Nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/23/diesel-cars-pollution-limits-nox-emissions <comment><USER2> I'm willing to take down votes for this position, I don't understand the fuss here, nor to credulity of the actors whom should have (and probably did) know better. If the tests were meant to reflect real-world conditions, they should be be designed to do that -- they clearly weren't, and were only tiny sample of performance from which (wild?) extrapolations were drawn.

Don't have a cry about it, fix the tests. Get together some disinterested parties to design them to capture the behaviour we all apparently expected the current dud tests to measure.

This actually reminds me of how the failure of the bodies responsible for banking oversight cry WOE when the industries they were charged with overseeing did bad things. Failure of _real_ oversight again. And it the same way, we have these same bodies (NOT end users) expecting to be paid for making these mistakes. Who benefits from the fines? Not car owners, not car makers.

<comment><USER3> There is a lot more riding on these tests than is currently being admitted. The simple fact is that based on the tests and the impact of NOx on population health, the sale of diesel cars should be stopped immediately.

Even London has doubled the congestion charge fee for diesels.

A further step would be to recognise that petrol cars also emit NOx and that the long term goal should be the removal of these from the road.

Politically this is a hard thing to do, however some countries are forcing the issue [http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer- news/95237/du...](http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer- news/95237/dutch-move-to-ban-diesel-and-petrol-cars-by-2025)

This is going to hurt the car industry in ways we don't fully understand yet. In the short term I would be end-of-lining their diesel production and restructuring to electric.

<comment><USER4> > The simple fact is that based on the tests and the impact of NOx on > population health, the sale of diesel cars should be stopped immediately

Extremely disingenous. You know what happens when the sale of diesel cars/taxis/buses stops? The old ones get driven longer.

You know what vehicles create the lion's share in NOx emissions? The ones built and sold before 2000 when Euro3 emission standards started limiting NOx emissions. The majority of London "quaint" TX4 black cabs are of this toxic variety, as are the majority of their buses. (This is probably similar to much of the rest of Europe). Taking 50 new diesel vehicles off the street will do less than upgrading a single one of these legacy vehicles to a state-of-the- art diesel engine. Your proposed policy would be counterproductive.

<comment><USER5> > (This is probably similar to much of the rest of Europe)

In Germany, we actually limited almost all cities to cars passing Euro 4, and many even to cars passing Euro 6.

Cars get a sticker with a color based on which standard they pass, and the zones are limited to cars with a sticker of the proper color.

So most busses in Germany are Euro VI now.

<comment><USER6> London's bus fleet is also pretty new. All meet Euro 4, and over 20% at least Euro 5. [1]

The taxis are the problem -- London's low emission zone (similar to those in Germany) only applies to large vehicles, taxis are not included. There are thousands of taxis over 10 years old still running in London [2].

> So most buses in Germany are Euro VI now.

Really? That would mean most buses in Germany are less than 3 years old, which seems unlikely.

[1] [https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press- releases/2014/july/w...](https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press- releases/2014/july/world-s-largest-bus-retrofit-programme-compjeted)

[2] [https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/spread_of_ages_of_lon...](https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/spread_of_ages_of_londons_black)

<comment><USER5> In my city all busses are Euro VI, in several others they already switched to hybrids or are testing fully electric busses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ouch, that's gotta hurt: "Surprisingly, the tiny number of models that did not exceed the standard were mostly Volkswagens"

<comment><USER8> Not terribly surprising. Their engineers are competent, it's just that the US (where diesels are less popular) set some rather unpleasant requirements for diesel cars, in particular insisting that they couldn't require the diesel exhaust fluid tank to be topped up by the end user and setting lower NO2 limits. In order to meet these conflicting requirements, VW cheated. I think some of the VWs they tested actually have the same engine and emissions control system as some of the US models that cheated, just without the defeat device intended to reduce exhaust fluid usage.

<comment><USER9> > _in particular insisting that they couldn 't require the diesel exhaust > fluid tank to be topped up by the end user_

Not being rude, but I'm having trouble parsing that part of your comment.

Do you mean that the US authorities won't let diesel car owners re-fill the diesel exhaust fluid tank by themselves, i.e. the re-fill must be performed by a dealer?

Also is the DEF tank just a US thing? I'd never heard it before (UK resident here).

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure that owners can refill the tank by themselves, but manufacturers are required to have a big enough tank that it can be done by the dealer as part of the regular servicing schedule. The tank itself not so much a US thing as it is a modern diesel car thing; it's part of the emissions control system on I think most new diesels.

<comment><USER10> My dad has a US Volkswagen diesel. He's told me he _can_ refill the urea tank, but he _can 't_ reset the computer to tell it the tank was filled, so there's very little point for him to actually refill it. His car will stop working unless he brings it into the dealer, one way or the other.

<comment><USER11> See, this is a great example of how our regulators have failed miserably. This kind of practice should be outright banned. There should not be anything on a car that requires you to take it to a dealer to reset; any competent mechanic should be able to do any service on the car, and not need a special dealer- only computer system to make the car recognize the service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > There is no suggestion that any of the cars tested broke the law on > emissions limits or used any cheat devices.

Since all these cars passed the laboratory test, that means there must be something very wrong with the test and the way the standards are enforced. Or all car makers do cheat.

<comment><USER13> I thought it was common knowledge the lab tests are a joke? Has been posted on HN as well IIRC.

<comment><USER12> I thought it was more a case of "some car manufacturers cheated" and not "almost all diesel cars emit several times more than they should". How is this possible?

<comment><USER14> The test is accurate and measures emissions very well. The cars emit NOX at levels lower than the legal limits during the test. There is no mistake during the test and no cheating (apart from VW).

However, when the cars are used by normal drivers, the usage patterns are so significantly different than the test sequences that the emissions profile changes. In the majority of cases the NOX emissions from cars used by normal people exceed the EU limits.

This does not, as I understand it, mean that the cars are illegal. The cars all passed the tests in the test environment. That is the requirement and they met the requirement.

No law is being broken but that is only because the law is not fit for purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every gasoline car is going to put out more pollution in "real world" driving scenarios as well. This isn't a problem with diesels, per se, it's a problem with all emissions standards.

<comment><USER16> Its supposed to be 'built-in' to the emissions standard. The lab levels are so low, because that makes the road emissions in an acceptable range. Everybody involved knows this; its not a secret; there's no news here.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I was trying to figure out an eloquent way to add something to that effect to my comment, but I think you've done a better job than what I had drafted anyway.

What _would_ be interesting, is if diesels were predominantly more likely to exceed those lab levels than gasoline cars to a significant amount, or if they were exceeding those standards to an unexpected level.

That's still possible, and it would mean we need to update the emissions standards and/or the test process, but this article doesn't make that case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nothing strange about that - if there is a limit that is hard to meet (which there should be) then manufacturers will make a car that _exactly_ meets the standard.

And just like advertised fuel consumption figures, it will meet the standard under very controlled circumstances. In case of fuel consumption the manufacturers can reach the figure by taping shut door seams, using overinflated tyres, throwing out interior to reduce weight etc. Those aren't "real world conditions" but apparently they are real-world enough to use in advertising. Presumably the same conditions can and are used when testing emissions.

The only conclusion we can draw is that emissions tests aren't used to make manufacturers build cars that emit at most X in real world conditions. That would be both unfair and expensive - it's _better_ to say "use whatever extreme conditions you want and the emissions should be at most Y".

In that case authorities can make Y < X and the whole thing is simpler and easier for everyone. If cars emit too much in real-world conditions? Then tighten the limits.

This of course only works so long as no one cheats and designs workarounds _specifically_ for the test conditions (which is what VW did).

<comment><USER18> Why couldn't a third party just take a production car and do the testing? This is how it works for most compliance testing. This whole situation seems needlessly complex. Or, probably more aptly, it reeks of crony capitalism and politics.

Testing and compliance is an engineering problem. It should treated as such.

<comment><USER19> Although keep in mind that requiring 3rd party, independent auditors creates a market for crappy/soft auditors. I learned that from ISO 9000 work. Companies don't want to hire someone who will fail their product/process, so they hire someone who will conveniently look the other way. Probably the only way is to have government testing... which brings us full circle to the potential of crony capitalism and politics.

<comment><USER18> Industrial certifications like ISO 9000, six sigma, etc... are kind of a joke. What happens to those companies if they fail to maintain an acceptable standard? Quality goes down? Who cares? There's no liability.

A better comparison would be something like UL or FCC. Make the standards and testing body liable for their claims. Require PEs to be part of the organization and personally responsible for signing off.

This is a solved problem. We build bridges and electronics that don't kill people using similar methods.

<comment><USER20> The difference is that those two examples have insurance/liability implications and therefore there is an incentive by some party (insurance industry) to do the certification. There is no equivalent insurance or tort market for emissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Unlike other parts of the world, European nations incentivised the use of diesel vehicles over the last 20 years because they emit less carbon dioxide per mile than petrol cars. Governments thought stricter regulation would sharply reduce NOx emissions, but carmakers found ways around the rules and governments failed to clamp down on the practices."

How typical in so many ways (I particularly like the claim that governments "failed" without either suggesting to strip the governments of those powers which they failed to use so consistently throughout all of Europe, or charging government officials with criminal incompetence or fraud.)

<comment><USER22> Governments 'failing' in this scenario seems to be referring to not acting quickly enough.

