WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition - <AUTHOR> http://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_f8b1509f44a2e3b96999bb04d587e3ef <comment><USER2> Before the sceptics get in:

1\. The purpose of DSM/ICD is often to justify financing treatment:

> Chris Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University ... > described the ICD as "the book of real diseases that you can get insurance > payments for."

2\. Treatment has to be mindful of the specific form of addiction:

> "These are co-morbid conditions," he said. "If you just treat the depression > and not gaming, the gaming is likely to come back." This suggests it's a > unique condition, he said.

3\. No we are not "medicializing everything":

> But Ferguson argued that, if it is a disorder, it seems to be very rare.

NB.

Before criticizing modern psychiatry keep in mind:

1\. mental health patients are extreme in their dysfunction, never common.

2\. the operation of the brain (, nervous system, etc.) in its interaction with its environment is as liable to breaking as any other part of the body

3\. modern clinical psychiatry is an evidenced-based, research-driven field which treats and forms diagnoses on the basis of decades of research into any particular condition. It isnt the 1950s.

<comment><USER3> > 3\. modern clinical psychiatry is an evidenced-based, research-driven field > which treats and forms diagnoses on the basis of decades of research into > any particular condition. It isnt the 1950s.

But isn't modern clinical psychiatry marred by the same problems social or economic sciences are? Ultimately you are studying/interpreting human behaviour, which doesn't lend itself well to quantisation or categorising.

<comment><USER4> Most recent studies in psychiatry and social sciences that I have read, even those published in Nature, use sample sizes of around 50 people, which should be considered insufficient. Instead they use various cooked up formulas for correcting for gender/ethnicity etc. Instead, sample sizes should be much bigger. Of course this is not practical or even perhaps impossible. I find this to be a poor excuse, though.

The matter of fact is, we know very little about how the brain works. We certainly have some big picture on how the brain functions, but we are very far from grasping the chemistry.

<comment><USER2> psychiatry =/= psychology =/= social psychology

This is more "everything is the same" anti-expertism.

Clinical psychiatry is not about p-hacking groups of 50.

The treatment of bipolar disorder hasnt been decided on the basis of what happened to the last dozen undergrad students.

>The matter of fact is, we know very little about how the brain works.

Profoundly untrue. Even if it were truth, its very truth would preclude your ability to make this assertion. If we knew nothing, how are you estimating the nothing we know?

It is no mystery what happens when you give a person lithium. Nor some speculative game to know what the effect of MDMA on PTSD patients is. Nor hocus pocus to identify the effects of repeated trauma.

How are you deciding what percentage of "how the brain works" we need to know in order to do psychiatry in a reasonably well-informed way?

Suppose, even, we know now 0.1% of the entire story. Is this sufficient for an evidence-based treatment of psychosis?

It clearly seems to be. Since the treatment of schizophrenia is overwhelmingly more effective than anything based on a study of 50 people.

Your comment may very well apply to "journalistic science" ie., the increasingly prevent, "ive just had an idea, lets get 50 undergrads and a seminar room!".

That is a tiny percentage of science, even if it is the most commonly popularized.

<comment><USER4> I had a look at this review on bipolar disorder, [https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e8508](https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e8508) . According to a study referenced in it, 68 randomized trials where used to determine the effect of different drugs compared to placebo. Again the sample size is low and the statistical significance is also small, unless I'm missing something.

You are correct in saying that we don't actually know how much we know about the brain. But the brain is s much more complex than e.g. planets orbiting the sun. There are many components that can get affected by chemical compounds in the short term, but more importantly in the long term. I agree though that only through testing can we get a better understanding. It is just the way it's currently done that I disagree. I would gladly read some research you think is good and does not have the shortcomings I describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know whether what I had (have?) meets this WHO definition, but I can tell you that at points in my life, I've had an unhealthy relationship with video games.

For me, and maybe others as well, it's about having control over something and feeling a sense of accomplishment, feeling like I'm achieving something. Video games give you that. For a small cost ($20-$50), you can have pure escapism from reality, think about things other than your shitty life and depression and instead feel yourself accomplish goals, achieve success, _win_. Unlike drugs or alcohol, it doesn't end- you can just keep coming back without paying anything. There's no chemical hangover, no blood test for it, no social stigma like drugs have. It's perfect.

My underlying problems have been dealt with now, but I still have to limit how long I play games for. The high is still there and I recognize it well. I just don't _need_ it like I once did.

Looking back at my high school days, I had a good friend who was into drugs. I got him into EverQuest. I wish he'd gotten me into drugs instead- there are well understood paths out of drug addiction. And that game messed the both of us up.

<comment><USER6> I did both drugs and Everquest in highschool and I have to say I would rather walk through the Qeynos Hills than the other option.

<comment><USER7> There have been some publicized cases about Everquest...

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/addicted-suicide-over- everquest...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/addicted-suicide-over-everquest/)

I remember seeing the Everquest demo trailer video in an Electronic Boutique store and reading about it in PC magazine, I was astounded by the sheer level of depth. Especially the part where you could setup a physical real estate and sell stuff you gathered form the virtual world (I'm not sure if this existed in Everquest, just recall seeing bits of it in a magazine).

<comment><USER5> The accusations against Verant Interactive/Sony Online were that the EverQuest was designed to make you get addicted, play endlessly- that they knew what the consequences of these design decisions were.

An example: often bosses would spawn once every K hours- randomly. So you might have to wait a literal 24 hours in a row without ever seeing the boss you need to kill, and he has a 1 in X chance of dropping the item you actually wanted. There were no 'instance' dungeons- the whole server shared that one room with the boss, so maybe you go there to wait for the boss to spawn, and there's two other groups already waiting.

There is a lot about it that was akin to a slot machine and those people who sit and put money into the machine over and over, all day. The same reward mechanism in the brain was being triggered. And from the perspective of players, that waiting, that fighting bosses, all of that was _work_ that you put in to get the reward. And that feeling of putting in work and achieving something- even something that isn't _real_ \- that was the addiction when it felt like you couldn't ever get that in real life.

Death in the game was a big deal too- you lost experience, lost maybe hours or days or work. You could lose a level! This triggered really complex fear-of- loss psychology, and for people already dealing with psychological issues (that's why they played EQ so much) there were always stories about the _rage_ from dying. Just really unhealthy stuff all around.

I don't personally think it was _designed_ to do this to humans, no truly malicious intent, but it _did_ mess with people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The underlying root cause often is loneliness. Many addictions are just symptoms of loneliness.

<comment><USER9> There is some merit to this. The Rat Park experiment comes to mind: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park)

<comment><USER10> Lots of difficulties replicating Rat Park.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't really care if it fits the definition of mental health disorder or not. What matters is that we recognize self harming addiction arising from digital toxins, optimized to release quick dopamine hits to the user, and help them rehabilitate.

Similar to how some people believe depression is not a mental disorder because it's not "physical" and that they just need to think more "positive" like the non-depressed people, I think any sort of addiction, be it drugs or games needs to be addressed from a medical stand point of view.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hope this doesn't get abused.

Also, maybe a social media disorder is next on the list?

<comment><USER12> Without a doubt. This should have been a far more serious consideration than gaming addiction.

<comment><USER13> I wish I could upvote this more. Compulsion addiction and those companys (FaceBook,Twitter,EA,King, ect) that promote and profit from it are a dangerous threat to society. And obviously destructive to the individuals they target.

<comment><USER7> Let's regulate ads that show unrealistic body images of people about men and women. They already done so in France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think that better acknowledgement of mental health conditions is generally a good thing. There's too much stigma around something being labeled as "mental health", when really I think everyone should view their own mental health as a work in progress, just like how physical health always has some room for improvement.

For mild cases, I think it's fine to say that playing video games obsessively is potentially problematic (and in this case, I think "mental health" is the obvious category for that sort of problem), just like how not getting enough exercise can be problematic for physical health.

When it gets bad enough to the point that people feel out of control of their lives, it absolutely deserves to be called a mental health problem, and it would be incredibly frustrating to seek professional help and hear "your problem isn't real", when it clearly is causing suffering. Acknowledging that you have a mental health problem and seeking professional help is already hard enough.

Whether you use terms like "mental health disorder" or "mental illness" feels like just an issue of semantics, and my understanding is it's often more an indication of severity rather than being something fundamentally different. Just because you acknowledge a thing called "gaming disorder" doesn't mean it needs to be treated with medication or any kind of extensive treatment; you can still apply reason within any individual case about what the right course of action is. But if it's not even in the vocabulary, there's no reasonable way for the medical community to talk about it and understand it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think I would have met the qualifications for this as a 14 year old. My parents were going through a bad divorce and I spent all my time playing StarCraft to cope.

I had all the signs of addiction, I stopped hanging out with friends, I stayed awake all night, ate poorly and gave up in school. More than once I recognized my issue and smashed the CD, even one time glued it to a piece of paper and put it on our bulletin board for my mom to see. Two weeks later I'd be back playing at 3am.

I needed help but I don't think my parents knew what to do.

<comment><USER7> > I spent all my time playing StarCraft to cope

Stereotypes aside, a lot of Korean teenagers (for me, counter-strike and an early 2000 korean MMO called N-age ㅋㅋㅋ) went through this cycle. It was a form of escape, especially as a kid dealing with a stressful environment, I can see why some of us form a special bond with video games.

