Screeps programmable MMO RTS will go public on August 12 - <AUTHOR> https://screeps.com

<comment><USER2> Given that it has a single persistent world, I would expect the one best player to take over the entire game. I wonder how they counteract that.

The best botting experiences I've had were in a tournament format. Initially you square off against opponents who you can teach your bot to beat using only very simple heuristics. Then you progress to opponents who require increasingly more sophisticated algorithms. It wouldn't be fun for novices to immediately face the best bot anyone has produced.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is described here: [http://support.screeps.com/hc/en- us/articles/203079471-Indie...](http://support.screeps.com/hc/en- us/articles/203079471-Indiegogo-update-2015-02-19)

You can't control the entire world, there are game mechanics to prevent this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It has been in Early Preview stage for 2 months, and now the public release date is revealed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks awesome.

<comment><USER4> I backed the kickstarter and played with the early parts of the game for a while. It is pretty good! But it's hampered by mediocre development tools. I never figured out a good way to write code for it, even after they added github support and lots of nice features. With github, you'd have to commit everything you wanted to test, and getting screeps to notice the new commit was a hassle that I never mastered. No nice debugging tools either. They improved a lot since I started, though, so I'm not sure what the current state is like. I would love a recommendation of how to play this in a sane manner.

But the game itself is very cool and you can do a lot without too much work. Definitely worth checking out.

<comment><USER5> The code update stuff frustrated me too, so I wrote GoScreeps ([https://github.com/andyleap/goscreeps](https://github.com/andyleap/goscreeps)). Handles uploading code changes, and will also do an initial download for you. Changes can be pushed by merely saving the file in your editor, as the tool sits and watches for file save events.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding the Reaction to Amazon Prime Air - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/ptwobrussell/Mining-the-Social-Web-2nd-Edition/blob/master/ipynb/__Understanding%20the%20Reaction%20to%20%22Amazon%20Prime%20Air%22.ipynb

<comment><USER2> My Reaction to Amazon Prime Air is that I live around a mile from a Amazon warehouse and I can not drive there to pick it up. Instead I need to use Free Shipping, have them "package" my purchase randomly anywhere from 2 days to 5 days so I can't cancel it on them for taking too long, then ship the item 1,000 feet or so.

They could setup a location for Amazon Locker in the warehouse location for me to pickup my items. I understand I will receive absolutely no on-site customer service. They could even use the Locker for returns. I have suggested this to their support.

Or, I could pay for Prime free shipping so they can mail it such a short distance and actually receive the item the next day like I do with Newegg, who is further away, which has been enjoying my business if they have the item.

</comment><comment><USER3> 5kb per serialized tweet? That doesn't sound very efficient.

<comment><USER4> Ouch.

They're probably encoding in XML and several nested layers of base64!!

(yes I have actually seen people doing this in a finance company's integration platform).

<comment><USER5> They're storing all the metadata, and for better or worse they are storing each string field as an "object" whereas they could have used a fixed-width field. The former of course is something like a reference count and a pointer to a string elsewhere; the latter would have some overhead when strings are of varying lengths. If memory usage were really a concern, decent savings could be realized by changing (most of?) the 13 float64 columns to float32, and some of the object (string) columns to fixed-width. For example, "lang" is two characters always, and usernames (which are stored in several fields) would be more efficiently stored as char[15]. Easy to try, just not the default behavior; I bet you could cut the total size by a third (too bad they didn't).

<comment><USER4> Ick. I wonder if anyone has actually heard of ASN.1 BER before?

Seems like ridiculous encoding and structures are the in thing at the moment.

<comment><USER5> Have you used Numpy/Scipy/Pandas? It works a bit differently. It basically creates a matrix as in C--the trick is choosing the right column types. I don't see what relevance ASN.1 has here.

<comment><USER4> Yes SciPy (although I usually end up with Mathematica).That's a generic encoding. ASN.1 is a specific and compact encoding of the data.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some tidbits from Joel Spolsky's talk last night on recruiting programmers - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.posterous.com/some-tidbits-from-joel-spolskys-talk-last-nig <comment><USER2> _Joel is super strong advocate of : 1) private offices for each programmer, 2) free, nicely catered lunch every day (everyone eats together and bonds), 3) usual internet stuff - comfortable office, dogs, flexible schedules etc._

On one hand, a little voice inside of me cries, "Yes! This is what it takes to produce great software: a programmer-appreciative environment."

On the other hand, another little voice claims, "This stuff is all well and good, but nothing more. It's cosmetic, not functional, like putting perfume on a pig."

I have been in many situations with Class A office space, private offices, catered team-building breakfasts and lunches, etc., etc., etc. and was ready to jump out the window. Why? Because the work sucked and all the window dressing in the world wasn't going to change that.

Then I think back to some of my most favorite projects and remember the great work that we did. Sometimes in squalor-like conditions, sharing cubicles or tables, sitting in the server room with too much air conditioning or in the warehouse without enough, eating vending machine garbage and drinking old coffee because that was all there was.

Bottom line? The _work itself_ is 100 times more important than the working conditions. Sure, everything being equal, I'd rather have nicer digs. But everything not being equal, I'll choose the better project every time, no matter what the environment is like.

I suspect Joel gives the programming environment more credit than it deserves. His people are probably happy, and the office helps. But the real reason is the work itself, and they'd be almost as happy no matter what the office was like.

<comment><USER3> "But everything not being equal, I'll choose the better project every time, no matter what the environment is like."

Really? Don't get me wrong, I largely agree with the spirit of your post, but... there are some real shitholes out there. At one job my chair was so bad that I could barely move at the end of the day. I had to exercise more often than usual to ease the back pain. The office was often dirty because the owner was too cheap and would only send a cleaner when he really had to. I don't care if you're working on an OS kernel or movie special effects, doing something you love should not come at the expense of your health or personal hygiene. Now I don't particularly care for free lunches or private offices (I prefer shared offices myself, with 3 or 4 developers per office). But the reason Joel's message resonates strongly with so many people is precisely because most developers work in conditions few professionals would put up with. Even in software companies where software is (or should be) a profit center, the accountants, office administrators, etc. often work under much better conditions than the developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Screening process: Resume screen, phone screen, web based Etherpad code test, then fly/bus in and day of interviews and whiteboard code test._

As a programmer currently looking for work, I find this screening process to be draconian and insulting.

I cannot vouch for it's efficacy as I've never used it when hiring people.

However, the problem I have with it is the rigidity with which I've seen it enforced. I've a number of open-source projects that I've started and contribute to and a plethora of code examples I can send upon request. I like to think of it as a portfolio of code. I've sent links to these projects and made sure the recruiter knew that I could provide further code samples as required. Yet each time I walk into the interview, the interviewer hasn't read a single line of my code and hands me a dry erase marker. I then get the sense that I'm just another number and they could hardly care about who I am or what I do.

I don't know what writing code on a whiteboard is supposed to show the interviewer. The person they're interviewing is not in the normal state of mind they are in when they're doing they're job. What good is a pressure test other than to keep very good, capable people out of your organization?

Certainly a production artist wouldn't walk into an interview with a portfolio and be asked to draw a puppy. The gall of the interviewer would force the artist to walk out unless they're especially desperate. The same is true for programmers, IMO. If a candidate sends you code to read, take the time to read it before you interview them. Otherwise why should they even bother sacrificing their time on this Earth to your benefit if you won't even consider their work and effort?

<comment><USER2> _As a programmer currently looking for work, I find this screening process to be draconian and insulting._

As a hiring manager, I look for someone who _gets things done_. No surprise that this takes many things: knowledge, skill, smarts, creativity, experience, team work, and maybe most important: attitude. You have just self-identified your bad attitude. If you think this is "draconian and insulting", just wait until your knee deep in digital shit with customers barking at you all day long.

 _I cannot vouch for it's efficacy as I've never used it when hiring people._

I can. Nothing works better. Period. If I have 30 to 60 minutes to find out how well you'll perform, I'll have you code and teach me what you've done. I don't care what you've done before, your state of mind, or even if your code ever runs or compiles. If you're any good at all, I'll find out. If you're a poser, I'll find that out, too. And if you don't want to play along, then either you're a poser avoiding exposure or a prima donna who is saving me a lot of suffering down the road.

I'm not trying to insult you, just give an honest answer to your (very good) question. This comes up so often, I've responded to it before. A little more light shed here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=89669>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=834513>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=835092>

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the honest reply. I was hoping someone who uses these techniques in their hiring process would explain what they find so useful about it.

I've hired many programmers before myself and I've never used such a rigorous process. I'm just curious why it has become so popular, There's got to be a reason, right?

 _You have just self-identified your bad attitude. If you think this is "draconian and insulting", just wait until your knee deep in digital shit with customers barking at you all day long._

Actually my bad attitude has left me with a list of references from customers and managers who'd be happy to tell you that they've been satisfied with my work. Some of them are my best evangelists.

What I find insulting is ignorance. In my original comment I mention that it's the rigidity with which the process is enforced which is insulting. I think it's ignorant of the interviewer to not bother reading a candidates' source code when they offer it (the same for their website, etc). You validate that by saying that it doesn't matter what code a candidate has written prior to the interview. That is exactly the ignorance I have a problem with.

I suspect that if the goal of this process is to understand what a person's attitude, knowledge, skills and such are really like then reading their source code and blog posts would be the first step in getting to know them.