If you're going to strip governments of power for this, there would be no more governments left in the world.

<comment><USER21> Not acting quickly enough?.. VW's "defeat device" wasn't uncovered by the government, and it's been deployed for years. I'm not sure what would make governments do anything about this at any future point in time if the issue wasn't reported by a non-government entity. The article also elaborates the measures governments are taking to let perpetrators get away with this into the future (and another source reported how governments keep postponing random checks of cars on actual roads.) There are at least three reasons for governments to side with the perpetrators - campaign contributions or outright bribes to politicians, concerns about the economy/employment, and a revolving door between car makers and regulatory agencies, all this is true for any big business regulated by the government.

The belief that fraud is conducted on this scale but the regulator is not to blame is stunning to me (same with banking fraud etc.) I didn't say governments should necessarily be stripped of this power, just that if they all fail so miserably at something, you ought to either suggest that they cannot ever succeed (and if so of course you'll want to strip them of this power) _or_ that people currently employed by governments to oversee this should be investigated, in the hope that eventually the governments can be trained to find competent people to fill these roles, and find some mechanism that prevents corrupting these people. Meeting extreme government incompetence with complete understanding ("they just didn't act quickly enough") and zero penalties, however, is IMO perpetuating the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't get the math about diesel. American refineries produce 12 gallons of diesel and 19 gallons of gasoline on average[1] from a barrel of oil(42 gallons). I seem to remember that figure being lower and it looks like googles answer was 10 gallons at one point using the same site reference. I think that there was a push to get most cars off of gasoline and on to diesel before the VW scandal, and that diesel was going to save the world. I didn't see how we were going to make that work when there is 50-80% less of the stuff per barrel of oil. I think in the real world the MPG gains are 25-35%[2]

I don't know that EVs are the savior they're pitched as, unless we can make battery tech and power generation cleaner. It looks like there is progress in that arena, so hopefully that continues. I think that we have demonstrably cleaned up gasoline cars while also increasing power output and MPG, and progress in that arena should continue as well. I think that diesel for passenger cars is a dead end, and it should be left to big rigs and heavy duty vehicles.

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=327&t=9](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=327&t=9) [2][https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/di_diesels.shtml](https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/di_diesels.shtml)

<comment><USER24> I think the main push to go off gasoline onto diesel, is mainly biodiesel, where crude oil is not required for production.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now I wonder what the diesel emissions of a 20 year old ford f350 are. A lot, I imagine.

<comment><USER26> Well it wasn't that long ago that a study found that school buses had many times the acceptable levels of pollutants inside because they sat idling while waiting for kids.

All I have to do is watch the local bus service, mostly the city one, to see how bad some vehicles pollute. So let us be honest here, the government needs to clamp down hard on all vehicles in its employ at all levels even more than going after consumer cars

<comment><USER27> I rode the bus every day as a child, and I will always associate the smell of diesel exhaust with the inside of the school bus, because it always smelled like exhaust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My feeling is that catalytic converters go the wrong way.

The biggest problem today is global warming. We want to stop burning diesel. By hiding the NOx, there is less of a problem with burning diesel so we burn more. That's sort of a hard ass approach, but.

Also using a catalytic converter also saps some energy and so requires more diesel to be burned and so more CO2 released.

<comment><USER29> Diesel cars have lower CO2 emissions. That is one of the reasons they are so popular en Europe where vehicle taxes are often based on CO2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> While it makes good headlines, I think most of this could be summed up as "vehicle emissions are more complex than the simple model you might expect".

Go and read the Wikipedia page on the New European Driving Cycle - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_European_Driving_Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_European_Driving_Cycle). Notice that in the test procedure every instance of acceleration is described as "the car slowly accelerates". Now think about the range of driving styles that are found in the real world. Some people might be quite laid back about accelerating, but I think there's an awful lot of "floor the accelerator to get back up to the speed limit" as well. It's hardly surprising that in those periods the emissions from the engine will be higher than they were under the test cycle.

So who do we blame? The vehicle manufacturers? Well, given current popular sentiment, down that path may lie vehicles which are designed to never exceed the emission limit. At the extreme end we might finish up with cars that automatically throttle back when they hit an emission limit, similar to processors throttling back when they hit thermal emission limits. But what do we do when we start having fatal accidents when people tried to overtake and the engine suddenly reduced power in an unpredictable way because it had gone over the emission limit?

So, blame the emissions tests? Well, what should the emissions test be targeting? Never going over a particular threshold, say? In which case, how do you define a standard protocol (to ensure fairness across vehicles) that all vehicles will be able to follow? At one end you've got cars like the Peugeot Bipper Tepee with a 0-60 time north of 16 seconds (with both petrol and diesel engines - [http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/peugeot/bipper- tepee-20...](http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/peugeot/bipper- tepee-2009/?section=data)). At the other you've got cars like the BMW X5 4.4 V8 which can accelerate roughly twice the mass in a quarter of the time ([http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/specs/detail/?v=MBMWI-X50311](http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/specs/detail/?v=MBMWI-X50311) \- the diesel engined version isn't far behind either). I'd imagine that a protocol that produces the highest emissions from the BMW would not even be achievable by the Peugeot.

The only other party left to blame seems to be the drivers, and particularly their inability or unwillingness to drive in a style that minimises emissions (and at the same time most likely increases fuel economy). But the media seem reluctant to point the finger in that direction.

I think we need to blame all of the above, but we need to get past the simplistic model of emissions being a constant that you can set a limit on for all vehicles regardless of how they are driven.

<comment><USER31> >I think there's an awful lot of "floor the accelerator to get back up to the speed limit" as well //

When I took my UK driving test (quite a few years ago) my instructor informed me that I needed to accelerate hard on a [uphill] dual carriageway section in order to not be perceived as "failing to make progress" (ie. keeping up with traffic). I wonder if modern tests take account of safer aspects of fuel economy, such as slower acceleration, or if it's still penalised?

<comment><USER32> > I wonder if modern tests take account of safer aspects of fuel economy, such > as slower acceleration, or if it's still penalised?

-When I took my driver's licence last year (I am in my mid-thirties, only didn't have any need to be able to drive a car until recently), part of the curriculum was economic (=less damaging to the environment) driving.

However, my instructor told me that if the examinator brought up the subject, I just had to murmur the right noises - while accelerating hard so as not to upset traffic flow.

Bingo, the examinator suggested I explain to him a couple of principles of green driving, and after doing so, I observed that I had yet to see another car in traffic that morning which paid attention to said principles.

He shrugged and suggested that if I did drive like we had just discussed, I would probably fail the test for being a traffic hazard and general nuisance - but he had to ask, I had to answer - and now, could we get on with the test, if I didn't mind?

I think we follow an EEC guideline for driver's training, so presumably it is the same all over the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My 1998 Ram with 12 valve 5.9L Cummins then... Is killing us all, loudly. Gets 25mpg on the highway though.

</comment><comment><USER34> Color me shocked.

</comment><comment><USER35> More central planning!

<comment><USER36> Is that sarcasm or a genuine call to action? By Poes law I have no idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Well this should put an end to the "It's not dieselgate, it's just VWgate" thing.</comment>


Just launched a travel project.  Can I get some feedback? - <AUTHOR> https://www.tripvo.flights <comment><USER2> The last thing I want is notifications that are not relevant. Everybody and his sister-in-law wants to send me them.

For better and for worse my travel planning proceeds like "want to go to place X", "figure out how to go to place X", "go to place X".

Many people in the travel biz want to tell me I can get a special deal to go to place Y and who knows, if I do that I might have a great time, but I am not in that habit.</comment>


A Proofless Introduction to Information Theory - <AUTHOR> http://jeremykun.com/2015/02/16/a-proofless-introduction-to-information-theory/ <comment><USER2> This is an excellent 'road map' to the two key theorems of information theory.

The focus on decoding complexity in the noisy coding theorem is particularly welcome. A separate article amplifying just this aspect (error exponent, Pareto complexity, etc) would be welcome.</comment>


What If Silicon Valley's 'Brilliant Jerks' Are Just Jerks? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-29/what-if-silicon-valley-s-brilliant-jerks-are-just-regular-ones <comment><USER2> What if, and hear me out on this, we tell people off when they do something wrong?

I know its controversial, but imagine that this was someone's really cute husky. Sure every day it would bounce about the place and make funny husky noises.

However every week, on a sunday, it would attack your child and poop on the carpet.

A normal person wouldn't shrug and say, "Hubert the husky brings a lot of value to the household, so lets just ignore this." No. You'd bollock the arrogant shit when it did wrong, and praise it when it was good.

The dirty secret of Silicon value is that actually, individuals are replaceable. What isn't replaceable is time and money. The cult of the Jerk is a defence mechanism to allow shit to continue to be shits.

repeat after me:

If they've broken the law or done something morally grey, bollock them.

I know that sounds radical and foreign, but its part of a thing called "wider society"

<comment><USER3> If Hubert the Husky makes a shit-ton of money, the definition of "did wrong" changes.

<comment><USER4> I don't care how much money someone earns, be it a dog or otherwise, or if they can buy me untold carpets. I am still going to tell them off if they shit in the middle of the living room floor.

<comment><USER5> Problem is, the incentive for businesses is to fire you and make Hubert the Husky happy, so only such businesses survive.

