How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://documents.trendmicro.com/assets/white_papers/wp-fake-news-machine-how-propagandists-abuse-the-internet.pdf?_ga=2.117063430.1073547711.1497355570-1028938869.1495462143&utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=1f1e1358fb-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-1f1e1358fb-154451305 <comment><USER2> > _News management and opinion manipulation by itself is not necessary "evil". > Corporate communications and public relations departments often use certain > propaganda techniques as a crisis management measure to prevent panic, > additional financial and reputation damage, etc._

Ehhh.... I'll refer you to George Carlin's [edit: it's Bill Hick's] "If you're in marketing or advertising" bit.

> _Fake news is the promotion and propagation of news articles via social > media. These articles are promoted in such a way that they appear to be > spread by other users, as opposed to being paid-for advertising. The news > stories distributed are designed to influence or manipulate users' opinions > on a certain topic towards certain objectives._

Good definition. But by that method... NYTimes is fake news when it comes to GMOs and their consistent bias against it. I see journalists trying to push an ideology all the time.

We've lost trust in news institutions. Capital-F Fake news is especially egregious, but this definition of fake news, which is just about manipulating opinion, is _everywhere_.

<comment><USER3> "If you're in marketing or advertising"

The government should apply a significant "sin tax" to advertising. Advertising imposes huge external costs on society that aren't borne by the advertiser; a sin tax would help to properly align the incentives.

And it really wouldn't hurt the advertisers very much -- if advertising became more expensive they'd do less of it, but so would their competitors, making the ads they do run much more effective.

It would hurt Google, Facebook and other billboard-selling agencies. Not necessarily a bad thing.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Advertising in many cases also isn't a net gain for society. One of its goal is to manufacture demand where there is none. A famous example is the DeBeers diamond company, which created expectations for diamonds to be used as a sign of love in proposals. We could just as well get along as a society without any diamonds in jewelry whatsoever, and might even be better off for it. They didn't realize increase enjoyment in society so much as create a new _negative_ situation (spouse upset/insecure with jewelry) that only money could fix.

There are benefits to advertising: it keeps consumers up to date on the current products on the market and can emphasize the positive traits of those products. But in practice it more often relies on psychological tricks and manipulation (look at any Budweiser commercial and tell me it isn't a subtle play to insecure masculinity) that don't necessarily benefit consumers.

<comment><USER5> Insane spikes of demand happen. Fashion did not become an industry because of Advertising. Fidget Spinners did not require advertising to be a huge hit. Manufactured demand doesn't happen nearly as much as demand bubbles up and advertising provides the lightning rod by which it's grounded.

Advertising can have a lot of really great effects on society, too. You think that conservation programs came out of nowhere? That people learned how to recycle because everyone was really interested? The entire "green" economy is hugely driven by advertising - Not as much the corporate style, but lifestyle advertising driven by conservation nonprofits (whose revenue, by the way, is almost entirely driven by advertising; Look up the rates that nonprofit fundraisers charge, and then realize that despite how insane they are, the nonprofits still find them profitable!)

<comment><USER6> None the less it's pretty easy to see advertising and the subsequent consumption is a net loss to the environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There will be comments about how some information from actual news organizations contains opinions or incorrect facts...and therefore it's in the same universe with fake news. This is like, the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

And it's the actual final goal of the most evil forms of propaganda. Overwhelm the audience with false information > make it harder to determine true vs false > maybe no source can really be trusted > all sources of information have some kind of agenda > all sources of information are roughly equal in quality. Now in the mind of the individual in question, the playing field has been leveled between propaganda and the work of trained journalists. And at that point it's not a real contest.

<comment><USER8> Is fake news that's created in Eastern Europe or somewhere actually that tricky?

who does it actually fool?

There are obviously some people this stuff fools, as a class though, are the people who fall for this stuff high trust nodes in the information universe?

The problem with the Washington Post or wherever, is that when they get their facts wrong, or slanted, it takes a far more careful reader to catch it, and the people likely to spread it, tend to be far more trustworthy

<comment><USER9> _who does it actually fool?_

There was more than one person on HN who argued very strongly that PizzaGate was a real thing.

I found that completely shocking.

<comment><USER10> The fact is that there was a pedophile scandal in the UK. You believe that, correct? People were prosecuted, yes?

Also, you realize that US Catholic priests, and very likely priests in other nations have been involved in innumerable cases of child molestation. Also correct? Or is that just fake news?

So why is it such a giant leap of faith to suspect, given the rumors, that a similar scandal might exist amongst elites in the US?

Whether some pizza shop was the nexus of the whole thing, I have no idea, that isn't the point. The point is that powerful people with twisted appetites may be getting away with extremely reckless and illegal behavior and therefore deserves our attention.

Right now, we know there is 'human trafficking' going on. Who is involved? If wealthy elites outside of politics are involved, is it not that giant a leap to assume that political elites are also involved? And that some compare notes?

<comment><USER9> _Whether some pizza shop was the nexus of the whole thing, I have no idea, that isn 't the point._

No, it's exactly the point. It was a specific story with specific allegations which were untrue.

The rest of your comment is "something could be going on".

<comment><USER11> There was more to it than just a single shop.

Some random HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13432098)

<comment><USER9> You realise that isn't anything more than what was posted above, right?

There's a link to some email and some art. No alleged victims, no evidence, nothing. Just some interpretation of an email.

<comment><USER11> Yes. I only said that it was a wider story than just the specific allegations against one particular shop, which you seemed to disagree with.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with the entire conspiracy theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A security company commenting on these matters suggests undue interest in manipulating the infosec community. I would be interested to learn who paid/funded for this slanted whitepaper. The absence of commentary on left- wing disinfo actors (Media Matters, Correct the Record, Shareblue, etc.) and principally those that operate according to yesterday's mainstream media methods is most telling.