Another contributing factor is if in that environment, the prospect of earning six digit salary as a pro gamer is very real with poor job prospects in a hyper competitive society. The industry is rife with health issues that is conveniently ignored and unfortunately "mental disorders" are still viewed with the stigma one would attach to institutionalized patients, although its improving thanks to organizations like WHO setting a standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> my personal reaction is 2 fold

WRT

>In one study, he found that when kids stopped being addicted to games, their depression and anxiety got better.

( 1 )

Is this study repeatable? (or does it suffer the fate of many (75%) psychology experiments that cannot be replicated [1]

( 2 )

Instagram, Facebook , -- would those, potentially, addiction-fueled activities, ever become subject to the WHO recommendation ?

[ 1 ] [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study- delive...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study-delivers- bleak-verdict-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results)

<comment><USER17> The replication claim has never been replicated either.

<comment><USER18> they have. repeatability problems have been found in various domains , including medicine and psychology which is of concern here

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, generally speaking, anything a large enough group of people would find themselves too passionately engaged in - can be considered at it's extremes as a disorder - from utilitarian, dominating "usefulness of the body" perspective? Ant world!

Then extreme sports go next? "Base jumping addiction" (deadly!) or let's just go big and make "adrenaline junkie" a serious medical condition? Who in Sci-Fi got this right?

</comment><comment><USER20> Whether gaming addiction is a disease or just a symptom, we need to treat both the cause and the symptoms.

I don't really care how we go about working the medical system to enable this.

</comment><comment><USER21> Video games are obviously addictive. The way you make money off of games is to make them addictive. There is a direct feedback loop between more addictive games and more profits and so the addictiveness of games can be research, refined, and optimized over time.

The WHO is way behind the curve here.

If society treated video games the same as alcohol and drugs they would already be banned for minors. Eventually they probably will be.

<comment><USER22> <sarcasm>We should also ban other dangerously addictive activities, such as fiction books, non-video games, sports, DIY hobbies (e.g. electrical engineering, painting or storywriting), pets, hanging out with other people and lots of other things.</sacrasm>

I'm no expert on the matter, but I think you're completely missing the point. The keyword here is "gaming addiction" not "video games". Please, for the love of all the sanity that's still left out there, don't mistake one with another. There is a lot of things that one suffering from behavioral disorders could get addicted to. Unlike substance addictions (which are complicated matter), games (or overindulging in escapist fiction or having dozens of pets) are more of a symptom than an underlying cause.

If you'd try to ban just about everything that one could get hooked onto, it won't help the person a little bit with their impulse control. It would just make their and everyone else's lives dull and boring, probably leading to much more unhealthy situations (just my guess, though).

<comment><USER21> All I said is that if video games were treated the same as drugs and alcohol they would be banned for minors.

Video games are just as addictive as alcohol, cigarettes, or cocaine and just as destructive in terms of seriously impairing the ability of addicts to function in a socially acceptable way.

If you think books or hobbies are as addictive or destructive as video games that is a matter of opinion, but I think most reasonable people (like mental health professionals) would disagree with you.

Even if any of the things you listed were as addictive or destructive as video games they are all missing one crucial aspect: the ability to optimize and enhance addictive properties over time.

There are billions of dollars being poured into enhancing and refining video games (making them more addictive) every year and the technology to do this (tracking player responses at a minute level and adapting games to maximize profits) can not be applied to any of the other things you listed the same as it can to video games.

<comment><USER22> > All I said is that if video games were treated the same as drugs and alcohol > they would be banned for minors.

Sorry, I had possibly misinterpreted this as you not just comparing but actually suggesting treating video games similarly to alcohol and banning those to minors. My apologies if you didn't mean that.

If you did - I strongly disagree.

> Video games are just as addictive as alcohol, cigarettes

Sorry but this is nonsense. No video game binds with receptors in the brain and cause physical dependence. Please, let's not equate gaming with substance addictions.

> If you think books or hobbies are as addictive or destructive as video games > that is a matter of opinion

There are people who lost their friends, jobs or have other problems in their lives because of their hobbies or obsessions. I knew some hardcore anime otakus who had some personal issues - shall we ban Japanese animation and comics?

But you missed the point, again. Let me reiterate: video games are retreat, not a cause. Banning them won't help the person who can't control their urges a single little bit. You would either leave them empty, concealing the issue, or they'll divert to something else.

Adding games to DSM is a good idea, though. If someone has addiction and it manifests into video gaming addiction, it's easy to measure this. I could be wrong but as I get it, that's the whole point, having a concept of unhealthy obsession - not that games are something undesirable on their own.

I believe you perceive video games as something special only because they're easiest thing available out there, making them the common retreat. That, plus existence of some games that specifically concentrate on abuse of the addictions (see my next point).

> tracking player responses at a minute level and adapting games to maximize > profits

Sorry, but if I got you right - you're talking about some specific niche (or several niches) of video games, generalizing this to the whole industry. You'd probably want to complain about in-game purchases and microtransactions (or whatever else this stuff is called).

Upd: Sorry for edits - I re-read my comment and did some edits to it to better clarify what I've meant. Finished editing now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone have any good books to recommend about gaming and mental health? Or, really, just gaming in general? Perhaps from a philosophical perspective?

</comment><comment><USER24> What about HN/Reddit/whatever F5-ing disorder? :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> yep, and we have football disorder, coding disorder, watching television disorder, 40 hours a week job disorder, dying in poverty disorder, bla bla bla.

</comment><comment><USER26> >The disorder is characterized by "impaired control" with increasing priority given to

Oh please, then I assume every hobby in the world can be considered "hobby- name disorder". If it's something that help the millennium generation to relax and free their mind a few minutes /hours and if the society doesn't find something to come and reach the same level of satisfaction we found the "solution", it's a mental disorder... We really evolved... NOT</comment>


Food Delivery Search Engine GrubHub Raises $20 Million - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/09/exclusive-food-delivery-search-engine-grubhub-raises-20-million/

<comment><USER2> _sigh_

Techcrunch of course being completely ignorant of the world outside of the US seem to have missed JustEat, a European startup in the same space. GrubHub turned over $85 million last year, JustEat does that kind of volume every month.

I understand how Techcrunch might miss smaller startups, but missing one that has close to a billion dollar annual turnover?

<comment><USER3> Is there an equivalent one for the Australian market as well?

I saw first hand how powerful (something like) Grub Hub is when I was in Chicago back in 2008. Would be very useful for all of the Australian slackers, erm, students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Logged in to check the area I live only to find out that no places deliver to me. Given the plethora of places that do, I hope their funding goes a long way towards changing that.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, I hope something better comes along. Grubhub charges restaurants 10-15% commission on order (10% figure from $8.5M revenue on $85M food order, 15% figure from other sources I've heard). There got to be a better way.

<comment><USER2> 10% is about standard in the space, it also works out cheaper than say newspaper ads or leafleting.</comment></comment></comment>


How to build stable systems – An incomplete opinionated guide - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jlouis666/how-to-build-stable-systems-6fe9dcf32fc4#.xqdgltgqf <comment><USER2> This has been posted 14 times thus far, garnering a grand total of _one comment_ besides this one.</comment>


Mitigations are attack surface, too - <AUTHOR> https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/02/mitigations-are-attack-surface-too.html <comment><USER2> The irony of Google security blog giving advice to a problem that the company is responsible for it happening in first place.

Had they placed update requirements as part of the Play Store contract, vendors would be more keen in providing the said updates.

<comment><USER3> The irony is real, but I appreciate P0's transparency here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > On Android, it is normal for vendors to add device-specific code to the > kernel.

[https://i.imgur.com/DnRNrZe.png](https://i.imgur.com/DnRNrZe.png)

Normal for Android : Normal in general :: Madness : Sanity

> This code is a frequent source of security vulnerabilities.

If the first sentence was the shot, that's the chaser.

<comment><USER4> Your snark is very welcome, but do you have any proposal of how do you add support for a new Qualcomm SoC, GPU and it's camera modules without modifying the kernel? Or for their basebands?

Linux still has pretty much no path of adding these in userspace, neither it's interested in a stable ABI.

And no, forcing the only big SoC manufacturer in the world to opensource their drivers isn't really going to work.

<comment><USER5> Why Linux doesn't have a driver framework? That's seems the problem here. It exists in Windows, FreeBSD and probably elsewhere too.

<comment><USER6> To encourage people to either open source their drivers so that they can be maintained inside the kernel tree, or to pay the cost of updating their stuff themselves so that Linux kernel hackers don't have to pay for backwards compatibility.

<comment><USER2> It does wonders for those stuck with AMD cards on their laptops not supported by the open sourced driver.

<comment><USER7> if i understand the discussion correctly user space drivers could not help, right? and sadly, user space drivers in android are fairly limited.

[https://developer.android.com/things/sdk/drivers](https://developer.android.com/things/sdk/drivers)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


ATLAS sees first direct evidence of light-by-light scattering at high energy - <AUTHOR> https://atlas.cern/updates/press-statement/atlas-sees-first-direct-evidence-light-light-scattering-high-energy <comment><USER3> Neat-o. A little bit more info at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two- photon_physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics) . Basically two photons with enough energy to interact via virtual pairs created.

It will be interesting to see the cross-section rates and maybe hopefully some new physics (as the wikipedia page weakly hints).

<comment><USER4> >> Basically two photons with enough energy to interact via virtual pairs created.

Or could it be that a photon bends space-time as though it had mass, and they simply follow the local curvature and it looks like scattering? Just speculating, because for some purposes photons act like a solid particle with their energy equivalent mass traveling at speed c.

