Ask HN: Is 25 too old for Masters? - <AUTHOR> Hi HNers,
I am 23 yr old indian CS under grad working in Finland. I have plans to do MS(in NLP/ML) in one of the top universities in US this fall. However, I got an opportunity to work in a company in text analytics field last fall. I am really enjoying the work and all the new technologies I am learning in process. The team and work environment is great and they even requested me to extend my stay here. My only gripe is that if I stay for 1 more year, I will start my MS at the age of 25 and I may have plans for Phd, even it will be postponed.
I have thought a lot about it and deep down I want to stay for one more year and enjoy the work, learn more awesome things, experience finland and of course visit a lot of places in Europe but, on the other hand, I am a bit worried that I may be too old for MS.
I don't even know if it is a valid fear. So, I am asking the learned ones of HN to help me out if my fear is really valid? Does completing Masters as early as possible give me an advantage?
Thanks for your time. <comment><USER2> No its not too late far from it.

I finished grad school in 2010 (I'm 23 y/o) and most of my classmates were 25-38 range. Grad school really is alot better for mature students far far better. I felt I learnt alot more not from the subject matter/university but from the peers I was around who were all very mature even at my age.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it might depend on whether you're aiming for a career in academia, where there's a certain amount of (de facto, not necessarily conscious) age discrimination.

If not, I doubt it matters, but either way, 2 yrs seems fairly trivial. I finished my master's around 30, and I'm doing fine (in a non-academic job).

</comment><comment><USER4> There is no age limitation for education. You can do Bachelors when you are in 50s... so doing MS in your 20s is fine. From what I have seen, at my college, most people are in the range of 23-35 doing their MS (I am 23, myself), so you would be comparably young @ 25.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know plenty of professionals who started their master's anywhere from 3 to 5 years after finishing their bachelor's. There are some programmes, including many MBAs, that require this.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's never too late to start a new degree. [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/100-year- ol...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/100-year-old-freedom- fighter-pursues-PhD/articleshow/6764127.cms)</comment>


Brain in a Jar - <AUTHOR> http://stephaniehurlburt.com/blog/2017/4/15/brain-in-a-jar <comment><USER2> I really needed this! While you know these things, it takes constant reminders to not fall back into bad habits. I constantly skip on sleep and I can see my body falling apart. This was a great and simple article to remind me

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd make the crazy (/s) argument that the mindset, not the eat well/exercise/sleep is what matters.

I tried endlessly during my PhD to eat healthy, sleep well, and such but this only worked when I truly realized 'ok, my normal routine is killing me', like OP did.

It's scary because that's how you know yourself to be / work but once you have no alternatives it is easier to risk a productivity deficit (.:. it's also easier when you're more confident about your achievements so far and don't think you have to prove as much of yourself to others).

Luckily for me the marginal productivity deficit is totally compensated by living a burnout-free life. (I hope. Ask me again in 5-10 years)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone reading this and going "3 cups of coffee per day" ... how is that a lot?

<comment><USER5> I was drinking 10 a day when someone offered me "Java" coffee. Oh my days. Pale, shaky, heart palpitations. I couldn't touch coffee for almost a year after that mug.

Apparently, you're supposed to drink it in teensy cups.

Who knew.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps it was a Java espresso? Would explain the teensy cups, Java beans are normally middle of the road when it comes to caffeine content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Eat well and rest._ \-- and exercise. The best natural anti-depressant and life-extension technique (fine, maybe tied with caloric restriction).

TL;DR: Exercise.

<comment><USER8> I dislike exercise. It makes me tired, grumpy and sore. Don't generalize.

<comment><USER9> What's your BMI?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought this 'Brain in a Jar' article was going to be about the philosophical 'Brain in a vat' question. Disappointed. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat)

oh and, don't work too hard young people. Burn out is the worst.

</comment><comment><USER11> A site with nothing but static text content and yet it is completely unusable without Javascript.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely awkward. You can load the site with JS enabled, but if you disable it then suddenly the entire page disappears, and yet it still scrolls. What's the point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Being smarty pants here, but I wanted to point out that "Brain in a Jar" usually refers to something entirely different: _that one is a victim of thoroughgoing error induced by a God-like deceiver_.

Hypothesis, skeptical argument etc in detail: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content- extern...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/)

</comment><comment><USER14> The common mistake in "hippy philosophy" is assuming that since we are ultimately subsets of the universe, we ARE the universe, here and now.

Problem is, things are made up of a bunch of components. And operate due to internal and external mechanisms.

Objects exist as causal sets.

We all might be one, when it comes to that we are manifestations of electromagnetic energy. But that's a superset of the here and now.

We're physical beings at the bottom rung, and maybe more when you take the russian doll nested sets apart. But that doesn't change the fact that each part is just as integral to identity in the here and now, or well, the physical human part might be even more important in the here and now.

So yeah, we're all "one" as members of the universe. But don't let that fool you into thinking you're transcending right here and now. Everythings made from components. Everything has supersets and subsets that keep it going. You are not a brain in a jar here and now. But you may be a brain in a jar there and far. So keep a level head. And don't dismiss the philosophy that grounds you.

<comment><USER15> I read you, but I really don't get the point you are trying to make.

<comment><USER14> I'm saying that the poster is trivializing the "brain in the jar" argument by providing something just as overfitted. His argument is just as trivial. We are a mixture of timeless things and expiring things. So for sure, don't forget you're rotting flesh. But don't dismiss brain in the jar either.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for the clarification.

<comment><USER14> Gotta love how one day HN is for drugs, another day HN is against them. One day HN is for the "steve jobs" LSD hippy vibes, and the next day, HN is against them. HN has schizophrenia with regard to spirituality's duality with technicality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could the 'psychiatric medicine' be modafinil?

<comment><USER17> Could just as well be adderall or ritalin, doctors hand out prescriptions like candy on Halloween, especially to people who are currently or were recently young.

</comment></comment><comment> m-j-fox > 3+ (actually, I didn't count, it was a lot) cups of coffee per day

My God. You monster.

</comment><comment><USER18> One person she knows takes care of himself and is successful. She doesn't take care of herself and she's not successful. Now she takes care of herself and we don't know if she's now successful but the added rest fixed some things in her life.

Seems like a small sample size. Luck helps some along more than others and it's spotty in its distribution.

She doesn't say if her friend is a business owner. She mentioned she wanted to start a business but she doesn't say if that was part of what she was working on.

Her friend doing 5 hours of coding in one day is a lot. It's probably more than a typical 9-5 office coder puts in. Especially working from home with relatively few distractions.

But when you own a business, once you have finished putting in your 5 hours of coding, you still have the rest of the business to take care of. One full time job is done, then you start the next one.

<comment><USER19> > Now she takes care of herself and we don't know if she's now successful

I get a bit tired of the generalisations in OA. Sometimes there is far more wrong with life than just not taking good enough care of yourself in terms of sleep, diet and exercise. Sometimes you need professional help and (even if not) what is good for one person might not help you one bit.

My personal bugbear is mindfulness: tried it, didn't get on with it, do not see it as the holy grail of wellbeing -- as some people seem to claim it is. It works for them, that's fine. Doesn't mean it works for everyone.

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is- mind...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness- making-us-ill)

> Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three- > day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. > "Initially, I found it relaxing," she says, "but then I found I felt > completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later > sessions, I was starting to really, really panic." The sessions resurfaced > memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic > attacks. "Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over," > Claire says. "I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric > unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the > trauma, and several dissociative episodes."

Of course, people will say she clearly had deeper issues but that's my point.</comment></comment>


Building Dynamic Navbars with Jekyll - <AUTHOR> http://jordanthornquest.com/blog/2014/04/07/building-dynamic-navbars-with-jekyll/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I'm the author of this piece. This is my first tech article, and my first submission to Hacker News. Hope it's helpful for any Jekyll fans out there!</comment>


How the seeds for the affordable housing crisis were sown nearly two decades ago - <AUTHOR> https://fora.ie/readme/affordable-housing-ireland-3588021-Sep2017/ <comment><USER2> From working with planners in Ireland a lot of the problems are down to classic poor planning, questionable zoning (if you can call it zoning), incompetent local government, and the penchant for low rise building in Ireland. In Ireland nothing is ever backed up by decent independent analysis and well executed social and market research. It's a Gombeen nation where politics centres around winks, nods, and how many funerals you go to in your constituency. There are very few intellectually honest players that are anything more than centrist leaves that blow which ever way the wind is going. I could write volumes, but I just don't have the energy for the place anymore, it's just a nonsense country that believe it's own bullshit. I was born and raised there and I left because I was getting sick of the delusion of the high tax, high bullshit economy.