<comment><USER13> Another concerning datapoint: Google Now has recommended Shareblue propoganda articles as "Trending News". Pretty Orwellian.

<comment><USER12> Google has a long-standing bias that is comparable to other Silicon Valley tech companies. Their Newsstand app is like a certified stream of mainstream propaganda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't it embarrassing that nobody cared about this until their favourite team lost the election and now they have to find something to blame it on? He should have lost because fake news isn't fair! He should have lost because of popular vote! As the article says, it's been around for thousands of years. We should just accept it. The UK has very popular fake news papers like News of the World and The Sun. I once read an article about how a donkey's legs were attached to a human who had lost his legs. It's entertainment, just like all news some people might believe it. It doesn't matter.

For people who want real news, we have trusted brands, like The Guardian or whatever.

<comment><USER15> External money influencing elections is an issue for the integrity of the voting system. That's not entertainment, nor is it (or it shouldn't be) a partisan issue.

<comment><USER14> America already has external money to pay for campaign advertising. Is that just as much a problem? Why does it matter what form the paid advertising comes in?

Even if it's foreign money, why can't foreigners help their preferred candidate win? They're stakeholders too. The US government does things that affect other countries so it's only fair that people there have some voice, if not an actual vote.

Anything that seems objective is partisan if it benefits one party more than the other. Eg Gerrymandering, campaign financing, electoral college. They're only issues because people on the losing side noticed they were disadvantaged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is no such thing as fake news. There's only news, otherwise you're insinuating that some speech is 'fake', and conversely, some speech is 'genuine'.

News can be false, misleading, disproven, untrustworthy, and many shades in between. In fact there are a lot more angles to information than a False/True boolean. Some things can be true in a certain context, but not others. Sometimes untested or fringe news outlets have real stories (Drudge Report, was, for example, was the first news outlet to break the Monica Lewinsky scandal). Sometimes trustworthy news outlets deliver a misleading stories, as in the case of Iraq WMDs or Y2K.

A better way to phrase things would be to use more nuance to describe the state of reporting on current events. But since skepticism and logic don't increase readership or viewership, unfortunately those qualities aren't encouraged among the discourse going around these days.

<comment><USER17> It looks to me that you are spreading unnecessary confusion. Let me give you two scenarios:

(1) I go to a marketplace and buy a service to plant a news story. Assume that the title of the story is "oceanplexian is part of DC pizza scandal". This story is posted on their affiliate websites, by bots on Twitter/Facebook, it is even reported on your local TV as "rumors emerge about oceanplexian (with a healthy dose of nuance, skepticism, logic)". This is certainly fake news, right? (I hope so!)

(2) In the second scenario, imagine if two of your coworkers contact a journalist with information that "oceanplexian is making bombs at home". Then the journalist finds out that you are buying fertilizers even though you live in a multi-story building. The police refuse to comment. Then a news story is published with the title of "suspicious behavior by oceanplexian". Later it turned out that you had joked to your friends about making bombs and the fertilizers were for your science experiments. So this was a false story, the people involved in spreading this story apologize and move on.

Also, the meaning of words depends on context and the context changes with time. There is a current meaning of fake news. And we can easily classify many fake news stories with 100% certainty as fake. I do not know how muddying the water with Iraq War, Y2K, etc. helps in the discussion about fake news in the current context.

<comment><USER10> Because this shit has been going on a long, long time! That's why--you can't discuss fake news and then not bring up the key examples put out by official media sources. It's like talking about just Nigerian scammers when scams have been going on for thousands of years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Governments are starting to recognize that fake news is something that must > be actively fought.

That can be read in two very different ways. Sometimes the governments are the ones that are the problem.

</comment><comment><USER19> Actually most fake news sites are someone who set up a Wordpress blog that reports on news items that cannot be verified. These sites can be set up quickly on any VPS service.

Most of them use donain names that look like a real news site like cbsnews45.com instead of cbs.com etc. So when they in this example claim to be CBS news, it is a fake news site.

Steve Wozniak would use The Department of Defiance on T shirts and badges because people would mistake it for the department of defence.

</comment><comment><USER20> >Fake news is the promotion and propagation of news articles via social media. These articles are promoted in such a way that they appear to be spread by other users, as opposed to being paid-for advertising. The news stories distributed are designed to in uence or manipulate users' opinions on a certain topic towards certain objectives.

The definition itself is incorrect. This is the changed definition, post it becoming a buzzword

>It is inevitable that other motivations—such as pro t—will come to the forefront in later years.

Profit _was_ the original motivator. That's why those Romanian click bait sites appeared in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER21> 5MB pdf file. Just had to see if there was any more context to this:

>News management and opinion manipulation by itself is not necessary(sic) "evil".

It's either evil every time or none of the time.

</comment><comment><USER22> Accompanying blog post:

[https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime...](https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime- and-digital-threats/fake-news-cyber-propaganda-the-abuse-of-social-media)

</comment><comment><USER23> Consider the following contradiction: Supposedly, fake Facebook accounts (which appear real) engage with "fake news" in order to fool _real_ Facebook users. Then, the engagement of such articles is measured. That is, these articles are spread by bots so that it appears like the articles are being read by a wide swath of the population. Then, analyzers like Buzzfeed measure the activity of the fake news articles and count the total number of "engagement" activities, which includes _both the fake and real engagement_. They claim that this is evidence that people are spreading fake news -- but how can we know how many real people _actually_ read (or believed) the content?

Next, they mention that fake news results in a change in people's perceptions. They say:

> It can be considered a form of cognitive hacking12—except that the > modification of a user's perception is the goal of the operation, not a > means for gaining access to a network.