<comment><USER5> It is not gravitational. That effect would be far, far too weak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just as a reminder, those photons are high energy ones (Gamma-ray range) so no light sabers, holograms or anything involving visible light I am afraid

<comment><USER7> Electrolasers kind of seem slightly light saber-esque. I'm assuming miniaturisation of them would be tricky though, as i'm assuming ionization with a laser requires a lot of power.

<comment><USER8> I was about to make a comment regarding using UV lasers and ionization - <USER2> decided to take a second to google it, and found this interesting (though short) discussion:

[https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/laser-to-ionize-air- to...](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/laser-to-ionize-air-to-run- current-laser-power-per-foot.795093/)

In short, I think your conclusion is likely correct...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone explain this in easier terms for a layman like myself?

<comment><USER10> Photons carry no charge, so normally they don't interact with each other. However, at high enough energies they do. The explanation given by the best available theory is that there is enough energy that a virtual electron and virtual anti-electron form, and since those have charges, they interact, and from the outside it appears that the photons interacted.

This is totally impossible in the classical view, but is fine in the quantum electrodynamic (QED) view.

<comment><USER11> High energies are not absolutely necessary. Couples of "virtual" particles can be created at any energy, it's just less likely for smaller energies. I think the real problem was the experimental set-up: particle accelerators use electric field to transfer energy to particles and magnetic field to control their trajectory and eventually to cause collisions, but all of this only works with charged particles. And photons carry no charge, as you said! As the article mentions, the observation was finally made possible by accelerating bunches of lead ions, as they carry around a cloud of high energy photons (I suppose due to bremsstrahlung caused by chaotic movements within the bunches).

<comment><USER12> > Couples of "virtual" particles can be created at any energy

doesn't the energy need to be at least the mass of the virtual particle?

<comment><USER13> The vacuum itself has enough energy that there are particle pairs popping into existence and annihilating each other constantly.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The bit about the trigger was interesting. Is that software/firmware? Or is that a hardware trigger they are discussing.

<comment><USER15> I think at the moment they use a level 1 hardware trigger and a level 2 software trigger. ALICE is moving to a pure software trigger.

<comment><USER11> When I last participated to ATLAS, working in the Trigger & Data Acquisition group, ATLAS had 3 levels of trigger: the first was hardware, the others were software. Regarding the first level, software was not an option due to the extremely high bunch-crossing frequency (40 million times per second). The difference between the 2nd and 3rd levels consisted of data availability (region-of-interest only for 2nd, full detector for 3rd) and algorithms permitted (light algorithms for 2nd, full reconstruction and advanced analysis for 3rd). The maximum allowed output were, IIRC, 100 kHz for 1st level, 3 kHz for 2nd level and 100 Hz for 3rd level.

<comment><USER16> They've since scrapped L2, now it's only L1 (HW) and the High Level Trigger (HLT) running on a server farm

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the info. I left ATLAS beginning 2009, many other things evolved, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else here is having a hard time seeing what could be applied usage of light-by-light scattering? (ie new computers? new internet? new telescopes?)

Can someone here give us some insights?

<comment><USER18> Currently, very little. According to the article, you need crazy particle- accelerator-levels of energy to have them happen at all.

However, by studying and understanding such events, we can test and improve our theories of physics, which may lead to breakthroughs in technology we can only dream of.

For example, general relativity would have been considered completely useless knowledge for any practical purpose when it was first formulated in the early 20th century. It only has any measurable impact at extreme velocities and gravities. In the late 20th century, it proved instrumental to creating accurate enough models for measuring the time delay of signals from satellites, creating what we now know as the GPS system.

<comment><USER19> I've heard people make the argument about GR being essential to the GPS system before, but the skeptic in me has doubts. I don't deny that it's useful to have a correction derived from relativity, but is it really as _essential_ as people make it out to be? If we hadn't known about GR when we built the GPS system, wouldn't we have realised there was an unexpected drift in the clocks and found a way to recalibrate them periodically?

<comment><USER20> Yes its essential. Because the satellites are moving at orbital velocity, their frame of time is ever so slightly different than ours. To keep accuracy timewise without special and general relativity would be difficult if not impossible without understanding relativity generally. Could we have done GPS without relativity? Maybe, but we'd have to discover it with the satellites to be able to use it.

A quick note from: (i'm too lazy to do the calculations right now) [http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps....](http://www.astronomy.ohio- state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html)

        If these effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day! The whole system would be utterly worthless for navigation in a very short time.

<comment><USER21> I think I see what he's saying. Those satellites are moving at a fixed velocity. So the time dialation effect on them relative to the ground should be static.

It could reasonably be the case that we just adjusted the clocks on the satellites by .05% or whatever the drift rate is by measuring them against known points until we get it right. Good enough engineering.

Eventually someone would have asked some scientists to explain why it's happening.

<comment><USER20> > I think I see what he's saying. Those satellites are moving at a fixed > velocity. So the time dialation effect on them relative to the ground should > be static.

The issue you have is that the dilation effects aren't static, they're all relative to each satellite and ground observer and are constantly shifting based on the orbits. Basically the premise you have to accept to allow for "just adjust the clocks" is too basic. This is why both general and special relativity come into play in GPS. You might get away with adjusting for a single observer, but not all observers.

Note that we already have the clocks purposefully skewed to account timewise for their orbital speed and still require constant updates. I just don't see that happening through "good enough engineering". If you're a nanosecond off you're off by over 1 kilometer and things get worse from there.

Plausible as a hypothetical gedanken experiment? I suppose, plausible in reality? I'm skeptical that you'd be able to do it. Would be akin to launching a rocket to the moon without understanding how to fly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> post from november [http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/66878](http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/66878)

</comment><comment> awinter-py light seeking light doth light of light beguile

</comment><comment><USER23> One step closer to light sabers.

<comment><USER24> Not sure you'd want some high energy photons scattering on your face after the collision of the light sabers. Except if you want to call it "the photon menace".

<comment><USER23> Sounds just like watching the prequels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One step closer to holograms.

<comment><USER26> Could you explain?

Also, do you not think that current implementations that use eye tracking are not real holograms?

What's to say that holograms similar to those of Star Wars could not be produced by inspecting the environment and automatically determining where people's head and eyes are, e.g. via a combination of technologies similar to the following:

Eye-tracking holographic table requiring 3D glasses: [http://www.euclideonholographics.com/](http://www.euclideonholographics.com/)

3D TV not requiring special glasses for the 3D effect: [http://www.ultra-d.com/](http://www.ultra-d.com/)

And what about things that have been called and accepted as holographs created since the mid-20th century?

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

<comment><USER27> This is closer: [http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131622-holograms-are- finally...](http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131622-holograms-are-finally-here- plasma-lasers-used-to-create-images-in-mid-air)

Star Wars-style holograms implies that I don't need additional equipment or special angles or anything, just a (basically) magical "hologram" projector. As that link shows, it may not be entirely out of the question, but, well... I'm not sure I want to be in the same room as one of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's an interesting implication here for redshift observations and Hubble expansion, insofar as it provides a mechanism for photons to lose energy while in a highly sparse medium, populated largely only by other photons.

I'm keeping my money on expansion and dark matter being hooey brought about by incomplete of incorrect understanding of light.

Only recently there was that rather interesting piece about simulated momentum transfer from photons in media.

It's exciting - we'll potentially be lopping off a huge branch of dead wood from the tree of science, from which new ideas can grow.

<comment><USER29> > I'm keeping my money on expansion and dark matter being hooey brought about > by incomplete of incorrect understanding of light.

That's a very interesting hypothesis. Unfortunately, it's easy to verify that photon-photon scattering doesn't explain the expansion of the universe.

1) photon-photon scattering is elastic, so no energy is lost, and no redshift is occuring

2) if it isn't elastic, the scattering is a random process. So different photons will lose a different amount of energy, which means that measured spectra are going to be blurred.

3) rather than seeing redshift, due to photon-photon scattering, you'd see fog, which gets cloudier and cloudier with distance.

<comment><USER28> Those are all solid points, so I retract - but the momentum paradox bit stands!

I wish I had someone else to chat physics with - isolation leads to screwy notions which can easily be quashed by the right counterpoints.

Edit: a thought. Please (genuinely!) tell me where I'm wrong. As it's elastic, could we not end up with groups of lower energy photons with the same vector as an original high energy photon, which would similarly explain redshift? Doesn't address your point re: fog, however, unless they're universally tightly grouped.

<comment><USER30> It looks like from what we know, 2 high energy (it's much less common with low energy) photons collide and change direction: from what I understand, they don't split into low energy photons. It'd be basically impossible for all the high energy photons to scatter directly away from earth (why would the earth be special?) leaving only low energy ones towards us.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Newly found TrueCrypt flaw allows full system compromise - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/article/2987438/newly-found-truecrypt-flaw-allows-full-system-compromise.html <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone have any opinions on the following questions? (where my opinion is in parentheses)

1) Did the TrueCrypt developer introduce the bugs? (extremely doubtful in my opionion)

2) Is this what the TrueCrypt developer meant when he said "Don't use it; it's not secure"? (also very doubtful IMO)

3) Do these bugs compromise the encryption directly? Obviously the bad guys can install a keylogger, etc., as in a zillion other privilege escalation bugs that afflict Windows. But does it allow bad guys to break the encryption in a powered-off TrueCrypt-encrypted laptop that the bad guys seize, find, or steal? (very doubtful I think)

It'll be interesting to know since when the bugs existed for further insight into questions 1 and 2.