<comment><USER4> I knew there was a good reason why I hadn't commented any code, named all variables using the elvish translations for a variety of diseases of sheep and built the DB backend out of practically unknown fork of paradox for dos that will only run queries if you keep the lowercase letter 'j' held down.

edit - also known as _' best practice'_ when writing bespoke software for industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's easy to see if they are just jerks or geeks as well: just look at their early life.

In 1998, Levandowski entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.[12] As a freshman, he launched an intranet service from his basement.[3] In 2004 he and fellow UC Berkeley engineers built an autonomous motorcycle, nicknamed Ghostrider, for the DARPA Grand Challenge.[13] The Ghostrider motorcycle competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and 2005 and was the only autonomous two-wheeled vehicle in the competition.[14] The motorcycle now resides in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.[3]

I challenge the author of the article to build this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CYGT97i8qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CYGT97i8qU)

<comment><USER7> That's got to cost a ton of money to build. Who pays for it?

<comment><USER8> Well "ton" is not very accurate. University teams (some of them) are legendary in how far they get on how little funds. You'd need a used motorcycle, a garage (which will be donated), time from 4-5 AI PhD students (again donated), test space (supermarket parking on sundays or at night), actuators (bad, recycled or donated ones), time in a metal shop (let's say 2000-3000$), various parts and ... (let's say $1000), travel and ... expenses (let's say $10k), ...

It doesn't have to cost much more than $20k or so. Budgets went into $x00k range for the first Darpa challenge (x < 3 or so).

Who paid for it ? DARPA. Also known as the US military.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXE1Iu5E3o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXE1Iu5E3o)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > People like Levandowski, Travis Kalanick, Parker Conrad, Elizabeth Holmes > and Andy Rubin

This is a really weird grouping. It's mixing people who have built incredibly valuable things (Rubin) with those who are famous for failing to do so (Holmes); and people who broke the law by committing fraud (which seems like an unusual use of the word "jerk") with those who have been accused of sexual misconduct.

<comment><USER3> Levandowski did a lot of ethically sketchy things up to the point where he allegedly broke the law.

Travis Kalanick did a lot of ethically sketchy things up to the point where he was removed from his own company.

Holmes did a lot of ethically sketchy things up to the point where the wheels came off.

Conrad did sketchy things up to the point where someone realized he wasn't actually doing what he was supposed to.

Rubin did sketchy things up to the point that Google paid him to close the door behind him.

The key commonality is that they did sketchy things, people knew they were doing sketchy things, and the entrepreneureal and tech community lionized them up to the point where doing so became embarrassing. (And seems to be continuing to do so, judging by this thread.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "But to me, the Levandowski litigation again shows the tech industry's schizophrenia about those brilliant jerks. "

Sure let's generalize entire industry based on one nutcase. Brilliant article.

<comment><USER11> "This cherry picked example exactly confirms my preconceived notion!"

<comment><USER3> To be fair to cryptozeus, Levandowski is in the photo directly under the title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes when I deal with people I think are less intelligent than myself I wonder what it would be like to be in that rare stratosphere of intelligence never running into someone who you thought wasnt an idiot.

Then I wonder if I would become a jerk simply due to fatigue.

Good thing I dont have to worry about it too much :)

<comment><USER11> If you're actually a genius, you understand that people dumber than you aren't idiots. They're normal.

<comment><USER8> And that's supposed to make you feel better ?

Go to city hall or DMV, try get something done, and you will understand how dealing with inflexible idiots feels. (note that you're not dumb because you work at city hall/DMV, but if you're not dumb you have better options and go somewhere else. So over time, these places collect idiots). When you're smarter, there's a lot of DMVs.

It's not like dealing with people a little less smart or smarter than you feels (in fact they will regularly outsmart you, you'll just outsmart them just a tad more than the other way). That's just fine, interesting, and doesn't stand in anyone's way. It's dealing with people _much_ dumber than you that's the problem.

Here's a repeating conversation that's frustrating. The problem is smart people play chess, whereas normal people just play a move.

"I want to X" "But that's (insane|difficult|not what I'd like to do|not what I see|...), why not Y ?" "Because Y leads to Z, to A, and likely to B, which is a negative for me" "But why not C ?" "Because C leads to D, E and then again to B, which is not what I want" "But ..." (continue for another 10 minutes)

Or people that hate you because you "make them feel dumb" (which is exactly what they do to you when you have to explain everything of course, but never mind that). And you might say "why not make them feel smart". And sure, I do that. That's easy. But it takes time and energy, and I'm just not going to do that 100x every day. 10x, sure. No problem. But there's a limit.

Or people who feel like they're _entitled_ to your intelligence. Every last problem they encounter. "Hey <drop everything and> come look at this", and then the first time you don't they immediately escalate.

Or just playing chess, then looking at "idiots" moving on the playing field. And seeing them placing themselves into impossible positions and ...

Also worse is that you see people's motivations. How, say, social workers are going to discuss a new policy to do X, and this sounds really positive and you're the only one in the room that's "but, no it isn't positive at all. Because the motivations of these guys that are involved are to ... and that will lead to ..., which is going to destroy these peoples' lives, and you KNOW this but you're suggesting the policy because your organization will once again have to expand". For example, "early detection of child abuse" by people who are paid for finding child abuse will lead to ... false accusations. And of course, once again they will find much more than their worst fear. Or helping the homeless by "providing accomodations", and you want to scream that no, they want them off the street because they think it'll increase their house's value and their ego while effectively arresting and locking up these people.

Or worse: you actually go look at the accommodations they were talking about, because you're interested. Either for those abused kids, or for those homeless. And then you know: there is no act as despicable, counterproductive and outright evil as "professionals" "helping" people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't really understand the headline question. Levandowski is brilliant, that's not really up for debate.

<comment><USER14> The article is paywalled, so I may be off-base about the article's premise, but my take is that the "brilliant jerks" of our industry (first ones that come to mind are Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds) not only get a pass because due to results, but that their personality is worth emulating. The idea I think is that we need to push back, and call being a jerk what it really is: a character flaw, not an asset.

<comment><USER15> Sorry I probably missed something, but when was Linus Torvalds being a jerk? Sure, he showed finger to NVidia the company once, which was funny, but didn't harm anyone. His mails are also very straightforward and up to the point, without diluting it with compliments, contrary to current cultural code.

I don't think skipping compliments equals to being a jerk. I'd look at actions, and I don't remember Linus did something nasty.

<comment><USER14> Linus himself admitted to it:

"My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry.

The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely."

[https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167](https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167)

<comment><USER15> Thanks, I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You usually only meet jerks when they're in positions of prestige and very competent (brilliant?). Why? Because the jerks who aren't good at they're job are fired long ago. You might start to think that there's some connection, but really is just they've managed to barely hang out by virtue of their skill.

<comment><USER17> > Because the jerks who aren't good at they're job are fired long ago.

That's wishful thinking. A lot of jerks will never be fired and are terrible at their job. It's not that simple and isn't cheap to fire someone.

IMHO the main difference is mostly that jerks with power will negatively impact more people, thus are more visible.

<comment><USER18> The jerks with power who appear bad at their job are actually good at their real job and that's politicking. They're only bad at their nominal job, whatever it may be, which doesn't matter by definition since they are successful enough to have power.

<comment><USER19> ^^ This.

Also, your real job is making your manager look good to his manager, not actually the nominal job of writing reliable, stable, flexible code that you signed up for in your employment agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Jerks are jerks are jerks are jerks. Their intellectual acumen is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER21> The whole brillant jerk thing is epitomized in "Halt and Catch Fire" ... So I am going to go with nuance.

</comment><comment><USER22> When they write, "Brilliant Jerks", do they mean, "Sociopaths"?</comment>


How to get around Gmail's "Promotion tab of Death" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gochime.com/post/60463406395/how-to-get-around-gmails-promotion-tab-of-death

<comment><USER2> Another excellent reason not to use FBook.</comment>


Someone forged my resignation letter - <AUTHOR> https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/91643/someone-forged-my-resignation-letter <comment><USER2> I wouldn't be surprised if this actually didn't happen. Let's see if there are elements in the story that stand out if we take this perspective. (It is much harder than detecting photoshop effects).

\+ He could have been on holidays, or getting a child, but it is the death of his mother. Of course, we are gonna feel really bad for him. That's really good for the story.

\+ The security of the system is such that on one hand a dongle is needed, but on the other hand someone can fake sending email through your account. This is apparently widely known by non-expert colleagues to just joke around, but not known by the security staff.

\+ Technological "details" that do not seem to make sense such as SQL to make it sound like a true story to the uneducated.

\+ The writer already assumes that we think he is lying. Hence, he comes up with the dongle story. We would already have been fine with his word that he just didn't send the resignation letter.

\+ He physically shows up 6 weeks later without checking his email once (reply email). Of course the effect of the story is much stronger in that case. However, is it very likely not to check your email at least just before you show up at work 6 weeks later? [Edit: incorrect assumption, see @c8g.]

Then what would be motive of the person asking the question. It is a throwaway account.

\+ A researcher who wants to see what the difference is between a fake story on Facebook versus one asked on StackOverflow? How could such an effect be properly compared?

<comment><USER3> > is it very likely not to check your email at least just before you show up > at work 6 weeks later?

a work dongle is needed to read reply email and he said that he didn't bring it.