 _I don't care what you've done before, your state of mind, or even if your code ever runs or compiles. If you're any good at all, I'll find out. If you're a poser, I'll find that out, too. And if you don't want to play along, then either you're a poser avoiding exposure or a prima donna who is saving me a lot of suffering down the road._

I find that reading someone's commit history in a project can be very illuminating. The logs alone can give you a sense of their commitment to a project, what kind of work they prefer, and even a cursory glance at their skill level (are they fixing small bugs, introducing bugs, reverting a lot?). If you have time to sit down and read a few patches you can certainly see how well they follow coding conventions, whether they understand control and data structures, and perhaps even algorithms if that's what you're looking for. You can learn a lot from the code a person writes.

What I was having a hard time understanding is what kind of things can white- board (or pencil and paper) problems tell you. After reading your other comments, I think I have an idea. You want to know if they can talk freely about time vs space constraints, optimization, basic control structures, and data structures. You want to know if they know the fundamentals. I can appreciate that.

What I still don't understand about your process is how the candidates' previous code contributions and experiences do not matter. Can you not get the answers you seek from reading their code? If it wasn't just Joe Programmer but Larry Wall or Peter Norvig, would that change your opinion?

I just don't think it's a universally applicable tool, but I find many companies that seem to think it is the _only_ way to screen candidates. I think that some flexibility is necessary because you're dealing with human beings. The hiring process isn't an exact science IMO. Just like Agile isn't the ONE TRUE WAY to develop software I don't think you'll find a single process that will find you the best employees.

<comment><USER5> >>I've never used such a rigorous process. I'm just curious why it has become so popular, There's got to be a reason, right?

I _think_ the feature is the speed and standardization of the screening process -- the code writing on line probably clears out a lot of incompetents. (Trivial parallels with CPU instruction queues etc inserted here.)

>>how the candidates' previous code contributions and experiences do not matter.

They'll look at open source contributions in a later phase, or they are idiots.

>>my bad attitude

There is nothing wrong with your attitude -- that was way out of line. Don't work for people who doesn't like if you ask questions. (And don't judge the GP as an idiot either, he made some good points but might have had to explain some simple things once too often. :-)

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert or even a good amateur at the hiring process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not alone in picking up on this:

      > private offices for each programmer,

I refer readers to the comments made by Richard Hamming, quoted here by PG : <http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html> : about shutting oneself away:

      > I notice that if you have the door to your office
      > closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow,
      > and you are more productive than most. But 10 years
      > later somehow you don't know quite know what problems
      > are worth working on; all the hard work you do is
      > sort of tangential in importance.
      >
      > He who works with the door open gets all kinds of
      > interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues
      > as to what the world is and what might be important.
      > ... there is a pretty good correlation between those
      > who work with the doors open and those who ultimately
      > do important things, although people who work with
      > doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to
      > work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but
      > enough that they miss fame.

Adapting this to programming, intra-team communication is already hard enough to establish and get flowing. Don't put stuff in the way. Yes, programmers do need quiet environments, but the gains from good and easy communication will out-weigh the losses. If you really need silence for a bit of hard-thinking work, take your laptop and go somewhere else for a bit.

<comment><USER7>
      > I notice that if you have the door to your office
      > closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow,
      > and you are more productive than most. But 10 years
      > later somehow you don't know quite know what problems
      > are worth working on; all the hard work you do is
      > sort of tangential in importance.

I think Joel's office will avoid this problem because they have scheduled interaction time each day. The daily all-company lunches prevent the employees from becoming isolated and out of touch. I don't think he intended for the free lunches to be a balance for the private offices, but that seems to be the function they serve.

Edit: fixed a typo (I'm don't vs. I don't)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found it interesting that he claims Wall Street offers dull problems compared to most startups. I've never worked there myself but I know people who do (and in London), and they tend to work on awesome and seriously hard core projects. Stuff right on the cutting edge of math, CS and technology and often far beyond what most start-ups deal with.

Sure I'm not doubting that there are plenty of dull jobs on Wall Street as well, but I'm surprised he writes off the entire sector.

<comment><USER9> That's what I thought so too. Remember that Russian programmer who worked for Goldman Sach (or was it Morgan Stanley) that got caught for stealing his own code when he moved to a firm in Chicago? He's coding in C++, Erlang and a bunch of other things doing hardcore Math and CS.

Has Joel ever worked for a Wall Street firm?

<comment><USER10> That surprised me as well. I really respect Joel for

a) treating his programmers well

b) not taking external funding for something that doesn't actually require (I suspect points a and b are connected too).

but writing a bug tracking system in ASP.NET seems a lot less intellectually challenging compare to what's involved in a high frequency trading system (even if you don't get to use Erlang, Haskell, OCaml and C++ -- and you frequently _do_ ). Of course that's also nothing compared to many Silicon Valley companies (you get to work on hard problems _and_ you're in a place where core competency is software). I'd imagine, this is related to his point about Stanford (or any other Bay Area school for that matter, even San Jose State): if given other choices, graduates will tend to work on projects that are more interesting or "hard-core" (to borrow a phrase Joel himself has used in terms of of what sort of he experience he looks for on people's resumes).

(Edit: Had a point about GPA, but since others are talking about this, I'll remove it. That said, does Joel (or anyone else) have any hard data on this, in a statistically significant sample?)

<comment><USER11> The fastest way to make your bug tracker into a challenging project is to approach it with the idea that it's not a challenging project and therefore unworthy of serious developer time or energy.

We had one of those where I work. It just got its ass decommissioned and replaced by virtue of being too challenging to work with.

Every non-trivial program has significant challenges in it; if you can't see them, it's probably your lack of experience or your casual assumption that it must be easy, not the fact that the task itself is that easy.

Of course, that challenge may be hidden behind other problems. You may not be allowed to actually address the challenges; a code monkey making the same change to 50 webpages instead of writing the proper code to do it all in one fell swoop is doing something challenging in the sense of _difficult_ (more difficult than it has to be!), but not the right things. This is a far more common cause of "unchallenging programming" than the actual lack of hard problems; most of the time, most programs completely fall apart under their own complexity load before the true challenges even come into sight. This is, however, the fault of the system building the program (programmers and management), not the problem domain. Wherever there are people to interface to computers, there is challenge.

<comment><USER10> > Every non-trivial program has significant challenges in it; if you can't see > them, it's probably your lack of experience or your casual assumption that > it must be easy, not the fact that the task itself is that easy.

I remember Joel talking about Wasabi, purpose built language for making their main product cross platform. I see many business software vendors doing this e.g., SAP with ABAP, but I'm curious as to whether there has been a significant ROI from it (I heard mixed things about its current status of both Wasabi and ABAP and since I have no background in business software I'll refrain from commenting further on this practice).

I agree that are there are significant UI/UX challenges in a system like a bug tracker (and quite frankly, most of the existing offerings are a disaster in that space). There's also a whole slew of fairly interesting problems you _could_ do in the greater space (integration with a VCS/code-review/diff tools in comprehensive system like Github, Google's internal tools or some of Atlassian's offerings).

It's also far from a trivial problem, which is why most companies are willing to pay for bug tracking systems rather than write their own (although, it used to be common to use heavily customized versions of Bugzilla): problems don't have to be "hard-core" to be non-trivial or extremely useful (much like Joel advices, I'd refuse to work in a company that didn't have a bug tracker). If I ever gave an impression that I considered a bug tracker trivial, I apologize for it.

What I should say instead is if you're looking for a "hard-core CS" challenge (systems, networks, data structures and algorithms) -- and certainly only a small minority of people are both qualified to and are interested in working in that space, in reality these topics involve lots of fairly unglamorous work -- a bug tracker seems like the wrong thing to work on.

I wouldn't make the whole point, if Joel didn't spread the whole "we're hiring best programmers to solve the most difficult problems" aura and has instead stated "we may not be the most hard-core, but we build great products and treat developers as more than just cogs". The latter point sounds a lot more honest and still suffices in terms of recruitment. There are many people (including many hackers I know and respect) who are passionate _specifically_ about development tools and they're the people you want to be working on development tools who aren't going to be interested in Wall Street (or any other place where building development tools isn't a core competency, which excludes most other software and Internet firms with exceptions of the largest, who have custom needs) in the first place.

<comment><USER12> One thing which is surprising with bug tracking is how crappy most of the products are, especially the open source ones. This strikes me as odd a priori since open source is generally pretty good at core programming tools - and bug tracking certainly fits that category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I respect Joel for sure and he's got way more experience than I do, but I strongly disagree with private offices for developers. I had that while at MS and at first I thought it was just amazing. It didn't take long before I realized how much it stifles communication and even how territorial it can make people. Sure cubicles or even big rooms with open desks aren't nearly as glamorous or prestigious, but in my experience they foster teams that talk to each other, constantly, about the product. The overall team knowledge goes up dramatically. It also fosters an environment where people are more on the ball and productive, instead of sneaking off to some vice website every 5 minutes.

<comment><USER14> In my experience, private offices foster _increased_ communication because a small gropu can get together and talk without having to get a conference room or pissing everyone else off.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that is a good point. I guess in both situations, it really depends on the team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope dogs don't become an "internet standard". I don't want to work in an office with dogs. Maybe it would repulse me so much that I would even reject to work for Google.