<comment><USER2> VeraCrypt fixes the issues, and lists them as local privilege escalation bugs: [https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Release%20Note...](https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Release%20Notes)

So no, the encryption itself isn't compromised. "It's not secure" specifically referred to potentially unfixed security issues, though.</comment></comment>


India's Surveillance State - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A91idibgT0

<comment><USER2> So far, I have come across government actions against expressing anti- religious, anti-national, iconoclastic sentiments: all thought-crimes. Given how common jingoism is among my own colleagues, all engineers, I'm convinced that the abuse of power will effectively go unchecked for the foreseeable future.</comment>


Simpler life by shining new light on old tools - <AUTHOR> http://btw0.posterous.com/simpler-life-by-shining-new-li

<comment> patrickg-zill The old Mac-based scripting tool / database/ language known as Frontier by UserLand software, could do this 10 years ago. So it is not really a new idea using old tools, more like a better implementation of an old idea.

</comment><comment><USER2> Umm... ok... not sure why this gets voted up though. Not exactly that interesting or news-worthy...

<comment><USER3> Maybe someone reads this article and learn information that makes them more knowledgeable about computers.</comment></comment>


Everyday Life - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyday_life <comment><USER2> I was not expecting to find this gem here:

"People choose what to do with their time based on opinions and ideals formed through the discourse they are exposed to. Much of the dialogue people are subject to comes from the mass media. The media uses language to make an impact on one's everyday life, whether that be as small as helping to decide where to eat or as big as choosing a representative in government."

I would add it is also influenced by one's peers and friends.

</comment><comment><USER2> Its hilarious that the first picture on an article of "Everyday Life" is a dude sleeping like there's no tomorrow!</comment>


Richard Stallman Braved a Winter Storm Last Night to March Against DRM - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/read/we-marched-with-richard-stallman-at-a-drm-protest-last-night-w3-consortium-MIT-joi-ito <comment></comment>


Stop caring about your code - <AUTHOR> https://noreasontopanic.substack.com/p/stop-caring-about-your-code <comment><USER2> After 20+ years writing code, I've learned that you need to be able to move on from the code you've written. I've thrown away so much code. There are features and entire apps that I've had to throw away. And I'm perfectly ok with that. Most of it, I was paid for. Good. We're even. Some I wasn't. That's ok. I learned.</comment>


Why Greplin is my favorite new startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlineaspect.com/2011/04/17/greplin/

<comment><USER2> I would never put all of the keys to the kingdom in one place, which is the only time Greplin becomes useful. Your e-mail inbox is, quite literally, a skeleton key to your entire online identity, and by extension, a great part of your _life_ , and there's no way that I'm handing that over to someone to get GMail searches that finish a fraction of a second faster.

(Seriously, search your inbox for 'password' at some point. You'd be amazed how many plaintext passwords, or good-forever recovery URLs are sitting there. Just the knowledge of what accounts someone has is an absolute _goldmine_ for nefarious people. I sincerely hope the Greplin people have invested significant, meaningful effort into security and have someone who lives and breathes it, because a single exposure would evaporate them overnight.)

</comment><comment><USER3> If they get hacked _one time_ it will haunt them for eternity. It's just like Mint in that regard. I sure hope they're putting in serious effort towards security.

<comment><AUTHOR> i hope so too. they're asking for a lot of trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please can anybody explain to me why gmail search is that horrible? In each greplin article somebody throws shit at it and I can't see what's so bad about it.

I think it's very useful, the only thing I miss is sort options.

<comment><USER5> The main complaint against Gmail search is speed. With a sufficiently large email history, the built-in search becomes unreasonably slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Greplin is cool, but I think it's cool for techies. I doubt my wife would bother to use Greplin.</comment>


Understanding quantum measurement from the solution of dynamical models (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.2138 <comment><AUTHOR> Some high level overviews: phys.org [1] and a detailed answer on physics.stackexchange [2]

[1] [https://phys.org/news/2013-07-physicists-publish-solution- qu...](https://phys.org/news/2013-07-physicists-publish-solution-quantum- problem.html)

[2] [http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/71800](http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/71800)</comment>


When Will the Tech Bubble Burst? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/05/opinion/sunday/when-will-the-tech-bubble-burst.html?src=twr <comment><USER2> Any newspaper article whose headline is a question invariably fails to answer that question. So at the end of this Op-Ed, we have a nice quote about no- handed clocks, but no new information about the tech bubble, if it is indeed a bubble. People have been calling the peak since shortly after the Great Recession. Being pessimistic makes you look realistic and smart. But when the bubble doesn't burst, you still lose money based on an unfounded opinion, and that's just as stupid as groundless optimism.

</comment><comment><USER3> The latest Fed minutes suggest they intend to tighten up the QE balance sheets, and leave interest rates alone as long as interest rates stay below 2%. I think that means there'll be there'll be less money trying to figure out what to do with itself, and funding might get tighter for a bit. Don't know that there's a bubble to burst, but there might be a slowdown over the next couple of years.

<comment><USER4> We currently have dozens of high-valuated tech companies that make losses, surpassed their growth phase and have no hope of ever turning a profit (e.g. Dropbox, Twitter).

This very much sounds like a bubble that will burst to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937910)

</comment><comment><USER6> Only when something new comes along and replaces it.</comment>


Forget 'the Cloud'; 'the Fog' Is Tech's Future  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304908304579566662320279406

<comment><USER2> For everyone slating this article, please try thinking of it from a different perspective (and look beyond the buzzwords). Here's my take.

(paraphrasing) 'In the rush to 'the cloud' people are disovering that there are bottlenecks related to bandwidth to edge devices (phones etc) and this problem will only increase as more and more devices become conencted (cf Interent of everything). However, not all services/products _need_ to constantly push data back and forth to a centralised place. There is enough processing power in many devices such that more processing can happen at the edge so why not build more applications this way? Cisco and IBM see merit in this approach and hope to capture part of a (presumabley nacscent) market by providing some kind of processing ability that is a little nearer the edge of the network, rather than huge datacentres.'

Is that any better?

My view on the article is that until developers can more easily build distributed applications, then we're stuck with the prevailing paradigm of large centralised services. I don't see how anything from Cisco or IBM changes anything other than having a slew of mini-datacentres that essentially do the same thing.

What we really need are the means to create, deploy and maintain software in a more distributed manner. Having all the fancy smart sensors in my home talking to _my_ hub is preferable to having them all talking to their individual silos. At least then, I can excersice some control of what's going on within my network and benefit from e.g. my high-speed wireless vs my much slower upstream bandwidth.

FWIW I'm working on an open source toolstack to make building distributed systems a lot more stratightforward. Essentially, we want to get to a place where everyone can own their own piece of the cloud. Whether that ends up being called the 'fog' or 'dust cloud' or 'motes' is beside the point. You can read an overview at [http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing- nymote/](http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/)

<comment><USER3> "There is enough processing power in many devices such that more processing can happen at the edge so why not build more applications this way?"

... and thus spins the endless wheel of IT. You could find this exact same sentence in any number of trade journals going back every five years to 1970. Just replace "mainframe" with "cloud" and "client server model" with "fog".

See you in another five years...

<comment><USER2> I don't understand what you're getting at. That things go in cycles? Sure, I agree with that. Is there something else?

<comment><USER4> He's talking about a specific cycle in computing where it has moved from centralized processing to decentralized multiple times in the past. For example

-first there were mainframes with glorified type-writes as terminals

-then we had personal computers

-then we had thin clients

-then we had thick clients

-etc

Basically this has happened before, will likely happen again, yet people (or maybe just tech reporters) always seem so surprised when the pendulum swings back the other way

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure anybody is surprised here.

The fact that the pendulum is swinging back the other way is news, though maybe not very exciting news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like most of you, this article caused multiple PR-early warning detectors to fire in my head. It's unfortunate because there is a useful kernel to keep in mind here.

If there's one thing you can bet on in computing, it's that technological trends are a pendulum that swings back and forth over time. The pendulum has been pegged on the "cloud" side for a long time.

One thing I've learned over the years is that the pendulum changes direction pretty much at the precise moment you start thinking it's not going to. I think "the cloud" falls in that category right now. I don't really know what the swing away from cloud computing looks like, but I won't at all be surprised when it shows up.

<comment><USER7> >> but I won't at all be surprised when it shows up.

Then by your own logic, it's still a long way off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The fog? Computing on the computers themselves? Isn't that basically what we've already been doing since... well, literally since computers were invented?

That said, I don't know if there is a snazzy marketing term, but offline- capable apps with proper syncing support is the best solution for most stuff I want to create and use. I have a super computer in my pocket, so yeah it's nice to have snappy stuff done there, but data kept nice and backed up (as well as dispersed across the rest of my devices) using the "cloud".

Calling it "the Fog" is dumb, however.

</comment><comment><USER9>
      > I'm as big a believer in the transformational power of cloud computing
      > as anyone you'll meet. Smartphones, which are constantly seeking and
      > retrieving data, don't make sense without the cloud, and any business
      > that isn't racing to push its data and software into someone else's data
      > center is, in my view, setting itself up for disruption by a competitor
      > who is.

\- A smartphone is useful even without internet.

\- My local restaurant wont get disrupted because it's not using Cloudfront.

At first I though it was a parody (Seriously, "the fog"?), well apparently I wasn't wrong...

<comment><USER2> > _" A smartphone is useful even without internet."_

In principle, I agree but that's not the way things are going. How many apps do you have that have to talk to (someone else's) backend service to be at all useful? For me I can think of Google Maps, Citymapper, Whatsapp and the weather app (just off the top of my head). All these are useless to me without a data connection.

<comment><USER9> Notes taking, GPS, music, to-do lists, calls(!), etc.

