mind is entirely consumed by these things. I feel like fears rooted in reality are at least tangible enough to not be horrifying.

The things that make me talented feel like mind diseases. Pattern recognition is so easily polluted with ruminations and cyclical thinking.

The only way I've been able to cope is by becoming numb. The more uncertainty I acknowledge as existing, the worse I feel. I don't feel particularly good though. Nothing in the world feels like "enough" to occupy my mind anywhere near as much as the negative things.

SSRIs can aid in that numbing. For me it has somewhat. I haven't found that they have given me any sort of increase in motivation or excitement for life, though.

</comment><comment><USER11> > as a white, heterosexual, cisgender man in America, I live life on the > lowest difficulty setting

Seriously, what is this shit? Is there a grant I'm not aware of that's given to straight white men? Free housing somewhere? I'm white and straight and American and I'm pretty sure my children's education is paid for by my near constant work (and my wife's) not by the magical fairy dust that was sprinkled on me at birth.

In no way am I saying Wil does not suffer from depression, but the "my life is perfect, how could I possibly be depressed?" spin rings false. Child stars that go on to find middling success and depression (and substance abuse) later in life is more the norm than the exception isn't it?

As far as I know he never almost died because of drugs, never had a public meltdown and is still gainfully employed, so I'd say he navigated things better than most. I can't speak from experience, but in no way would I say that the life of a child star is easy. It's probably one of the hardest things you could ask a young person to do.

But I have no sympathy for someone who gives in to prevailing rhetoric about "privilege". That is just as moronic as saying "women can't program" or "black people are good at sports".

<comment><USER12> "Seriously, what is this shit? Is there a grant I'm not aware of that's given to straight white men"

You can get a little badge that says "respectable citizen, handle with care". You don't see it, but people in authority do.

<comment><USER13> It's called a stereotype, and it depends more on other aspects than skin color. Mostly on how you communicate (vocabulary, grammar, accent, gestures) and how you look (beauty, illness cues, dress code).

White, heterosexual, cis-gender male that "looks like a junkie", acts disrespectful and speaks slang? Good luck getting authorities to consider you a "respectable citizen, handle with care".

I'm not denying skin color or gender are traits often included in stereotypes, but it is not the only one, nor the most relevant.

<comment><USER12> > White, heterosexual, cis-gender male that "looks like a junkie", acts > disrespectful and speaks slang? Good luck getting authorities to consider > you a "respectable citizen, handle with care".

Yes, that's why I said "can get": it's obviously not an absolute. In some places and situations it's considerably harder for people who aren't a white, heterosexual, cis-gender male to get pegged as someone who should be treated with consideration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I lost most of my twenties to anxiety and depression. Started therapy at 29, finished university with only a Bachelor's degree at 31.

The worst aspect was that through all this time my mind was always telling me that, yes, I have some problems, but what if I don't have anything at all? Maybe if I ever did see a doctor about it, I would be wasting their time. It wasn't even about whether or not they would take me seriously. My biggest fear was that a doctor would tell me that there's nothing wrong with me. It's really the worst of all the "what if"'s that Wil was talking about, because that was the one that kept me from getting help.

</comment><comment><USER15> Only depression and anxiety? That sucks, and I wouldn't wish those on anyone... but try also having ADD, mild Asperger's, home drama, stuttering (silent block, way more awkward than repeating)... oh and being not a celebrity, unemployable, unpersonable, broke and homeless. It's all my fault, I know, I'm lazy for going to interviews and people not liking me for reasons/feedback they'll never mention.

Depression isn't good or victim-hierarchy laudible, get rid of it with CBT, group, exercise, diet, work, socializing, meds... whatever.

Anxiety is shit too but I down about 12 hydroxyzine a day.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, interesting. I comment around the internet as anonymously as possible on posts by people asking for help with their depression. Or people posting without knowing that they _can_ ask for help. I've even posted a few times here on HN. My list of steps for immediate mitigation of the symptoms are almost exactly his steps:

1) Throw your clothes in the laundry.

2) Go for a short run.

3) Take a shower.

4) Put on clean clothes and eat a healthy meal.

5) (Which is implied in Wil's post but something I always say explicitly): Make an appointment with your doctor, or any doctor that will point you to the right doctor.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well written, this is also had profound effect on me [https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html](https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://wilwheaton.net/2012/09/depression- lies/](http://wilwheaton.net/2012/09/depression-lies/) is shorter and better.