Serious? They think that people reading an article are going to immediately believe it? This idea sounds a lot like the beliefs in the 1920's that media could "inject" false beliefs into humans:

> Hypodermic needle model, or magic bullet theory: Considers the audience to > be targets of an injection or bullet of information fired from the pistol of > mass media. The audience are unable to avoid or resist the injection or > bullets.

However, we now know that people are _not_ passive consumers of media: they are often very critical. If we were to categorize the engagement of fake news in order of proportion of observed engagement acts:

1\. bots (not real people, not influenced, largest proportion)

2\. curious but critical people (real people, but not influenced)

3\. people whose beliefs are changed (real people, real influence, smallest proportion)

Finally, to prove that fake news can be damaging, they use examples where Spirit Airlines and American Airlines were damaged by _real news_ :

> For example, shares in the American ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) Spirit > Airlines fell 5% the day after videos of passenger fist fights due to > cancelled flights15 made the rounds on social media. When United Airlines > forcibly removed16 a passenger from a flight in April 2017, its stock price > fell17 as well.

If you're going to claim that 1) fake news is a huge problem, 2) that fake news affects people's perceptions, and 3) that fake news affects the organizations targeted, then why do you:

1\. not show concrete examples of fake news?

2\. not show that people's beliefs are affected by that fake news?

3\. and show that targeted organizations are affected by people's beliefs?

Sorry, but this paper isn't really rooted in fact. I'd go so far as to say that it's more or less fake news.

<comment><USER24> People are passive consumers of media and are easily manipulated when given a story that jives with some general belief that they have. A great example of this effect is the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings.

Question 1: Alex Jones, a talk show host who has a growing niche following, including the current President, pushed a narrative that despite the dead kids, identified shooter, etc this massacre of young children was a "false flag" hoax.

Details: [https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/13/here-exactly- wh...](https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/13/here-exactly-what-alex- jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook-massacre/216889)

Question 2:

According to a Newsmax poll, 24% of people surveyed believed that Sandy Hook was or may have possibly been a hoax. [http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/752850?section=Poli...](http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/752850?section=Politics&keywords=voters- believe-conspiracy-theories- trump&year=2016&month=10&date=11&id=752850&aliaspath=%2FManage%2FArticles%2FTemplate- Main&oref=www.google.com)

Question 3:

This kind of malicious misinformation makes the weak minded dangerous and can influence policy.

Case in point: Parent of murdered Sandy Hook kindergartner threatened by nutjob from Florida. [https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/tampa-area- resident-ind...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/tampa-area-resident- indicted-threatening-sandy-hook-parent)

Case in point: Gun advocacy groups get the benefit of angry anti-gun control people mobilized to push for concealed carry and even mandatory arming of school officials.

Other examples abound. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is a great example at the nation state level.

There's always a reason. In the case of Gulf of Tonkin, LBJ wanted to escalate the Vietnam Conflict. The the case of Alex Jones, he wants to undermine your faith in society to make you buy his vitamins. In the case of the "pizza gate" faux scandal, parties unknown wanted Clinton voters to stay home or vote Trump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is quite concerning indeed.

I'm glad that no one who I agree with politically would use such underhanded techniques.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure if you're intending to be hilarious here, but I'm taking it that way.

<comment><USER25> ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> title should say PDF</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Prototype.js so inconsistent?    - <AUTHOR>

I would consider myself a very experienced front-end web developer, I usually use jQuery and can almost always get it to do exactly what I want in a very intuitive way.  I am forced to use prototype/scriptaculous for a small project (really just some light animations/dom manipulation on a page), and I have to say that I am really shocked with how inconsistent and confusing it seems.  I know that this combination is very popular within the Rails community and I am wondering if I can get some help on a few issues I am having.  I think I must be doing certain things wrong but I cant seem to find the answers anywhere.
Below is a list of oddities that I am running in to, I would really appreciate anyone familiar with prototype to take a read through them.  I am not interested in starting a JS library war, only in knowing why I might be  finding it so difficult to use.
- Why does $('element_id').getStyle('height') only return a value if the value has been set with inline css (ie by doing something like style="height: 40px" on the element).  If the value is set in an external CSS file or in the HTML head, the .getStyle function returns 0.
- Why can't I do an Effect.Appear (and others) on an element by class name, I know that prototype should let me do a $$('[any css selector]'), but with something like Effect.Appear I apparently have to set an ID on my target element and use that. I can do "Effect.Appear('idname');" and "Effect.Appear($('idname'));" but not "Effect.Appear($$('.classname'));"  Does prototype force you to use IDs for every element you want to interact with?
- Why is it "Effect.Fade" (capital F) but "Element.hide" (lower-case h) - I know that one is technically prototype and one is script.aculo.us, but come on.
- Why doesn't this example work consistently? http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/128280/prototype-test.html  The small box should always start animating at the same position, it works if you leave your mouse off the box for a while, but if you bring it back over within a few seconds or so it starts animating at the previous ending position and flickers a lot.
- Sometimes i have to do "new Effect.something" and other times I don't need the "new".  Eg: I can just do "Effect.Appear" but I have to do "new Effect.Move"
- I always use Firebug for catching typos and debugging my jQuery code, but I immediately noticed that with Prototype, many errors just cause the rest of the JS to not function, but no error is listed in Firebug.  This is frustrating, especially for a new user who is not comfortable with all the various syntax.  Is there anything I can do to catch these errors?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> It looks like you're using some older version of Prototype. `getStyle` should return computed style of an element (there are bugs but they are more like edge cases). If something doesn't work, file a bug (with a reproducible test case, of course) and we'll look into it :) `Element.fade` is starting with lowercase `f` (perhaps it was uppercased in older versions of scripty). `Effect.appear` can be invoked on a collection with `invoke` - `$$(cssExpr).invoke('appear')`.