To me it's especially the "don't make sense without the cloud" bit that I find egregious.

<comment><USER10> Your notes should use the cloud to persist, or they will disappear when the devices are out of work.

Where did you get music? Scrape from CD?

As for GPS and calls, their infrastructures are also part of the Cloud.

<comment><USER11> GPS is part of the cloud? Seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My word that article triggered my bullshit detector instantly.

Cloud, fog, internet of things, big data, smart, edge computing. Ugh.

<comment><USER13> It is basically an ad for a new Cisco marketing term. "I guess we should go with the Cisco solution because they have that fog."

<comment><USER12> It's a bad marketing term as well. Just makes me think of coughing Victorians...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stopped reading/caring when I read "the fog" a term created by "Marketers at Cisco Systems Inc."

Noting to see here, just more PR fluff.

</comment><comment><USER15> And, of course, anybody dealing with "the fog" needs a "fogbeam"[1]. :-)

All joking aside, this seems like a weird term to try and coin. Isn't it just what people are mostly calling the "hybrid cloud" today?

[1]: [http://www.fogbeam.com](http://www.fogbeam.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> Coming soon, 'the mist'.

<comment><USER17> just trademarked "haze" computing! lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The 'cloud' idea bothered me from the start. But not as much about bandwidth and latency, but a loss of control of private data and that the company and network become single points of failure.

It's about control of my data; I have to give it up to to benefit from a computing service.

Homomorphic encryption is an interesting thought: Allow my neighbors or a computing service to process my data without them able to see it. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)

</comment><comment><USER19> Also: [http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/](http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0080749/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess they got tired of calling it mesh networking

</comment><comment><USER21> The problem is bandwidth? I don't buy it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not utility fog composed of nanobots; I don't care.

</comment><comment><USER23> "That's what you want me to believe, you f __ks! I see through your fog! I don 't talk to robots! I'm going to call Commissioner Duck!"</comment>


The Art of the Pan - <AUTHOR> https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2019/1/10/18176366/bad-reviews-jeff-weiss-a-o-scott-greta-van-fleet-post-malone-bohemian-rhapsody <comment><USER2> >"The secret of the bad review is that you can get a lot of pleasure out of it," A.O. Scott tells me, chatting via phone in late December. "It is a kind of a dopamine rush. First of all, editors—especially editors at The New York Times—love it. They love bad reviews. And they're fun to do because they give you access to a lot of writerly tools that are fun to use. You can be funny. You can be clever. What you're doing is, you're demonstrating your superiority to a thing that you're writing about."

This is my least favorite thing about negative reviews - writers start to really "feel their oats." It almost always goes _way_ too far. Reminds me of the occasions back in my creative writing program when a fellow student would start using "he/she proceeded to..." a bit too liberally in their writing. Calm down and tell the story.

It's also getting a rise from your readers on the misfortune of someone else (in the case of a movie, many hundreds of people), which, as A.O. Scott says, can go straight to the writer's head.

>But "you can get too hooked on that feeling" of writing slam after slam, he warns. "They're definitely more fun. But positive reviews—where you can make a case for something that you really feel enthusiastic about, and still write as well as you can—that's a lot harder, and a lot more valuable."

Agree all the way through, here. Saying "it's bad" is easy, and then you go ahead and play with all the turns of phrase you've been thinking about in the shower every morning. It just feels, I dunno, unnecessary, or maybe even a moment of weakness - as if the new programmer on our team did one bad PR too many and I really just let off on them. Makes me feel good, maybe? But in doing so I've lifted my restraint, abandoned my values, let the floodgates out to the detriment of someone else.

I guess critics will exist no matter what, but it really doesn't jive with my philosophy of "be good to eachother."

<comment><USER3> > I guess critics will exist no matter what, but it really doesn't jive with > my philosophy of "be good to eachother."

I think it can be both - a finer art not mentioned here is the strong negative review that acknowledges what the creator was attempting and maybe includes a silver lining. Showing humanity while criticizing is maybe even more important.

Sometimes negative aspects come from deeper macro level societal problems though, manifesting at the individual level of the creator who then puts them into a piece of mass media thus fueling the macro problem. Criticism focusing on this is incredibly important and IMO is in exact support of "be good to eachother".

Again though, that doesn't mean hang the creator out to try and show your own writing chops doing it. It means show your ability to deeply understand the context and the piece by drilling down into the nuance of what made it bad, and maybe even adding some suggestions of how to improve it for future pieces of the same type or genre or even the exact piece.</comment></comment>


The Architecture of Evil: Dystopian Megacorps in Speculative Fiction Films - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/article/architecture-evil-dystopian-megacorps-speculative-fiction/ <comment><USER2> Back in my days of architecture school we threw around terms such as "human scale" and "typology" in classes.

The article demonstrates well the idea of "typology" \- how we came to associate Brutalist structures with FBI-style surveillance states. Did you know we also associate stuff like Greek Columns with government in general?

The "human scale" term refers to how a building's shape and texture should be broken up to break up any notion of the building being looming/threatening to tiny humans by comparison - kind of like how a person would prefer wearing different colors as opposed to a monocolor jumpsuit.

Almost all "evil" architecture fails human scale design on purpose by making oversized elements or using the same material everywhere - the idea is to make the organization seem greater than the individual or even society, and make it seem impossible to challenge. This is also seen in architecture built or designed by fascist Germany and Italy back in the 1930s, for exactly this reason. Look up [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_architecture) if you want more.

<comment><USER3> That's funny, in the context of American buildings, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Greek columns in Georgian mansions. Only after that do I think of perhaps courthouses.

Here in Boston, the brutalist monstrosity that is our city hall has its Soviet oppressiveness enhanced by the pillbox-laden concrete wasteland that surrounds it. It really is a monument to government power.

<comment><USER4> Boston City Hall really is an epic attempt to outdo Soviet era totalitarian architecture. There is at least some effort to do something with the windswept brickyard that surrounds it. [1] I haven't followed these plans all that closely but, to the degree the surrounding space can be made more useful/inviting, it would help a lot.

I'd also note that the brutalist addition to the Boston Public Library always struck me as rather a desecration of the original Beaux Arts structure but the recent remodel and cleanup actually created a rather open and airy space. I still don't love the architecture but it's a big improvement.

[1] [https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/boston-city-hall-plaza- rede...](https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/boston-city-hall-plaza-redesign- designers-selected)

<comment><USER5> Pure brutalism is bad enough, but in Boston (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the US) we just _had_ to muck it up with fake-traditional touches like brick facing that make it look so much worse. IMO the worst part of City Hall isn't the concrete honeycomb superstructure, it's the brick-clad base. Brick is good when its appearance makes structural sense: arches or lintels over openings, proper sills, a combination of headers and stretchers, etc. However it's always monolithic, and the only thing worse than monolithic concrete is monolithic brick. That's why I'll take the BPL extension over city hall any day--at least BPL is purely brutalist and makes no apologies for it.

<comment><USER6> _Pure brutalism is bad enough_

I think, just for the building itself, that the Houston Public Library serves its function very well. It is an excellent building for its purpose, and I rather like going there. The courtyard outside, though, is a stellar example of how US culture has completely forgotten how to create public spaces of value. (Why is it that Houston, of all places, seems to be challenged to remember why _shade_ is useful!)

<comment><USER4> One of the things that seems to happen is that there's often a sufficient aversion to businesses making money in public spaces that you end up with barren expanses rather than cafes, shops/stalls, etc. In Boston the difference between the utilization of City Hall Plaza and Quincy Market/Fanueil Hall is instructive.

That's not to say that public parks need to be crammed full of commerce but people often need some reason beyond "open space" to go into an area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honest statement: maybe its because I'm a child of the 80s, and so grew up around media with strong dystopian/cyberpunk styling...

But I've always wondered why more tech companies and corporations don't embrace this aesthetic. The buildings are so distinctive and striking that it would result in very strong branding. And while motivated by questionable ethics, we do associate megacorps in fiction with bleeding edge technology and incredible capabilities.

It is not as if anyone takes the Google happy colors and 'don't be evil' motto as actually indicative of ethical behavior. Conversely, I don't think an insidious aesthetic would imply 'we are doing bad things' as much as a fun nod to sci-fi high tech.

<comment><USER8> My dad, who was a historian and business professor, told me once that you could trace the start of the decline of a company when they completed their showcase palace headquarters. The problem is they became focused on the edifice rather than their business.

<comment><USER4> I wonder how much of that is some sort of reversion to the mean though. I.e. you often don't build a showcase palace headquarters until you've clearly been a great success. Not always of course. Executive ego can't be discounted in some cases.

However, to the degree a showcase gets built when a company is riding high and growing, it's not unusual that looking out 5 or 10 years, that company won't be doing so well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article really nails this topic. Architecture and film theory are two of my favorite topics, because visual symbolism is so integral in both. Both disciplines have a lot of domain-specific language that it's really easy to write an article that is inaccessible to most readers. Most articles by 99% invisible really hit the sweet spot where they are entertaining and accessible introduction to the subject, but are still interesting to people familiar with the topics being reported. This article could easily have been "Five real buildings that housed Evil Megacorporations, #4 will surprise you!"

Speaking of dystopian megacorps and their architecture, I bought _Invisible Inc_ during the Klei sale on Steam. I'd highly recommend it. It's a turn-based stealth rougelike based based in a cyber-punk world run by dystopian megacorporations. You control a team of technologically augmented spies who infiltrate these megacorps. The levels are all procedurally generated, which works really well for the inhuman sameness that corporations have in science fiction.