Also from the viewpoint of his wife: [https://www.annewheaton.com/the-other- side-of-depression/](https://www.annewheaton.com/the-other-side-of- depression/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think I have that, how did he treat it?

<comment><USER20> He mentions he implies he started taking anti-depressants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The equation of power is shifting from "Money and willingness to do Evil" to "Persuasiveness and reach," according to Scott Adams. So while previously cries for help like this meant nothing and were an invitation to private torment, now they can work for this author with this audience. I'm extensively documenting my plight into what looks like a homeless end game, going on for 5mo now, and I am pretty sure most depression symptoms/feelings are actually disappointment/shock/dejection inflicted by those who help was sought from. Where are those friends and mentors? Theirs probably taught them to be heartless by example, people pass on their injuries. I'm not MRM but I can't say there aren't valid points like male disposability. Thankfully I am able to detach from my emotions and go about my days in joyful solitude but I'd rather just move on and not be put into boxes based on the past; interesting how many comedians are child abuse survivors. My view of humans as savage with a capacity for empathy emerged, as opposed to the opposite I'd felt in my years as a beloved winner/good friend/etc with an envied life. "Comedy is truth and pain," indeed. I am now ostracized for looking conservative in SF, ex-BF even questioned if I am racist while wearing a shiny Fuck Trump shirt to my house. Silver lining is I am now much more able to feel the ostracization my younger brother felt in his short life, a tearful "nobody believes me" is burned into my memory from one conversation with him as kids. Kudos to OP for finding a platform, but this level of emoting still sends most people straight into "needs help _not associating whisper whisper_ " mode. Even guys you feel are sensitive and who you have helped aren't there, in fact they are the first to start picking up social capital you're losing. As an outside observer of my own plight I can laugh along with the people who've received my communications asking for help, and predict their power moves, knowing one day perhaps our roles will be reversed and I can bend their minds with kindnesss. Hope things keep going for OP but we're nowhere near acceptance of men without a platform having feelings and tears not made out of money. We create our own reality and too many people are scared to step out of the box and try stuff like this, in any case, and I hope it's beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER22> Meta: Currently buried on page 5, with 140 upvotes. This right here says more about our feelings about mental illness than anything else.

<comment><USER23> I would be inclined to say it says more about our feelings on Will Wheaton. . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Ending the stigma against mental illness"?

If anything, as many sociologists have noted, having a mental illness is almost fashionable today. It is not a stigma by any means.

Ever since right after WWII, when housewives seeing a psychoanalyst become so popular, the ability to claim a diagnosis and then talk about all the treatment you do has been something of a social signal.

Having Chronic Depression is not a problem that is solved by increasing "acceptance". Perhaps it just genuinely reflects the state of our world, or maybe simply the tragedy of what it means to be human, to suffer from original sin.

I do not doubt Mr. Wheaton's illness or pain. But his focus on "acceptance" as the ultimate end is frustrating.

<comment><USER24> I don't enjoy seeing comments dismissing the stigma of mental illness. I have seen friends in industry targeted and pushed out after disclosing mental illnesses, and the simple fact that awareness campaigns exist and you happen to see them doesn't mean that stigma doesn't exist.

Awareness campaigns are a response to stigma and a recognition of the damage it does. Mistaking their presence for the stigma being removed is an error of familiarity and attention (you notice the awareness campaign more than you notice the stigma).

Lastly, consider that the point of the awareness campaign is to lessen unnecessary suffering, not to cure Chronic Depression, so to dismiss it as failing at a criterion that was never the intention behind it seems odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm going to say something that probably get me banned from this SJW cesspool that HN have become: his depression is a sign of his gut telling him he is not a real man. He is a soy boy, so obsessed with looking like he is not a sexist/racist/homophobe that he cant appreciate anything else in life and blame others for not accepting him. He just need to man up.

<comment><USER26> More nuanced take: men are finally acting like women have told them to act for decades: talk about your feelings, open up, be in touch with your inner self... not realizing that only works for women because women's feelings matter and verbalizing them often enough will cause others to take action sooner or later. The reason men had the "irritating" habit of offering solutions is because it was inconceivable to most that you'd complain and expect that to actually accomplish anything.

It's like an attractive person telling the ugly that they just need to approach the world with a more positive attitude and good things will come in return. No honey, that's only because they want to have sex with you. Other people don't get shit for free.

As Warren Farrel said: men's facade of strength is their weakness, women's facade of weakness is their strength. When a man displays weakness, he forfeits his right to get help.