Consider asking these questions on Prototype mailing list where there are always people willing to help.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know you don't want to start a framework war (and I don't either), but for my work in Rails the first thing I do when starting a new project is install jRails ( <http://ennerchi.com/projects/jrails> ). Makes my life a whole load easier. Rails 3 is apparently planning to be more agnostic when it comes to JS frameworks, so if you're not a Prototype fan this should be good news.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should prefix your question with an "Ask HN: <question>" to differentiate it from a linked article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Updated.</comment></comment>


Docker 19.03.0-Beta1 supports running docker daemon without root - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/docker/docker-ce/releases/tag/v19.03.0-beta1 <comment><AUTHOR> More info on roorless feature: [https://github.com/moby/moby/pull/38050](https://github.com/moby/moby/pull/38050)

"Running rootless dockerd in rootless/rootful dockerd is also possible, but not fully tested."

Docker-in-docker sounds closer than ever to working well... Exciting.</comment>


Death by algorithm: the age of killer robots is closer than you think - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2019/6/21/18691459/killer-robots-lethal-autonomous-weapons-ai-war <comment><USER2> All this hoopla about state level actors and un bans and scavenging the tech, but realistically speaking of any of us really really needed to, we could probably bolt a gun to a drone and use pytorch/tensor flow/whatever to make a reasonably effective LAWS. Sure a country could do it better than me, but you don't need Manhattan project resources to do this. The cats out of the bag. Pandora's box is open. The horse has already bolted

</comment><comment><USER3> >Experts in machine learning and military technology say it would be technologically straightforward to build robots that make decisions about whom to target and kill without a "human in the loop"

I'd like to know who those experts are because like almost always in these ethical debates about autonomous systems, the first thing I notice is the grandiose claims being made about the technology itself.

It is highly non trivial for humans to make calls about civilians, targets, journalists and so on with high fidelity in war zones.

And even if the classification was possible, what stops bad actors from the trivial countermeasures of handing civilians weapons or using disguise, or even adversarial methods to fool autonomous systems? That's not something any existing technology can cope with, it requires extraordinary human judgement.

Just like with autonomous driving technology I'm almost more afraid of the notorious overselling of dumb machines than I am of ethical debates.

<comment><USER4> Bad actors already use adversarial patterns by mixing up within the civilian population.

This is been to core concept of guerrilla warfare since it was conceived and likely well before it was named.

In fact even outside of war zones bad actors constantly hide in plain sight we just call them criminals rather than terrorists when they aren't a foreign entity with a political goal (although organized crime can easily fall under the definition of terrorism under certain conditions).

As far as dumb machines go then we already have plenty of systems which already automate much of the killing including target identification and tracking.

We've already been over selling dumb machines that make killing easier a human in a conflict zone overloaded with sensor data that makes it easy to hit a target isn't more likely to make the right decision.

Given the limited window of opportunity and the level of cognitive dissonance any one engage in combat has to develop as coping mechanism the idea that humans are inherently capable of making a moral decision under these conditions is pretty laughable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the somewhat famous Slaughterbots video from the Stop Autonomous Weapons initiative: [https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA](https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA)

<comment><USER6> It's a pretty crappy video that is doing nothing but fearmongering.

Did you know that there is a knife in every kitchen? So why isn't there a knife murder epidemic? Because murder has to be "profitable" in some way. As long as there are better ways to obtain that "profit" violence will generally not happen on a large scale.

Nowadays the bigger problem is that countries like the USA are willing to kill journalists and other civilians in foreign countries Drone or rifle does not matter. They were innocent either way.</comment></comment>


On turning Y Combinator rejection into reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2013/09/creative-breakthroughs-alexis-ohanian/279593/ <comment><USER2> Hey Alexis.

Between Small Empires on The Verge, and a number of recent media appearances, you've recently begun very publicly advocating in favor of entrepreneurship.

Any particular reason you chose to do this now, instead of earlier, or even sometime in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's been something on my mind since SOPA/PIPA. After that, I turned my eyes toward getting people think about the internet economy happening outside of the Valley (e.g., INTERNET 2012 bus tour + documentary: [http://siliconprairiefilm.com](http://siliconprairiefilm.com)) so that more Americans (and our politicians) realize just how important protecting + nurturing the internet is for the American economy.

I'm spending the next year promoting lowercase "e" entrepreneurship -- not just for people who want to start companies, but just use the same entrepreneurial skills to help themselves be awesome. The motivation for Small Empires was not only to make founders + startup employees more relatable, but also the users who are using these tools.

For everyone one person who wants to start etsy, there are tens of thousands who just want to start an etsy store -- I'd argue they're even more important to reach.

And after speaking at enough universities, it was clear there is no curriculum in the country preparing students for the new economy, yet we're sitting at a time of unprecedented potential. That's what lead to the book (Without Their Permission) and the 70-university, 150-stop tour I'm doing this fall!

[http://withouttheirpermission.com/tour- dates](http://withouttheirpermission.com/tour-dates)

There is no master plan, though, I can guarantee that.

<comment><USER3> Silicon Valley is doing a poor job at connecting with the rest of the world. In people's eyes it's all brilliant MIT kids who get millions of dollars to write software that lets other kids share pictures and sell it for billions. Most of the rest of the world can't even fathom this. It's a novelty, a fairy tale which will never affect them. In a lot of people's eyes there will be no major casualty if the tech business "goes away".

It is really important for rest of America to relate to Silicon Valley. To see the millions of lives these companies are changing, not just by connecting people to each other but also by helping them earn a living. The etsies of the world are providing real opportunity that didn't exist before. The rest of America needs to see that.