The gameplay is well thought out, and the story mode is well written. It deconstructs a lot of themes typically present in cyberpunk, but the deconstruction doesn't upstage the gameplay (I feel like game designers sometimes try to be 'clever' when deconstructing tropes, to the detriment of fun.) The story mode isn't very long, but it has good replayability due to the roguelike nature and the procedurally generated levels. There is also an endless mode, which adds a lot of replay value, and is something that I miss in other roguelikes, such as FTL.

I played it on Linux, and it runs well. It's $20 normally. I'd say it's a must-buy at $10 or below if you enjoy roguelikes or stealth games. I'd say take a pass if you don't enjoy turn based games or cyberpunk. You can probably get a pretty good idea of the gameplay from watching a video on youtube, but I'd definitely try to avoid spoilers.

<comment><USER10> super-into isometric graphics. Invisible Inc does it very well.

Tokyo 42, a supposed spiritual successor of Syndicate, is another new game with a terrific architectural style.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the recommendation. The art direction on that reminds me a lot of absolute drift. I like how many games are getting back to isometric but using updated graphics, rather than going for the full-retro style. It seems like it makes it easier for developers to achieve their vision, and I feel like isometric games tend to flow better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.reddit.com/r/evilbuildings](https://www.reddit.com/r/evilbuildings)

<comment><USER12> [http://www.sosbrutalism.org/](http://www.sosbrutalism.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love this article.

For those of you who enjoy a heaping meal of architectural commentary sprinkled with a generous portion of sarcasm, check out the author's blog [1]. Literally LOL every time I get a chance to read it.

[1] [http://www.mcmansionhell.com/](http://www.mcmansionhell.com/)

<comment><USER14> I kind of hate that blog. They make fun of things for basically being slightly tacky. A lot of the criticism feels like it's just 'Stop Having Fun' Guy. (The heating bills for mcmansions are another story, but that's unrelated to the criticism.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The English mini-serie 'Residue' has plenty of dark architectural scenes. I didn't find the plot very interesting, but if you want unending shots of grey oppressing buildings from UK and (mostly? dunno) Hong-Kong, you shall be satisfied.

</comment><comment><USER16> This was good, worth the quick read. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the Sydney office building where The Matrix was filmed, and how its suggestively spinal form echoes themes in the movie.

</comment><comment><USER17> Given the discussion at the end about people working in factories and wanting to come "home" to simpler places, I wonder how the author would interpret the trend in modernism in apartments and condos. The Millennium tower in San Francisco, or a dozens of 3 - 4 story tall "mixed use" type facilities where there are apartments above and shops at ground level.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you want examples of architecture like this, try reddit.com/r/evilbuildings</comment>


Ask HN: Do entry-level jobs w/o experience even exist in startups? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering, from my past experiences job hunting I know entry-level positions that don't need any prior experience are extremely hard to come by outside of programming jobs (say biz dev or bio research). Is the same true in the start-up job market? <comment><USER2> Entry-level jobs are cheap and the company I am working in used these profiles almost exclusively in its pre-funding time.

Took a few months to a year but now the guys are churning out good code... and groaning about their low salary. Time we get that funding round completed!

How it works is that you take an entry-level job for a cheap salary in a field you like. One or two years later, you change job, as you now are experiences. For a weird reason, the industry does not manage to raise salaries. You have to switch jobs for that.

So you may hear people (probably including your parents) saying that accepting a too low salary will put you in a situation of perpetual underpaid worker. That used to be true for people who planned to work at the same company all their lives. It is not true in the startup world anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, startups are limited capital (or worse reported to board), high pressure, time crunch, quality focus, full throttle environments. Little money and time is spent by leadership for entry level work in them, imho.

Betterms to do your own startup with some college kids or tech friends, and pick/do your dream role with the appropriate tools. Best cas the biz gets rich, worst you get applicable experience and aren't entry lvl any more.

</comment><comment><USER4> My startup hired entry-level people for account management. Biz dev involves a lot of high-touch activity which no company will be comfortable handing over to entry-level employees. But account management jobs can be a good path to biz dev positions.

</comment><comment><USER5> My old company, a fintech startup, hired our business analyst intern for a full time position. SQL and Excel were the primary requirements, and programming was a nice-to-have.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, for perhaps manual QA testing and data entry positions. I know because when my company was a startup we hired people fresh out of university.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense considering the nature of QA testing and data entry. For other roles, the outlook seems bleak. Entry-level jobs are a crucial first step on the path to a professional career and most companies are cutting those jobs out in the efforts of staying "lean". Quite a problem.</comment></comment>


Adblock Plus finds the end-game of its business model: Selling ads - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/adblock-plus-starts-selling-ads-but-only-acceptable-ones/ <comment><USER2> "My pill is better than theirs", he said, after a demagogic campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt.</comment>


Strange Facts About the Northern Lights - <AUTHOR> http://www.cosmosup.com/strange-facts-about-the-northern-lights

<comment><USER2> Whenever I hear Northern Lights, the first thing I think of is the cannabis strain.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most likely cause of fever? - <AUTHOR> That is, if a fever is observed, what is the most likely explanation (in the US), as of today? I'm having a lot of trouble finding data on how likely it is to be COVID-19 vs something else. <comment><USER2> The most likely cause is some kind of infection. Why on earth would you ask here instead of looking up reputable medical sources, or consulting a doctor? No one can diagnose over HN.

[https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases- conditions/fever/symptom...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases- conditions/fever/symptoms-causes/syc-20352759)

Probabilities of getting any specific infection like COVID are population rates. They don't predict individual cases.</comment>


Show HN: Finally out - Calendar for the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/calendar/id415181149?mt=12&ls=1&finally=out

<comment><AUTHOR> I had originally submitted this app last week, all excited to see the sales, but then something horrible occurred: the app crashed on startup.

We stayed up until 5 AM and figured out the problem: the app was checking for our company's signature, but Apple re-signed it with its own certificate before releasing on the app store. Needless to say, it was pretty painful:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2283064>

The app was racking up 1 star reviews, so we pulled the app's availability on the store. I submitted the fix the very next day and emailed appreview @ apple with an URGENT subject line, asking them to please push this through quickly because the version that was up there was not helping anyone.

The fixed version just came out. So we're back at the same point we were last week. Except, are we? Back then, this app was at the top of the Productivity section within an hour. Now it's been a week. We'll see what happens.

So I guess this can be an example of how our startup handled a major setback... I'll keep you posted!</comment>


Show HN: Shelfjoy – tinder to find your book love - <AUTHOR> http://www.shelfjoy.com/ <comment><USER2> how is this tinder to find your book? No screenshot or gif before I give you my number?</comment>


Creating and Verifying Hashes in PHP 5.5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.jcurcio.com/posts/creating-and-verifying-hashes-in-php-the-easy-way/

<comment><USER2> This is a great addition to PHP. Before, most new devs would either skip hashing passwords altogether or use `md5()` or `sha1()`. So you'd end up with databases with passwords in plaintext or easily cracked. Bcrypt frameworks for PHP were too confusing for beginners. If you were lucky you were using a framework that took care of hashing and salting passwords and if you were extremely lucky you had bcrypt available on your PHP install and that framework used it.

But that didn't always happen. There do exist experienced PHP devs who would do password storage the right way but PHP up until now neither made it easy nor encourage these practices as they relate to passwords. Now I hope word gets out about this and people stop using md5() thinking their passwords are safe. Not that md5 is necessarily bad, but most people don't realize there are better tools for maintaining secure passwords.

Also, this reminds me a little bit of `has_secure_password` method in Rails minus some of the automation that comes with it.

<comment><USER3> > There do exist experienced PHP devs who would do password storage the right > way but PHP up until now neither made it easy nor encourage these practices > as they relate to passwords.

As much as I welcome these features, I don't think that's true. PHP has made it extremely easy to use the core operating system's hashing features.

[http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.crypt.php](http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.crypt.php)

And after 5.3, even if for whatever reason your operating system is lacking, they were built in for convenience.

<comment><USER4> crypt() is not extremely easy to use. Actually, it's fairly hard and easy to get wrong. The two things that people usually get wrong is a) salt generation and b) fixed-time comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > 'salt' => password_hash("MySalt",PASSWORD_BCRYPT)]

This is really, really dumb and pointless. In fact it makes absolutely no sense, it tells password_hash to use a bcrypted "MySalt" as a salt.

Not only is there no reason to explicitly provide a salt _unless_ you already have bcrypted passwords in a non-standard format, (in which case you'd pass the existing $salt directly, you wouldn't bcrypt it) this is an inane way to generate one.

If you want to generate your salt by hand, don't do it. If you really, really, really want to, use mcrypt_create_iv.

<comment><USER2> Adding that salt is optional. I'm pretty sure the author just added it to the post so people know it exists.

I don't think it's dumb and pointless at all, really. Generally you wouldn't generate a salt yourself if you're using bcrypt however I'm sure there would be cases where it would be needed or even preferred for some reason. I would advocate for flexibility and education rather than rigidity and simplicity. That is to say, rather than make the function useless to those who'd need their own salt I think it's a better idea to allow these options while making sure developers know that they should only be used in certain situations. A function like this isn't bad because it can be misused.

<comment><USER5> > Adding that salt is optional. I'm pretty sure the author just added it to > the post so people know it exists.

I have nothing against adding a salt manually to show how it works, I have things against adding stupid salts.

> I don't think it's dumb and pointless at all, really.