This video sums up so many things that made me leave, and the things that I miss, the line "sometimes were too tough on ourselves, most of the time we're not tough enough" is bang on. [https://vimeo.com/56336219](https://vimeo.com/56336219)</comment>


ES6 Cheat Sheet – Summary of ES6 Features and Their ES5 Equivalents - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zsolt-nagy/es6-summary <comment><USER2> Great effort, good examples and a lot of info but it's not really a cheat sheet is it?</comment>


Interactive map shows where native and new Berliners live - <AUTHOR> http://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/zugezogene-in-berlin

<comment><USER2> As someone who moved to a new country, the city center was the only place I really wanted to live because it's the best place from which to get to know a city and make connections. The difference between "I live in the burbs and take the train in to the city center now and then" and "I can walk out my front door and be in a museum, my choice of several pubs, etc. in 5 minutes" is huge. It's also handy for meeting people; you can build networks more easily than when you're geographically separated. Those same networks can be preserved after moving, though.

Now that I've been here for a couple years I'd be fine with a nearby (within 2km of city center) suburb, but that's only because I'm familiar enough with the city that I don't need to explore it daily. If I had started off living in those burbs I would know the city much less than I do now.

<comment><USER3> I haven't been to Berlin, so I don't know exactly how big it is, but one would not typically call "within 2km of city center" a suburb. One would typically call 2km from a city center, "the next neighborhood over in the city".

Suburbs aren't a "not the cool, trendy area of a city" thing. They are a driving thing. They are completely different towns, not other neighborhoods in the same city. It doesn't count if you can easily walk the distance every day. Think more like 20km.

I mean, really, Millenium Park in Chicago is almost 2km long. The National Mall in Washington DC is about 3km. Central Park in New York City is over 4km long.

<comment><USER4> >I haven't been to Berlin, so I don't know exactly how big it is, but one would not typically call "within 2km of city center" a suburb. One would typically call 2km from a city center, "the next neighborhood over in the city".

This is an American/Canadian vs Australian (and possibly European) thing.

From speaking to Australians, Downtown is the Central Business District, and everything else is a suburb.

<comment><USER3> It seems weird to think of anything that is a part of the urban area be called sub-urban.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure where one would place the "center" of Berlin, but Berlin-Mitte (which you could translate as "Berlin Central") is really mostly banks and insurance companies, tourists and expensive hotels. It's not very urban, or alive. It's just... _there_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The main problem of this development is the fact that more and more old local people cannot afford the rents anymore and have to move to the suburbs although they have lived in the centre for almost all of their life. A Kiez is changing very quickly: it starts with an abandoned Kiez which everybody avoids - low rents etc. Then creatives come and a scene is developing. Bars/Clubs etc get attracted, more people move there, rents rise, bars/clubs close again -> scene moves somewhere else. Funny is that a lot of my friends who have moved to Berlin complain that their local club/pub has closed (cannot afford rent anymore) but in fact they're responsible for it. Atm Berlin is still an awesome place with a lot of independent spirit but that might dramatically change within the next 10 years.

<comment><USER7> Hm, is it normal in Berlin to live at some place for many years and still renting the apartment? Instead of buying/owning it...

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's one of the places that legislates favourable rules toward the lodger (stringent conditions on rent increases or lease terminations etc). Lots of people even sublet their favourably gotten rental flats onward for more money.

Although if people owned the flats, the lower income senior citizens would still move: they would find it expedient to sell their now-expensive flats and put the money to living expenses (or grandchildren or travel or assisted living etc). This is happening in other growing cities around the world.

edit: It seems to me renting (or some other form of "right-of-occupancy" arrangement) is actually the desireable choice for most situations. Investing hundreds of thousands in a single unit of housing is not a good fit for most people's savings/investment plan - you'd want to diversify, and possibly hedge against things going downhill in your neighbourhood. If rent market works well, and taxation and rental terms work out, it's better for everybody to just pay for the apartment's financing and maintenance plus a small profit margin in the form of rent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. I wonder whether you wouldn't find the same pattern in many other metropoles. On Manhattan, when I lived there, everybody seemed to be from somewhere else.

Maybe this is just a function of the facts that a city center is an expensive place to raise kids and that few aim at living in another city's suburbs; if you are moving to some suburb of another city you might as well just stay in the suburb of the city you are currently in.

<comment><USER10> I think you can compare the centre of Berlin (roughly Mitte, Charlottenburg, Tiergarten, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg) to Manhattan in that respect.

Those are the areas where the interesting stuff is happening that makes moving to the city worthwhile. As for Berlin most of the startup activity and economic growth is happening in that area. In addition to that all the important government institutions are located in that area, too.

Rapid transit is an important factor as well. Inside the S-Bahn-Ring you can get around really fast whereas getting from say Köpenick to the inner city takes quite some time.

I suppose the areas around Manhattan or Greater New York as a whole would show a very similar picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who attempted (and failed) to move to Prenzlauer Berg earlier this year, I can honestly say that it was really rare to interact with native Berliners because they were pretty hard to find. When I stayed in Wedding there were plenty of what you and I might call native Berliners, but locals wouldn't (mostly of Turkish descent), although I did find more in the Hansaviertel than the stats would show, but I think I was better at interacting with local people by then.

<comment><USER12> Bear in mind that this map is simply showing people born in Berlin (which would include second generation immigrants) vs. elsewhere (including other Germans).

If you're interested in non-Germans in Berlin, that's this map:

[http://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/migranten-in- berlin/](http://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/migranten-in-berlin/)

<comment> guard-of-terra It's a curious sight: Russians seem to be very correlated with East Berlin (having arrived after the wall fell anyway).

And e.g. Poles don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The influx of new Berliners in Mitte, Neukölln, Schöneberg etc is not totally unexpected. A lot of new residents moved there in the past 4-5 years and they're much sought after.

What's interesting here is the influx of new Berliners in areas like Lichtenberg and Marzahn. These were traditionally perceived as DDR remnants and full of neo-nazis.

Also what's happening in Tegeler Forst kiez?

</comment><comment><USER14> In amsterdam this is also happening to my knowledge. The main reason is that the city center is becoming too expensive for native-amsterdammers with a medium income to live. Lots of high-income (often expats) are willing to pay more for living in the city center.

<comment> guard-of-terra It seems that we have a global undersupply of city centers and oversupply of boring places noone really wants to live in.

<comment><USER12> That's true in the US, but not necessarily elsewhere. There are lots of great cities in Germany which could stand for some growth; people have been talking about Leipzig recently.

<comment><USER15> Deutsche Welle just did a series on Leipzig ("Hypezig") on their Made In Germany show this week:

[http://www.dw.de/hypezig-the-new-start-up- zone/av-18039297](http://www.dw.de/hypezig-the-new-start-up-zone/av-18039297)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTML, CSS and JavaScript are not enough (esp if you plan to be a indie dev) - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/fayazara/html-css-js-are-not-enough-esp-if-you-plan-to-be-a-independent-dev-2a77 <comment><USER2> Counter-argument - if you work as part of a team it's fine to only know a small, specific set of technologies.</comment>


How Do You Get Anti-Vaxxers to Vaccinate Their Kids? Talk to Them – For Hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/19/how-do-you-get-anti-vaxxers-vaccinate-their-kids-talk-them-hours/ <comment><USER2> Sadly, the unvaccinated children are the ones that suffer - some will get the disease and suffer severe side effects(Mumps sterilizes many adult victims, but largely spares kids before puberty) Measles also has some severe adult side effects. Then there is polio...</comment>


Five time-wasters for the college entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.college-startup.com/entrepreneur/five-time-wasters-for-the-college-entrepreneur/ <comment><USER3> "Hanging out with friends."

I tend to value the time I hang out with my friends. I certainly dont think its a time waster.

</comment><comment><USER4> I looked for the down arrow, but it wasn't there...

Okay, I should be more concrete: with respect, the article is uninsightful, and hence, 100% self referential.

<comment><USER5> I'd agree with that, a terrible article. My favourite time-saving tip - <USER2> a bit of work on your laptop whilst driving..

<comment><USER6> If you're lucky, you might even win a prize: <http://www.darwinawards.com/newsletter/200801.txt>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So water is wet, eh? DDDownvote</comment>


Nasal vaccine against Covid-19 prevents infection in mice - <AUTHOR> https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/nasal-vaccine-against-covid-19-prevents-infection-in-mice/ <comment><USER2> This article on mucosal immunity provides helpful context for intranasal vaccines:

> Many microbes, including the coronavirus, enter the body through the mucosa > — wet, squishy tissues that line the nose, mouth, lungs and digestive tract > — triggering a unique immune response from cells and molecules there. > Intramuscular vaccines generally do a poor job of eliciting this mucosal > response, and must instead rely on immune cells mobilized from elsewhere in > the body flocking to the site of infection.

> Given the potency and rapid spread of the coronavirus, some say it makes > sense to develop vaccines for the airway as well as the more standard jabs. > "Knowing how potent mucosal responses can be against a viral pathogen, it > would be ideal to be thinking about mucosal vaccines," said Akiko Iwasaki, > an immunologist at Yale University.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus- nasal-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus-nasal- vaccines.html)

And here's one of the first studies using a mouse model (AFAIK) for SARS-CoV-2 if you want to see how that works: [https://rupress.org/jem/article/217/12/e20201241/151999/Mous...](https://rupress.org/jem/article/217/12/e20201241/151999/Mouse- model-of-SARS-CoV-2-reveals-inflammatory)

</comment><comment> Duller-Finite This is an interesting and well-done paper. It is, however, difficult to evaluate these mouse studies because, unlike human ACE2, mouse ACE2 doesn't facilitate SARS-CoV-2 cell entry. Therefore, they had to first deliver hACE2 either with an intranasal adenovirus injection, or use transgenic mice expressing hACE2 in a pattern that does not recapitulate its expression in humans.