Two generations now have been utterly miseducated on gender by a feminized education system that treated masculinity as a condition to be medicated away and passive femininity as the role model, not realizing boys need adversity in their youth to prepare them for the complete heartlessness they'll receive as adults.

"But I love my husband!" Yes, until the marriage is over, after which he'll be devastated and pining for years, while you'll discard him like an old pair of shoes, still getting alimony, the house and the kids.</comment></comment>


Kinetic Artwork Attempts to Get a 'Little Piece of Privacy' - <AUTHOR> https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/02/niklas-roy-little-piece-privacy/ <comment><USER2> This is a cute little art project.

[https://thisiscolossal.com](https://thisiscolossal.com) is one of those websites I like enough to have a bookmark on my bookmarks toolbar. Every week or two when I have some free time to spend, I will go to the website and just wander around, looking at the art on display.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great. Those curtains are so loud though, they could really use some silent drape runners[1].

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/Mzj9QsY](https://imgur.com/a/Mzj9QsY)

<comment><USER4> Nadine is low-key one of the best characters in Twin Peaks. Her character arc's resolution in The Return absolutely brought me to tears.

One of the most intelligent, irreverent, and powerful series in television history.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more. I just finished rewatching The Return and it is such an astonishing achievement. I'm still kind of in disbelief that it exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previous "discussion", just a decade ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1826002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1826002)

</comment><comment><USER6> So cute!

</comment><comment><USER7> It's ironic that the artist used a video camera (a rather privacy-invading tool) to detect where the subject is, in order to move the curtain (to shield privacy). A more honest implementation could have used low-resolution ultrasonic proximity sensors or something like that.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's the intent of the artwork.</comment></comment>


Amlogic S905 SoC: Bypassing the not so Secure Boot to dump the boot ROM - <AUTHOR> http://www.fredericb.info/2016/10/amlogic-s905-soc-bypassing-not-so.html <comment><USER2> Summary: the secure boot ROM is validated by a SHA-256 hash, instead of being authenticated by a crypto signature, so one is free to tamper with the bootloader as long as the hash is recomputed correctly. The strangest thing is that there is support for RSA signatures, but the feature is just unused.

<comment><USER3> Not quite. Weakness is later in the chain.

Secure second-stage loader (BL2) loads secure third-stage loader (BL31) from insecure flash storage, then verifies it by calculating SHA-256 hash of it and comparing that to the value stored _in the same insecure flash_.

<comment><USER4> The Xilinx Zynq has one time programmable eFuse registers for this sort of thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very good read!

But, in fairness this isn't a failure of the S905 SOC. It is a bug in the second stage bootloader that fails to authenticate the next image.

The SoC BootROM validates the RSA signature of the second stage bootloader.

</comment><comment><USER6> Huh. I wonder what the implications are for Play Store's DRM.

Specifically it seems like this board could be used to strip DRM from media.</comment>


Alphabetical Order in Korean - <AUTHOR> https://blog.plover.com/lang/mooneo.html <comment><USER2> > As far as I know, there is nothing in Korean analogous to the English > alphabet song.

We sing 가나다라마바사아자차카타파하 to exactly the same tune as the alphabet song up to P.

<comment><USER3> There is also a variant where you sing out the actual name of the characters rather than just the sound

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how databases deal with this. I imagine there's the appropriate LC_COLLATE, but would it have an impact on performance?

<comment><USER5> IIRC precomposed hangul syllables are in Unicode[0]( although I'm not sure if the precomposed characters are the canonical form or not) so you would likely apply the same functions on the precomposed hangul block as you you would for basic latin.

It's quite interesting because I once showed a non-technical Korean speaking friend a picture of Unifont[1] and they thought that the Precomposed Hangul Syllables block was quite daft. They likened it to "making a character for aa, ab, ac, ..."

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

[1] [http://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-12.1.01/unifont-12...](http://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-12.1.01/unifont-12.1.01.bmp)

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression that character blocks like

갋 and 괢 were not phonetically possible. I thought for the double consonant you could only have the same consonant twice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One way to think about this is, orthographically, muhae is written mu_hae where _ sorts before any other letters.</comment>


Show HN: Stroom – A social news platform for sharing breaking news and events - <AUTHOR> http://www.stroomnews.com/ <comment><USER2> Disclosure: I'm related to the OP.

You should put on the front page that your app is for location-aware live- streaming video from a mobile device.

What makes your app different than Meerkat, Periscope, or Twitch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion!