<comment><USER2> Of course, my bad! That actually neatly fits the story line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't be surprised if that "someone" was the CEO or someone working on the CEO's behalf. What else could even make sense?

Even if some coworker had a grudge or a bone to pick with OP, they had to know that OP would return eventually and any CEO worth his salt would demand answers immediately. Specially considering the legal risks exposed here for firing someone on FMLA qualifying leave (assuming US).

Weigh that against a CEO who accepted a resignation and re-hired for the position based on a single email alone without so much as a follow up call. When OP returns seems lackadaisical about investigating. Seems fishy to me.

<comment><USER5> The whole thing smells like fiction, and this is the very first post from a days-old Stack Exchange account.

> It could've been a colleague because I know there is a backdoor way to send > emails using someone else's account via some sort of a SQL database thing. > We used to do it as jokes but it was never used for something like this

That in particular is setting off my troll radar.

<comment><USER6> I mean, the "first post" thing is hardly a red flag--it could be a throwaway, or just the first time this person had felt the need to ask an SE question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hardly related, but does anyone know why resignation letters are so popular in the first place? When I quit the only job I ever had, I went to my boss and told him I wanted to quit. We had a constructive conversation.

Now, this company has a very strong "talk about it" culture, with super supportive management, etc. No bureaucracy or paperwork anywhere. Nevertheless, my boss was totally surprised that I wanted to _talk_ about resigning. Pleasantly surprised I might add, but still: In his entire career, every employee who had left had written a letter and left it at that.

Why do it that way? Of course I understand if there's fundamental disagreements or deep unhappiness, it's a good way to keep emotions out of the way. But that wasn't the case here, and everybody I know who left that company left it on good terms.

I ask because I'm an employer now. I try to be a good and open-minded boss, and I'd much rather have someone tell me what's going on than receive a letter out of the blue. Is this wishful thinking?

<comment><USER8>
      does anyone know why resignation letters are
      so popular in the first place?

My employment contract literally says "Your employment may be terminated either by you or by us by providing X weeks written notice" and while I could work to get that language changed, I don't imagine such a change would deliver measurable business benefits.

I suspect many employment contracts are the same, lawyers having seen that clause in some 25-year-old textbook.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. I've always explained my decision in face to face discussions, and the first thing they ask once they've confirmed that is definitely what I want is if I could write it in a letter please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would tell him go to the CEO and say:

"The letter was a forgery, someone in your company is unethical, and you should find out who.

As far as I am concerned I am thinking of suing, but if you simply paid out my leave I would be satisfied, and finding the unethical employee will be on you."

And that's it. If the CEO is as honest as the question makes him out to be, this should be enough, and it's much simpler. If not, then you lost nothing, and can sue, get a lawyer, etc, as all the answers suggest.

<comment><USER11> > As far as I am concerned I am thinking of suing, but if you simply paid out > my leave I would be satisfied.

You know to many that type of language would be interpreted as a threat. You might also take into consideration the CEO may legitimately believe the company has done no wrong in this case. Not all people/companies respond to threats by getting scared, many fight back.

The allegation which is being made, is that the company accepted a fake/fraudulent letter. It will be highly unlikely that a company would openly admit to be such a victim, unless it was in their best interest.

> If the CEO is as honest as the question makes him out to be, this should be > enough, and it's much simpler.

This is business, a CEO's job is to protect the business not kowtowing to someone who is threatening to sue.

<comment><USER12> To add to that, I do not delineate between threats to sue and suing. If you threaten to sue me I will instruct my lawyers to beat you to the courthouse with a countersuit. I've found this attitude tremendously clarifying in the long run.

<comment><USER13> To clarify: what do you propose the countersuit would be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Using a throwaway...

When I was working at a previous company, my manager jumped on my PC and used it to send an email from my account to my colleague, while I was out on my lunch break. It was a joke, which I thought was highly unprofessional. I asked my colleague, and he said that he seen the manager use my computer. I confronted the manager and she owned up to it. I've asked her to explain, and her excuse was that I should have locked my PC and I didn't take it anywhere further. However, I could see how a more serious incident could happen, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was the CEO where hubris can run rampant at those levels. Usually companies would have audit logs of who and when the account was accessed, I would start looking there.

<comment><USER15> At a previous employer I worked at, this was pretty common. If you left your computer unlocked for any amount of time, you were pretty much guaranteed to be screwed with. Because it was so common, it wasn't a big deal. If you got an odd email from a co-worker, you assumed they must have forgotten to lock their computer.

It was a security related company, and the general excuse was that the practice was intended as negative reinforcement to push everyone to have better security practices. I don't know if it was a good or bad culture to have. I can tell you that, to this day, I never leave my computer unlocked.

<comment><USER16> It's bad culture. For productive environments you need coworkers to trust each other. Frequent office pranks do not foster that.

<comment><USER17> Pranks are a sign of trust. The trust bit is that you _only_ use it for pranks and not any of the myriad other things you can actually do with a logged in computer. But the pranks should be a reminder they might just as well not have been a prank, and that you should bloody well lock your computer already.

<comment><USER16> Can't find it at the moment but I remember Adam Savage once saying that him and Jamie Hyneman never play practical jokes on each other. It would end up with one of them duct-taping the windows on the other one's house to fill it with water. Don't prank your sysadmin. It won't end well for you.

<comment><USER18> For context, the two Mythbusters presenters have famously different personalities and are not exactly friends. This reinforces the idea that pranks are generally done between people who feel they can trust one another.

<comment><USER16> There was trust between them. Trust does not require compatible personalities. Both of them have spoken at length about their working relationship. Part of that trust was knowing the other one would _never_ condone or sign off on pranking. Adam was pranked once with a cattleprod and it resulted in firing the producer that was responsible (and Jamie was not in on it).

Pranks are cheap laughs, slapstick humor. It does not belong in a work environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As said on stackexchange, you should get a lawyer and contact the authorities as a felony has been committed. Even if the company isn't involved in the events, they should not treat you as they did and owe you a proper severance pay.

<comment><USER20> Getting a lawyer is a fine idea, but if this happened in the US, they don't owe you anything apart from optional COBRA (medical insurance for purchase). Severance pay is not required, and is typically not paid if a person terminates employment of their own volition. Even if a person is fired/laid off, severance isn't mandatory and is mostly about protecting the company from litigation/employees going to competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do people afford a knowledgeable lawyer and forensics expert as mentioned in some of the replies? Don't they get expensive fast? What if you lose the case... how much money will you be out?

<comment><USER22> Many people have legal dispute insurance (at least in Norway, Netherlands, and Switzerland[1] this is not uncommon once you make a normal IT salary). It is not that expensive and well worth having. They wont pay for top lawyers, but it will pay for legal advice and normalish proceedings, especially on common legal areas related to hiring and firing.

Secondly, advice about going to lawyer does not mean sue until it hits the supreme court. It means, get professional advice on the likely outcomes of the different actions. Such as what kind of settlements can you expect, are you like to win on procedural grounds etc... How to best proceed etc... and what outcomes are acceptable to you.

This kind of advice will give you an expected ROI on different approaches that are available to you. Upon which you make an "investment" decision on which approach will be the best for you (not always financial). Normally such a conversation won't take to long and will not be billed at the legal firms top rate.

[1]: [https://www.generali.ch/en/privatkunden/haftung- recht/rechts...](https://www.generali.ch/en/privatkunden/haftung- recht/rechtsschutzversicherung) (which is the one I pay for)

<comment><USER23> Speaking as someone in the US, I've never heard of legal dispute insurance before.

<comment><USER18> In one of the most litigious societies in the world? I find that extremely surprising. How are all these ordinary people able to afford suing big companies because they burnt their tongue on their coffee?

<comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_fee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_fee)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > You need to talk to a lawyer, ASAP.

The only acceptable answer.

If someone forged your email it becomes wire fraud thus criminal act under federal law. You should consult a lawyer now.

<comment><USER26> The "get a lawyer" advice gets tossed around workplace.stackexchange WAY TOO OFTEN and basically snubs discussion.

Getting a lawyer, at a minimum, means forking over a few hundred dollars just for some advice. Going beyond that we're talking hundreds to thousands more for the lawyer to merely write a letter. Going further beyond that, it then becomes the plantiff's "life work" to deal with the court system while paying many thousands to the lawyer for, AT BEST, an iffy outcome after months of drudgery, and yes, then face being effectively blacklisted in the local industry.

That said, there are some good reasons for people to get a lawyer but getting fired with a dirty trick (assuming the dubious story is even true) is rarely one of them.

<comment><USER27> > Getting a lawyer, at a minimum, means forking over a few hundred dollars > just for some advice. Going beyond that we're talking hundreds to thousands > more for the lawyer to merely write a letter.

This has not been my experience at all.

A few years ago I had a dispute over a commercial lease agreement with my landlord. I did all the research I could and wrote a short summary of my position on the matter, along with a few relevant citations. I made an appointment with an attorney and asked that she write a lease addendum that terminated the lease immediately and held harmless both parties, which included my reasoning for doing so.

I paid her $120 for her time to write the letter, and it was invaluable as leverage in negotiating with my landlord - there's a big difference between saying "I'm gonna sue!" and bringing a document to the meeting prepared by your attorney to resolve the disagreement.