It does seem like they do an especially good job at blocking infections in the respiratory system, but that's both the system that they primed for infection and where they provided the ChAd vaccine, so I don't know how fair of a comparison the intramuscular injection experiments are.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really interesting. Obviously evidence in mice is a long way away from demonstrated safety & efficacy in humans but I'll be curious to see where this one goes. If non-healthcare-professionals could be trained to administer a nasal vaccine (the way many non-hcps are able to carry and administer nasal naloxone in case of opiate overdose), it seems like it might potentially make vaccine adoption faster or more widespread.

<comment><AUTHOR> They evaluated "the protective activity of a chimpanzee adenovirus-vectored vaccine encoding a pre-fusion stabilized spike protein (ChAd-SARS-CoV-2-S) in challenge studies with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS- CoV-2) and mice expressing the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor" [https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31068-0](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(20\)31068-0)

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify — the vaccine uses as its backbone a type of adenovirus that typically infects chimpanzees, modified by the addition of pieces from SARS- CoV-2, but the experiments testing efficacy are performed in mice (specifically, a type of mice engineered to express humanized ACE2).

This vaccine has not been tested in chimpanzees (and actually such experiments would probably be a challenge, since they may have existing immunity to the backbone adenovirus).

(edit: parent comment initially mentioned experiments in chimpanzees rather than mice)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Cell paper: [https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31068-0](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(20\)31068-0)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm very interesting if we switched to using nasal vaccines, would it help soothe out the rabid anti-vaxxers?

A large part of the movement IMO stems from the fact that subconsciously, humans tend to associate long sharp needles = pain = bad

<comment><USER6> Polio is available as an oral vaccine that used to be widespread in the west. I still remember demanding a sugarcube with every oral medication after getting one for the polio vaccination :)

That doesn't seem to stop anti-vaxxers: [https://www.latimes.com/world- nation/story/2019-09-04/anti-v...](https://www.latimes.com/world- nation/story/2019-09-04/anti-vaxxers-helping-polio-comeback-pakistan)

<comment><USER7> The oral polio vaccine is a live vaccine. It is much more effective than the injected dead vaccine we now get in the west but it does occasionally cause polio outbreaks...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i want to see the tiny nasal sprayer they used on these mice, must be adorably cute!

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this a general vaccine, or would it only protect you when inhaling through your nose and neutralizing the virus before it can infect you?

</comment><comment><USER10> This is right out of Contagion! I don't understand why even I feel like an injected vaccine vs. a nasal one seems so different. Injected vaccines seem a bit scary and unknown but I can totally get behind a nasal spray. Very weird.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yay!!

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone here still cares about COVID-19? That's probably the most overhyped disease of all the time.</comment>


Forecasting: principles and practice (free ebook) - <AUTHOR> http://otexts.com/fpp/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the book's Preface:

 _The entire book is available online and free-of-charge. Of course, we won't make much money doing this, but textbooks never make much money anyway — the publishers make all the money. We'd rather create something that is widely used and useful, than have large publishers profit from our efforts._

</comment><comment><USER2> What an interesting subject. Does anyone else have a bookmarks folder full of interesting subjects that they intend to go through at SOME date?

Is anyone else like me and the growth of that list seems to completely outpace your ability to work through it? :)

<comment><USER3> Yes! I'm waiting for a free day when I have the time and motivation... I have been waiting for some time, and the list keeps growing, to the point where it is now daunting.

A terrifying amount of fun awaits.

Perhaps we need a HN book club?

<comment><USER4> <http://hackershelf.com/browse/>

<http://www.hn-books.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks really interesting. Is there a link on the site anywhere to download it as a PDF or Mobi? I'd love to drop it on my kindle but I don't see a link.

<comment><USER6> They indicate that print book will eventually be available, so providing the book in PDF, mobi or ePub may be a breach of contract with the publisher. Publisher may still be OK that general public cannot easily put on an eReader or paper stack.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for personal document management and archival? - <AUTHOR> Recently, I have reached the point in one's life where the various important documents one has to keep for one reason or another have begun to pile up. Until now, they've been few enough in number to not require any particular form of management and any risk of losing papers while moving was small. Slowly but surely they've become more cumbersome to deal with, which has lead me to look into some kind of digital document management. The idea of scanning, indexing, and discarding all except a handful of things where the original physical copy matters is appealing.
I've heard some people use Evernote for this purpose, but the idea of entrusting what will eventually accumulate into vast amounts of sensitive documents to a third-party cloud service which is used by many others for the same purpose doesn't sit too well with me. It's just too juicy of a target. Evernote is also "less than svelte" and it seems less than wise to lock all of that up behind a closed source service that could easily go belly up or otherwise lock me out.
So this leads me to the question in the title. What do people here use for this kind of thing? <comment><USER2> KISS

Local Filesystem - hierarchical directory names that make sense to you

Meaningful filenames (with the appropriate date of the item up front in ISO8601 format).</comment>


Null Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NullConsideredHarmful

<comment><USER2> The best solution I've seen is a Maybe Monad.

The problem is that unless your language has support baked in (a la Haskell) the syntax has way too much overhead.

If you haven't played with Haskell, I thought this was a pretty good explanation: [http://paulbarry.com/articles/2009/07/17/emulating- haskells-...](http://paulbarry.com/articles/2009/07/17/emulating-haskells- maybe-in-java-with-checked-exceptions)

<comment><USER3> > The best solution I've seen is a Maybe Monad.

More generally an option type. Maybe being a monad has other advantages (lifting for instance, though being a monad isn't actually required: C# 3.0 lifts operations into Nullable when you're e.g. adding two Nullable<int> [aka int?] values) but is not a requirement for a "nullable" living in the types.

> The problem is that unless your language has support baked in (a la Haskell) > the syntax has way too much overhead.

Not really. The problem is more around the way your generics work: Putting Nothing in a Maybe Int is nice, putting a new Nothing<Int>() in a Maybe<Int> isn't as much.

And if anything, I think having overhead in pushing null values in the system is a _good_ thing: it avoids people running to it right off the bat, and may make them pause and think about better solutions (a command-type pattern, a Null/SpecialCase object, …)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is he really suggesting to replace all attempts to dereference null with no- ops? Weird.

I think there are two ways to deal with this. Either it is known at compile time that a particular variable must never be null. In that case the compiler should catch it like it does with C++ references.

If the decision is left until runtime, the only way to deal with it is to specify or compute a default value, which is very much complicated by the special cased 'this' parameter in OO languages.

It's kind of funny that basically everything Java has removed from C++ turns out to be important for a statically typed language. Java should have been a C++ virtual machine with garbage collection.

<comment><USER3> > Is he really suggesting to replace all attempts to dereference null with no- > ops? Weird.

It is. Some languages work that way though, Objective-C for instance: `nil` is a "message sink", any message can be sent to `nil` without generating any error, it simply returns nil.

<comment><USER4> What about side effects though? Consider this:

      obj1 = new SomeClass()
      obj2 = null
      obj2.do(obj1.doWithSideEffects())

So obj2.do being a no-op should mean that obj1.doWithSideEffects is never called. Or should it?

<comment><USER3> It should.

        [obj1 doWithSideEffects]

will be evaluated before

        [obj2 do]

because Obj-C is eager, so the runtime doesn't know (or care) about obj2 when it considers the evaluation of the inner expression.

To get the behavior you want, you need to use blocks (which incidentally were introduced in 10.6) and write something along the lines of:

        [obj2 do: ^{ [obj1 doWithSideEffects] }]

In this case, if obj2 do: doesn't explicitly evaluate the block, obj1 doWithSideEffects won't be evaluated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Strange. Nulls, as the author describes them, are incredibly useful. Being able to test for existence and branch accordingly saves us a ton of extra ".IsNull" properties that we'd otherwise need to tack on to every class so that we could tell whether we were looking at a real instance, or just a dummy that the compiler initialized without asking.

His 'solution' to the Null Pointer Exception trades that easy to identify and fix runtime error for an entire class of subtle logic errors that are pretty much guaranteed to arise when you have a bunch of improperly-initialized-yet- alive objects sprouting up every time you declare them.

No thank you.

My suggestion is to use an IDE that notices potential Null Pointer Exceptions for you and lets you know about them. VS.NET does this, as does every Java IDE worth its salt. This is simply not an issue if you use modern tools. Please don't go adding language features to "fix" a problem that went away ten years ago.

<comment><USER6> You're wording my thoughts 100% exactly. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Part of the problem is that NULL is used to convey meaning. e.g. "login" returns NULL if the user isn't logged in.