Besides, I thought the internet standard is LOLCats.

<comment><USER16> I agree with you. I will work with your dogs in the office if you work with my children in the office.... no? Ok then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The GPA thing always bothers me to hear it admittedly because I wasn't a great student in college. I typically always had my own thing going on that I cared about more. I can see where he's coming from though and I consider high GPA to a good sign when I'm looking at a resume. Often when I look at resumes I'm just looking for anything good.

My career outside of school is considerably better than that my work in school would have ever suggested. Before I started my company I was always the programmer who everyone hated to see leave and who was offered a lot of money to stay. I was glad to hear people talking about my younger brother who is also a programmer the same way. I figure that's the final measure of how good you are.

I never really cared much about what I worked on though. I always just wanted to be kept busy. Part of why I wanted to start my own company was to stay busy.

</comment><comment><USER18> What interests me is if there's any correlation between objective ability (as in programming 'skill') and GPA. I'm not surprised that programmers with good GPAs make better hires for Joel - it means they're more likely to do work on somebody _else's_ project even when it doesn't particularly interest them (which is good for an employer in a small/medium size firm like Fog Creek, as opposed to an early-stage startup).

But is there any correlation with programming ability? Or is GPA just an indicator of 'obedience'/employability?

Nonetheless - great insights, all of them, as is only to be expected from Mr Spolsky.

<comment><USER19> If the courses were rigorous enough, then I'm sure the correlation between grades and programming ability would be meaningful and fairly reliable. It's hard to imagine someone doing well at courses like algorithms, statistics, and compilers, and not being a decent programmer too.

<comment><USER20> > It's hard to imagine someone doing well at courses like algorithms, > statistics, and compilers, and not being a decent programmer too.

Sure, but are those who did poorly in those classes less likely to be good programmers?

I aim for slightly over a 2.0. I limit myself from going lower because that puts me on probation, which does irritating things like prevent me from being on paper as a club officer (I'm unofficially the president of our LUG for this upcoming year). I don't aim for higher grades because I find that the amount of work required is on an exponential order - the difference between a D and a C is far less than a B and an A. Doing fewer assignments gives me time to work on all sorts of projects that there aren't any classes for. As a result, I've got a basic understanding of quite a few different things, enough to realize if one of them is a good solution for a problem.

But that's what I am - the guy who knows a little about a lot. My role in a recent team project was essentially that of technical advisor: when my teammates weren't sure of how to approach a problem, they came to me for suggestions.

Now, will this bite me in the butt later? Quite possibly.

Edit: I suppose my question is this: would you rather hire someone with a good GPA but little programming experience outside of school, or someone with a rather poor GPA but contributions to open-source (with code quality being roughly what you would expect in order to achieve the first candidate's GPA)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >>>GPA is really good predictor of good programmers (this surprised me). You can have great programmers who have bad GPA but that often means they are great only when working on super interesting projects which won't always be the case in real life.<<<

I think that this is a bad line to draw. Sometimes, it's about bright kids getting bored with dull teachers, but more often it's about troubled kids who need to escape. This is quite important because I would hire someone who has crawled his/her way up through adversity in a heart beat. As compared to someone with a cushy resume with an equally cushy life.

Think about it in this way. Person A has never had _anything_ to take for granted and has to fight for every inch s/he has gained in life. Person B has a much more impressive resume, but grew up in a comfortable life with an entire army at their beck and call. Who would you choose for a startup fighting against the odds?

[ _edit_ \- I haven't judged someone on the basis of their financial background, or something like that. In fact, what I was trying to say is that until you understand the context of what a person has achieved you cannot judge them. Kids who have parents with large bank balances can also face a far from ideal childhood. Moreover, kids whose parents struggle to make ends meet can have the perfect environment to grow created by their parents.

It's my observation that you can't judge if someone will be good, or not on the basis of what lies on the surface. You need to truly understand the struggles of the person in front of you to make that decision.

So, as a rule of thumb I would pick someone who has struggled more in life vs. someone who hasn't felt the world crash around them.]

<comment><USER22> You make quite the leap from GPA to a person's financial background. I would still lean toward the individual with the higher GPA, as it really is a solid indicator of how hard someone is willing to work. Joel makes a great point that academic projects are frequently uninteresting, but a high GPA indicates that the candidate can complete these tasks regardless.

Judging someone on their financial background instead is heavily subjective, prone to all sorts of prejudices and pre-conceived notions, and doesn't actually tell you anything about the person's abilities.

After all, a driven and motivated person from a troubled financial background can achieve a high GPA. Your theoretical 'Person A' who lived a cushy life yet isn't motivated won't be able to achieve a high GPA without working for it.

<comment><USER21> My point wasn't to make the case for high or low GPAs. Or, for checking the parents bank account, but it was just an observation that lines can't be drawn without context. It's only when I understand someone can I judge his/her accomplishments.

However, when you are trying to hire someone on a massive scale then this isn't always possible. So, that's why, I think, it's better to throw the resume into the dustbin and look at what they've actually built on their own.

So, this way you don't throw false negatives, while having a lower false positive layer.

[edited it a bit to make the point more clear]

<comment><USER22> I definitely agree with you that lines should not be drawn without context. However, I don't think anyone here would choose someone solely on GPA either.

Still, I'm not going to hire someone who has poor grades and personal problems over the smart kid, as in your example. No matter how you cut it, someone who can complete college with a solid GPA has already proven that s/he can set goals, handle deadlines, deal with multiple managers (professors) all while learning the material and completing the homework and tests.

Your aversion to the 'smart kid cruising through' is a bit perplexing. I usually work hard to get and keep the smart kids on my side.

<comment><USER21> It's not an aversion. Or anything like that. I make a point to never judge anyone. Ever.

Yet, I sincerely think that the kid that struggle to put him/herself through college and fought against all the odds to sit in the interviewee chair should be hired. It's about determination to make things work no matter what.

Person B has shown that s/he can work within those constraints, but they haven't known perpetual hopelessness with fear about their future. They haven't fought to make things work no matter what. They haven't faced repeated failure and crawled their way up from there.

So, in a lot of ways I will respect person B, but person A is a determined survivor and I would prefer to hire him/her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's interesting about the bad yields at MIT and Stanford, not something I would have guessed.

<comment><USER24> Also interesting to hear programmers with "motivation problems" usually fail to regain motivation.

<comment><USER15> What does he mean by motivation problems, though? The motivation to join the company? Or to work on that particular companie's problems?

<comment><USER25> Motivation to work on what Joel will pay them to work on.

I've known a few really bright developers who would be highly motivated if you were asking them to produce a streaming media server or debug a problem with the Linux TCP/IP stack (real examples) but who would probably die of boredom working on a bug tracker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just bought Smart and Gets Things Done by Joel Spolsky on hiring the best programmers.

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590598385/>

This article has whetted my appetite even more.

</comment><comment><USER27> As is often the case with Joel's stuff, some decent but fairly obvious ideas overshadowed by terrible ideas:

\- Private offices?

\- Over 1:1 ratio of interns? Does this make sense for small "agile" teams?

\- Then some talk about what school people went to and GPAs... right. I suppose if you are hiring that many interns this will matter somewhat.

<comment><USER28> A 1:1.5 ratio is less than 1:1.

<comment><USER27> That's what I get for reading in the morning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >Programmers with motivation problems: Joel has rarely seen successful "turnarounds".

Hmm, this is properly a more specific example of the general point that you can't change people, only people can change themself - I would imagine that the successful turnaround would be a lot higher for those who themself perceive this to be a problem (and not just claiming so to avoid problems).

<comment><USER30> Boy, I gotta tell you from personal experience that Joel's right on. My GPA was OK, not perfect, and motivation is something I've been fucking fighting for over a decade.

I've finally even gone to a psychaitrist but it's still a massive struggle and no magic bullet.

So I have to agree with you, Joel. But damnit, I wish I could prove him wrong. I fight this every day.

<comment> daniel-cussen You know, I once went to a doctor to ask about ADD, and was told I didn't have it. Fast forward a couple years later, I was diagnosed with ADD. I used to have motivation problems, and don't anymore because of the ADD medication. My (maybe unwelcome) suggestion: talk to a lot of psychiatrists.</comment></comment></comment>


Our Cellphones Aren't Safe - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/opinion/cellphones-security-spying.html <comment><USER3> Counterpoint:

In the history of the industry no mass-market computing platform has been safer than the flagship hardware/software platforms from Apple and Google --- on no platform does an exploitable vulnerability cost more to obtain, and no platforms have ever been more capable of establishing secure channels between themselves.

SS7 is insecure. But operational practices at both the carriers and inside governments rely on those insecurities to get jobs done, and some of those jobs are important and enjoy wide support. Anything we do to shore up the security of SS7 will, almost necessarily, include compromises most of us here will find hateful, and we'll be stuck with those compromises for another generation.

Rather than "fixing the potholes" in GSM and SS7, we could instead accept that the cell signaling layer is insecure, and route around those weaknesses with application code that can establish end-to-end secure channels accountable only to their users. That's pretty close to what Apple has already done with SMS text messaging, which opportunistically upgrades to Apple's secure iMessage protocol. We can do even better than that!

That's what we've done with the Internet, where this approach is called "the end to end argument in system design". It worked there and will work just as well for telephony.

<comment><USER4> There is a reason why POTUS can't have an iPhone.