This is why I am so excited about Alexis' "Without their Permission". I hope it gets a much wider audience than the tech sector and people see the tech world for what it really is.

In similar vein, it is very important for the tech world to remain humble, not to get carried away by catered lunches, google buses, 6 figure salaries and free ubers. The tech world needs to understand that this is not how life in most professions works and we are in real danger of turning into spoilt and privileged people that the rest of the world has started seeing us as.

<comment> mkr-hn > _The etsies of the world_

Etsy was launched in NYC. Other than that, I agree. I'm struggling to think of a SV company other than Facebook, Twitter, and Google. And as far as I'm aware, Google is the only one of those three with projects outside SV. Maybe it's easier to think of more if you're in SV and not on the other side of the continent.

<comment><USER4> Are you serious? Facebook and Twitter are huge forces worldwide. There's a reason countries like Iran and China have blocked them. (And this just in: Iran has unblocked FB and Twitter as of this week.)

And for SV companies other than those, there's no lack of big names: Apple, Oracle, Salesforce, HP, Intel, Symantec...

<comment> mkr-hn > _Are you serious?_

You must have missed this:

> _Maybe it 's easier to think of more if you're in SV and not on the other > side of the continent._

I didn't know those were SV companies. They're household names because of their impact, not their location. People don't tend to associate them with the location of the company's headquarters.

> _There 's a reason countries like Iran and China have blocked them. (And > this just in: Iran has unblocked FB and Twitter as of this week.)_

You missed this too:

> _only one of those three with projects outside SV_

I was thinking of Google Fiber and Google's lobbying to make driverless cars legal in as many states as possible. Projects. "Getting banned in China" isn't a project. It's almost as if you ignored the content of my comment.

And today I learned that Menlo Park (Facebook) and Cupertino (Apple) are in California. I imagine this is what it's like when someone learns there's more to Atlanta than the airport.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


If you're working in a big group, you're fighting human nature - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/995-if-youre-working-in-a-big-group-youre-fighting-human-nature <comment><USER2> didn't pg write an essay on this? or at least is was a major part of one of his essays?

<comment><USER3> At least he gathered some new quotes and anecdotal evidence. I particularly like the "two-pizza" reference.

<comment><USER4> (Completely off topic, but "real" pizzas, in Italy, are one per person).

<comment><USER3> Actually, that's a valid point. "Two-pizza team" could mean 2-5 people depending on how much pizza that really is and how hungry your teammates are.

<comment><USER5> Anyone who ate lunch at startup school knows this quite well :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some time ago I wrote to PG about this very subject:

Paul Graham wrote: | Thanks, John. Dunbar's number is more about the size of societies than | the size of a group that can cooperate to complete a task. There the number | is more like 8-12, which I believe prob corresponds to the smallest unit | in an army.

Not sure the army is the best analogy since they operate with large amounts of funding and not the same restraints as a start up. Terror organizations are a better analogy since they have to combine team effectiveness with minimal size (for security and finance reasons). This seems a lot like a start up that needs an effective team of the smallest size (for mostly finance reasons).

For example, the IRA was divided into 6 to 8 man operational units.

<comment><USER7> FWIW, the smallest US infantry unit is the fireteam, comprised of 4 men. I think it's 2 fireteams to a squad.

Sounds like a 2-pizza outfit to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The army examples don't mean a lot imo. They have unit sizes across a lot of different scales, so it's not significant that some happen to fall into this range.</comment>


Everybody Dance Now - Transfer Motion from One Person to Another Using AI - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=PCBTZh41Ris <comment><AUTHOR> Paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.07371.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.07371.pdf)</comment>


Hypergive: Secure digital food wallets for the homeless - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/hypergive/introducing-hypergive-secure-digital-food-wallets-for-homeless-or-hungry-people-in-your-community-4e7ad17def81 <comment><USER2> I hope this company is able to provide some real value using their fancy app and smart contracts...but I highly doubt they'll be around in a couple of years.

It doesn't seem like they are really solving the problem in any useful way. They're creating an overly technical "solution" that isn't sustainable or practical.</comment>


We Analyzed Every Meme on the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/we-analyzed-every-meme-on-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> The source the article links to [0] seems to be scraping stuff from popular "meme" generating website like imgur, 9gag etc.

"We analyzed data from Priceonomics customer Me.me, a search engine that's indexed practically every meme ever produced and made the text on the images searchable."

This is a strong claim. But even if I give them the benefit of doubt, their analysis shows that memes have strong correlation with real world event and trends die out. Eg: thanks giving meme became popular right before thanks giving and faded after thanks giving. I don't find this too surprising.

I am sure memes can tech us stuff. But I would find stuff like meme trends Vs comments to do sentimental analysis or something along that lines.

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

[0] [https://me.me/post/the-meme-zeitgeist](https://me.me/post/the-meme- zeitgeist)</comment>


Show HN: Kdo – Deployless Development on Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stepro/kdo <comment><AUTHOR> Kdo is a command line tool that enables developers to run, develop and test code changes in a realistic deployed setting without having to deal with the complexity of Kubernetes deployment and configuration.

With Kdo, you can:

\- run a command in a Kubernetes cluster _without any deployment_ ;

\- build and use a custom image to run a command _without any registry_ ;

\- inherit pod configuration from an existing workload _instead of deploying_ ;

\- replace existing pods while running a command to _evaluate end-to-end behavior_.</comment>


Note on How Many Facebook Users Go About Logging into their Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/383925895

<comment><USER2> Brilliant. What's nice is that you can actually log into Facebook "on their site", because comments are accepted via Facebook Connect.