Hiring an attorney doesn't have to cost a fortune - you just have to take steps to minimize the time they have to spend on your case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would write a formal letter to the board of directors (and perhaps key external shareholders) as well. It doesn't have to be much - even a forward of the post, letting them know that it refers to you and their company.

If they are complicit - it makes a paper trail for others to discover. If they are not complicit then the CEO will get instructed to do the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you could see the email, look at the email headers. It should indicate what IP address and email program sent the email, as in, it may say SQLMail and it IP of the machine.

<comment><USER30> Finally someone using their head instead of just blindly speculating. SQL keeps history of commands as well. Plus if this company is so "advanced" that they use some kind of SQL procedures to send email, I am sure there are plenty of other audit trails they can follow to verify where the message came from.

All-in-all, the fact that he mentions he exploited security hole in his company and then calls it "SQL thing" screams at me: FAKE

<comment><USER31> > All-in-all, the fact that he mentions he exploited security hole in his > company and then calls it "SQL thing" screams at me: FAKE

Why? That doesn't surprise me at all. As a (Computer Science) student, there were a lot of jokes (e.g. connecting to other computers, and doing... stuff) involving scripts that most people just blindly copied, without understanding them at all. And I have seen the same last year during an internship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Re-use the expoit to resign the new guy.

<comment><USER33> Or, since the CEO takes these resignation letters as undeniable fact, use the exploit to resign the CEO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How do you accept your exit package without signing anything in person, I have never had a job where a single resignation email was enough for HR to close you out as an employee, this smells super made up.

</comment><comment><USER35> "ain't passed the bar/ but I know a little bit"

He probably does not work in a 'right to work' state as the employer would not need to justify their action with a resignation letter.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to- work_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

The scenario is odd - I understand dropping things to take care of a relative. But a 6-week interval is too great in this day. There should have been some further communication of intent.

<comment><USER36> I suspect the country is India or possibly some one working in a body shop in the US

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "We used to do it as jokes but it was never used for something like this and I can't imagine anyone that would hate me enough to go this far."

It's all fun and games, until ...

<comment><USER38> What even is the point of requiring a dongle if you can do this? Checkbox security at its best.

<comment><USER39> You can do this with most systems. Just edit the From field in a script. External emails will usually be blocked and you can still see in the header that it was not sent from the actual account so that the risk of fraud is low.

If it happened with a script it should be easy to find out by looking at logs and/or header.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It is difficult to believe that the guy has sent a resignation email and the CEO didn't even talk to him over the phone.

<comment><USER18> It's possible the CEO did try to ring him but didn't get hold of him. From the lack of response the CEO assumed the guy was serious about his resignation and went ahead.

<comment><USER40> The author hasn't mentioned it. But yes, it is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Local IT guy in the company is only person to help most likely, it would be first person to reach for such sneaky task. Either he would know or would have logs.

Though, seems hard to solve, especially if he is out of US/Europe.

<comment><USER42> > _Either he would know or would have logs._

Uh...or be the culprit.

<comment><USER43> Yeah. But if he's not the culprit he's the best person to help.

Also, unless there's a personal vendetta, the biggest motive for someone doing this is someone that doesn't want to pay the expense of an employee on leave for awhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why is this on HN? The top-voted comment here calls it fake, not a single comment adds anything substantial that wasn't written on SE. As far as I can tell it's just tabloidish voyeurism...

</comment><comment><USER45> You don't need a dongle, backend sql db or infact anything to send a forged email but just a terminal on linux would do.

The company should have investigated if he did or didn't send the email

</comment><comment><USER46> My only question here, why he haven't reported the email backdoor to the IT ?

</comment><comment><USER47> Someone was probably ghetto testing the possibility of doing it.

</comment><comment><USER48> >It could've been a colleague because I know there is a backdoor way to send emails using someone else's account via some sort of a SQL database thing. We used to do it as jokes but it was never used for something like this and I can't imagine anyone that would hate me enough to go this far.

Most places would escort you out of the building for doing this.

<comment><USER49> My friend got managed out of the BBC and had emails confirming a promotion deleted from his inbox; unbelievably they were still in his trash folder. Someone else was promoted in his place while he was away on holiday. Nothing surprises me anymore when people have a sense of entitlement to someone else's promotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Well, if the employer is just like "Well, sorry, too late now, we don't care that it's a forgery" then maybe it was a good thing you can move on.

<comment><USER51> Except now he's out of pocket

<comment><USER52> Yeah, some severance pay would be appropriate at least.</comment></comment></comment>


Testing HTTP caching in Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.sanarias.com/blog/215TestingHTTPcachinginGo

<comment><USER2> The article is very good, I read it all the way to the end and learned quite a few things. But the title is just a bit misleading, it is more like "test coverage in go, with an example using http cache". Thanks for writing and sharing.

<comment><USER3> That is very true, but at least the article has links to the previous tutorials that fill out the background of the topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Serious question: is properly handling the "Not Modified " status code really considered caching or is there a better name? Maybe client-side caching? HTTP caching in my mind is associated with something like varnish.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that along with dealing with Last-Modified, If-Not-Modified, ETag, and other similar HTTP Headers is what is meant by HTTP Caching.

From what I can tell Varnish uses these same concepts to do what they do (caching HTTP reverse proxy).

See

* [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7234#section-1)

* [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec13.html)

* [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Caching_FA...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Caching_FAQ)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Automatic emoji support for main routes in your website - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-express <comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow up on my pet project. Today I integrated it into an app that we're working on and it seems to be working great so far.

I implemented the suggestions and features requested. E.g. setting your own emojis for your custom routes.

If you have any other ideas or inputs let me know. Thanks!</comment>


Y u selfish code? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@i12/y-u-selfish-code-9b77f1c30c8c

<comment><USER2> "What happened to the ways of the hackers of yonder? Why are we interested less in systems and more in getting that promotion and that joy. What happened to that internet where you could express your thought in code and break and mix systems in new ways."

Life happens. You realize that hacking on a fun project doesn't pay the bills and if you want to have a nice lifestyle, you will need to get some sort of job. A job means you will be working on something at some point that is boring/you don't really want to do it.

This is why I left that life and started my own company. I hack on new projects constantly and still have the same amount of fun I always did when I was much younger.</comment>


Whistleblower: Google Boss' Daughter Scrubbed from Guardian Exposé - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/whos-a-whistleblower-gonna-trust-ask-christopher-wylie-about-the-guardian-and-cambridge-analytica <comment><USER2> I don't quite get why people are mad at Schmidt and not the Guardian for shady reporting.

So a woman interned at SLC Elections (which later became Cambridge Analytica) and now works at Uber.

After reading the story I fail to see her significance to the story of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The author of that piece is trying to make a fact that she's the daughter of Eric Schmidt into some sinister "Silicon Valley elite" impugning that she's the mastermind behind Cambridge Analytica becoming the shady organization.

It's really shady, grasping at rhetorical straws journalism.

"A firm that belonged to someone she knew about through her father" is so much juicier and scandalous than "Palantir".

Strangely, I don't know Eric Schmidt and I do know about Palantir.

Yes, Schmidt can buy more justice than most of us, but in this case, the primary issue is the high cost of justice, not that some people are rich and can afford it.

The idea that rich can bully anyone with lawyers is seductive, but this is The Guardian, a newspaper with its own army of lawyers. Newspaper that published Snowden files and many other controversial things.

If there was no merit to the complaint, the Guardian would tell Schmidt to sod off.

After reading the article it seems to me that the "journalist" threw a completely innocent person under the bus, tried to implicate her into an international scandal only because she happened to be a daughter of a famous person.

It's appalling what Guardian did implicating her in this scandal. And sad because it was otherwise well researched.

<comment><USER3> >The idea that rich can bully anyone with lawyers is seductive, but this is The Guardian, a newspaper with its own army of lawyers.

Don't forget how Billionaire Peter Thiel sued gawker to bankrupcy.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but directly though - unless there are other events I'm unaware of.

I thought Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker (IIRC HH didn't have much money after his divorce)

<comment><USER3> According to what I remember, Thiel already had an axe to grind with gawker. Hogan's case simply presented the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can view the diff of the scrubbing via NewSniffer: [https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/1375881/diff/7/8](https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/1375881/diff/7/8)

<comment><USER6> Wow, that looks worse than I thought.

In the newest version, it reads:

> _In some ways, an intern showing up and referring to Palantir is just > another weird detail in the weirdest story I have ever researched._

while the original version read:

> _In some ways, Eric Schmidt's daughter showing up and referring to Palantir > is just another weird detail in the weirdest story I have ever researched._

They didn't just edit her out - instead, they completely changed the meaning of the text. By changing the point of those paragraphs from "here is how well- connected people behaved in this scandal" to "isn't it quirky that powerful people would listen to a random, unremarkable intern?" they have gone completely against the whistleblower's point.

I can definitely understand why he's so angry about this.

<comment><USER7> > Why would anyone want to intern with a psychological warfare firm, I ask > him. And he looks at me like I am mad. "It was like working for MI6. Only > it's MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and > you got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were > working with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It's not like > election campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy shit." Why > would anyone want to intern with a psychological warfare firm, I ask him. > And he looks at me like I am mad. "It was like working for MI6. Only it's > MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you > got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were working > with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It's not like election > campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy shit."