<comment><USER5> Do you have a source for this? A casual search online shows that both Obama and Trump use(d) iPhones in office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine a service where you type in a phone number, and it used the GPS location data sold by cellular providers to obtain the physical location of the phone number. It would then autonomously fly a drone near the GPS location of that device and use an onboard cell-site spoofer to intercept data from that device.

That's all possible today.

<comment><USER7> And also easily defeated with commonly available end to end encrypted messaging

<comment><USER8> Recent Australian laws make it possible to force Australian companies and individuals to compromise software to defeat encryption. Which could be as simple as getting a boutique update delivered to a device that includes a screen recorder or keylogger, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the messaging app that gets compromised. That isn't really a problem unique to Australia or state level actors. I think apple and Android have some protections against screen recording.

<comment><USER9> Fortunately, Australia doesn't make any phones or popular e2e software.

<comment><USER8> It wouldn't have to be the e2e software as the delivery app for the payload or tooling. Regardless it was more about the fact that governments and other actors have options. Phones are just like any other software platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always wondered this. When encryption algorithms are broken, we phase them out for new ones. When cell tower protocols have weak encryption we don't seem to do anything about it. I hear that edge and 2g protocols are completely unsafe but there's not even an option in my phone to disable them. What gives?

<comment><USER11> > _When cell tower protocols have weak encryption we don 't seem to do > anything about it_

Consumers are more likely to switch because of coverage than security.

<comment><USER12> > _Consumers are more likely to switch because of coverage than security._

This is, perhaps, because they aren't informed that their communications aren't secure and that coverage is extended _despite_ being insecure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't make phone calls on the teleco layer. Make them on the application later, such as FaceTime voice or Signal. If phone companies won't secure their networks, lay a secure layer on top of the phone company network.

<comment> matt-attack That's all fine except SMS is the defacto method that most use for password resets, dual-factor, etc. This was mentioned in TFA.

What does one do about that?

I think it would be amazing if banks and financial institutions used iMessage but I can't see it happen.

<comment><USER14> IME most SMS verification is bundled with some additional information submitted by the user (e.g. secret information, ID information).

<comment><USER15> All of which is pretty easily phished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Actually 5G provides this overhaul, more than it provides speed benefits for customers.

The 4G backend still has a web of trust between operators and their e.g. IP exchange providers. As far as I know, this will change with 5G.

Roaming data confidentiality can then be routed and encrypted until the home operator network, while the associated metadata is accessible for the IP X to provide their services.

The home operator can verify the smartphone is actually in the visited network.

These are all bits and pieces that break up the operator's web of trust.

</comment><comment><USER17> No mention of why GSM 2G was made less secure than it could be and what current policy makers could learn from that.

[https://www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/Olkl/Sources-We-were- pre...](https://www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/Olkl/Sources-We-were-pressured-to- weaken-the-mobile-security-in-the-80s)

</comment><comment><USER18> > _Nobody could have envisioned how deeply ingrained cellular technology would > become in our society_

Am I the only one often peeved by this kind of slop in thought and expression? Of course somebody could. Some visionaries even did, and not than just Arthur C. Clarke.

So rightly: 'Few envisioned how deeply ...'

</comment><comment><USER19> The first fully open source phone (RISC-V?[0]) that ditches the 3G chip and goes wifi only using either software defined radio or open source wifi chipset (RISCV again?[1]) will be the only thing to fix this IMO.

We have the means to have secure communication over insecure channels with asymmetric crypto signing+encryption (which doesn't seem broken at least for now), the problem is semi-solved at the software layer -- we now need to solve the privacy/security issue at the layers below software.

[0]: [https://riscv.org/](https://riscv.org/)

[1]: [https://riscv.org/2018/10/hackaday-article-new-part-day- the-...](https://riscv.org/2018/10/hackaday-article-new-part-day-the-risc-v- chip-with-built-in-neural-networks/)

<comment><USER20> Wifis are often absolutely terrible for low latency applications such as voip (buffer bloat). Also that means your phone only works at home and in the office

<comment><USER19> Yes, but this is only if you subscribe to wifi as it exists today, or near you.

It's becoming increasingly common to rent portable wifi devices from 3G carriers, and if long distance wifi mesh networks ever take off things will be even better.

The idea is to not have your _primary mobile computing platform_ be compromised, if you can prevent it.

Also, see the sibling post to this -- [https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl- mifi/](https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mifi/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Large companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Google and Apple have not been public > about their efforts, if any exist.

Isn't this one of the major selling points of iMessage etc?

</comment><comment><USER22> Hmm interesting read. In Sweden there is a thing called BankID and basically you can use your mobile device as a universal authenticator. Of course, you need to have the device and enter a 6-digit pin, but I often wondered how dangerous it was to use this so much. And on top of that I know people that used it in local cafes on public WiFi.

I would love to do an examination of communication via BankIDs app to the internet to see what kind of security exists to protect the user. If you can get the person's social number (personnummer) and their 6-digit code, then spoof their device (probably the easier part) you can basically take over their life in Sweden.

<comment><USER23> U2F & authenticator apps are _way_ better than cellular. Cellular provider companies suck at infosec in massive ways.

<comment><USER22> Pretty much my hope. If it's so easy to snoop on cell traffic my hope then is that the app communication is encrypted using modern standards and airtight. Though I'm sure you're right since these apps are more under the microscope. It's probably fine.

<comment><USER23> I had my Uber account hacked even though it had SMS 2FA enabled (from Russia as best I could tell). Now maybe there was some flaw in Uber's implementation but I don't trust SMS 2FA. Talk to any competent security researcher - SMS 2FA is only mildly better than no 2FA.

The fact that cellular traffic to this day isn't encrypted properly[1] even though LTE was supposed to should indicate just how horrible cellular providers are at infosec & what happens when they drive security requirements.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/06/lte-w...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/06/lte-wireless-connections-used-by-billions-arent-as-secure- as-we-thought/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are no secure smartphones (2016) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905643)

<comment><USER9> The twice-linked brief article states that basebands have full OS memory access, which is not true in 2018. And the article is completely uncited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am relieved to see that this is not another article about EM radiation from mobile phones. However, the title is a bit clickbaity in that manner.

</comment><comment><USER26> No one want safe widespread solutions: we want to being able to spy both for bad and good reasons. The good part is simply justice: telecommunications are vital to anyone, criminals included, to a point that we do not want to limit them. But to catch criminals we still need a bit of surveillance power.

Unfortunately the very same power is interest for criminal itself to spy on their targets, any kind of criminal from the home thief that may like follow you to know when you go on holidays, what kind of safety you have at home (because yes, you post new shiny photos of your new home surveillance system, together with it's plan, photos of you and few technicians during the mounting phase etc), what you have in your house (because you post tons of photos/selfie with relevant "background") to your insurance company that buy with discretion your data from Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Apple, data recorded by voice assistant, smart devices with cameras everywhere, speaker mic of your phone etc (curiously in the past such kind of spying devices were buy, and they are very expensive, by people who want to spy on you. Today you buy them from the people willing to spying on you and also you pay connectivity and electricity form them) to your government that likes to know your political opinion and influence network like ancient est-German STASI or modern NSA/FBI/CIA/* do.

The real "safety" point is not safety itself but balance of power. A knife good to cut a succulent steak is also good to kill someone and perhaps to open a package. A car the same. A phone the same. etc. They are instruments with more or less effectiveness, comfort and power. If they are balanced so anyone have more or less the same power we have no real safety problem. If too few have too much power we have a problem, bigger as fewer and powerful counterparts are.

Unfortunately to proper balance power as a society we need also a certain level of awareness and civic sense distributed among us, because yes knowledge is power. At any level. Today's and not from today's we evolve in a more and more ignorant society with a more and more reduced élite that rules against tons of sheep.

</comment><comment><USER27> I guess this is supposed to be the part where the masses decide whether the added safety is worth the inconvenience of not having cellphones? Or have we already.

</comment><comment><USER28> I recently launched [https://www.tamarin.us](https://www.tamarin.us) (fake websites + canary credentials) hoping I could capitalize on some of this - <USER2> IMO it's a hard sell (and a lot of the salespeople I spoke with kept confirming how hard enterprise security sales are). It will probably be a while before I try to work on another privacy-related product.

Fortunately I'm having a little bit more luck on my current project in the health space.

<comment><USER29> You should sell it to consultants. The problem with honeypots in enterprise is that the enterprise leadership wants to avoid knowing things.

<comment><USER30> This single post reveals more about how disconnected from reality corporate/enterprise leadership is incentivized to be, and about the state of bad faith overall w.r.t user's privacy than I think I've seen in a long time.

Please tell me this is a joke.

<comment><USER29> It's cynical, but not a joke.

Big institutions are fundamentally feudal organizations. If you look back at medieval times, some of the lords and dukes were wise men driven by some higher purpose. Others were not.

The tools have changed, but people are the same.

It's also why regulation is so important. Like feudal lords, the agents of the overlord (ie the auditors) are feared and respected. Compliance tied to compensation or continued employment is something that is cared about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> New York Times is broken for IOS mobile

</comment><comment><USER32> Privacy and hacking, but also mental and social health, road safety, and potentially radiation danger. Mobile devices are sort of a Faustian bargain.

<comment><USER33> Cell phones release non-ionizing radiation. (1) Your internal risk model should put this at the same level as being outside in the sun.