I'm still having trouble believing this:

       1) Type "facebook login" into the browser bar.
       2) Get Google results page, with a news story called "Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login" at the top.
       3) Click that link
       4) Observe a red page that says "Read Write Web" at the top, taking up nearly half the screen.
       5) See a facebook logo and a facebook connect login prompt.
       6) Log in to comment, and whine about how "I am going to delete my account if I ever figure out how to log in"
       7) ???

I just don't get how so many people could make so many errors. If you know English well enough to comment, you probably know how to read the article, and the links, and the message on the Facebook Connect page.

I am having such trouble comprehending this that I think it's fake. But I'm probably wrong :(

<comment><USER3> Users don't read. They're not in "comprehending" mode - they're in "find the damned blue button and log in so I can get on with what I really wanted to do" mode.

<comment><USER2> I can sort of understand this; sometimes I press the wrong button on the elevator at home (thinking I'm at work), and I get off on the wrong floor. I am confused for a second, but I eventually realize that I am not at the right place. I definitely don't start ranting about how I can't believe they renumbered my apartment, repainted the hallway, and changed my lock. I just get back into the elevator and go to the correct floor; perhaps slightly more aware of what that task entails than I was when I first pressed the button.

Why is the Internet any different?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really don't know how to feel about this. As much as I want to say "get a brain" to these people… a problem this widespread really can't be considered an individual problem.

This is, I guess, representative of the problems the iPad is aimed at, but I'd really rather there was a better solution.

<comment><USER5> It's just a matter of the numbers involved. With hundreds of millions of users on Facebook it's inevitable that some of them are going to be either complete internet beginners or straight-up idiots.

Also, once you get a few dozen of those messages, the trolls come out and pretty soon you can't tell who is confused and who's just piling on for fun:

 _What is rong heer. I wnted to get my bebo. But my bebo wos stolen. I just wnt my bebo back. I dunt want your crappy site wheres my bebo you will get sud for million dollas $$$$ for bebonets stealing_

Well said, MrFerret. Well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess this explains why even the most obvious of phishing sites work.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one reason I like the behavior of Chrome's URL bar. It sometimes gets it wrong, but I think it frequently guesses correctly when I start typing something whether I want to: 1) visit a site I've recently/frequently visited; or 2) search for that term. If you just start typing "facebook" in the URL bar and hit enter you'll end up at facebook.com instead of performing a search for it.

I must confess that I often use something like this myself, though, despite being a tech person. I can never remember the stupid URL for my university's obscurely-located courseware system, for example, so I usually just Google for _universityname coursewarename_ and click on the first result. I guess I could bookmark it, but this method works fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> What really depresses me about this kind of thing is how at-risk these people are of online fraud. The internet means everyone is just one hop away from a criminal, and mass phishing attacks are lucrative enough that there will always be attempts at them.

Unfortunately, if you want to stay safe online you need to understand an incredibly dense stack of technologies - you need to know what a browser is, how URLs and domains are formatted (so you know the difference between facebook.com and facebookcom.com), what an actual website is, how easy it is for someone to create a fake looking login page, how to judge if something is safe to enter your credit card in to...

I make my living on the web and I want to continue to do so. I need people to use it for e-commerce and to trust their private information to it. But I'm horribly aware that for anyone who isn't knowledgeable about how it all works, I'm basically encouraging them to join an unsafe environment which is almost certain to rip them off.

Stuff like the iPad is a step forward, but it doesn't help address the core problem - it will be exactly as easy to fall for basic internet cons on the iPad as a regular desktop machine.

I'm pretty much stumped.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is dangerous, given how dumb these people are, a less nice blog could be stealing passwords.

<comment><USER9> why bother? the password is just 1Password or any of the other twenty common passwords.

<comment><USER10> Because the password to their homebanking account is the same.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but you typically need other user data to validate their banking. Obviously it's good that people aren't grabbing the data, but lets be honest here: there is still a class of people who don't really know how to protect themselves online etc. Therefore to capture this data is not that hard, you just need to be persistent - stalking their rubbish, having key info etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Incredible! I don't understand how so many people could be so clueless. Also, I wonder why Facebook.com isn't the first result for "facebook login".

<comment><USER12> It's not first because Google places recent news stories before the general web search results.</comment></comment>


How the Mormons Make Money: a look into the business empire of the Mormon Church - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/62364-how-the-mormons-make-money

<comment><USER2> More readable version here: <http://www.jottit.com/5f82/></comment>


New bill would give president power to step in and stop 'cyber 9/11' - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/102491-new-bill-would-give-president-emergency-authority-over-cybersecurity

<comment><USER2> What the hell does any of this even mean?

1\. What's the worst-case scenario as far as such attacks are concerned? How could it be done? Who has the resources to do it?

2\. Would giving the President the power to "step in and stop it" do any good whatsoever? How would one "stop it"?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, and I suspect neither do the politicians or journalists. But hopefully somebody here does?

I do remember that Richard Clarke spent most of his years as counterterrorism czar warning of a "cyber Pearl Harbor". Instead of that we _actually_ got 9/11, so now they're warning about a "cyber 9/11".

<comment><USER3> I was going to ask the second part of your second question. The answer is, that by the time anyone knew a "cyber 9/11" was happening, the President himself could do nothing to stop it.

Further, this sort of security theater (or is it Security Burlesque?) doesn't really do anyone much good. It's far better to work toward policy and protocol that improves security a little bit across the board, rather than nit-pick little specific threats. For instance, throwing a lot of time and money at locking down SCADA at nuclear power plants isn't going to help as much as making sure there's a sane firewall review policy in place.