>On that day in January 2013, Sophie met up with SCL's chief executive, Alexander Nix, and gave him the germ of an idea. "She said, 'You really need to get into data.' She really drummed it home to Alexander. And she mentioned to him a firm that belonged to someone she knew about through her father."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The same Eric Schmidt once famously stated "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" [0]. Apparently, it depends.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument#In_fa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument#In_favor_of_the_argument)

<comment><USER9> It seems like he used the word "maybe" there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When Schmidt says 'privacy is dead', he means _your_ privacy.

<comment><USER11> NB, that specific quote tends not to be associated with Schmidt. His comment on the matter was "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place".

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/)

Larry Ellison (CEO, Oracle) said "Privacy is dead".

[https://securitycurrent.com/privacy-is-dead-long-live- privac...](https://securitycurrent.com/privacy-is-dead-long-live-privacy/)

Scott McNeally (CEO, Sun) said "You have zero privacy anyway, get over it."

[https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over- it/](https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/)

Though, looking back on it, Big Tech really seems to have had it in for privacy for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Guardian haven't been trustworthy for a while now.

It seems as though only recently did they start turning a profit [1] and I suspect some of this is achieved by giving up some of their original journalistic integrity.

[1] [https://www.opednews.com/articles/Guardian-turns-a-profit- fo...](https://www.opednews.com/articles/Guardian-turns-a-profit-fo-by- Stephen-Fox-Advocacy-Journalism_Citizen-Journalism_First-Amendment_First- Amendment-Press-190502-282.html)

<comment><USER13> And you'd almost certainly be wrong. The subscribers to The Guardian, worldwide, value its quality reporting where most other newspapers are beholden to the interests of their owners.

<comment><USER14> Their trust structure is probably a positive vs. influential owners (as you say) but that doesn't automatically mean that The Grauniad always offers "quality reporting".

They still push a distinct political angle (aka bias) in everything they write, and aren't above lower-quality clickbait.

<comment><USER15> The Scott Trust got wound up in 2008 and its assets transferred to a new limited company named "The Scott Trust Limited" (disingenuous name). [1]

[1] [https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-owning-scott- trust-t...](https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/guardian-owning-scott-trust-to- fold-after-72-years/)

<comment><USER13> Seriously, you need to learn a little about company formations, especially Articles and Memorandum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > It's extraordinary that the daughter of Eric Schmidt—the man who says that > privacy is dead—would be using U.K. privacy laws to get herself taken out of > the piece

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

<comment><USER7> It's was Schmidt's lawyers, money and his influence.

Sippenhaft is leagal term and there is no legal case against Schmidt or his daughter.

Outside the law, family relations and connections are relevant. It's the job of journalists to expose those connections.

<comment><USER2> So you think that it was fair that she was "exposed" in that piece?

What exactly was her role in and relevance to Cambridge Analytica scandal?

According to the article, she was an intern at SCL Election before 2013, in January 2013 she met with CEO and, the article absurdly claims that "she gave him the germ of an idea" by mentioning data and Palantir.

Oh, and she works at Uber now, which we all know is bad. Somehow.

It's absurd to suggest that what a former intern, even named Schmid, said in 2013 had any impact on what happened later.

SLC Group was founded in 1990, Palantir in 2003.

By 2013, SLC Group was involved in political lobbying and manipulation for over 20 years.

Cambridge Analytica was created in 2012, a year before the 2013 meeting.

The idea that CEO Cambridge Analytics didn't know about Palantir in 2013 or needed to be educated by a former intern about the importance of data is just laughable.

As far as I can tell the journalist opportunistically juiced up the story by twisting facts to fit a narrative of some sinister SV dominance and throwing a random person under the bus by trying to tie her to an international scandal.

<comment><USER17> Tbh, "intern" doesn't need to mean that she copies documents and hangs around shadowing people. I agree that she most likely didn't tell them anything new when she recommended Palantir, it sounds more like what Trump is doing having his daughter work with others on his behalf. When it's about business with people you trust, immediate family is often the obvious choice.

It's not ruled out, but it's not that likely that any random person would get great offers. Being the child of one of the most powerful men of the industry helps, so of course there's the family is involved. Playing the "oh yeah, but the relation is totally accidental, it had nothing to do with any decisions of businesses"-card sounds a bit strange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That "whistleblower" has no credibility left:

>> In 2014, Wylie co-founded Eunoia Technologies[9][23] along with former SCL/Cambridge Analytica senior staff Brent Clickard, Mark Gettleson and Tadas Jucikas.[23] In describing his ambitions for developing Eunoia, Wylie stated, "I want to build the NSA's wet dream".[23] Eunoia Technologies has been criticized for the similar psychographic profiling tactics used by Cambridge Analytica,[9][23] using the same dataset shared by Alexander Kogan.[9][23][24][25]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wylie#Eunoia_Techn...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wylie#Eunoia_Technologies,_2014-17)

So he basically accused Cambridge Analytica of doing what he then went on to do with his own firm. It's great that we learned all that shady business going on, but it's clear that Wylie's motives were not altruistic.

<comment><USER19> There are a lot of attempts to dismiss whistleblowers by attacking their "credibility" lately.

There is only one criteria to assess: is their report true? You assess this by investigating what they claim in their report. So far, what he's said has been entirely backed up by facts. His reason for blowing the whistle in the first place is irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Guardian was pushing the narrative that Dix and the rest of the Cambridge Analytica management were evil geniuses.

The alternative is that the management didn't really understand technology and were often overselling what was possible to potential clients. A story that Sophie Schmidt had helped them understand stuff reinforces this alternative line.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am surprised by the many comments here so critical of the Guardian. I live in the USA, and I find it frustrating trying to find news sources that don't seem biased with strong agendas.

I pay a monthly donation to the Guardian because I find them better than most other news sources. I also like NPR Nightly News (they give fair time to both sides in contentious issues) and sometimes the BBC.

</comment><comment><USER22> This article is kind of all over the place, at first blaming the Guardian but then backing down a bit to say that they had limited resources to fight what would be an expensive legal battle, which is understandable.

> He said he was put in touch with Gavin Millar, a well-known London lawyer > who had worked on the Edward Snowden case. Wylie said the lawyer suggested > he give the story to a U.S. newspaper because the First Amendment provided a > stronger defense against accusations of libel..."it was actually The > Guardian's Katharine Viner who reached out to Dean Baquet at the New York > Times to help set up the partnership." Wylie's revelations were published > jointly by The Guardian and The New York Times

This should be the main takeaway from all of this. They were making a calculated choice based on the resources they had available. The Guardian should still be seen as a trustworthy publication

</comment><comment><USER23> Surprised people are still listening to Christopher Wylie, the "whistleblower" who founded a company as shady as Cambridge Analytica and only blew the cover after being sued by them for soliciting their clients and offering the same services.

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

</comment><comment><USER24> > When one of the world's most respected newspapers went up against former > Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his daughter and backed down, Wylie decided to > go to The New York Times.

Let's keep in mind the NYT was a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the scandal and other privacy-related projects that stemmed from it.

</comment><comment><USER25> And they said Gavin Belson was just a fictional character...

<comment><USER26> L M A O - Yea, all of the SV show is loosely based on actual events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Oh who would have thought it. 2 years after this story was published he comes out this this story. Could it be at all related to the fact he has a book coming out 8th Oct based on the subject. I dont know why we fall for this media stories that just pump out because some guy the world has moved on from 2 years ago is trying to peddle a new book.

The guy works for H&M fashion in their retail division doing pretty much the same work he did for Cambridge Analytica. He was at the bylinefestival recently at which Wylie insisted on a chauffeur back and forth to his flat in London.

Demands no doubt agreed with his hollywood agent William Morris.

If you give people enough money they turn into the people that once hated and called out as a whistleblower.

<comment><USER28> He works for H&M manipulating elections? Aren't they a clothes label?

Is requesting a driver some sort of moral failing now?

Do you think that all people who publish books should not have agents, or is it something about William Morris in particular?

The diff linked in another post here shows pretty clearly that the article was changed, and everybody who wants to sell a book wants publicity (even whistleblowers). I don't understand where your hostility is coming from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I m more concerned about the nepotism contained in the piece rather than the expose, which acts as a good promotion for his book</comment>


Facebook spent 23 seconds fighting racism, and failed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/culture-club/facebook-spent-23-seconds-fighting-racism-and-failed-a57a4dce44f1

<comment><USER2> > This is where we would hope that the Internet would come in. After all, > that's the promise of the digital age, isn't it? Unlimited access to a sea > of information. Anyone can learn anything. Underfunded schools are a moot > point, because everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps with a > wireless connection, and fix any stubborn points of ignorance they might > have — whether that be advanced algebra or racism.

Sadly you won't find this on popular sites like Facebook. Learning is all but popular.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what the solution is.

With so many people encased with their own filter bubble, and and an increasing number unwilling to consider other points of view rationally (i.e. objectively, without judgment, and without jumping to take offense), I only see the situation growing more and more polarized over time.

The article would have been improved by reducing the sniping at "white people" and recognizing that this is a broad, human issue. People tend to cluster in groups that have similarities. In some cases, the similarities are along interests (bitcoin geeks, Alabama football boosters) and in other cases the similarities are along ethnic, religious or cultural lines. It's not something that white people are doing to others - it's a human tendency.