So NULL can mean dozens of things. You can return something more valid (e.g. "Guest", or even "NotApplicable"), but doesn't get rid of the checks... Can result in more readable code though.

This is a good reference too: [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null- References-The-Billi...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References- The-Billion-Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare) Edit: Plus there is a discussion on this talk here: <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3186>

</comment><comment><USER8> In my experience NPE is the most common java exception and a huge waste of programmer time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I almost never have null pointer exceptions. I adhere fairly strongly to Design By Contract, which means that I check for boundary conditions (null being the most comon) at method and constructor entry points and throw exceptions there and then. This means nulls are caught early rather than late (as _parameters_ , rather than as _state_ ) and so the cause can be found right then and there.

NPE as a "problem" is vastly overrated. Just apply DBC wisely.

<comment><USER9> But how much code do you have to write to check your parameters for null references?

<comment><USER6> Trivially little compared to the code base and compared to the advantages. It takes only a few seconds to type

      if (object == null)
      {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Parameter 'object' should not be null.");
      }

Whereas I could lose hours chasing after null values that were passed through layers of unguarded abstractions.

Sure, I'd love for DBC to be a language feature (Eiffel has it) but exceptions help me out here, too.

<comment><USER9> I get that and thats how I handle it too, however, you now have an IllegalArgumentException to handle for the null pointer when IMHO having null pointers should be something out of the ordinary and therefore not possible in MOST of the code.

<comment><USER6> Things that are not possible should be asserted to be so. Leaving an assumption in the mind of the programmer only is dangerous and almost worthless. Any assumption reasonably expressible in code should be expressed in code. This goes beyond null checks, it counts for any state.

For instance, in a tool that uses graphs as data structures, some transformations might impose that your graph at input and output is acyclic. Don't put this in comments, assert it in code!

The exception is an exception in the strictest sense: something that _should not happen_. I consider IllegalArgumentException to be an exception you should never catch (except in unit tests, perhaps), but instead fix the root cause. Unlike IOException for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I fail to see the problem: A NPE is thrown if the code tries to access an object, but there's no object.Using a standard behavior here would conceal that there's a flaw in the program logic.

<comment><USER11> That there is no object is the problem.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. The flaw in program logic is that there is no object. Very often, it makes no sense to not pass an object somewhere where an object should be passed. Having null pointers makes it easy to live with this logic bug, when it should never have happened in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nulls are often used to signify that an object can't be returned for some reason, often not actually worth an exception. (Hence null is actually a valid result).

</comment><comment><USER13> This article is like a fiction the "Java Land". To the Java language designers, it would be like a space-age concept.

<comment><USER8> Sadly, that's not true. They do know lisp which has much better ways of dealing with nil. Lisp methods can even declare a nil handler function. Other languages allow defining special functions to handle null, it's not rocket science, but it would complicate java a lot to fix it now.

<comment><USER3> > They do know lisp which has much better ways of dealing with nil.

Lisp being mostly a class of dynamically-typed languages, their solution to the issue doesn't really apply to Java. For statically typed languages, the solution adopted by the ML family (as well as haskell) is far superior: encode the notion of "optional" values in an abstract type.</comment></comment></comment>


Humans are born irrational, and that has made us better decision-makers - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/922924/humans-werent-designed-to-be-rational-and-we-are-better-thinkers-for-it/ <comment><USER2> Irrational just means to act on instinct (model-free reinforcement learning) as opposed to planning (model based RL). Planning is more deliberate, can incur model errors and takes more energy, but instinct lacks generalization power. Both are useful systems of behavior, the problem is when one is triggered instead of the other - specifically, planning is useful in novel situations, where memorized responses don't work. Instinct is better where situations are repetitive and when uncertainty about the situation is too high to use modeling.

<comment><AUTHOR> that seems like a very useful way to frame it. Is there a source that goes into more details on this?

<comment><USER2> It's mostly based on studying reinforcement learning (machine learning subfield). It opened up my eyes with regard to a lot of psychological issues.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's - <AUTHOR> I started a web company about 8 years ago, on the side.  Three years ago I went full-time and have been fortunate that it is now providing me with a good income.
My CPA and Lawyer have recommended that I incorporate (I've been operating until now as a sole-proprietor), which I am in the process of finalizing.
After incorporating, I must, under IRS rules, pay myself a salary of "reasonable" and comparable compensation.  For tax reasons, I want this salary to be as low as possible, but can't go lower than what would be normal and reasonable for a CEO/Software Developer of a profitable but small (under $1 million in revenues) web company.
Does anyone have any source or advice on how to come up with a reasonable number? <comment><USER2> It sounds like you are incorporating an S-Corp. There aren't really any IRS rules like that for C-Corps, which is why Steve Jobs can get paid $1 pa.

The rule is essentially there to make sure that you pay FICA. The limit for paying FICA in 2008 is $10,200. So that should be a safe reasonable compensation. Anything you pay yourself on top of this should be done as an S-Corp distribution.

That said you could probably get away with paying less. But really your CPA should be able to guide you on this. You may be able to get away with $50k pa.

<comment><USER3> You missed a zero there, right? $102,000. $50k sounds sane, presuming you don't distro yourself $100k on top of it.

<comment><USER2> You are right I missed a zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reasonable to the IRS just means you aren't giving yourself a $300 salary and saying that's payment. Calculate general cost of living and use that number. You can justify that number to the IRS.

<comment><USER5> I would highly recommend against just paying yourself just cost-of-living. A low salary and high dividend is a big-time audit flag for the IRS... if your salary AND your dividends are low, then there's no problem.

You state that your company is profitable. In this case, if you pay yourself a low salary and get audited, the IRS can (and will) retroactively adjust your salary to whatever THEY feel is reasonable and comparable for a CEO of a successful small company. Then you will owe back taxes, penalties and interest on whatever amount they determine you cheated them out of. The process isn't very democratic and getting audited is a HUGE pain, so I'd recommend going with something reasonable in the 100K range to avoid scrutiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to this ([http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/10/2008-startup- compensatio...](http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/10/2008-startup-compensation- survey.html)) 10-year old survey executive compensation of 600+ venture-backed startups, a founding CEO of a software company with <$5MM in revenue is in the $160-230K range (25th %ile and 75th %ile respectively). As an aside, equity is in the 8-30% range (same percentiles).

This isn't terribly helpful to you question since it's for venture-backed companies, but it's at least an upper threshold.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fnazeeri, this study actually is helpful and does provide some useful data, I think it will be very helpful to have a professionally done compensation study if necessary to show the tax man.

<comment><USER3> There are two extreme data points you're getting here:

(1) The absolute lowest number people think you could get away with.

(2) The ridiculous numbers awarded to vanity CEOs of VC-funded companies.

You probably want to be somewhere in the middle. There's no rule about what a "CEO" makes; you're compensated based on the value you create in the company. If you do the same work as a lead developer, pay yourself like a bare-bones startup would pay a lead developer.

Web companies pay CEOs 200k because they're suckers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the feedback. OK further clarification: I am incorporating as an S-Corp. Income taxes on S-corps flow through to the tax returns of the owners. No taxes are paid at the corporate level.

The IRS doesn't care about the $1 salaries of public CEOs (yes I know apostrophe S isn't plural, it was a typo) because those are C-Corps. C Corps DO pay taxes at the corporate level so the IRS doesn't care what your compensation is on a C-Corp - they've already collected taxes.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear in my first post, I was NOT thinking of a $1 salary or anything like that to avoid taxes. I'm thinking in the $75K - $150K range but that's just a gut feeling that I'm looking to confirm with some kind of data source in case I have to justify it to IRS. My CPA is helpful, but he can't give me a total answer because he's not in the internet/web business...I am, hence the reason I posed the question on Hacker News.

I do however want to minimize my salary to a REASONABLE level as I don't want to overpay FICA (which caps out at 102K, but several CPAs I've spoken with feel Obama will eliminate that cap), plus I don't want to pay Medicare (3.9%) on ALL of the income the corporation generates - only on the portion reasonably attributable to my salary.

I was hoping some of the early stage YC companies or other CEOS/Developers who frequent Hacker News would have some guidance and/or a source for some general ranges of salaries for CEOs of web companies.

Thanks again for all your help.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think that $75k would be reasonable. That's on the low side (25th percentile), but reasonable. Below $50k and I'd say you're begging to be audited. But I don't do this for a living or anything.

Really, your CPA and lawyer should be able to give you an exact figure. That's their business. It's a little odd to ask for that advice here when you are already paying professionals in the field for that advice. Your CPA/lawyer should have experience with what is safe. Use it.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a matter of practicality, any number in the $80K+ range will be fine, though you may feel better about paying yourself $100K given that the spread in taxes is under $1K/year (from 80->100). You can go below "normal"; you just can't go below "reasonable". I'd also set the comparable position as "web developer", not "CEO", as you can make a strong case that your primary function day-to-day is more akin to web-dev than to captain-of-industry.