(1) [https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/r...](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes- prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet)

<comment><USER32> > non-ionizing radiation

This is a tired response that everyone memorizes but fails to back with facts.

1\. There are studies showing some effects besides DNA mutation, such as heating, due to non-ionizing radiation, which could cause a number of health effects.

2\. The World Health Organization classified cell phone radiation as a potential carcinogen. The CDC has stated that there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other on whether cell phones cause cancer.

3\. I said "potentially" above.

<comment><USER34> Ah yes, the good old "Group 2B carcinogens" that are "possibly carcinogenic to humans". It includes lead, DDT, dry cleaning (as a job), firefighting (as a job), aloe vera extract, ginkgo extract, and pickled vegetables.

A more dangerous Group 2A includes red meat, "Shift work that involves circadian disruption", and "Very hot beverages (more than 65°C)", according to Wikipedia.

Group 1 contains UV light.

So, walking outside in a sunny day sipping coffee after eating BBQ with kimchi is _probably_ more dangerous than cell phones. Doubly so if you're a firefighter.

<comment><USER35> I think the point is that you likely won't do all of those things all day every day; rarely do you spend all day and night in the sun, drinking coffee every hour, and eating red meat 3 times a day.

Your phone is with you at all times of the day, always within 5 feet of your person, which means that _if_ it leads to cancer (which we will likely find out within the next 30 years since American children are now surrounded by phones and tablets from age 5) then it's much more likely that you end up with cancer because of your phone rather than the fact that you were out in the sun for an hour every day.

<comment><USER34> The first iPhone was released in 2007. Radars have been used since WW2. Of course it's _theoretically_ possible that cell phone radiation causes cancer to everyone but only after being largely ineffectual for 12 years of continuous use, but that's somewhat reaching, IMHO.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are computers listening/recording when off? - <AUTHOR> Edward Snowden in an interview with MSNBC on Sept. 17th 2019 says computers are listening and recording video even when off. Ed also says he desolders  his mic and camera (and plugs in a mic when necessary).<p>If this really is happening, would engineers working on Android & Apple phones be aware of this? And if they are aware, are there posts stating this on HN? <comment><USER2> Note: they won't be able to tell you without making a burner account. NDAs etc

Also worth mentioning checkout Little Snitch.</comment>


The Sad Story Behind a Dead PC Game That Can't Come Back - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-cant-come-back-1688358811

<comment><USER2> I wonder some times if the best course of action is to simply publish it and then if someone wants to litigate it they can "settle" for some licensing fee.</comment>


Rent control or how to tame exploding rents - <AUTHOR> https://paulheymann.de/economics/rent-control <comment><USER2> It is easy, get rid of laws that keep other people out of your area. All those houses in San Francisco that are worth $1 million or more, would only be worth $50,000 in Iowa. So let people build small, close and tight, and they will solve this man created problem. Created by all those pigs in $1 million houses who fear them turning into $50,000 houses. Well, get this, houses and rents are so high in SF that it has already begun it's decline as people simply refuse to work there to pay 75% of their wages for a tar paper shack. This worker and IPO mobility will soon become a rush, I mean a bigger rush...</comment>


Reasons Today's Kids Are Bored at School, Feel Entitled, Have Little Patience - <AUTHOR> http://deeprootsathome.com/kids-bored-entitled/ <comment><USER3> Christ. I take a decent amount of pleasure in poking holes in topics here, and this is one of those "where do I even start", as well as continuing to lower my opinion of self-identified therapists.

(EDIT: To clarify: I don't mean to detract that the author is a Real(tm) therapist, but the "self identified" part is key to me as the author conveys that as their angle of expertise, as opposed to a physician who may also have a degree in therapy but tries to speak primarily as the former. I've found my Bayesian prior of agreement to correlate inversely when someone opens with "as a therapist...")

Let me pick a few points out. "ENDLESS FUN". Because that clearly defines the childhood of most of the people I grew up around in a Philadelphia public school. (My sarcasm should be VERY heavy right about here.) Quite to the opposite, children spend ~half (usually far more if you count transit, extracurriculars, and homework) of their waking hours in a situation one can honestly describe as "penitentiary-like". Yet the article NEVER touches on the far more likely hypothesis that children, like most semi-sentient creatures, don't want to do highly unpleasant things with no feeling of autonomy? We recognize this for our food animals but not our own children?

"KIDS RULE THE WORLD" This isn't even defended in their own paragraph, if I'm reading it right (it's a bit "fun" to dig through the spurious rhetoric and anti-youth slant); and in all of the quotes they give, I would argue as examples that they _don't_ rule the world, given that the response in most situations is "you don't get a choice, I'm your parent".

"TECHNOLOGY" This has been the mantra of parents as long as I've been watching news. It just used to be Phones, TV, Radio, Rock Music, Swing/dance halls, all the way back to the turn of the century. The statement about parental emotional availability may have some merit but is in no way supported, and seems distinct from the section header.

Now, I'd like to ask _why_ the author paints a slant that so entirely deprives children of means and mentality, so allow me to apply my typical cynicism with a quote from the author bio: " She is founder and director of a multidisciplinary clinic in Toronto, Canada, for children with behavioral, social, emotional and academic challenges."

If you convince parents their kids are broken, they'll pay you money to try and "fix" them. As a kid who had decades of adults trying to "fix" me, and has turned out "pretty damn OK" I still resent that; and find the article entirely lacking in substance or legitimacy.

<comment><USER4> Do you have children?

<comment><USER5> As a 16 year old this article is pathetic. This refrain that the children are terrible has echoed down the centuries and repeating it does not make it any more true. "The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise." - <USER2>

<comment><USER6> Nor does repetition make it any less true. Also, that's a misattributed quote [0].

[0] : [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving- childre...](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in- ancient-times/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Were kids ever _not_ bored at school? This feels like yet another article about those gosh darned spoiled kids these days.

<comment><USER8> Students find it almost impossible to stop checking their phones.

If you take a phone from them you can see the anxiety rising, they are unable to work or concentrate. There is a real difference in how a classroom feels these days to how it was before every student had a mobile phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not a very rigorous article. It's a series of observations/opinions of one particular expert who's worked with one particular set of kids. Not useless anecdotes, but anecdotes nonetheless.

That being said, I think there's some truth in there. I'm very dubious of the endless technology moral panic that's cycled through parenting ever since the invention of the sharpened stick. ("In my day we just bashed the gazelles with a blunt stick. These kids today have no character") Nevertheless, I tend to agree that the human mind needs unstructured periods of boredom and social interaction to thrive, and that parents are too quick to mollify their kids with entertainments instead of helping them learn to occupy themselves. Also, kids should be able to play outside, away from parental supervision.</comment>


Show HN: Is your favorite "craft" brewery owned by InBev? - <AUTHOR> http://inbevchecker.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com <comment><AUTHOR> I'm surprised something like this doesn't already exist (that I know of). It's getting more difficult to avoid the sprawling list of InBev beers, so hopefully this speeds up discovery to drinking new beers.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yes.

This company is literally the alcoholic monopoly.</comment>


Eran Hammer on Twitter: "Some thoughts on the NPM acquisition - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/eranhammer/status/1258080677464956929 <comment><USER2> cached: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Wxi- Iu...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Wxi- IuZoT9QJ:https://twitter.com/eranhammer/status/1258080677464956929+)</comment>


Dear Internet: please move the share buttons from the web page to the browser - <AUTHOR>

There's been more than one mock-the-silliness-that-is-ten-share-buttons-for-an-unshared-blog-post blog posts.
The mobile browsers have already shown the way - a single share button, share with any service (yes, there needs to be some open bring-your-own-service functionality like we already do for search).
I'm hoping one or two people who are working on one of the major browsers would read this and "simply put it in" and we'd eventually all be living with a cleaner, faster loading web as the on-page buttons go the way of the dodo.
Not to mention that it would actually be really useful. <comment><USER2> The problem is, _they work_ (for a certain definition of "work").

On one website that I work on, implementing one of those stupid "like us on Facebook" popups (in the lower right of the screen) almost doubled the number of likes the page had over a couple of weeks.

Now, whether the number of Facebook likes your page has is a useful metric to you is another matter, which is why I put the word "work" in quotes above...

<comment><USER3> Is it any surprise that the sort of people who are still actually using Facebook would be the sort of people who would click on something as ridiculous as that

<comment><USER4> "Still using Facebook"

It's like you're actively denying the fact that it is, TODAY, the largest and most used social network in history.

Would you at least let it BEGIN it's user decline before you call it dead?

Let me guess: You ran to G+ on Day 1 (because one large advertising company is worse than another large advertising + email + search company...)

<comment><USER5> Mark my words, within the next 3 years facebook will begin to decline. 90% of the people I speak to say they don't use facebook anymore because it's got boring.

<comment><USER6> If your sample of people that you surveyed was representative of facebook users on the whole, then you wouldn't need 3 years to see the decline of facebook . It should have been happening right now because as you said, 90% of the people _you've_ surveyed no longer use it.

It's fair to say that your sample group is totally flawed.

<comment><USER7> Well, I've heard of many people saying (and I still go to school, so my survey is kind of relevant) that they 1. have multiple accounts, like for games or 2. are bored by facebook/ annoyed by the stream of useless stuff, or even 3. simply hardly ever go online (as in, measured in weeks, or months)

<comment><USER6> Once again, the anecdotal evidence does not conform with the usage numbers released every so often that show facebook users spending massive amounts of time(average of 400 minutes per month per user).