The answers to #1 would probably be: a. Infiltration of networks belonging to Federal Government, Military, and private defense organizations. Maybe other massive-scale breaches of smaller government entities, hospitals, etc. - Communications shutdowns, leakage or destruction of data, etc. It's really hard to tell. I don't believe in a "Live Free or Die Hard" movie-plot "Firesale" scale of carnage, though.

b. If you look at Operation Aurora, though, and consider the fact that a dedicated team of skilled attackers could potentially sit in wait, persisting without causing much trouble, over long periods of time... you see where it could go.

c. Folks who don't like the U.S. but have strong technical skills. As you can imagine, that's not exactly a TINY group of people. They'd also need someone or a group of people who are good at coordinating things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This bill (or something like it) comes up over and over again here. So, let me repeat myself as tersely as possible: the people who wrote this bill are probably not trying to take over the Internet. The private-sector networks that they are probably concerned about are the GSM and utility networks, as well as networks used by privately owned mass transportation operators. These networks are indeed vulnerable to serious attacks. No, "just don't plug them into the Internet!" isn't an answer to that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Arguing that 9/11 can happen in cyberspace is complete idiocy. No one will die if crackers take out the IRS database, unleash a worm, or release credit card data on everyone in the country. Saying these two events are somehow equivalent really takes away from the meatspace event that changed America forever.

</comment><comment><USER6> Headline sounds to me like "New bill gives unprecedented power over the internet to the government"

</comment><comment><USER7> It would give the president the authority to take such steps: I'm trying to imagine what would give him or anyone the power.</comment>


What really happened on Mars? (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/mbj/Mars_Pathfinder/Authoritative_Account.html <comment><USER2> "We've been looking through the old Pathfinder software. We got duplicate computers up and running for testing. Same computers they used to find a problem that almost killed the original mission. Real interesting story, actually; turns out there was a priority inversion in Sojourner's thread management and—"

"Focus, Jack," interrupted Venkat.

Weir, Andy (2014-02-11). The Martian: A Novel (p. 121). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't put that book down. It was probably one of the best bits of hard science fiction I've read recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ahh... The classic "better than we ever imagined" turns out to be a nightmare. This should be required reading for those who test software.

<comment><USER5> I didn't understand that part. It describes "high data rate" as "best case". Does "better than we ever imagined" means they were overflowing in good usable data? Because too much data sounds like a problem.

Unrelated, note how difficult it is for people to accept 100% responsibility for a problem. For example:

> Did we (the JPL team) make an error in assuming how the select/pipe > mechanism would work ? Yes, probably.

There's no "probably"! A mistake was clearly made.

<comment><USER6> This is science, all knowledge is both inductively reached and imperfect. More people should use the word "probably"—if you're going to assign blame, which is not always necessary, it is important to do so accurately.

<comment><USER7> _Everything_ is probability. Why since out some statements as deserving of qualification?

You said all knowledge is inductively reached, why didn't you say "probably"?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > No, we did not use the vxWorks shell to change the software (although the > shell is usable on the spacecraft)

That adds new meaning to the phrase "remote shell". Can you imagine how irritating the latency would be trying to use a shell on Mars?

<comment><USER9> >Can you imagine how irritating the latency would be trying to use a shell on Mars?

I can I have Comcast. But on a serious note I think for applications like this a Puppet/Chef style recipe will be used. A complex series of checks and bounds before and after the changes have been applied and if anything sightly goes awry, revert back to the previous working condition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> RS6000 processor! Wow.... I remember doing work on one of these back when I was in college. Turned out I became the only person in my state to be able to maintain the old RS6000 machines.

...haven't touched or heard of one in over a decade.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is an embedded real-time OS like VxWorks still used in this role on this kind of mission today, or is a general-purpose OS like Linux used instead?

<comment><USER12> Pretty sure VxWorks is still used today for a lot of spacecraft; Curiosity[^1] and at least at one point the SpaceX Dragon capsule[^2] it looks like.

^1: [http://www.windriver.com/announces/curiosity/](http://www.windriver.com/announces/curiosity/) ^2: [http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/pdf/DragonLabFactSh...](http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/pdf/DragonLabFactSheet.pdf)</comment></comment>


NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-seeks-to-build-quantum-computer-that-could-crack-most-types-of-encryption/2014/01/02/8fff297e-7195-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_print.html <comment><USER2> 1\. $80MM isn't even in the ballpark of what it would cost to build a quantum- theoretic machine that could break IFP (RSA) or DLP (DH, DSA) crypto.

2\. $80MM is way, way past the threshold believed to be required to break the most widely deployed public-key crypto, RSA-1024. Put differently: there are venture capitalists who could successfully fund an effort to break the most widely-deployed public key crypto.

3\. If it is feasible to build a quantum-theoretic machine to break RSA, it is vitally important that the NSA attempt to do so; such work is at the very core of their mission.

I have no insight into what's actually happening behind this disclosure, but the price tag on it suggests to me that it's just a research project.

Since NSA is the kind of organization that historically spends $80MM on paper clips, the number suggests to me that quantum-theoretic attacks on IFP and DLP crypto aren't currently a serious thing. But that's a wild guess.

<comment><USER3> What would you use as an RSA replacement? Beyond that, is there a technique that's still relatively simple like RSA (humor me) but impervious to publicly- known quantum attack vectors like Shor's algo?

<comment><USER4> I was going to jump in and say ECC

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

but, searching I found that it is apparently vulnerable to quantum computing attacks (wikipedia points me to: Nielsen, Michael A.; Chuang, Isaac L. Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. p. 202) and also found this:

[http://www.mathcs.richmond.edu/~jad/summerwork/ellipticcurve...](http://www.mathcs.richmond.edu/~jad/summerwork/ellipticcurvequantum.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Elliptic curve cryptography is logically equivalent to prime-factorization cryptography in a sense: both are special cases of the _hidden subgroup problem_. DLP is also a version of the hidden subgroup problem. Any variant of HSP can be broken by a quantum computer using a variant of Shor's algorithm.