You're missing the criticism. The problem isn't the ability to inject a salt (it is useful e.g. when the (cost, salt, hash) triple is in a format other than MCF), it is the way the salt is obtained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's also a library for PHP >= 5.3.7 that provides the same API if PHP 5.5 isn't an option yet.

[https://github.com/ircmaxell/password_compat](https://github.com/ircmaxell/password_compat)

Written by Anthony Ferrara, the same guy behind the `password_*` API in PHP 5.5

<comment><USER7> There's also PHPass from OpenWall:

[http://www.openwall.com/phpass/](http://www.openwall.com/phpass/)

<comment><USER8> If you use PHPass, remember to check your hashes to make sure they're actually hashed with bcrypt. PHPass falls back to a less secure algorithm if bcrypt is not available in your PHP version. Most of the CMS's that claim to use PHPass actually use the "portable" option, which is based on MD5, because they want to remain compatible with PHP versions lower than 5.3 (the first version that is guaranteed to support bcrypt).

<comment><USER6> > Most of the CMS's that claim to use PHPass actually use the "portable" > option

This is true for WordPress, which uses PHPass. You have to replace `wp_hash_password` to get WP to use bcrypt: [http://wptip.me/wordpress- bcrypt](http://wptip.me/wordpress-bcrypt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are using a PHP < 5.5, use this library: [https://github.com/ircmaxell/password_compat](https://github.com/ircmaxell/password_compat)

</comment><comment><USER10> If the password hashing APIs asks developers to generate a salt on their own it's neither easy nor safe.

I've worked on password hashing recently, and I think the best interfaces should take only a password, and return a hash. Modern password hashing algorithms, e.g., bcrypt, scrypt, etc., usually also need a set of local parameters. The API should hide them as well, and expose only a set of interfaces with safe and sound preconfigured parameters, which in turn determine how much CPU time and memory space will be used. One disadvantage of this approach is that it exposes the local parameters, hence make it a little bit easier for attackers.

This is exactly how crypto primitives have been designed. If the designers of AES ever let people choose the key size, sooner or later some people would shoot themselves in the foot, and set the key size to 1-bit. If you think this is an extreme example, it actually has happened, not in some obscure API that nobody uses, but in the very XMLDsig standard published by W3C [1].

Regarding password hashing standards, I found many misuses of libscrypt that would make it extremely easy to recover passwords. But I'll save the details for another blog post or something.

[1] [http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/07/hmac_truncation_in_xml_signatu....](http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/07/hmac_truncation_in_xml_signatu.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is an awesome improvement. I agree with BPatrianakos that hashing has not been easy enough for the average PHP dev - we hear that a lot.

As another option, you can also just not build any password infrastructure. We do all the hashing and authorization as a secure service and there are PHP devs of all levels using it... [http://www.stormpath.com/docs/php/quickstart](http://www.stormpath.com/docs/php/quickstart)

</comment><comment><USER12> Just noting if you're new to this you don't have to add a salt, by default password_hash with bcrypt will add a random one to each password.

<comment><USER13> Assuming the RNG isn't duff, which PHP has stumbled on a few times in the past, with session keys and such.

<comment><USER14> Check it out for yourself. Here's the random generating parts, pulled out for you: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14673005/how-does-phps- pa...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14673005/how-does-phps-password- hash-generate-the-salt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone explain to me what the "cost" option is?

<comment><USER16> Increasing cost by 1 doubles the time needed to create a hash.

A simple benchmark with results: [http://pastebin.com/NiqKEAVm](http://pastebin.com/NiqKEAVm)

</comment></comment><comment> workhere-io It certainly makes handling passwords easier. Another option, though, would be to use Persona, in which case you don't store passwords at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for easily explaining this for everyone.</comment>


Startup ideas for developing countries - <AUTHOR> http://www.brightjourney.com/q/tried-tested-startup-ideas-done-developing-countries

<comment><USER2> I live in Africa, and I've been all over the globe, and I can that, unfortunately, the world is becoming smaller and smaller, and there's no such place as a Developing Country or without competition, especially when it comes to technology. And with the fact that RocketInternet and some other giants are replicating all the ol' web business models you could think of (classifieds, real estate, e-commerce,...), there's no little chance that you could succeed on the short term without relying on innovation + thinking Global.</comment>


Tool for liberating data tables locked inside PDF files - <AUTHOR> http://tabula.technology/ <comment><USER2> MIT license</comment>


How Limitations Improve Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/08/how-limitations-improve-design/ <comment><USER2> Limits make everything more fun!

I have this thing I call the Nintendo Theory(tm). Nintendo was great at producing games that were simple, responsive, and had endearing characters. Companies like Microsoft and Sony pursue complex graphics and complex controls and they make amazing feats of technical engineering but if you ask people what games they absolutely love, a lot of them will say they love the old Nintendo stuff.

I try to apply Nintendo's approach when I'm thinking about and designing the user interface for my app.

I suck at Mario, by the way, but I love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! Nice theory man - I love how limits pushes are creativity beyond from where it has ever been before.

Lol, I love it and suck at it too :P</comment></comment>


Is 2011 like 1994 for Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and the Web? - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2010/04/11/is-2011-like-1994-for-apple-twitter-facebook-and-the-web/

<comment><USER3> I must agree, Apple failed in the 90s because they did not reach a critical mass of developers.

Today they have more developers then they would need.

Still their tactics has one weak point; They must deliver the best product in the market. In the moment there is a better Product, with a better OS and it is open, the users and developers would abandon the "Apple Empire".

The loyalty and "fanboyism" for the Apple brand is not for Apple itself, but for the high quality products they consistently produce.

<comment><USER4> I thought Apple failed in the 90s because they tried to go mainstream.

<comment><USER5> Everybody above in this thread of "Why Apple failed in the 90s" -- you're focusing on tiny facets of why they had so many problems, so let me tell you the true story.

As someone who was there, covering the whole Apple saga, going to the tradeshows, etc., etc., I can tell you what the problems really were.

1\. Quixotic, inconstant leadership that didn't understand technology and also didn't have a vision. Nobody has run Apple better than Jobs 1.0, much less Jobs 2.0.

2\. That lead to a lack of focus in the product arena, trying this, trying that, producing printers, scanners, way too many types of Mac, home gaming devices without a chance, trying to do everything at once. With so many failures, and products killed or abandoned left or right, the company had lots its spirit and so did the employees.

It's especially amazing to look at the Apple Design book, which has many photos of gorgeous and amazing prototypes from the design group made during the 90s, which of course never made it to the light of day. Except the TAM.

3\. When all that scrabbling failed, the (silly) leadership decided that the reason Microsoft won was OS licensing. That may be strictly true, but Apple had always been built as a hardware company, and the attempted head transplant nearly killed it. (That's why the first thing Jobs did when he was back was to call in the Power Computing, etc., licensing deals.)

4\. Entré doomed retail deals with sales channels that were more like shit channels. Seriously? BestBuy in the 90s? Bad idea.

5\. And, of course, they had crap-all for a future OS roadmap. Copland was doomed and years late.

All of the above comes down to ignorant leadership. Scully, Amelio, they were all unfocused and impotent at best and deeply incompetent at worst.

When NeXT bought Apple for -$400 mil, and Jobs came back, grown up a lot as a human being, it was like when a missing parent shows up after a kid has been living on his own, building forts, skipping school, making a mess and eating ice cream all day.

At first, it seems terrible, but secretly the kid is relieved and glad that some discipline, somebody who knows better, has finally returned.

Jobs cleaned house. He tore down the forts and restored the living areas to a semblance of adulthood (bye bye Power Computing). He took away the ice cream (bye bye Newton, sniff). He made the employees go back to school… he's a demanding and exacting boss, with a clear vision, and not afraid to tell people when their work is not measuring up.

And Apple grew up.

End of story.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>

Did Apple lose developers to Windows? Extremely few. The people who were with Apple in the 90s were almost exclusively hardcore fans.

Did Apple not have as much software as Windows? Yes, but it was of higher quality; Windows has never had a shareware community (so willing to pay) like Macs have always had. There was a tight-knitness there that existed nowhere else.

Did they lose distribution of physical software packages in stores? Yes. See their retail woes above. This was a symptom, not a cause. Any retailer would be pissed that they were expected to carry 15 models of Mac that were practically indistinguishable from each other. A huge amount of Mac software was high-quality, professional shareware, downloaded or copied on floppy disks at Mac user groups.

Was trying to 'go mainstream' the problem? No, it was a tiny facet of the core issue -- worthless leadership.

\-----

I also don't get why anyone would say "Why Apple failed in the 1990s" -- since it's still around, and has boatloads of cash, the core principles are still the same as they ever were. They were just buried for a while under fear.

Apple was never truly near death. You can't trust the news media and internet gossip, since they've been predicting Apple's death for 20 years.

Apple has always kept boatloads of cash on hand and its IP was extremely valuable. Throughout much of the 90s, its cash reserves were higher than its stock price * outstanding issues.

Apple could have chugged on for another decade with no problem.

<comment><USER3> This is what I love about Hacker News. I think it is one of those rare few places where one voices his/her opinion and gets back an amazing, intelligent, well thought through response. As I have not been in the business in the 1990s I can only rely on records of people who saw it first hand. I enjoyed your post so much, because it is a very thorough explanation for an issue I heard only very onesided opinions so far.

<comment><USER5> Glad you liked it.

What I strongly dislike about HN is how such a high percentage of commentors feel that, because they are smart in a given topic, they can hold forth on any topic.

I'm tired of seeing people get the facts so wrong about Apple, Apple's history, the legality or precendents for 3.3.1, etc., etc., etc.