A lot of people may whine that they are "bored" but that doesn't mean they don't use the site. That is the problem with going on anecdotes--they often represent what people say instead of actually do.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Bored people go to Facebook.com. Bored? Type Facebook.com. That's what people do. And considering the influx of "content" pages, like George Takei's, which provide continuous content updates all day long, I can see why people check back frequently when they're bored.

Subscribe to 5-10 "content" feeds and your wall will always have another joke or post to read...

Many people do this, I imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can we just remove all the share crap that allows these so-called "social media services" AKA amoral data collectors to collect data on any and everyone who happens to load a page?

Call me a luddite, but... I got along for 30+ years without Facebook, Myspace, Twitter et al. We had gopher and we liked it!

What we didn't have (or didn't notice) was a bunch of AOL style butt-heads shoving useless advertising at us.

For what it's worth, I try to filter them out but keeping up with the filtering is getting tiresome.

<comment><USER6> _We had gopher and we liked it!_

I take it that you are speaking for your generation, yes? If so, I think much of my generation would _not_ like gopher and _does_ like facebook etc.

Re: advertising - you hate on data collection and at the same time call out "useless advertising." A core goal of data collection is to make advertising more relavant and with things like retargeting, I think things have improved for the better.

<comment><USER9> What targeted advertising means, apparently, is that if you look up Warby Parker once to see what they do, you'll get nothing but Warby Parker ads for the next month. I'm getting so sick of empty eyeglasses staring at me, you can't even begin to imagine. If that's targeted advertising, you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it.

<comment><USER8> Amen. I don't think more than 10% of the targeted advertising I was exposed to ever appealed to me.

Buy some jeans on Amazon for a gift, get ads for all kinds of crappy jeans from Amazon. I like and wear one type of Levi's jeans. Not one Levi's ad ever hit me.

Buy some Little Mermaid crap for my niece, see above.

Buy Alabama Shakes debut album on ITunes, get all kinds of ads for music I wouldn't listen to in a dentists chair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not going to work.

A website operators won't take a gamble that a visitor may or may not have a sharing widget built into his browser, so it's a safer bet for them to keep the sharing buttons on the page.

<comment><USER11> Thats the point I suppose. Make it as prevalent as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "(yes, there needs to be some open bring-your-own-service functionality like we already do for search)"

There is, actually. At least on my mobile operating system.

<comment><USER13> Yup. Android Intents provide this system perfectly. Any app can hook into the intent, provide you a list, and you can select action defaults.

<comment><USER14> Hopefully Web Intents[1] will bring the same to every browser.

[1]: <http://webintents.org/>

<comment><USER15> Hopefully, yes. Go download the latest Chrome Canary to play with the current implementation - it's already pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Use Ghostery (<http://www.ghostery.com/>) or Do Not Track (<http://www.abine.com/dntdetail.php>), or various others addons like these, and you will have the problem partially solved.

</comment><comment><USER17> There _was_ an effort to put sharing into Firefox. I'm not sure of the current status - it looks like it may have gone stale.

See <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/F1> and <http://f1.mozillamessaging.com/>

<comment><USER18> I tried that out for a while when it was first announced, but it didn't seem to work as well as, say, Android's Intents. And as you say, appears to have gone stale.

I suppose this is the scenario that Web Intents (<http://webintents.org/>) are intended to deal with.

EDIT: specifically <http://webintents.org/share>

<comment><USER17> ...and there actually seems to be _something_ going on with regards to sharing in Firefox still. According to [1] it's targeted at Firefox 17, though I haven't noticed anything yet (I'm on Firefox Aurora 17 now). It seems like it has a much broader scope than just sharing.

[1] <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_Social_Integration>

<comment><USER19> Sharing something easily is one thing, but they seem to be planning to provide a newsfeed/wall with this. That'd be a big distraction that I hope they keep away...

<comment><USER17> For people spending their days on Facebook it might be an improvement. It does sound like a huge addon though and I agree that it'd probably be best to make most of that non-default.

<comment><USER19> The problem is, how keenly will the various services let something like Firefox take their newsfeed? This is exactly what Twitter for example is trying to prohibit with their ToS. Just sharing is a lot more durable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be great if the sharing functionality is built in browser, but the control on what sharing services to show remains with developers. This could be achieved with some meta tags, or something. But it'll make sense if the developer can choose which all sharing platform link should be shown while sharing.

I said so, because there are a different kind of audience for different websites, so generic sharing options wouldn't be a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, latest version of Safari has gone along this road which is nice but completely limited, but I've found that I prefer being able to use bookmarklets from the Bookmark Bar to have sharing, but then that's dependent on the user having X installed for Y and there's no clean way to check. Plus you'd need the ability to rapidly update for multiple services, deal with sharing changes and so on, so it's a sticky issue.

</comment><comment><USER22> One way or another people will opt out.

Betting on the integrated browser's support for sharing might be better than plastering ugly overlays over interesting content. Most 'this makes the site unreadable' stuff these days are 'Share on ..' widgets.

Today, most people around me (somehow inspired by my rants) block this stuff, unconditionally. Because it is 99% crap and the 1% where you want to share something there's the old way of copying the url to your social platform of choice.

So - I'd put it different: Dear Internet, please restrain yourself in the use of obnoxious "share" widgets and thingies or people will treat them just like ads. By ignoring or filtering them.

<comment><USER23> You have to realize that "most people around you" are probably not representative of internet users at large. With the current state of things, browsers would probably need to have implemented these features for a couple years before most people get used to using them for sharing.

<comment><USER22> You're perfectly right - and I do realize that.

On the other hand: I'm part of the group of people that installs/defines other setups (for friends, family - people that don't bother). All of those will never see these 'share' buttons, because _I_ decide they are overused and often harmful.

I guess at one point AdBlock was used by a minority as well, but now it its userbase is huge. I predict (and of course I might be very wrong about this, I don't claim to know the future here) that with the current (over-)usage of 'share' thingies we'll see the same scenario. It starts off as reasonable (simple ads), becomes annoying/slows down the reading experience/hides content (sounds familiar?) and will be despised by more and more users until even people outside of my (and similar minded people's) influence find a solution on LifeHacker on how to avoid these things.

And frankly, that 'people getting used to them' argument seems weak. There are gazillion different (and most ugly, from this particular pov) ways to present a 'share' sidebar or somesuch thing. It's hardly what I'd call a unified and well-defined experience.

<comment><USER14> _I guess at one point AdBlock was used by a minority as well, but now it its userbase is huge._

But still a minority. Adblock for Chrome has ~10M users, Chrome itself has more than 310 million. That's just a little over 3%.

EDIT: apparently, ADP has 5M more, which means the total is still less than 5%.

<comment><USER22> Plus the users of my browser of choice

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock- plus/...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock- plus/statistics/?last=30)

Certainly no majority overall, but a huge number of people that never look at ads, because .. ads sucked too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So who gets to decide which buttons should be in browsers by default? Sure, Facebook, Google+, Twitter are obvious. How about Pinterest? Or X, Y and Z which might be not popular in US but popular elsewhere?

<comment><USER25> Possibly there could be a meta tag describing which share buttons should be shown on the page--even what the particular share link should be when they're clicked.

<comment><USER19> A bit like Apple did with their "app banners": [http://david- smith.org/blog/2012/09/20/implementing-smart-ap...](http://david- smith.org/blog/2012/09/20/implementing-smart-app-banners/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> <http://webintents.org/share>

</comment><comment><USER27> Flock tried it, a bunch of different ways. People just weren't all that into it.

<comment><USER28> True! I did like it back in the days. What's the state of Flock right now? The website claims it's not dead yet ;)

<comment><USER29> Flock's big problem was, of course, that you had to convince people to install a whole new browser.

If they could redesign it as a browser plugin, it might have a shot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Windows 8 tries to solve this problem with sharing built into the OS, similar to how intents work in Android.

</comment><comment><USER31> Your dream is never going to become a reality in the way you're asking.

As a feature of the desktop browser, users could turn share buttons off. Embedded in the page, they can't. That is why the site operator put them there in the first place: to maximise exposure.

<comment><USER32> Like someone already said, embedded buttons can be turned off with AdBlock. Normal users won't do that, but they won't tweak their browser settings either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They can already live in the browser by way of addons - if you use delicious then install the addon. If you don't, don't.

The solution is not for browser makers to host the share buttons, but for content creators to stop treating users like push-button monkeys and realise that if I want to share it on facebook I'll do that of my own volition and if I don't then a little blue and white f in a box at a cute angle is not going to sway me one iota.

Web page creators: It is not your job to make sharing easier.

<comment><USER34> > Web page creators: It is not your job to make sharing easier.

Actually, it pretty much is. That is one of the key ways in which sites gain audience, and it's a huge topic of concern among website creators, owners, and programmers.

Shares drive traffic, and both the website owner and the social network want you to ask yourself on each shareable page, "Is this something worth sharing?" Some people will say yes and that's a win for everyone.

You can say the on-site button doesn't do anything, but it really does. It sends a signal: Other people think this content is worth sharing, you might think so too.