A big differentiator is that we are purely news and events based. The others are general use (or in the case of Twitch more geared towards video game broadcasts). The idea is that this focus will help us have a higher concentration of quality news media, making it easier for people to find what they are looking for. We want to be a hub for citizen journalism.

Our content is also perpetual and will never disappear after a period of time.</comment></comment>


The Cold War nuke that fried satellites - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150910-the-nuke-that-fried-satellites-with-terrifying-results <comment><USER2> > _British government documents detailing the fate of the satellite remained > locked away for 50 years. Reading through a copy of the file stamped > 'secret' in red letters today, it is clear why: Nasa realised almost > immediately what had happened to the satellite but the UK was, > embarrassingly, kept in the dark._

Another example of Classification used to censor something that poses no security risk, but holds huge reputation risk.

<comment><USER3> You say that, but now that this is out it's only a matter of time before the bad guys realize they can stop using their nukes for leveling cities and repurpose them for disrupting HBO.

<comment><USER4> The sats for HBO are geostationary. Hitting them with nukes is a far cry from disrupting those in low orbits. You would need a much bigger rocket and significantly better aim (GST=35000km vs. LEO=150km).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I recall correctly, there were a couple of people (I don't remember if they were astronauts or cosmonauts) in orbit at the time of Starfish Prime, whose space capsule passed through the radiation belt on its orbit. The space agency in question was pretty nervous about _them_ getting fried as well, and was kind of upset they weren't informed ahead of time.

<comment><USER4> I doubt it. The vanallen belts were predicted long ahead of time and were confirmed during the very first sat missions (explorer 1). They were known not to be dangerous, at least not in comparison to riding a rocket. The amount of dangerous radiation penetrating any spacecraft would be minimal in comparison to that constantly funneled into the belt from space.

The vanallen belts are often mentioned by moon hoax people to suggest that manned spaceflight is impossible. Mr Van Allan has been interviewed several times to dispute this assertion.

<comment><USER5> As far as I understand the issue, the Van Allen belts themselves were not the problem, but the high energy electrons released by the thermonuclear explosion, which got caught in the belt. (Apparently the amount of high energy particles released during a solar mass ejection far exceeds that released by any of the nuclear weapons set off during Operation Fishbowl, but I guess people knew a lot less about SMEs back then.)

The only reference I can find right now is the Wikipedia article on "High altitude nuclear explosion", which says: "The radiation dose rate was at least 60 rads/day at four months after Starfish for a well-shielded satellite or manned capsule in a polar circular earth orbit, which caused NASA concern with regard to its manned space exploration programs."

Which sounds quite a bit less dramatic than I remembered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many good reasons for protect space from weaponization by treaty, too bad the article doesn't raise this issue better.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this the real life event that led to Goldeneye?

<comment><USER8> For England, James?

<comment><USER9> No - for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Why is flaking so widespread in San Francisco? - <AUTHOR> http://devonzuegel.com/post/why-is-flaking-so-widespread-in-san-francisco <comment><USER2> To be clear, the author's usage of "flaking" refers to people who "flake out" \- or frequently renege or "bail out" of plans they have made with other people.

In my opinion - people who flake have a lack of self-discipline and a lack of respect for anyones time but their own.

<comment><USER3> It depends on culture.

See the recent article about Brazil, where it's considered rude to arrive on time, because everybody expects you to be at least one hour late.

<comment><USER4> But that would not be flaking, just being late, no? Are there cultures where completely failing to do what you said you would is acceptable?

<comment><USER5> Similar could be said for a lot of latin countries, though you are right -- they may be late but they do _show up_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A better question to ask is why does SF think its some unique city where everything is different than the rest of world?

<comment><USER7> Having lived in SF for a few years now I would say it is _very_ unique (not necessarily in good ways).

The weirdest thing about SF is that there are no kids.

<comment><USER8> That really depends on which part of the city you're in, my neighborhood is a sea of strollers!

<comment><USER7> I guess, but I'm just saying walking downtown you just don't see families, kids anywhere...whereas in most other cities you see kids, families, retirees, students, workers, etc in the "public centers" of a city.