Not because I care. The truth doesn't care, it just goes on being true. But because it's a bunch of people who have no clue, arguing with other people who also have no clue. It's like a contest for who can make up the most shit.

There are tons of books that detail Apple's history. If you want to learn about Apple, read Accidental Empires, Apple Confidential 2.0, West of Eden, Insanely Great: Life and Times. There's the book Wozniak co-wrote, taht told his side of the story, and there are several books that focus on Jobs.

Gil Amelio even wrote a whine-ography called Firing Line. Sculley wrote one called, if you can believe it or not, Odyssey.

Apple didn't happen in Ancient Mesopotamia, it happened in the 1970s. There is massive amounts of documentation. There's absolutely no excuse to debating it in ignorance.

And there's tons to gain from studying Apple, because it's got a fascinating history and had an unbelievably enormous impact on what the tech world looks like today.

There are plenty of people on HN making the same stupid mistakes that nearly "killed" Apple as a successful company (regardless of how much cash they had).

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." - <USER2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe the world is just too big for only one platform.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why does he write "baaaahhhhssstttaaaarrrrdddddssss" when he means to write "bastards" ?! Reads very silly to me. Is he trying to be cute? Or trying to get around content-blocking systems? (One would think he could just write "batsards")

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the analogy between the 2010 Time iPad app (and similar worse-than-the- web publisher-specific apps) and 1994's Pointcast: similarly pretty but equally doomed.

<comment><USER9> Maybe, maybe not. If anything, I think that the current interest in these sorts of apps is because they can cache content. The network is not pervasive yet, thus using a web browser to view all of it is impractical.

When you can reliably browse the web at broadband speeds in a car going through Bumfuck, Appalachia, the web will emerge triumphant again.

<comment><USER10> More important than Bumfuck, Appalachia is Thirty Feet Below The Sidewalk On the Train, Big City.

<comment><USER11> Providing 3G in the subway does not appear to be a problem in cities like Tokyo and Helsinki. Big City, USA will figure it out soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> More like 1775 malcognition.com</comment>


NASA Claims Supersonic Breakthrough For Biz Jets - <AUTHOR> http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=busav&id=news/avd/2012/04/02/08.xml&headline=NASA%20Claims%20Supersonic%20Breakthrough%20For%20Biz%20Jets

<comment><USER2> If a big proportion of business-travel-miles are flown over oceans (which seems reasonable between the most common routes like New York-London, SF- Tokyo, SF-HK...), would it not be cost and time efficient to use low-drag but noisy planes and just hit the speed of sound over the ocean? Flying .9 Mach over the land and 1.5 (or whatever was reasonable) would still save a lot of time and wouldn't disturb anyone.

<comment><USER3> And that's what they were doing before the demise of the Concorde.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't editorialize the headline. The article is much more nuanced than the headline suggests and it belittles an amazing achievement.

<comment><USER5> Agree with your analysis, but OP used the original title from Aviation Week.

<comment><USER6> It's been edited; the original submission was "The end of the sonic boom is in sight". Though actually that doesn't seem that inaccurate; the "supersonic breakthrough" discussed in the article is precisely the effective reduction of sonic booms.

(Incidentally, Twitter is a good source for finding what titles were before they were edited. In this case I found it at <https://twitter.com/#!/newsyc20/status/187650762111844353>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps we'll officially acknowledge the existence of the Aurora :-).

There has been great progress in the open literature about developing super- sonic craft which mitigate and possibly eliminate the 'boom' effects. The MIT paper [1] was worth a read as well.

[1] [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/supersonic- biplane-0319.h...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/supersonic- biplane-0319.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> At 70PNLdB, I doubt anyone in their car could hear it. In fact pretty much only rural quiet areas will hear it. Though I'm sure there's going to be some "concerned citizens" that claim that the sonic booms are causing their children migraines, or something similar.

Still, living at one end of Canada and having friends at the other end, I'm excited for the possibility quiet overland supersonic flight.

<comment><USER9> _At 70PNLdB, I doubt anyone in their car could hear it. In fact pretty much only rural quiet areas will hear it._

70 PNL dB is fairly loud, it will be very noticeable in urban areas and _extremely_ disruptive in rural areas. 65 dB Ldn is the target for normal aircraft and most experts agree that limit is way too high.

The research represents a significant decrease in noise from supersonic aircraft, but we're a long way from "quiet."

<comment><USER8> Got any sources for that? I'm interested in reading that research.

Couple anecdotes: I work in a semi rural neighborhood that's 2km from a regional airport (a bit off to the side of the approach path). I work right next to a window and haven't once heard an airplane go by. Now, this might be due to our shielded glass and white noise generators in the ceiling, but that's not bad.

Second anecdote, there was an airport downtown on the water that was re- opening with an airline running Bombardier Q400s (Porter Airlines at Billy Bishop). There was a group of protesters that were claiming that the noise would ruin the quiet of a nearby spit. So on the launch day, before the sun rose, they gathered at the spit to protest. Unfortunately for them, they missed the first flight as their talking had drowned it out.

Maybe it's just because I lived next to the railroad tracks for 20 years, but I say, bring on the jets.

<comment><USER9> _Got any sources for that? I'm interested in reading that research._

Nothing specific off hand, I used to work for a firm that did aviation noise analysis and this was something I heard a lot from colleagues at the firm and other firms. A starting point might be a couple of presentations from that firm that don't discuss the appropriatness of 65 Ldn directly, but discuss how that criterion is not always adequate:

<http://www.hmmh.com/cmsdocuments/UCD_Mar07_Eagan.pdf>

[http://www.hmmh.com/cmsdocuments/DNL_History_Eagan_FAA_NER20...](http://www.hmmh.com/cmsdocuments/DNL_History_Eagan_FAA_NER2010.pdf)

<http://www.hmmh.com/cmsdocuments/Eagan_Beyond_DNL65.pdf>

 _I work in a semi rural neighborhood that's 2km from a regional airport (a bit off to the side of the approach path)._

Approaches generally speaking tend to be much quieter than departures. What airport? Depending on a bunch of factors (noise abatement procedures, prevailing winds, approach tracks, fleet mix, etc) it's entirely possible it might not be loud where you are, vs another location. It's also possible that you're less sensitive to the noise because that you are working rather than trying to sleep (and also due to possible sound insulation measures as indicated).

 _Second anecdote, there was an airport downtown on the water [..] So on the launch day, before the sun rose,_

Key word being "water"and "before the sun rose" - depending on temperature gradients (which tend to occur near sunrise and sunset) and wind direction sound propagation over water can have very unusual effects. In particular, if air temperatures high up in the atmosphere are cooler than air temperatures just above the water, sound waves can "bend" upwards to that folks on the ground will experience lower SPL's compared to what they might hear when the air temperature is more homogeneous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I assume the reduction in sonic boom is a result of the shape of the aircraft. Does anyone have any ideas on what these new shapes could look like? Links?

<comment><USER11> Maybe these? [http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/07/aerospace-giants- design...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/07/aerospace-giants-design- supersonic-jets-with-a-silent-boom/)

This has a small image of a test vehicle: <http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/sonic_booms.html>

<comment><USER10> I really want planes to look like the ones in the Wired article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The jets are aimed to become available around 2025.

On a some what unrelated note, does anyone here know what the evolution of commercial planes is in terms of fuel sources?

Sources i've seen put non-traditional peak oil at 2030, so it would seem that by the time this technology is developed the fuel could be prohibitively expensive. Will alternative energies provide enough power for super sonic flight?

<comment><USER13> There isn't any difference between plane fuel sources vs cars or power plants.

In other words there is no change you can make to the plane. The only change is to the fuel source and that applies to everything, not just planes.

And don't try to predict peak oil - every single prediction ever made of it has been wrong. And not just a little bit wrong, wildly incorrect.

Every time we seem to run out of oil or natural gas we find more - known oil reserves have never been higher.

<comment><USER14> There's a huge difference between planes and these others. Power plants can run on a huge variety of other sources, like wind, solar, hydro, or nuclear. Cars can fairly reasonably run on electricity. Airliners as we know them must use some kind of high-density liquid fuel.

<comment><USER15> It sounds like ars was trying to suggest that the fuel we currently use is very similar to that aircraft use (ie. if you can synthesize oil you kill two birds with one stone)

The cetane number and the flash point is a little different, but to simplify, diesel is Jet-A with additives, mainly for lubrication. You can put jet fuel in a diesel truck and it'll work fine, the military often mixes it in to avoid two separate fuel supplies. The same thing can be done with piston aircraft (100LL vs auto gas)

Also, I can only imagine the use of a biomass mix will increase. Last year the USAF was saying it was roughly 10x the cost, but that's dropping with production scale while oil obviously is only going up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _it is possible to design configurations that combine low sonic boom with > low cruise drag, characteristics once thought to be mutually exclusive_

Why mutually exclusive? (just curious) What was the justification previously offered?

<comment><USER17> One possibility is that static analysis for supersonic waveforms is a whole lot easier if you have planar shock fronts (i.e. the shock waves coming off the airframe make simple polygonal shapes). Back when this was done with pencil and paper it was really the only option short of building and testing real objects, so if you wanted to do any sort of optimization you had to do it with airframes that produced big planar shocks.

But those big, single shock waves are, of course, perceived by the listener as a "boom".

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Boom is proportional to weight, and a small supersonic business is likely to meet that level"

Really? I would expect it to be relaated to size and shape.

<comment><USER19> Well, it's proportional to volume of displaced air, which should scale more or less linearly with the empty weight of an airplane.</comment></comment>