Another important thing to keep in mind, depending on your forecast need for credit: you may find it easier to qualify for a mortgage, to refinance, etc, if you have a higher base salary. Any amount by which you can get more favorable terms on a mortgage will likely BURY that $1K/yr in taxes. Sure you can substantiate with 2 years of tax returns, etc, etc, but that's going to invite human scrutiny, and in the current credit situation, I'd want to have the skids as greased as possible to have my application "look normal".

</comment><comment><USER9> Disclaimer: I am not an accountant or attorney so take this how you will.

My understanding of the law from our accountants and attorneys is that you do not have to pay yourself anything if you don't want to. BUT...if you do decide to pay yourself, the salary must be "reasonable and comparable" to salaries of persons with similar job descriptions and titles. In other words, if your company takes in $1M in revenues a year and you pay yourself a $500K salary it may raise a red-flag. On the other hand, if you pay yourself $1 it may also raise a red-flag. My advice is to pay yourself what you feel you are worth and the company can afford to pay you, but don't be greedy. You can always give yourself an end-of-year bonus. The point of the law is to keep you from operating the company for a profit, writing off all your expenses as business expenses and claiming on your personal taxes that you did not earn an income while the company cut you checks out of the "owner draw" account. Depending on size and revenues of your company you can always claim an S-Corp exemption and just flow through the profits/losses to your personal taxes thus alleviating a lot of this for you.

Again, I am not an attorney or accountant so I would definitely double check everything.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you really have to pay yourself "reasonable" compensation? I don't doubt that you were told that, but it is interesting that multiple CEOs of large, public companies (e.g. Brin/Schmidt/Page at Google, Jobs at Apple) pay themselves $1 per year.

See proxy statements at <http://edgarest.com/company/name/1288776/Google_Inc_> and <http://edgarest.com/company/name/320193/APPLE_INC> for reference.

<comment><USER11> That's because those companies are large and public, and the equity they have in the company makes an annual salary unnecessary.

I don't see how that applies in this situation.

<comment><USER10> In Jobs's specific case, for a while he held no equity and also drew no salary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shouldn't you be asking your CPA and your lawyer what "reasonable" means in this case?

</comment><comment><USER13> isn't the "reasonable" compensation more about the max you can pay yourself, not the min? So that you can't set your salary at whatever your profit is, in order to avoid paying business taxes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Apostrophe-S is not a plural!

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't incorporate in the United States? Does the law still apply?</comment>


Show HN: I built a tax calculator with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.taxmygig.com/ <comment><USER2> Does this factor in all of the costs you can expense as a freelancer? Like your office, electronics, marketing, etc. As a freelancer, I have never paid the "full" tax because of the deductions.

<comment><AUTHOR> The calculator assumes that you already know your net income if you're used to calculating taxes.

If you're new, it's likely that you'll speak to a pro about what you can deduct.

The calculator is geared towards providing a fast way to calculate taxable income.</comment></comment>


Google Penguin – Google started rolling out latest Penguin algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://www.accuranker.com/blog/possible-google-algorithm-update-today-in-the-states/ <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone started noticing any traffic fluctuations in the U.S?</comment>


Consumer Quantum RNG - <AUTHOR> http://www.idquantique.com/true-random-number-generator/products-overview.html

<comment><USER2> What applications need hardware random numbers at the high data rate those provide? For almost all applications a good CSPRNG like Fortuna periodically seeded with hardware entropy is good enough--even for key generation and one- time pads.

Given the massive cost difference between those and something like the one at <http://www.entropykey.co.uk/> ($1300 vs $60), I'm having trouble thinking of when I'd pick the former.

In the discusson of this that just occurred on Reddit, someone did mention a use for the fast but expensive kind. He said they are distributing random numbers to many others for us in seeding. Kind of an internal random.org. Even there I'd expect Fortuna on the distribution machine periodically seeded from a cheaper generator would be sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER3> These aren't too unique - there are several out there:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=usb+random+number+generator>

Also, many chipsets have built RNG's that work of thermal or electrical noise in the system, such as many of Intel's i8xx series.

You can also buy hardware that provides RNG's and crypto acceleration - here's a good list from OpenBSD:

<http://www.openbsd.org/crypto.html#hardware></comment>


How Children Interact with Alexa - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/10/30/559863326/alexa-are-you-safe-for-my-kids <comment><USER2> Posted earlier with unaltered title:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585180)</comment>


In Global Tech Battle, the Philippines Chooses China - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-global-tech-battle-the-philippines-has-chosen-sides-not-the-u-s-11563205891?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Who would you like to do business with?

country A that has the best tech, has a stable political climate, does not push too much, has a good price, or country B, who has inferior tech, a "maximum pressure" president and asks too much.

Turkey choose Russia for its S400 and the Philippines choose Huawei for its 5G for obvious reasons. If people in country B do not understand why this happens, they will fail again doing business.

<comment><USER3> _country A that has the best tech, has a stable political climate, does not push too much, has a good price, or country B, who has inferior tech, a "maximum pressure" president and asks too much._

The identity of country A and country B in all of the attributes you mention has fluctuated over the years, and through different contexts.

<comment><USER2> correct, and that is why I think _stable_ is an important feature.

<comment><USER4> Stable how? I can see mainland China being stable through its authoritarian government for the moment but the Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Uighur situations at the moment don't exactly scream "long term stability" to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Supreme Court ruling scraps royalty for music downloads - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/07/12/pol-supreme-court-copyright-rulings.html?cmp=rss <comment><USER2> The important bit doesn't show up until the sixth paragraph: "Today's decision does not affect the 'reproduction right' that they can collect a fee for, only the one for downloading. Until now, downloading fell under the 'communication to the public' right."

Apparently, downloaded/streamed songs in Canada had been earning royalties as a public performance. That part has been struck down. Royalties are still earned under the "making a copy" rule.

Seems totally reasonable to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else notice that the acronym for Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers (SOCAN), should actually be SOCAMP? Guess they felt that was inappropriate.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra "lower court decision that allowed SOCAN to collect a tariff when video games are downloaded over the internet"

Wait, what!?

</comment><comment><USER4> In Canada.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Canadian_ Supreme Court scraps royalties for Canadian music downloads.

We have a completely separate system in the U.S. that imposes mandatory royalties (along with a corresponding royalty collection body to obviate the need to track down music rights holders). Europe has something similar.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I was thoroughly confused until it clicked it was Canadian media. Can we get a bot on the news submitter that asks for a nation to be added when the headline says "Congress" or "Parliament" or "Supreme Court"? :P</comment></comment>


Anti-ACTA protests escalate in Poland - <AUTHOR>

A short vid as an intro: http://www.euronews.net/2012/01/25/protesters-in-poland-angry-about-acta
My synopsis of how it came to this from Monday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3502200
That EuroNews footage above is from Tue.
Here's some footage from Wed, when protests escalated in multiple cities:
http://wyborcza.pl/51,75248,11032507.html?i=1
http://kielce.gazeta.pl/kielce/10,88276,11032670,Manifestacja_ws__ACTA_w_Kielcach__Jeszcze_pokojowa.html
http://krakow.gazeta.pl/krakow/1,35798,11032507,Manifestacja_w_Krakowie__protest_przeciwko_ACTA.html
http://www.tvn24.pl/-1,1732237,0,1,zhakowany-sikorski-i-goracy-wieczor-na-ulicach,wiadomosc.html
It's also a good idea to search for "acta protest" videos on YouTube. <comment><USER2> as of 0330utc+1 ACTA has been signed in Tokio by Polish ambassador.</comment>


ASK HN: Why Database migrations aren't handled like Git? - <AUTHOR> In DB migrations you write SQL statements so database can be modified to a new state. Without having to delete the table and write new CREATE TABLE....
You basically write how to change state.
In Git, you change the file and git internally figures out what has changed and then creates a commit. If you push it and then others download the changes they also reach to new state without having to delete everything. Only difference is..
You made changes to final state and Git automatically detected what changed. Git figures out how to change the state.
What you do in DB migration is equivalent to typing out Git commits manually on what files to change and how to change them.
Ex: Delete lines 22-30 in file abc.js and new lines at 10-15 which are .................. Instead of you just editing the abc.js.
See how stupid that looks. That's how stupid SQL migrations look to me.
Instead of me just updating schema and have some program figure out changes and propagate them to related parties. I've to manually write what change and how it changed in SQL statements.
Benefit:
New Users wont have to run 3000 migrations they can start with final state.
Humans wont have to write migrations by hand and do more productive things with their limited lives. <comment><USER2> There are solutions like that out there, and they work pretty well, but tend to also be pricey.

See Red Gate's SQL Compare: [https://www.red-gate.com/products/sql- development/sql-compar...](https://www.red-gate.com/products/sql- development/sql-compare/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like Django migrations :-)

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/topics/migrations/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/topics/migrations/)

<comment><AUTHOR> so i actually didn't know about that, so thanks.

But does new user have to run all migrations.