<comment><USER8> My experience is only anecdotal, but I think most city centers I've spent much time in (Austin, Houston, Tokyo) haven't had many families around during the work week either. If you go to fisherman's wharf, you'll find it crawling with families (undeniably mostly tourists), and most weekends you'll find Union Square swarmed as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It has nothing to do with San Francisco. It's a generational thing that has nothing to do with SF specifically. Read this article from last year in the NYT:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/opinion/the-golden-age- of...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/opinion/the-golden-age-of- bailing.html)

FWIW, I'm an old person and flaking wasn't as prevalent pre-cell phone. The reason is that there was no way that you could get in touch with someone if you changed your mind or if something came up, so the person would be waiting there indefinitely. Also people would have much longer patience, I would sometimes have to wait up to 1 hour for my friends to show up. Of course, the reverse of that is if someone flaked more than a couple of times, you would stop inviting them out or making plans with them, so it was a problem that dealt with itself.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm disappointed. I was hoping that the author would go into the structural issues with transport in the SF Bay Area.

One of the primary issues with the SF Bay Area is that it's 60 miles north- south, and getting across the SF Bay is a major undertaking, both in time and money.

Unlike cities like NYC (large and dense + a mostly functional transit system), and Boston (small and dense + a vaguely functional transit system), travel times are much more non-deterministic in the SF Bay Area, especially if plans require people from multiple locations.

Ergo, the chances of people bailing on plans because some random traffic incident will add 90 minutes to their travel time (and possibly miss most of the event) is much higher in the SF Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's a general trend of being always connected. The original meetup is no longer a high-priority focused event but can easily be replaced by something else in a second. It also makes sending excuses easier with a simple text so there's not much consequence for lack of commitment. This is exacerbated by making everything into a "casual" experience with respect and professionalism waning among youth.

People didn't flake as much when they had to actually call each other to make plans, and couldn't communicate further until they were actually there in person.

</comment><comment><USER12> > _This was really frustrating, because I'd taken an expensive Uber to get > there on time._

The Bay Area is an expensive, slow, pain in the ass to get around. It's no wonder more people flake (if that's actually true). There's always going to be a reason _not_ to jump into bumper to bumper traffic or pay a $100 Uber fair. Compared to NY where you can just jump on a subway and meet someone in half an hour, it's a wonder people meet up in the Bay Area casually at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> In addition to flaking, people are highly reluctant to commit. Which is to say, they won't say yes or no until the last minute. This is just as rude as flaking, given that many occasions require headcount for planning.

<comment><USER14> If the last minute wasn't good enough then it wouldn't be the last minute. If someone needs a headcount by a certain time, then state so and then that's the last minute - not five minutes after getting a text message.

<comment><USER13> It's typically implicit given the nature of the event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> San Francisco is flake central for sure, but I noticed that it's largely the fakers who flake out on things. Most of the people I know running real businesses know how to keep their appointments.

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy I would assume there is so much to do there, particularly impromptu things, that it is a detriment to not be flexible.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Everyone is even more connected digitally here than most other places in the > world.

Someone needs to see more world.

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one who's relieved when someone flakes on me? Less human interaction ftw (of course in some scenarios it's really frustrating... but for non-urgent meetings, flaking can be a boon to win back precious time and energy).

</comment><comment><USER18> this is a stereotype of California, not just San Francisco. people make the same observation about film industry types.

like every seemingly irrational and inefficient mode of cultural interaction, there are some benefits to it.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's pretty brave of her actually to say that she's experienced a lot of flaking. Highly desired individuals probably don't get flaked very often, so admitting you get flaked about 50% of the time is kind of admitting that you have friends who feel like they have better things to do, which is admirable.

<comment><USER20> Oh come on, that's like saying that victims have it coming to them. The fault is on the person who flakes, and meeting a lot of people who flake is little more than bad luck.

<comment><USER21> This exchange does make me wonder how often she makes plans we people who've already previously flaked on her.

There probably are ways to minimize the risk of getting flaked on.

Engineering your life for zero flakes, is probably sub-optimal though.

Probably a better strategy is just to keep a kindle with reading you want to do with you (or something along those lines), so if you do flaked on, the time isn't a total waste.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome's H.264 support not true "free" software - <AUTHOR> http://ianweller.org/tag/ogg-theora/ <comment><USER2> I began to wonder how long it will take for someone to begin working on a fork of Firefox which would include support for h264. I have already seen patches for both DirectShow and GStreamer backends, so I'd guess it's not that hard technically.

What we need is a catchy domain name, some marketing and a few devs and the spice shall flow again.

<comment><USER3> Who's going to pay the licensing fees? If you fork, you probably don't get access to the Google money spigot.

<comment><USER4> Apple (QT) and Microsoft (DirectShow) pay the license fees when they distribute their Operating Systems.

Nobody gives a shit about distributing the x264 source code, and only the fosstards even have a hiccup about distributing binaries, especially from hosts outside the US. Ubuntu may not ship with the gstreamer plugin, but it does prompt you to download it the first time it's asked for by an application.