</comment><comment><USER4> Meh. If you give people an opportunity to voice an opinion for (effectively) nothing, some will. Those wishing to hand out bruises may be more motivated to voice their opinions than those who'd rather deal out hugs. To quote Caliban (The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1)

Cal. You taught me language; and my profit on 't Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you, For learning me your language!</comment>


Use compressed data directly - from ZIP files or gzip http response - <AUTHOR> http://united-coders.com/christian-harms/use-compressed-data-directly-from-zip-files-or-gzip-http-response <comment><USER2> I was hoping for something more like this:

Extracting files from a remote ZIP archive (accessing files stored inside a zip file without downloading the whole zip archive)

<http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/remotezip.aspx>

And would like to see an implementation of a server-side means of generating arbitrary .zip files (just storing, without compression) dynamically... for automatic large download integrity verification. Places like <http://put.io> could use something like that.

<comment><USER3> I wrote something similar in JS

[https://github.com/gildas- lormeau/zip.js/blob/master/WebCont...](https://github.com/gildas- lormeau/zip.js/blob/master/WebContent/zip.js)

The HttpRangeReader class is able to extract a file from the zip without downloading the whole zip. Thanks to new Blob APIs , extracting data from a zip without compression is quite fast. Then, you just have to use url.createObjectURL to convert the Blob object into a URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you know that the input data is ASCII-encoded (or Unicode-encoded and capable of being ASCII-encoded), then using Python's cStringIO package (<http://docs.python.org/library/stringio.html>) is preferential for the significant speed boost.</comment>


GitHub's Large File Storage Is No Panacea for Open Source – quite the Opposite - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@megastep/github-s-large-file-storage-is-no-panacea-for-open-source-quite-the-opposite-12c0e16a9a91 <comment><AUTHOR> At GitLab we're working to support LFS next month in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/2955](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/2955). Initial support might or might not work with forks. As now with our Git Annex support storage will be free with a soft limit of 10GB of disk space per project (includes Git, Git Annex and Git LFS data) and there is no bandwidth limit. It will work with public and private projects (both are free).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10444548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10444548)</comment>


Tidal Accused of Falsifying Beyonce and Kanye West Streaming Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2018/biz/news/jay-z-tidal-accused-of-falsifying-beyonce-and-kanye-west-streaming-numbers-1202804222/ <comment><USER2> FTA: _Tidal, which has rarely shared its data publicly, had a streaming exclusive on West's album for its first six weeks of release and continues to be the exclusive streamer for Beyonce's album. It claimed that West's album had been streamed 250 million times in its first 10 days of release in February of 2016, while claiming it had just 3 million subscribers — a claim that would have meant every subscriber played the album an average of eight times per day; and that Beyonce's album was streamed 306 million times in its first 15 days of release in April of 2016._

Does anyone believe those numbers on face?

<comment><USER3> As I understand it the 250,000,000 number refers to total streams of all tracks on the album[1], it does not refer to plays of the _entire_ album, so the article is wrong. The album is 20 tracks which means we're looking at 12.5 million streams per track. There were (and still are) many offers for a free Tidal trial, which were shared all over the internet at the time the album became available, so I do think it's possible that Tidal could have had those numbers. Paying subscribers? No, but users? You could sign up to Tidal for free, and Kanye albums are very highly anticipated... Is it reasonable to expect ~3 million people to each listen to an album ~4 times through on average? I certainly listened to it _at least_ a dozen times in the first 2 weeks and know many friends who did the same.

For comparison Taylor Swift's album Reputation did ~500,000,000 streams in the first few weeks after it launched, granted that was available on all services and not just Tidal: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment- arts-42564917](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42564917)

I'm a little suspicious of the numbers, given Taylor Swift has a wider appeal than Kanye and her album was on _all_ services but you could sign up for Tidal for free _and_ the article is clearly wrong when it says "a claim that would have meant every subscriber played the album an average of eight times per day" so I'm inclined to say Tidal are telling the truth because if they did inflate the numbers then they would not have needed to inflate them from, say, 25 million to 250 million which is what the report seems to suggest.

[1] See the BBC Taylor Swift article for an example of how the figures are calculated

<comment><USER4> At this stage, I think as far as for metrics of this nature, it is time to stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks within the albums (in the example you gave, someone streaming the entire album should count 20x). I, myself, still buy albums in full, but I think there's a significant number of people who go for singles at this stage. Streaming, probably just as much of a divide.

To focus at the track level is about the only way to quantify for both cases.

<comment><USER5> >it is time to stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks within the albums

They already do this (or at least the RIAA does)

>In the new structure, 150 streams of a song equals one paid download, and ten paid downloads equates to an album download. So, an artist's music will have to be streamed on any of the approved, included services 1,500 times for an album "sale" to be counted. [1]

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/02/13/now- tha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/02/13/now-that- streaming-can-make-a-song-platinum-what-counts-and-what-doesnt/#41f205d617ef)

<comment><USER4> > ten paid downloads equates to an album download.

But it gets fuzzy here. If the album has 10 tracks, it makes sense, but for ones with less than that or more than that, it doesn't hash out.

I'm just saying for these kind of metrics they should, now, stick to the track level but group them by album (ie Taylor Swift would have x streams/downloads from 1989 and y streams/downloads from Reputation).

Albums in these metrics just muddies the water too much and doesn't really quantify for those who go for singles. Say an artist releases a really, really popular song on a terrible album that no one buys/streams. That song performs well, lots of streams and lots of downloads or buys. Should the album be considered a hit if it is just a single track on it that performed well? Even if no one, or relatively few, streamed or bought the album proper?

<comment><USER6> > for ones with [...] more than that, it doesn't hash out.

Chris Brown released an album last year exploiting this fact. He released a fourty track double album. If that album is streamed in it's entirety a thousand times, he gets four sales on the charts. Many hiphop act did the same last year. The last Migos album had 24 songs and their label had just released a 30 songs compilation 2 months prior. Drake's last project was dubbed a 'playlist' and had 22 songs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ANECDOTE: I've never heard anyone mention Tidal in real life even once.

<comment><USER8> A lot of the draw for Tidal is the lossless streams. That is a big deal for audiophile people, which you and your friends are not a part of.

<comment><USER9> It's a big draw for clueless people. It would take Superman to tell the difference between lossless audio and a modern codec with a decent bitrate. I would be surprised if you can prove that a single person has ever done so on an ABX test.

The only reason to use lossless audio is for archival. Obviously streams are useless for that.

<comment><USER10> I know 100% that you're wrong, but I don't blame you for making that statement.

The problem with "can't hear the difference" statements is that they're highly dependent on the system you're listening to. The vast majority of systems are not resolving to a degree that there is an audible difference between AAC or a lossless format.

On my system, there is a profound difference between FLAC (at any bitrate) and higher rate DSD. Is DSD magically better? Not necessarily, but in my case my DAC bypasses its internal filtering for DSD playback, which means I can move the interpolation filter over to my CPU, which, running at 4GHz, is better at it than a (SOTA) DAC chip running at a few MHz.

It's a complicated topic, and the only people I personally discuss it with are professional audio engineers or serious hobbyists. No one else cares.

On topic, TIDAL is great in the sense that it's not US-centric for billing (just take my money please) and streams lossless. It's like a CD store for ~$20 a month (the max they'll take from me). I'd gladly pay a lot more and given the economics of it I'm worried it will go out of business at some point.

If you're interested in the topic you can check out the Roon community, "minimum vs linear phase interpolation filters", "DSD upsampling" or check out the work of Ted Smith (MIT / software guy turned DAC designer).

<comment><USER11> You've got a 1-bit DAC at the end of the chain regardless. Making it sound "better" by filtering in a 4GHz processor is golden ear nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone explain a motive for this? If Jay-Z owns the service, and the service pays royalties to artists streamed on it, is this just Jay-Z transferring some wealth to his wife and friend?

<comment><USER13> Tidal exists to be sold to some other media company or online service so that Jay-Z can finally make billionaire status. I am sure seeing Dr. Dre up there on those lists motivates him more than anything else in the world at the moment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tidal was one of the sites I submitted music to last time I tried DistroKid. They took 6 months to get it up (vs the 1-7 days for every other store), and it had worse results than even the already weak results of the others.

<comment><USER15> That's really weird. I just submitted my first album to DistroKid about 4 hours ago and it's already up. Waaaaay quicker than I thought it was going to be.

Then again, it might be a genre thing. Mine is a chill piano album I put under "Jazz"

<comment><USER14> I meant Tidal specifically. DistroKid isn't the problem. I'm sure they send it to the store almost instantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is foolish to trust Tidal's numbers... they're privately-owned by artists in a genre known for fictionalized details

</comment><comment><USER17> "Falsifying" is a strong term... They probably just released some alternative stats

</comment><comment><USER18> I plan to switch to Tidal. They pay artist the most. Only the top, top artist are making money on Spotify. I like to listen to indie/small label bands. I don't buy albums, go to concerts. Tidal seems to be the best way to support these artist.

<comment><USER19> I'm sorry, but this reads like astroturfing. I don't think it is, but it 100% feels that way.

And, from what I can see, Tidal is a service owned by phenomenally rich artists who have been the _best_ compensated by the existing record label structure (at the expense of indie artists), trying to throw their weight around and maintain their power in streaming as well. While fraudulently depriving other artists of revenue from Tidal, if this article is correct.