Say i get the repo, would i have to do migrate... because in git i dont have to run all commits. i get the final state of repo.</comment></comment>


Secret Dots from Printer Outed NSA Leaker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reality-winner.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> The arrest warrant says nothing about printer dots, actually. It says that once they saw it was printed (per the Intercept showing them a copy to confirm its legitimacy) they simply looked at who'd printed the original document. Upon looking into the desk computers of those 6 people, she was the only person who'd had email contact with the Intercept.

They didn't even need the yellow dots. She literally emailed the Intercept from her work email and was one of a trivial number of people who'd printed it in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Does this strike anyone else as suspicious? To my mind she's either incompetent or she intended to become a martyr.

<comment><USER4> Third possibility: that she suspected she'd be caught regardless, and decided that releasing this specific information publicly was more important than her personal freedom.

Fourth possibility: that the NSA did use the forensic marks in question to identify her, and fabricated a parallel construction in order to avoid acknowledging the existence of said marks.

(But still, most likely this is Hanlon's Razor. What's there to be suspicious about?)

<comment><USER5> > order to avoid acknowledging the existence of said marks

Not likely. It's been common knowledge for a long time.

<comment><USER6> The reporting on this everywhere besides tech sites has completely left this part out. Its not common knowledge to a lot of people.

<comment><USER5> Do you mean tracking dots in general? They've been mentioned in mainstream media, it's just that nobody cares.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/personaltech/24askk-001.html)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/10...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html)

<comment><USER7> That they were in two articles 10 years ago is not evidence either that it's common knowledge or that no one cares. They have their own wikipedia article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a really nice bit from TFA:

"FBI special agent Justin Garrick told a federal court that Winner – a cross- fit fan who graduated high school in 2011 and was in the US Air Force apparently as a linguist – confessed to reading and printing out the document, despite having no permission to do so. "

So, she joined the company 3 months prior, and it was 'permission' rather than enforced access rights that they relied on for new trainees not to color outside of the lines.

It's not about 'permission', it is all about 'capabilities'.

<comment><USER9> It's the same with the NSA's excuse.. "Yes we gather Americans' communications, but there are rules against agents listening to that!".

Or Facebook apps, "Yes apps can see your name, dob, email and your friends list, but they are not allowed to abuse this information"... Thanks, I feel secure now.

<comment><USER10> People could break your door and rob but don't. Punishment and deterrence work in real life.

<comment><USER8> Well, you did start with the assumption the door would be locked. If you left it open that would be the rough equivalent of what happened here.

<comment><USER11> I once went around and taped a note to about 50 doors in my neighborhood. As I recall, two of them opened at my touch - they weren't securely latched. At that point, it didn't matter if they were locked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> According to the FBI arrest affidavit, only six people printed that document, and she emailed The Intercept from her own work computer.

So she would have been identified even if she or The Intercept had the sense to remove or alter the DocuColor dots.

"The U.S. Government Agency conducted an internal audit to determine who accessed the intelligence reporting since its publication. The U.S. Government Agency determined that six individuals printed this reporting. WINNER was one of these six individuals. A further audit of the six individuals' desk computers revealed that WINNER had e-mail contact with the News Outlet. The audit did not reveal that any of the other individuals had e-mail contact with the News Outlet"

<comment><USER4> Not that that makes it any less concerning that The Intercept forgot to scrub the dots, unless the email in question contained instructions along the lines of "lol dont worry bout opsec i dont care if i get caught kthx <3 <3".

<comment><USER13> From The Intercept's "how to pass on tips" page [1]:

> _We've taken steps to make sure that people can leak to us as safely as > possible. Our newsroom is staffed by reporters who have extensive experience > working with whistleblowers, as well as some of the world's foremost > internet security specialists. Our pioneering use of the SecureDrop platform > enables you to communicate with our reporters and send documents to us > anonymously._

I think it's _shocking_ that nobody at The Intercept was aware of the yellow dots, or other metadata (eg printer-specific output artifacts) that might facilitate the revelation of the anonymous source. This is so careless of them that I'm led to believe that they don't have a formal scrubbing step at all.

Of course, I might be biased a bit here because I dislike Greenwald so much for how he handled the Snowden leaks. The risks Snowden took and the sacrifices he made are incomparable, but "it took Greenwald several more months and help from experts before he could learn relatively basic tools like PGP encryption."

[1] [https://theintercept.com/leak/](https://theintercept.com/leak/)

[2] [https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/edward-snowden-gpg-for- journ...](https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/edward-snowden-gpg-for-journalists- video-nsa-glenn-greenwald/)

Edit: I think it's shocking because assisting whistleblowers and protecting their anonymity seems central to The Intercept (which I believe is commendable), so they, of all people, should know better -- if not _best_.

<comment><USER14> Despite my criticisms of other comments of yours, this is an extremely cogent point. _The Intercept_ should, nay, _must_ have policies, procedures, and checks in place to prevent foul-ups of this nature. And must also produce a post-mortem on this incident.

Screw-ups happen. _Repeated_ screw-ups show a systemic failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have submitted a PR to 'pdf-redact-tools' tonight. The new feature removes the yellow printer dots by converting the document to black and white: [https://github.com/firstlookmedia/pdf-redact- tools/pull/23](https://github.com/firstlookmedia/pdf-redact-tools/pull/23)

<comment><USER16> Are you very damn sure that it works and doesn't just convert them into #fefefe dots?

<comment><USER17> But #fefefe isn't black or white? I presume the commenter specifically didn't say greyscale.

EDIT- checked the source:

It looks like imagemagick's 'threshold' [0] command is being used, so everything is max/min/black/white:

[https://github.com/firstlookmedia/pdf-redact- tools/pull/23/c...](https://github.com/firstlookmedia/pdf-redact- tools/pull/23/commits/e5e110f4f52bae58a5538c8b99f272050e99f506#diff-3bdc5abf0a60ad14fab98eb6df02c7a6R88)

[0] [https://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line- options.php#...](https://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line- options.php#threshold)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The arstechnica article[1] reports, based on the FBI document, that the NSA determined who leaked the info by finding creases in the documents provided to them for authentication by the Intercept demonstrating that they were leaked by being printed out.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/leaked-nsa- report-s...](https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/leaked-nsa-report-says- russians-tried-to-hack-state-election-officials/)

<comment><USER19> The Register (as usual) has great coverage of this:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/06/contractor_leaked_r...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/06/contractor_leaked_russians_hacking_election_systems/)

It turns out REALITY WINNER isn't an NSA exploit – it's her real name

<comment><USER20> In reality winner lost against the NSA.

<comment><USER8> But first the NSA lost against her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't get it. These kind of dots are not news, they have been around for ages, the EFF cracked the code in 2005 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography))

Why did no one at the intercept check for them? Its trivial and they have to know about this kind of stuff?

<comment><USER22> I don't want to sound like a tinfoil hat wearer, but there's a lot of trivial data that a leaker could/should guard against. Multi-layer PDFs and their metadata. Microsoft Office metadata. Photograph EXIF data. Tracking cookies. File access logging. Print job logging. Printer microdot steganography. Traffic and license plate cameras. Cell tower connections logs. Email headers. Windows event logs.

Many of these can be circumvented through the use of tech like VPNs, Tor, or GPG, and through careful behavior such as scrubbing metadata and the use of burner phones/laptops, cash, and public internet connections. And we're not even getting to the level of wireless carrier, home ISP, or NSA web activity tracking, NSA Tor exploitation, or zero-day exploits. Furthermore, this assumes that the documents themselves are not themselves subject to punctuation, word replacement, typesetting, or other content steganography. Should The Intercept be responsible for ensuring that its sources adhere to safe leaking behaviors? They probably should, at some level.

But what if - as I'm reading here - The Intercept got an email from firstname.lastname@example.com, subject "NSA Report on Russia Spearphishing.pdf", body "Hey, I was browsing some stuff out of curiosity in our SCIF and thought this study might be useful to you. I printed it off and smuggled it out in my purse, then scanned it and attached it to this email. Please publish it so the American people can know what's really going on. Hope this helps! -- Reality". There's not really any point to worrying about printer steganography, protecting your IP address, or GPG at that point.

<comment><USER23> Your assessment is totally correct. Steganography can be put everywhere. Perhaps the Free Software Foundation can take advantage of these cases for pushing for more use of open source, non-fingerprinted software.

OR for enforcing fingerprinting! (It can help with fighting against corrupt governments)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Or more accurately, the Intercept either though ineptitude or malice burned their source.

<comment><USER25> I would call it criminal ineptitude.

They (the Intercept) are playing in a dangerous game, and they should be extra careful about such things. After all the drama about smashed hard drives, Greenwald's BF being detained in London, etc. etc. you'd think they'd know better.

I'm not in the security business, and even I knew about the dots (and circles in the $20 bills). It's been on HN several times: [http://goo.gl/h1kqbu](http://goo.gl/h1kqbu)

So, shame on you, Intercept. Your callous disregard for your sources is now going to send one to prison for a looong time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Yes, this code the government forces into our printers is a violation of our 3rd Amendment rights"

FYI: The 3rd Amendment reads as follows:

"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

I don't see the connection. Why does this violate our 3rd amendment rights?