<comment><USER5> \- The 'fosstards' built and shared a good deal of the ecosystem on which the Internet you are using runs.

\- A large chunk of the rest is directly or indirectly enabled, possible or cheaper thanks to them.

\- Every one I have met in person has been polite about their goals, and while they base them on fundamental principles I don't quite agree with, their reasoning as based on those principles is rock solid.

As such I think they deserve a little more respect than being called names, especially here. When was the last time you saw a start-up that used no FOSS software?

<comment><USER4> The 'fosstards' aren't generally writing the Free Software I use -- they're hanging out in debian-legal and harassing people over petty imagined issues and doing more than anyone else to promote strong intellectual property rights (especially Software Patents: you don't weaken something by anal-retentively respecting it).

The vast majority of people writing GPL software do not align with the FSF's ideology, the GPL2 is just the most practical for their needs. Note how noone outside their core commune has switched to the GPL3, and how noone actually deeds the copyright for their random projects to the FSF like they recommend in the license text?

The only hard-GNU software I (and most others here) really use are GCC, coreutils, bash, and readline. Incidentally I'm hoping to be able to ditch all the first three in the near future for quality reasons mostly borne of FSF- pigheadedness (though I would like to swap out readline when that's the only GPL lib in a program). If I switch back to a Mac I'll be able to use better alternatives for all of them quite soon.

<comment><USER6> Any stats to back up your wild claims and non-sense assumptions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Mozilla has taken on the responsibility of providing a free-software solution for browsing the web_

..and in so doing they have intentionally crippled their browser's ability to play one of the most widely used video formats. To some of us, this sounds like a _dumb move_. Hence "get with the program", that program being the one where you attempt to build the best software for browsing the web.

<comment><USER8> There's a relatively simple solution to this that another heavy hitter in the FOSS world has been using for years: Prompt for a "restricted package" install when the user first encounters an h.264 video, similar to how Ubuntu deals with non-FOSS drivers, plugins, and codecs.

It's the best of both worlds; you stay free and you get to be compatible.

<comment><USER4> Mozilla links directly with liboggplay and actively avoids abstracting it in any way. It can't handle any non-ogm container formats, and ogm was intentionally designed not to handle any other codecs.

They're just assholes. If software patents are repealed in the US they'll mourn the loss of the mainstay excuse with which they force earnest activist wankery on their users. If patents were the real obstacle they'd distribute the x264 decoder to/from locales where the patents are unenforceable, and/or fall back on system libraries.

Their present actions serve only to strengthen the Copyright, Patent, and Trademark status quo, because without IP assholery they would neither have a soapbox to stand on nor an enemy to fight.

<comment><USER9> The "ogm" file format is an old, unsupported, deprecated variant of the Ogg container. Do you mean "ogv"?

Sorry, this may seem like nit-picking, but such a fundamental mistake makes it harder to take your strong claims about Mozilla's design and intentions at face value.

<comment><USER4> I intentionally used it to avoid a similar riposte if I had said 'ogg', an even older and shittier container. I didn't know they had implemented a new one, but from what I can tell they took special care to recapitulate all the mistakes of the last one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still don't understand why Mozilla doesn't just use the codecs already installed in the Operating System. Then you don't have to ship any codecs.

Separation of concerns.

<comment><USER3> See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070979>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about x264? I know there is speculation that x264 wouldn't have much chance to withstand a software patent fight but OGG Theora isn't 100% safe either. If Mozilla is already going down that road they should just adopt x264 and see what happens. Challenge the patent holders to outrage the public and cripple the Internet. That's going to do more for software freedom than sticking their head in the sand.

<comment><USER2> x264 is a h264 encoder implementation. Mozilla couldn't "just adopt" it, mostly because they have little use of an encoder. Its the decoder what they need.

<comment><USER11> Ah I see. I must be thinking of something else. I know I've definitely played back h264 video using OSS software with no commercial hackery.

<comment><USER12> Of course--ffmpeg's decoder library, libavcodec, supports every format under the sun, including H.264.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The number of comments trashing the FOSS position towards video codecs is strange given that it's equally popular to trash the proprietary flash player. Maybe this thread is a statistical anomaly or people are just inconsistent.

<comment><USER12> What "FOSS position"?

The vast majority of people I know in FOSS, both users and developers, could care less about patents. The apparent "FOSS position" comes from a vocal minority, not the majority of FOSS users and developers.