There are other models for sharing content, for example a site only needs a few self-interested posters on HN or Reddit to get traction there, then the voting system and "front page effect" take over. But for a decentralized social site like Facebook, you need a good number of seed posters to decide, "It might be in my self-interest to share this." That only happens with prompting.

</comment></comment><comment> hendrik-xdest I can already hear our customers ordering page enhancements that show an arrow or a bubble pointing somewhat in the direction of where that FB button should be in the current visitors browser.

We know that problem with the "Add page to your home screen" button. Of course, it has to disappear when the user opens your website from home screen. And god forbid Apple changes anything - like releasing an 8" tablet.

If we'd always get what we wish for, live could be so easy. And boring, probably.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think we would soon have sharing in-built within the OS. Mountain Lion already has it while it would not take much time for Windows 8 to implement this into their OS as well (if they already do not). The lines between a tablet/phone OS and a desktop/laptop OS are blurring and we can very well see that with Mountain Lion and Windows 8. Therefore, not just the browsers but every bit of functionality in the OS which needs a "Share" will have it by default.

<comment><USER26> This would be great as long as it's an open, agnostic API and not just something cooked into the OS vendor's bundled apps.

<comment><USER35> Good point. I think we are moving in that direction. The reason being the OS vendor does not own most of the "Share" ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The trouble is that the Long Tail of Social Services is there _for a reason_. Yea, maybe you are happy having your users share on Facebook and Twitter, but Jane's Buck Hunter Haven wants to have a RateVenison share link on her blog posts.

Closer to home, how many posts on Hacker News have an actual "share on Hacker News" link on them. Quite a few. How are you going to know which buttons go on which sites?

</comment><comment><USER37> Just combine two browser extensions in Chrome:

1\. Adblock Plus [1] to remove in-site social widgets [2] and ads.

2\. A social extension, pick your favorite, there are too many.

[1] <https://adblockplus.org/en/>

[2] <https://adversity.googlecode.com/hg/Antisocial.txt>

<comment><USER38> In Firefox you can use the plugin Share Me Not that prevents third-party buttons embebbed by sites from tracking you until you actually click on them.

This plugin don't remove the social buttons from the page, just disables them.

Thanks for the Antisocial AdBlock list btw!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> ... so that I can disable them (easily).

</comment><comment><USER40> Rockmelt actually does this. It's a browser built on top of Google Chrome. Along with a bunch of other features, it has one button in the top right where you can take any page you're on and post it to Twitter, as a Facebook status, or on a friend's Facebook wall.

</comment><comment><USER41> I agree with the idea, but please don't put them into the browser but in a "social media" extension. I have never clicked on one of these buttons (in fact, I block them), so cluttering the default interface of my browser with them would be very annoying.

</comment><comment><USER42> Chrome canary and Dev channel have a built in Share button that fires a Share webintent

</comment><comment><USER43> What I'd like is an extension that just removes them entirely (an anti-social browser?)

For one, I don't use them. For two, they cause a cluttered mess. For three, I don't want all those little snippets tracking my page loads.

<comment><USER44> Ghostery.

<comment><USER43> This is exactly that, and more. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> We have them on Android and iOS (probably Windows Phone as well). OSX 10.8 now has tweet and facebook functionality as well. Are the other operating systems and browsers social enough? Should they be?

</comment><comment><USER46> Dear internet please remove share button from the web. From EVERYWHERE. :)

</comment><comment><USER47> What about sharing option in Android, and now in Windows 8? It seems to be more versatile to embed this functionality into OS rather than a browser. We're getting there in my opinion ;)

</comment><comment><USER48> As a user I would love to agree but I can't. On a https website Chrome blocks additional JavaScript. Thus I don't see another way than having share button on the web page. Am I wrong?

</comment><comment><USER49> A good start would be to have the user's identity to be managed by the browser (with something like browserID). The rest could just be extensions, for those who care.

</comment><comment><USER50> I thought adblock can do this until things get better. Apparently I'm correct <http://superuser.com/a/454634>

</comment><comment><USER51> I am surprised no one mentioned web intents. It is happening and it is happening quickly. Launch chrome canary to see some UX (although not completely working yet)

</comment><comment><USER52> I have installed Tweet extension in the morning. Chrome canary version installed share button on the right side of navigation bar, it's very useful feature!

</comment><comment><USER53> Share buttons are part of the the content, not the chrome.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's already built into modern operating systems. (OSX, iOS, Android)

Your request should really be "Please get rid of share buttons from websites"

</comment><comment><USER55> Just like "Would you like fries with that?" this is just: "would you like to advertise my page for me?". It'll only get worse before it gets better.

</comment><comment><USER56> These buttons are sources of data for Facebook, Twitter etc. That's how they track their user over the Web. So no incentive for them to remove them

<comment><USER57> Yeah, not sure what the point of this post is. I've got a share button in my desktop, tablet and phone browsers (not that I neccessarily want them). These are for tracking and branding. Facebook, Twitter et. Al have not only implanted tracking widgets on nearly every site, they've also got little banner ads. For free!

<comment><USER56> Huh? The share button in your desktop or your phone is not making requests to Facebook or Twitter, thus it's not tracking you. For instance, when you integrate twitter's buttons on your website, you must opt-in the "do not track" which means that otherwise, anyone visiting the website will be tracked by twitter and the data is kept for some days. Unless of course if that person has an extension like disconnect.me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This would essentially lock out new "social media" sites as the effort of manually installing a share button is going to be too much effort.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why don't browser operators just suck it out of the page?

It's not like the page can display something the browser doesn't want it to.

</comment><comment><USER60> Working on a portfolio site now and managed to convince the clients not to have any share buttons. It looks so much better.

</comment><comment><USER61> Latest chrome comes with a share button that works with webintents.

</comment><comment><USER62> Try RockMelt

</comment><comment><USER63> Why has no one mentioned that this already exists.

Web Intents, borrowing in fact from Androids ability to share from anywhere to anywhere. (and it is actually rather Android unique)</comment>


Ask HN: How often do you go back to the basics? - <AUTHOR>

I tend to go back and review the basics--of a programming language, a framework etc-- from time to time. And everytime I tend to discover something new about the basics. What's your experience with the basics? <comment><USER2> If you talk to any professional or decent amateur of the board game Go, he or she will tell you that mastering the basics is fundamental, and is used at every possible moment in the game. In the same vein, this is how I often view programming: having strong knowledge of the fundamentals allows for immediate and precisely correct planning and action in the moves to come.

In one of my favorite Go books entitled Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go, the author Kageyama expresses the same sentiments: mastering the basics is fundamental for progression at every point in the player's career. He begins the book with what is very much an exercise taking some time and thought: there were no shortcuts to solve this problem for the beginner this book is aimed for. It is the same in programming: mastering anything (even the fundamentals) involves much time and effort.

As I become stronger at the game, I am finding new wisdom in the same advice Kageyama gives. I can read the same paragraph a few months apart and get different tangible results out of it. I have often had the same experience programming: I can use certain expressions and programming constructs without knowing the intricacies of them, but as I progress in my programming career, I am also able to understand these constructs, often at a lower level, to my great benefit.

I frequently go back to this book and always find new wisdom to improve my game. I strive to do the same with programming: just because I know how lambda functions in Python work does not mean I should be ignorant of the possibility that I may not know everything about them and tangentially related concepts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to go back to grad school, get my PhD, but it's been so long that I've forgotten all my math.

I'm planning to start with high school geometry. If I can find a copy, I'm going to use the same textbook as I used in high school. It was really good. Not sure about what I'll use for a trig textbook. For calculus I'll use Tom Apostol's Calculus vols I and II - that's what we used at Caltech.

<comment><USER4> I think I'm going to work through a basic calculus text again. I learned the concepts well enough 25 years ago, but I've gotten rusty on the practice. I look forward to it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whenever I try a new language, I go back to the basics of languages I'm familiar with for comparison...e.g. language Y handles closures in this way for this particular case...wait, do I really know how language X handled that?

</comment><comment><USER6> I feel like I am stuck at the basics. As a student with no large project to work on, I have no need to really master a single language and learn its intricacies. In the end, I jump from language to language learning and using cool new tools and ideas without ever gaining mastery over one.

</comment><comment><USER7> nice to know I'm not the only one doing that, I believe you need to un-learn to learn better I often get better understanding and good practices when come back to the beggining... however it implies to be careful no like if you are all the time reviwing the basics and never going further to advance stuffs

</comment><comment><USER8> Every day.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes. EveryDay.</comment>


Rome: JavaScript date (and time) picker. No jQuery - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bevacqua/rome

<comment><USER2> Is this mobile friendly? It looks like a dated desktop-only UI</comment>


Ask HN: Why does VISA/MasterCard provide 3-D Secure? - <AUTHOR>

3-D Secure (or "verified by visa/mastercard") has a really bad user experience! Hate when I have to enter the password!!
I understand that for merchants that enable this the fraud liability shifts to banks.
I also know that Amazon can get away without enabling this since they have in-house fraud team.
It seems that VISA/MasterCard is NOT taking any liability in either case (with 3-D Secure or without). So, what is the incentive for them to provide this system, given they might lose transactions from cart abandonment? <comment><USER3> Actually, in some cases the liability shifts to the customer:

      As few customers object to terms and conditions, banks are
      free to set terms that shift liability to customers. For
      example, the Royal Bank of Scotland says [2]:

      "You understand that you are financially responsible for
      all uses of RBS Secure."