<comment><USER27> One could argue that the "spirit" of the 3rd Amendment is that the government cannot compel you to use your own resources for their benefit on an ongoing basis. It's a stretch, but possibly no more so than other interpretations of the Constitution that courts have made.

<comment><USER26> Good point, but in this case I don't know if it's quite reaching the level of compelling. Maybe co-opting? I imagine the government uses us in many, many ways for their own gain that we may not know of. Perhaps a better connection might be the 1st Amendments implied right to freedom of association.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _To fix this yellow-dot problem, use a black-and-white printer, black-and- > white scanner, or convert to black-and-white with an image editor._

I'm not convinced that would be sufficient, especially the latter option.

Also this is the NSA. If they're smart, they have backup fingerprinting that isn't publicly known.

<comment><USER29> Yes, b/w converting is not sufficient. Once printed, the yellow dots are hard to remove.

[http://imgur.com/a/kLovh](http://imgur.com/a/kLovh)

And even when you mask them out so that they are no longer visible in the "all white" (paper) background, e.g. by messing with the white/black point of the image there's still the possibility that they could be recovered with correlation methods in grey areas where they aren't visible to the naked eye or just by increasing the contrast.

<comment><USER30> Why would there be grey in a thresholded image? The entire point of the transform is that it maps everything above a certain threshold to pure white and everything else to pure black.

They didn't say "convert to greyscale".

<comment><USER29> > They didn't say "convert to greyscale".

Very good point. But even then, assume that one page of a leaked document contains a large picture with areas around the thrshold value: With the agency being able to recreate a perfect replica of the initially scanned paper version, but without yellow dots, it might be possible to extract the (very few) bits necessary to boil it down to a single printer serial number by statistical methods.

<comment><USER31> Hmm, okay, so we reduce to black and white, add some warp and noise and then reduce the size so that the text is only just readable.

...and they focus on adding fonts of multiple sizes so it can't be shrunk without losing information.

<comment><USER30> Reduce to black and white, and proofread for dots. If they're still there, they will be easy to see, since you only have two colors. You can white out an image that came out looking like a test pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So this is the "extraordinary law enforcement effort" Rosenstein referred to. Check printer logs, send FBI to leaker's house.

This will certainly make anybody thinking of leaking to the Intercept think twice.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure how to say this, but I've been in a position to see what the US government considers some of its most valuable technical resources. More than a decade ago, a very specific breach of security happened in a specific place, operated by "a company". That organization sent in a team of people from D.C. for five days that specifically were "extraordinarily good" at their jobs in order to analyze the machines where this breach happened. All three of these folks were stumped _for three days_ by deleted browser cookies on a Windows machine, no kidding. I was originally one of a handful of suspects, but hearing about their ineptitude was _so fucking infuriating_ that I wouldn't keep quiet. Eventually, one of the people in power in that place (who was on my side) convinced the "crack forensics team" to hear me out. So I met with them and discussed the plan, and then I walked them through installing a stupid FOSS utility for recovering deleted browser cache and cookies, and they were able to extract a URL, account name, and timestamp from the cookies on the machine which then let them pull up the right footage from the security camera, and catch the criminal responsible. The person in charge of the whole thing offered me a job (which I did not take). Ever since that day, whenever I hear something like "extraordinary law enforcement effort" I think about those _stupid_ contractors and how I could have somehow suffered legal problems because of them. I absolutely _do not_ trust the US government's claims about its own technical capabilities. I mean obviously not everyone working for the government is an ID-10-T, but here is supposedly one of the best technical teams this organization has to offer, and they can't even get this really basic shit right. And not just "can't get it right" but consider the ramifications of their being wrong! Amazing, and eye-opening, and frightening.

<comment><USER34> Quite. The US government employs contractors more or less on the Charlie Sheen principle: it pays them to go away. There are some really sharp people employed by contractors, and some others that are just billed as if they were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> With all the talk of scanning in black and white, photocopying, taking a photo with a camera or retyping as means to get around the printer dots.

Why not use OCR?

<comment><USER36> NSA uses punctuation and typos to steganographically insert source information.

<comment><USER14> Do you happen to have a source on that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What did she reveal? That's what's important. Everything is focusing on how she was caught. Nice distraction.

<comment><USER14> Specifics of Russian activities, methods, and US intelligence awareness of same, all of which are relevant.

The fact of the arrest strongly suggests the documents themselves are accurate. If they don't reflect actual Russian _activity_ , they appear to reflect US _intelligence_ of such activity.

If accurate, the documents corroborate a general pattern of activity of election manipulation carried on from at _least_ June of 2016 through November, which would be highly significant.

There is circumstantial evidence of vote tampering in at least North Carolina, based on unexpected vote-tally convergence differences based on precinct size (I'm not entirely sold on the story, though it seems to have some legs): [http://www.votesleuth.org/north- carolina-2016-overview/](http://www.votesleuth.org/north- carolina-2016-overview/)

At a larger scale, this highlights weakensses in multiple elements of liberal democratic institutions, mechanisms, communications, and media, as well as, quite possibly, political bodies and individuals. Arguments which have been in large part theoretical of risks of voting machines, email, and end-to-end encryption are now looking to be substantial, actual, and potentially existential threats.

That's some prime meat in my register.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can someone explain the reference to the Third Amendment at the end of the article? Looking on Wikipedia, the 3rd Amendment is something to do with quartering soldiers in private homes.

<comment><USER39> The theory is that by pressuring printer makers in to making all printed documents trackable, the printer is an agent of the state quartered in your home to spy on you.

A theory that isn't going to satisfy many people. It is interesting, though, to ponder what would have happened at various points in history, had $state_actor at the time had access to this tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> For privacy purpose, we should have free (open source) printers.

<comment><USER41> #1 feature should be allowing the insertion of microdot patterns of your choice.

Whenever I hear of dubious 'features' like this, I dream of seeing them backfire on one of their supporters.

Say, next time there's a leak, the microdots show the source to be a printer in the White House.

If nothing else, it would make it trivial for the defense of a real leaker to show that forging the pattern is a very real possibility.

<comment><USER42> Are these not forge-able now with modified firmware? Seems like this should be a very real possibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I remember a HN thread years ago on these yellow dots watermarks, where an employee at a printer manufacturer said there was no indication this was ever used by law enforcement to track who printed what because, for one, the team who implemented the watermarking never documented or taught anyone how to decode these watermarks.

Well, here we are today with this NSA story.

I think it's possible that US-based printer manufacturers implemented watermarking _on special request_ from the NSA. That would also explain why the printer manufacturer employees never needed to teach anyone how to decode them. It wasn't their specs in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER44> As someone else pointed out already there is no evidence the dots were used. Only 6 people viewed the document and she was the one who printed it. Then they found logs of her emailing it from her work computer.

</comment><comment><USER45> So there are definitely printer dots in the posted images, but how do we know they are from a printer at NSA? They could be from a printer at The Intercept, a public copy and print shop, or anywhere else, intentionally left in as a red herring.

Of course, as others have posted, she doesn't appear to have tried hard to cover her tracks at NSA so that doesn't seem too likely. But stating that she accidentally left in the printer dots is assuming several facts not in evidence.

<comment><USER46> The printer dots include the serial number of the printer. So _we_ don't know if they are definitely from a printer at the NSA, surely the NSA does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> tl;dr: the dots may have exposed metadata of the printing, but from what we know officially, NSA's internal access control system was all that was needed to argue probable cause against Reality Winner.

So the dots don't look good in terms of The Intercept's opsec, but from what we know from the Justice Department's affidavit [0] and the search warrant [1], those dots were likely inconsequential as evidence compared to the audit trail that Winner left when she accessed and printed the file. It's not unreasonable to believe that the NSA and its contractors can track access activity by user, post-Snowden; I mean, it's a feature built into states' DMV systems, which is how cops get busted in the occasional scandal of unauthorized lookup of citizen info [2].

The warrant and affidavit allude to such a system when describing the audit that was done as soon as the NSA was made aware (because the Intercept reached out to them) that the document was out in the wild. At that point, it doesn't seem hard to query their own logs to find all users who accessed and/or printed out the document. Unfortunately for Winner, it seems that very few (1 in 6) NSA employees printed out the document, and I'm sure it didn't help that her background (former Air Force, fluent in several Middle Eastern languages) would indicate that her job did not require her to have a physical copy of this particular document.

The affidavit and warrant mention "physical" metadata that they say supports their case, but it's all circumstantial

1\. The documents show evidence of creases/folding, which indicates that someone had to secret it out physically (i.e. they printed it first) from the NSA. But that folding/creasing could come from the reporters printing out their own copies of the document.

2\. The affidavit says that of the 6 employees to have had printed out the document, Winner was the only one to have email contact with The intercept. But the warrant specifies that this email contact occurred using her private GMail address in _March_ , and it was limited to 2 emails: her subscribing the The Intercept podcast, and a confirmation email. i.e. she didn't use email (that we know of) to talk to the Intercept.