<comment><USER13> They should care because the H264 patent expires in 2025. If we were looking at a few years then you might be right not to worry. It's odd that MPEG LA supporters are coming out of the woodwork on this issue, seemingly to prevent HTML5 from starting out on the right foot.

<comment><USER12> _the H264 patent_

"The" H.264 patent? I have, sadly enough, the MPEG-LA agreement here, and there have got to be 25 pages at least simply listing patent numbers, with expiry dates ranging from very soon to a long time from now.

 _MPEG LA supporters_

So everyone who is against Mozilla's attempt to force crappy software on us using the excuse of patents is an "MPEG LA supporter"? Some of us _simply don't care about patents_ , as hard as it might be to believe for some.

<comment><USER13> I understand. But you could have a replay of the Unisys GIF situation except that it will last a very long time. Most developers and web services (vimeo, youtube, etc) are only thinking about how to improve their product in the short term. The best short term move is to choose H264. They're free to do what they want. So is Mozilla. Those same web services will screw themselves if they make Mozilla irrelevant. But again, short term thinking.

<comment><USER14> How will they screw themselves by making Mozilla irrelevant?

It's not like Mozilla in any way had any influence on their websites becoming popular, nor will they be affected at all if browser user agents change from Firefox -> Chrome.

Interesting leap of logic.

<comment><USER15> Well they do actually.

Right now: Firefox is the only platform-neutral web browser. Firefox on Linux and Firefox on Windows are supposed to be the same browser.

Using OS codecs changes that, which means a Windows shop can test Windows browsers, but no (reasonable) way to test Linux browsers.

So long as there is a platform-neutral browser, browsers have to work similarly.

If you remember: Microsoft IE for mac and for windows operate so differently that they must be developed for as separate browsers, and yet banks _regularly_ told people to use IE (despite the fact that IE on the mac didn't work either- and the bank programmers had no way to test it).

Content producers earn on eyeballs, and if 10-50% of their users aren't seeing what they want them to see, they'll adapt: browser sniff, flash fallback, or whatever it takes.

As a result, video will remain complicated. Maybe Apple and Microsoft can be pressured into supporting OGG, or maybe their users can be prompted to get higher quality video by downloading some codec or plugin. Maybe a technology like ChromeFrame will become popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So?

</comment><comment><USER17> better than flash

</comment><comment><USER14> Excuse me while I take 5 minutes to not give a shit..</comment>


Are frameworks making developers dumb? - <AUTHOR> http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/08/are-frameworks-making-developers-dumb.html

<comment><USER2> I completely agree with this. I think it stands for any language that frameworks create developers who only know the framework, not the language. This was my gripe initially with jQuery - it's responsible for a new generation of developers who know a little JavaScript but know jQuery.

The argument then goes: does a mechanic need to know what a computer diagnostic machine is built or what materials a shifting spanner is made of.

Frameworks create lazy developers, don't get me started on database abstraction layers! ORM's especially in PHP create lazy developers.</comment>


Nissan Chairman Ghosn arrested in Japan over financial law violation - <AUTHOR> https://japantoday.com/category/crime/Nissan-Chairman-Ghosn-arrested-over-financial-law-violation <comment><USER2> Compare to UK and American corporations:

* The corporation investigated its own chairman (and CEO of its larger alliance), based on a whistleblower's report.

* A corporate chairman/CEO was arrested by the government, and the accusation is not massive fraud but under-reporting his own compensation and making personal use of corporate assets.

* A chair/CEO of a global corporation wanted $8.5 million in salary, and that was considered too much (this was a response from European stakeholders too). He took less.

Perhaps some people with experience in Japanese business can provide context for what we are seeing.

EDIT: Corrected Ghosn's title

EDIT2: Corrected the allegations by the government. I had been reading the NY Times article, not the one linked above.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/business/nissan-carlos- gh...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/business/nissan-carlos-ghosn- misconduct.html)

<comment><USER3> Japan is also the country where there's 99% conviction rate in the courts (imagine what that entails) and you can be held by the police without charges for 30 days.

<comment><USER4> What little I know about Japanese law is from English translations of the Ace Attorney series, but one of the clear things from those (silly) games is that Japan seems to have a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach in courts.

(This seems somewhat mitigated by prosecutors supposedly not even bringing innocent people forward to trial at all, but in the Ace Attorney series the number of cheating prosecutors doesn't seem to make it a very trustworthy system. Then again, given there wouldn't be trials for the games' defendant protagonists to solve if that weren't the case, it _may_ be anecdotally skewed for the benefits of gameplay. Given how much psychic powers factor into the series, I try to make no assumptions.)