<comment><USER20> > I'm sorry, but this reads like astroturfing.

Without concrete evidence you should not make such claims.</comment></comment></comment>


A TinyGPS upgrade adding NMEA v3.0 and GLONASS support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newsplore.com/2015/09/03/a-tinygps-upgrade-adding-nmea-v3-0-and-glonass-support <comment><USER2> Nice work.

For reference, here's the original library which has TinyGPS and TinyGPS++: [http://arduiniana.org/libraries/TinyGPS/](http://arduiniana.org/libraries/TinyGPS/)

It doesn't appear to have any compatibility with the newer TinyGPS++ library which I had been using, but I guess that's not really the intent.

Also I didn't know there were modules commonly available for multiple systems. Mouser has the A5100-A mentioned in the blog for $17 in singles, plus an antenna I assume. I've been using the NEO-6M GPS-only modules from China that run about $10 with antenna. Nice to have more options.

[http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=A5100-Avir...](http://www.mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?R=A5100-Avirtualkey56970000virtualkey927-A5100-A)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @OrdaGarb. I have done similar work on TinyGPSPlus in this fork couple of years back (no GLONASS support, alas): [https://github.com/florind/TinyGPSPlus/tree/gpgsv- parse](https://github.com/florind/TinyGPSPlus/tree/gpgsv-parse) Unfortunately my pull request was rejected back then.

florin</comment></comment>


Machine Learning with scikit-learn - <AUTHOR> http://amueller.github.io/sklearn_tutorial/#/

<comment><USER2> I cannot tell you how much I hate these drip-feed presentations. There isn't even an indication of how long it goes for. The early stuff is obvious (for me) - how many times do I have to click to get to the interesting bits?

There might be some great stuff here, but many of your potential audience will never find out, because they'll give up.

<comment><USER3> Most reveal.js based presentations you can press "esc" and get a slide overview, although that's of limited use. Slides in general are simply not as useful as a reasonable web page if they don't have the presentation along with them in audio or video. It's a peculiar part of HN culture to link to just slides, I don't know of any other group that does it.

A far better introduction to sci-kit learn is the project's examples page, [http://scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/index.html](http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/index.html), which you can use to get example code and data to generate each type of graph. The documentation on the rest of the site is also of very high quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Andreas Mueller is one of the core devs of scikit learn.

He is active on Kaggle.com too.

For more practical ML projects see: [https://github.com/amueller](https://github.com/amueller)

<comment><USER5> He has only done one competition as noted in his slides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know what I'm doing tonight. Great idea including sample data to play with in the library! Is that the MNIST data set?

<comment><USER7> Here's how to get MNIST, from the sklearn docs:

>>> from sklearn.datasets import fetch_mldata

>>> mnist = fetch_mldata('MNIST original', data_home=custom_data_home)

I think the handwritten digits dataset used in the presentation is just a subset of MNIST; MNIST is 28x28 and the handwritten digits are 8x8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to know more about slide 6:

[http://amueller.github.io/sklearn_tutorial/#/6](http://amueller.github.io/sklearn_tutorial/#/6)

Why the [Classification][100K sample?] checkpoint?

And more info in general about this whole cheat-sheet.

<comment><USER9> SGD is _fast_ but not necessarily more accurate. If you've got lots and lots of data, then a simple yet fast approach is likely to be a good choice to start with.

<comment><USER8> Thanks.

I also found a blog post that figured the diagram, with some background infos:

[http://peekaboo-vision.blogspot.de/2013/01/machine- learning-...](http://peekaboo-vision.blogspot.de/2013/01/machine-learning- cheat-sheet-for-scikit.html)

<comment> alok-g And a prior HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831512)

There are many others too, but with few points and comments</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What keyboard layout do you use with Vim? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I convert escape to caps lock, I also change : to ; in vim so I don't have to hit shift all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, so that means you're using QWERTY?</comment></comment>


The Miseducation of the American Boy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/the-miseducation-of-the-american-boy/603046/ <comment><USER2> Worth it for this quote alone.

> "At one time or another, every young man will get a letter of admission to > 'dick school.' The question is, will he drop out, graduate, or go for an > advanced degree?"

Very insightful work to read as a stand alone article and a worthwhile teaser for the book they have written.

</comment><comment><USER3> Zhenotdel reinstalled</comment>


Estimating a nuclear blast with bits of paper - <AUTHOR> http://www.dannen.com/decision/fermi.html <comment><USER2> Wikipedia says the Trinity test was 20 kilotons. With Fermi estimating 10 kt, he was off by a factor of only two.

Of course Taylor got an estimate within 2 as well, using photographs published in Life magazine.

[https://thatsmaths.com/2014/09/18/how-big-was-the- bomb/](https://thatsmaths.com/2014/09/18/how-big-was-the-bomb/)

<comment><USER3> It wasn't off at all. It was spot on. He estimated BLAST power, not total yield. Half of energy was released in form of prompt radiation, flash, and fallout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lets see if I can replicate his mental math. Assuming a lot of spherical cows. A Zeppelin weighs like 200 tons and is about 10 million cubic feet of gas. I did cheat and look that up, everything else, including all the following mistakes, was messed up in my own head. 10 KT of TNT is 10e3/0.2e3 or 50 Zeppelins of gas when it goes boom aka 50 * 10 M cu ft = 500 million cu feet of gas.

So my theory is ten miles out the difference in volume between 10 miles and 10 miles+2.5 meters is half a billion cu ft. Now it doesn't expand the dirt so the sphere result is 1.25 meters or 4 feet or assuming about 5000 feet per mile we're talking a thousandth of a mile.

So my adjusted "done in my head" is at 10 miles, half a billion cu ft is the difference between 10 miles and 10.001 miles. At 5000 feet per mile 10 miles is about 50000 feet.

So if V = 4/3 pi r cubed, the derivative is 4 pi r squared, huh where have I seen that before, so at ten miles worth of feet radius, the volume slope is about 4 pi 50k squared or what twelve times 2.5 million? Or 25 million cubic feet of air slope at 10 miles per foot of blast front expansion?

So my blast front of 10 kilotons or 50 Zeppelins worth of gas should result in a shift of a good 20 feet but the dude reports 2.5 meters which is about 10 feet.

That would imply to me that he measured a good 5 kilotons of air displacement.

There's a heck of a lot of "round to one sig fig" and "spherical cows" and room temperature TNT explosions and foolishness like that so he probably gave himself a factor of two to handle that and I think that's a realistic way to do in your head what he did.

The atmosphere is not a perfectly linear gas, its not constant pressure with height, blah blah.

Of course what he probably actually did, since this project was kinda his day job, he likely calculated this stuff out on a blackboard without any rounding or spherical cows to "prove" it should be about 1 meter of displacement for every 4 kilotons then his real "in the head math" was 2.5 times 4.

Are any of these numbers reasonable? Well sure. At 10 miles the blast wave of a 10Kt simple nuke is a couple feet and virtually everyone survives it plus or minus building collapses. Good luck with the fallout and the fire, but the blast won't kill you, just knock you over probably. At 1 megaton that would be 100 times worse or like 250 meters instead of 2.5 meters and yes the survival rate at 10 miles of a 1 megaton fusion bomb is in fact roughly zero as you'd expect.

<comment><USER5> According to the NUKEMAP, the survival rate at 10 miles of a 1 megaton bomb should be pretty good:

[https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

That gives 2.5km as the lethal radius for radiation, 3km as the 100% lethal radius for blast, 7km as the radius for "injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread" and 12.6km as the radius for 3rd degree burns from thermal radiation. At 16 km you'd still get badly burned if you were exposed to the flash and you could get killed by a collapsing building if you weren in something sturdy, but you'd have a decent chance of surviving.

On another note, did you account for the fact that it's only a half sphere since the bomb explodes near the ground? I might have just missed it.

(Incidentally, this is why they used to teach "duck and cover." At this sort of distance, your chances of surviving are _much_ better if you're on the ground and under something sturdy when the shockwave hits. I never understood why "duck and cover" ended up with such a bad reputation.)

<comment><USER6> the bomb does not explode "near" the ground.

the relatively small bombs of hiroshima and nagsaki exploded about a mile above ground. the goal here is to make the shockwaves double up near the ground, causing more destruction.

i'd assume that bigger bombs would detonate at higher altitudes to achieve the same effect further out.

<comment><USER7> Much less than a mile altitude at detonation for both bombs.

Hiroshima: 1900 ft [1] Nagasaki: 1650 ft [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man)

<comment><USER6> about 1/3rd of a mile? weird units are weird :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One can only imagine what this moment must have been like for Fermi.

<comment><USER9> I believe he was often very silent about political or ethical matters of the "The Gadget". In contrast to other physicists at the time, like Oppenheimer and Szilard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This anecdote is described in greater detail in "The Pope of Physics", by Gino Segrè & Bettina Hoerlin (Enrico Fermi's biography told by a nephew of a close collaborator of the famous physicist). This fascinating episode is told in the first chapter, if I rember correctly. He also poses the "how many piano tuners are in Chicago" problem, using a similar approximation technique. Great read, totally recommended!</comment>


Glass Stories - <AUTHOR> http://glassstories.com Great interviews with Glass Explorers. <comment><USER2> interesting... but why aren't they using glass in front of a mirror to make an hangout instead of using another camera?</comment>