There's no mention of the yellow dots, which, sure, we could argue that the NSA is just keeping that bit of tradecraft secret. But keep in mind that the NSA started their investigation last week, with the FBI interviewing Winner just a few days ago (on a Saturday no less).

The other key point is that, according to the warrant, the Intercept journalist sent along the leaked documents to a NSA source for confirmation _using a smartphone_ , i.e. they texted smartphone photos of the documents. It seems possible that that kind of ad hoc scanning would make the yellow dots illegible, depending on how much care was taken to photograph the documents.

At any rate, it's kind of irrelevant. Assuming Winner used her own NSA credentials to peruse the system, the access control logs were all that were needed to out her as fast as the NSA and FBI were able to. However, it's worth noting that if the NSA had been clueless until the Intercept's published report, the actual published document apparently did reveal the yellow dots. This means that if even if Winner were one of many NSA employees to print out the documents, the yellow-dot timestamp would greatly help in narrowing the list of suspects.

So, it's wrong to say the Intercept outed her, because we don't know what would've happened in an alternative reality in which the NSA didn't start its investigation until after seeing the published report. It is OK, probably, to speculate that the Intercept was sloppy in handling the documents...but that's not what led to Winner being outed so quickly.

[0] [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-government- contractor...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-government-contractor- georgia-charged-removing-and-mailing-classified-materials-news)

[1] [http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed- realit...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reality- winner.html#.WTYT4hPyvUI)

[2] [https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap- acros...](https://apnews.com/699236946e3140659fff8a2362e16f43/ap-across-us- police-officers-abuse-confidential-databases)

<comment><USER48> > There's no mention of the yellow dots, which, sure, we could argue that the > NSA is just keeping that bit of tradecraft secret

Printers have been using microdots since the 90's; their use isn't secret. And the NSA would use other forms of forensic fingerprinting. For example, there's some kerning variation in that document, which could easily be another form of steganography. There are numerous other textual/grammar variations they could use to watermark a document.

<comment><USER49> > the NSA would use other forms of forensic fingerprinting

This is what I'm betting on. The 'creases' story may have some truth to it, but I suspect its primary goal is to take over the narrative and distract from the actual methods of identify the leak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Arresting the leaker is part of making this seem legit leaking?

</comment><comment><USER51> Convert the white background to yellow

<comment><USER52> dont print, make a picture of the screen with old camera bought in a car sale town away.

<comment><USER53> If I were the NSA, I'd have a modified graphics driver which overlays pseudorandom very faint grey dots over the screen at all times. A 254 254 254 pixel hidden amongst all while pixels isn't visible, yet thousands of them across a page will encode significant amounts of information, even in the face of quite severe image compression and low quality.

The dots could be based on the computer, currently logged in user, and timestamp.

Then later, if any screenshot or screen photo is leaked, you can decode the dots to identify the source.

<comment><USER54> You think that they would even be picked up when you take a picture with a camera? Between the external camera, and then compression, I don't think that the 254 254 254 pixels are going to make it into the final image. They might not even make it into the initial picture - screen backlighting consistency, etc, is going to wreak havoc on that from the start, before we even get into sensor noise, etc on the camera, any smudges on the lens, all before it even gets saved a jpg

<comment><USER53> There's an amazing way of encoding data called "gold codes". By having enough pixels like this, you can correlate the image with the expected pattern, and successfully extract data even though no individual pixel is visible.

It's used in GPS transmissions to allow decoding signals considerably weaker than the background noise. Because the receiver is aware what the signal should look like, it can extract it despite all the noise by averaging across all the samples.

It _does_ require perfect alignment though, which might be tricky considering camera lens warping, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Something smells fishy here. How did the Intercept maintain enough opsec to stay in contact with Snowden (who would have dropped them like a hot potato if they didn't seem competent) and then do this, with the same general staff in place?

<comment><USER56> From what I learned in Citizenfour, Snowden had to walk his contacts Laura Poitras(Citizenfour maker)/The Intercept through all the steps needed before he would communicate with them, and this latest person mistakenly trusted The Intercept with the original paper document (instead of passing it through a b/w filter, second step as recommended by the link).

<comment><USER9> I believe you're wrong...

Before they even meet, Snowden asked Greenwald to set-up PGP/GPG so they can securely talk/he can tell them what he has, Greenwald didn't manage to do that/ignored this "anonymous person", Snowden found that Laura had a GPG key, and knew Greenwald, so he asked her to help him set that up. This all happened pre-Intercept, Greenwald was working for The Guardian at that time.

Despite his technical ineptitude, Greenwald was the only journalist Snowden trusted with the info, he didn't go to NYTimes after the NYT delayed a story about surveillance during the Bush admin until after Bush's reelection, he was afraid the NYT would just go straight to the government before publication, asking "So is this story legit?"...</comment></comment></comment>


Why India wiped out over 80% of its cash overnight - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-37974423 <comment><USER2> From the bbc.com URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12952835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12952835) (23 points, 18 hours ago, 11 comments)</comment>


Meshbird – distributed private networking - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird <comment><USER2> How does this compare to something like zerotier? And how does this "All traffic transmit directly to recipient peer without passing any gateways." without hitting some server to negotiate the first connect? Does the "MESHBIRD_KEY" contain the IP?</comment>


Bezos sells 2 million Amazon shares for about $234 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/02/bezos_sells_234_million_in_amazon_stock.html?ana=from_rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TechFlash+%28TechFlash+-+Seattle%27s+Technology+News+Source%29&utm_content=FaceBook <comment><USER2> When I want beer money I usually just reach for the money jar on my bedside table.</comment>


Android Firefox Preview Beta Reaches Another Milestone - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/12/03/firefox-preview-beta-reaches-another-milestone/ <comment><USER2> All I'm waiting for is to be able to install ublock origin. Without it, the borwsing experience simply does not feel fast like it does on Bromite (chromium + adblocker).

<comment><USER3> Just use something like Blokada ([https://blokada.org](https://blokada.org)), and you'll get the benefit of ads being blocked device-wide as well.

<comment><USER2> I tried. But the adblocking wasn't as reliable as just using Bromite. In addition to that it was also breaking Google play and Motorola updates.

Blocking outside the browser isn't a big deal for me since I don't use any apps with ads (I just pay for an ad free version when it becomes useful enough)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It'd be nice to know what Mozilla's plans are for Firefox Focus.

Felt like it was always a stopgap solution until Android for Firefox had been through its big overhaul.

Are they keeping it around until Firefox works on iPhone? Are they keeping it around forever? Should Android users on the bleeding edge consider moving to Firefox Preview in anticipation of Firefox Focus going away? There was a time where Focus was the bleeding edge.

<comment><USER5> Development on focus has been halted last I read.

[https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/27/mozilla-geckoview- firefox...](https://venturebeat.com/2019/06/27/mozilla-geckoview-firefox- preview-android/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just awaiting the ability to install ublock!

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it possible to disable cookies per-site on Firefox Android? Specifically blocking cookies on medium.com to prevent its page-read-counter paywall from ever triggering.

<comment><USER5> Ublock origin supports this straightforwardly,and works wellon Firefox Android.</comment></comment>


In New York City, Jobs Come Back Without Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/nyregion/with-little-help-from-wall-street-new-york-city-enjoys-steady-job-growth.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> The tech sector and the energy surrounding it is palpable here; it's incredible. But, thankfully, it's not the only dominant voice in the city. I hear more and more people at every meetup I attend saying they moved from San Francisco to escape the "tech-centric" culture there. While Silicon Valley is likely still "the" place to be for tech, I'm glad NYC is emerging as a viable East coast alternative.

<comment><USER3> Most of the startups based here are very much fluffy and will vaporize when the VC/angel bubble pops. They are either "lifestyle" businesses (read: small businesses. make some money but should never have taken VC, because they will never have a real exit) or just e-commerce masquerading as "tech."

<comment><USER4> Most of the startups in NYC are going to do much better, they are profitable AdTech, Fintech, Fashion startups. Or the occasional ecommerce play. I would say in general less Facebooks, here but more profitable companies

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anything that changes NYC's economy to make it less dependent upon those who play with money is a good thing. I'm even happier that tech companies are finding NYC a place with plenty of talent.

</comment><comment><USER6> There was a pretty interesting, though potentially biased report about the impact of NY Tech on the job market here: [http://www.nyctecheconomy.com/](http://www.nyctecheconomy.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wish the NYTimes was better than that log-based chart of job recovery by sector (or whatever that non-linear scale is).</comment>


Women in the Boardroom and Their Impact on Default Risk: A Pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/07/women-in-the-boardroom-and-their-impact-on-default-risk-a-pitch/ <comment><USER2> This site looks like a blogspam and was autokilled by HN.

The original article is in [http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=11406900900910312...](http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=114069009009103121026019102084011106004049020088012091073071098111009119067010110024018110017063062049097118015111024124125006008043088026052069111126091094012115105027052007111074123000004114002088090014068099090091101088103095029103120122030094029066&EXT=pdf) (I couldn't find a HTML version.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Thank you.</comment></comment>