      So despite the bank having made many poor security choices,
      the customer must accept the losses – a clear example of
      misplaced incentives. The use of password also harms
      customer interests because they no longer have the
      statutory protection afforded by signatures where, in the
      UK at least, the law makes a forged signature void and thus
      prevents banks from using their terms and conditions to
      make customers liable for forged cheques. It has already
      been documented that many banks used the move away from
      manuscript signatures to make customers liable for fraud
      [4].

See "Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode: or, How Not to Design Authentication"

[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/fc10vbvsecurecode.pdf](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/fc10vbvsecurecode.pdf)

In other words, the customer gets both a user interface problem and a liability shift.

It is called in the trade "getting shafted"!

<comment><USER4> I just find it hard to believe a bank can be absolved of any liability since fraud can still happen electronically, just like signatures are forged. Most Internet users aren't savvy enough to look for SSL or legit looking URLs. There's still the possibility of a MITM attack. Does case law actually allow credit card companies to shift liability just like that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Card fraud was a huge problem in Europe/Russia/Asia etc, but less so in the US (probably related to US's dependency on credit and "credit history"). The internet was taking off and magnified this problem exponentially. To counter this the card companies decided they needed more security in all/most markets outside of the US.

In the "Amazon" type of model, Amazon collects card details and more or less keeps it on file. When a customer wants to buy something, the card companies and Amazon's bank more or less trust that Amazon will keep fraud to a minimum by looking at usage patterns, doing proper card authorizations etc.

They allowed this in the US, but decided to forbid this model more or less everywhere else. Everybody else had to start using 3DSecure.

With 3DSecure the purchaser's bank gets a say in each and every transaction. So you've now got Amazon, Amazon's bank, the customers AND the customer's bank. So when a purchase gets done, the card companies now demands that the customers bank (who know their customers) guarantees that it is the actual customer who is at the other end. The customer's bank can decide not to do any checks, but then if there IS fraud, that's the customer's bank's problem.

So most customer's bank require that the customer - at the time of purchase - identifies himself. Very often this is done by throwing the customer back to the customer's web-based banking solution (which already has identification procedures in place), or something similar, where the customer's bank can authenticate the customer (with passwords/2-factor etc).

The technical details of how 3DSecure actually works sucks bigtime. At least when it was launched it involved using encryption and signing xml-based documents. To make this work those documents had to be "normalized" etc - <USER2> huge mess.

Because of the mess, there probably is very little competition in implementing solutions for 3DSecure. Which again is probably why most 3DSecure feels like a throwback into the "Web 1.0" area, with the customer being thrown back and forth between the store and his own bank, typically with a user interface reminiscent of the "CGI" area.

Another consequence is that the US have had a huge advantage (and probably still do) when it comes to everything related to internet e-commerce, simply because the card companies and banks do not allow deviations from 3DSecure anywhere (mostly) but the US.

<comment><USER6> Not sure about the rest of Europe but in the UK it's standard for Amazon and many other online places to keep your card details on file.

Halifax, a bank in the UK didn't require 3d secure though did encourage it. Recently I used a site I'd not used before and they declined the transaction on my credit card and sent me a SMS which I had to reply to in order to use my card at that site.

<comment><USER5> It's quite common for these companies to push their transactions through their US subsidiaries. If a company can convince their bank there will be little or no fraud they can convince their bank to avoid 3DS as well. E.g. if you have lots of transactions and other attributes keeping fraud low, like airlines who check your identity later anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I also know that Amazon can get away without enabling this since they have > in-house fraud team.

Their fraud team isn't that great, but that's a whole different subject.

It's not like there's a magic switch that enables 3DS. Still, 3DS isn't bulletproof. There was a time (it might still be true) where all you'd need is the card holders last name, their billing zip, and the last four of the card number, to create the 3DS password if it wasn't already created.

Albeit, this wasn't the case for the larger banks, where you'd need their SSN most of the time. However, in most shops, you can search by BIN, so again, defeated...

If you were carding (verb: to use someone else's credit/debit card to fraudulently conduct a transaction), depending on the dump, you'd already have this information. Of course, there's no way for the processor to check verify the name of the cardholder*, so the info on the card might be incomplete in that sense, but it's still easy to get.

3DS isn't meant to be a catch-all for fraud. Depending on how a card is acquired, the 3DS code can come with it (keylogger).

</comment><comment><USER8> I do not know my password. It is senseless to know it as it does not provide more entropy as the backup mechanism to retrieve the password.

To retrieve the password, I have to enter 4 fixed digits of my account number and my birth date. As I have quite unique name then also my birth date is not very hard to find.

That leaves 14 +/\- 2 to 4 bits of entropy and makes it pointless to actually somehow keep track of the real password.

So I just generate a temporary password.

Edit: This is of course how my bank has implemented it. Your experience my possibly vary.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So does the VISA/MC take on any liability? If not, why is VISA/MC providing the 3-D Secure service and not banks themselves?

In addition, given fraud, does VISA/MC incur any loses themselves with and without the 3D?</comment>


Ask HN: Where to get a good subscription and service contract for managed e-commerce? - <AUTHOR>

We're a small shop offering a managed e-commerce solution, integration of our solution with various shopping channels (eBay, Amazon, soon to be many more), and additionally we offer web design, hosting and general IT consulting services. We have two legal entities, one to offer the subscription services and another to bill for consulting.Typically we roll a package out to clients as a bundle.
My question to HN is - what combination of contracts and disclaimers are necessary to protect us legally from error and omissions / unintended consequences / limit liability? We want to protect our IP also.
1. Are there any good online resources for small businesses, guiding them on contract law, that also are up to date with the internet?
2. Obviously many of these questions are better left to a lawyer - does anyone know of a good and reasonably priced contract lawyer (USA) familiar with e-commerce?
If you don't want to post this information publicly, reach out to me at email@example.com. <comment><USER2> Just find a site that more or less does the same thing as you and copy paste theirs. Just make sure to read the actual thing yourself, and not just use replace</comment>


Mysterious Voynich manuscript has 'genuine message' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22975809 <comment><USER2> There exists a Skeptoid article about the Voynich manuscript: [http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252](http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4252)

The conclusion:

 _" So let's wrap this up with my favorite theory, and the one that is perhaps best supported by all that's known. In the early 1400s, some professional, perhaps a physician or astrologer or alchemist, wanted to create some marketing material that demonstrated he had rare knowledge from the East. He engaged a monk or other scribe to produce a book filled with wondrous and curious illustrations from multiple sciences, and a text that nobody could read, which he could tell his customers was the source of whatever great Eastern wisdom he wanted. The monk had a colleague assist, and the two devised an alphabet and used their own multilingual familiarity with written language to devise a convincing nonsense text. It was well done enough that its owner could even use it to impress his colleagues. Thus, this anonymous professional ended up with impressive marketing collateral that's conceptually identical to the labcoat worn by a naturopath, the energy diagram on the wall of a yoga guru, and the purchased-online title of "doctor" sported by alternative practitioners of every variety."_

</comment><comment><USER3> Just another article about another inconclusive statistical analysis on the Voynich text, with no technical details.

Move along, nothing to see here.

<comment><USER4> I was excited to see that maybe something new was discovered but this article is just useless, just filler words.

<comment><USER5> Humm so the article is a long text with language structure but without a message... humm....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think I'll go with Randall Munroe on this one.

[http://xkcd.com/593/](http://xkcd.com/593/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there anyplace I can buy a print of the Voynich manuscript? I have long been fascinated by it but I've never seen it for sale. Amazon has some books about it, but not the manuscript itself.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if there are reproductions, but meanwhile, you can get page-by- page scans of it here :

[http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/esp_ciencia_manusc...](http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/esp_ciencia_manuscrito07a.htm)

Edit: Better source at the Yale library you can download the whole thing as one PDF :

[http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519597](http://brbl- dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519597)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's also a very interesting novel where the Voynich manuscript plays a central role: PopCo by Scarlett Thomas [0]

Another central theme that will probably appeal to this audience is underground resistance against global commercialisation.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/PopCo-Scarlett- Thomas/dp/B000I2J20E/re...](http://www.amazon.com/PopCo-Scarlett- Thomas/dp/B000I2J20E/ref=la_B000APSRUK_1_3)

</comment><comment><USER10> It has pictures of naked women bathing. So the words probably don't mean anything. I mean, who subscribes to Playboy for the articles?

<comment><USER11> You jest but Playboy used to have some of the best interviews ever conducted.

<comment><USER10> It would be very interesting indeed if that holds true for the Voynich manuscript :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 97-109-107 This is a very similiar article theme-wise, but not as sparse on details [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/ff-the- manuscript/al...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/ff-the- manuscript/all/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Cryptographers; isn't Voynich manuscript a proof that security by obscurity works? (only confidentiality)

<comment><USER13> I think it's proof that given sufficient decorative fluff, people will spend a great deal of time attempting to make sense of nonsense. Same basic principle as snake oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's alien.

</comment><comment><USER15> Where can I find specifics on the actual methods they are using to research the manuscript?

<comment><USER16> This page has some info:

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0066344)</comment></comment>


Meebo launches Meebo Rooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/14/meebo-launches-meebo-rooms-oh-and-meebo-now-has-ads/ <comment><USER2> I created a YCombinator room to test things out.

<http://www.meebo.com/room/ycombinator/></comment>