<comment><USER5> I know absolutely nothing about the Japanese legal system, but I suspect using the Ace Attorney series of video games to try and draw meaningful conclusions is probably not the wisest idea...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something smells very fishy on this. I bet all the information on this news so far comes from the intentional leak from police and Nissan.

It's rather odd to be arrested for a tax evasion alone. If it's just a tax evasion, you got a letter from tax office and pay tax and fine. So I think it's 別件逮捕, as usual.

I think there was internal political coup in Nissan.

<comment><USER7> It makes me wonder if Ghosn was preparing some sort takeover similar to what Porsche did to VW in the 2000s, and the Japanese government isn't interested in having one of their largest auto makers owned by a European company.

<comment><USER8> Things I did not know, from France Info radio: \- before the alliance, Renault and Nissan had about the same size. Now Nissan is twice as big in number of cars. \- Nissan maybe in position to merge with/control Renault (and French government is not really pleased)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is Nissan's full press release regarding Ghosn in which they implicate Greg Kelly, Representative Director, as also being involved in this scheme.

One thing is for certain: they're hanging Ghosn out to dry.

>Nissan has been providing information to the Japanese Public Prosecutors Office and has been fully cooperating with their investigation. We will continue to do so.

[0] [https://newsroom.nissan- global.com/releases/release-860852d7...](https://newsroom.nissan- global.com/releases/release-860852d7040eed420ffbaebb223b6973-181119-01-e)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a shame - he was a celebrity in Japan, turned around Nissan and Renault's fortunes, and could have retired as a living legend. Now even if this turns out to be false, his reputation will be in ruin. Why would you do tax evasion for small amounts when you already have dozens of millions in the bank

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately, the kind of person who will sacrifice to get dozens of millions in the bank is also often the kind of person who will be aggressive about running up the score.

We had a clear recent example. A family that's already rich, but did all sorts of dubious and/or illegal things to further their wealth: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald- trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html)</comment></comment>


We Sell Your Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.wesellyourdata.com/ <comment><USER2> Hahahaha. Needed a good laugh :)</comment>


Show HN: OpenMorphi – Build SVG animations between 2 emojis (web, desktop only) - <AUTHOR> https://openmorphi.now.sh <comment><USER2> I feel like a bad user because I could not figure out how to use this. The demo looked nice, but I could not figure out how to create my own animation from the provided svgs</comment>


Accused Palin Hacker Says Stolen E-Mails Were Public Record - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/palin-hack <comment><USER2> Kid did a dumb thing, but from what I know of the facts (no malicious intent) this seems like a waste of public resources to send this to trial and possibly keep this guy in jail. Proportionality seems a bit out of whack here, a stiff fine seems fair enough.

<comment><USER3> > Kid did a dumb thing, but from what I know of the facts (no malicious > intent)

How do you know that there was no malicious intent? (I'm not saying you don't - I'm asking how you gained access to this information.)

Putting on my "what if it had happened to {someone else}" hat, I'll ask if folks would be so forgiving if it had been Biden or Obama?

<comment><USER2> You're right, I suppose I was just inferring his intent. But from the facts that have been released, it looks like he just posted screenshots of his successful "hack" on 4chan, and didn't try to do anything more nefarious like steal her identity. I could be wrong.

I think my reaction would have been the same had it been Obama, Biden, or any public figure. One big difference for me anyway, would have been if he had accessed a @whitehouse.gov address (whether Bush, Obama or other official). Being able to figure out her pet's name or whatever seems somewhat trivial to merit a jail sentence.

<comment><USER3> > But from the facts that have been released, it looks like he just posted > screenshots of his successful "hack" on 4chan,

Are you saying that it didn't matter to him whose account it was? If it did, what definition of "not malicious" are we using?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't matter if the content of the emails was public, breaking into someones email account is wrong. PG: can we ban wired articles for a while? There's been a glut of them recently that have little to do with hacking or startups.

<comment><USER5> I agree that breaking into someone's account is wrong, but the argument isn't about that. It's about whether it is a felony or a misdemeanor.

<comment><USER6> Moreover, the legal standing of privacy for e-mails is very interesting and I doubt I am the only one crious to see where this line of argument goes. For example, it speaks to the question "If I have consented for my employer to scan my email, does that mean my employer has the right to make my emails public"?</comment></comment></comment>