<comment><USER6> How broken is the question - NSA cracks 2048 keys we just double the key size and are safe for 3-4 more years, or making it so trivial it doesn't matter how big the key size is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the sort of code-breaking the NSA _should_ be doing. If breaking encryption algorithms is possible with quantum computers, we should figure out how to do it before any other nation-state or hacker does. This discovery would hopefully push forward encryption standards toward less breakable encryption.

What we should not do is use those discoveries to illegally spy, but rather to improve our security. Unfortunately, the NSA has lost credibility in contributing to encryption standards, so how that would happen is unclear.

Breaking encryption with new technology is entirely different than subverting encryption technologies intentionally or using their asymmetrical powers to tap into communication systems. Any attacks that can be discovered will hopefully first be discovered by relatively good actors (US intelligence) rather than relatively bad ones (Chinese intelligence.)

<comment><USER8> If the NSA was able to break RSA, there's about a .1% chance they'd tell people about it.

<comment><USER7> If the NSA broke RSA, they'd know that it was only a short matter of time before other intelligence agencies did the same, so it would be pretty stupid of them to not hint to industry that they should upgrade their algorithms.

While the NSA wants communications to be vulnerable to them, they certainly don't want communications to be vulnerable to others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the first leak that lower bounds the NSA's capabilities. It suggests that the NSA does not have a quantum computer.

If the NSA did have a quantum computer they might fund a project like this as it would be suspicious not to.

 __EDIT: __The more I think about this, the less it says about the NSA capabilities. They may attempt multiple paths to QC. The classification document that WashPo released ([http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/classifying- nsa-...](http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/classifying-nsa-quantum- computing-efforts/692/)) outlines Level A (public) and Level B (classified) research. All this shows is that the NSA is dedicating at least ~0.8% of their budget to QC.

<comment><USER10> I think you mean "upper bounds" the NSA's capabilities.

<comment><USER9> You are correct, but now hn will not let me edit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Both NSA and GCHQ have quite the history of co-opting smart mathematicians to create secret _theoretical_ advances in cryptography and cryptanalysis, which could well be relevant given a quantum computer with the following three properties:

* Fully general. By this I mean capable of solving BQP problems in polynomial time. This excludes D-Wave machines, for example.

* Sufficiently large. 100 qubits would probably enable qualitative advances in cryptanalysis.

* Low enough error rate. This is a slightly redundant requirement, as too high an error rate would provably prevent the computer from being asymptotically faster than classical - which is what we care about.

The last requirement is due to the quantum threshold theorem[1]. Briefly, there is an error rate below which quantum computing is possible and above which it is not. The precise value is not known but it is probably over 1% and, at least for some kinds of circuits, under about 40%. That means that at the theoretical level, the task is to create a model of computation that has as high a threshold limit as possible, and then to design an error correcting scheme that comes close to that limit. This is something that a secret agency could plausibly do in-house.

However, there is then the question of implementing the model of computation in a physical system, with a sufficiently low error rate. NSA, GCHQ etc. are not known to have this sort of experimental expertise - they would probably have to contract it out (and indeed this is the major piece of new information in the article). The history on fundamental advances over civilian technology shows that this normally depends on co-opting basically the entire research community working in the field - as in radar, nuclear weapons, stealth etc. This is not at all the case for experimental quantum computing, which is not in practice treated as a 'sensitive' field.

Thus it is my opinion that the NSA may well already have some theoretical tricks up its sleeve that it can use in the future for a decent edge, but is unlikely to get the opportunity to use them before quantum computing becomes considerably more feasible in the unclassified world.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_threshold_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_threshold_theorem). Bounds lifted from [http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.1464](http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.1464). Qualifications: I studied the mathematics of quantum computing as a Masters student, although I can't claim to still be current on the state of the art.

<comment><USER12> If you had to pick, say, three books (or the online equivalent) on quantum computing that are relatively accessible to an educated layman, which ones would you recommend?

<comment><USER11> I can tell you the book that got me excited about quantum computing: The Fabric of Reality, by David Deutsch. It ranges over a much, much wider field than just QC, but if you want to understand how one of the best theoreticians thinks then there is no better book. Comprehensible by a smart 13 year old (as I was when I read it).

If you have some mathematical maturity, I heartily recommend Quantum Computing since Democritus, by Scott Aaronson. The book's web page is at [http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/](http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/), where you will also find freely available the lecture notes on which the book is based. Scott Aaronson's blog ([http://www.scottaaronson.com/](http://www.scottaaronson.com/)) is also a very valuable source of insider knowledge on QC, much of it targeted at a broader audience. I recommend his "Ask Me Anything!" posts for a good breadth of topics and technicality.

Schrödinger's Killer App by Jonathan P. Dowling is a pleasant alternative to Fabric of Reality if the latter is too out-there for your tastes. No equations, but it definitely has some conceptual meat on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When the limit to breaking encryption becomes only cost and not technical hurdles, we have a huge problem.

Because there is no limit to tax dollars the government would be willing to spend to spy on it's own citizens. Congresspeople are already happy to line up to throw money at the spy machinery which is the new arm of the industrial war complex.

<comment><USER14> It's not even tax dollars. The Federal Reserve is at the root of many of our problems -- congressional spending, the industrial war complex & NSA spying -- none of it would be possible if we weren't able to create money out of thin air.

<comment><USER15> Thus illustrating exactly who is running the world and why when Occupy started up they actually drafted plans to have LEOs assassinate the "leaders" of Occupy.

This underscores the need to revive Occupy.

<comment><USER16> Not to be a jerk, but Occupy was ineffective. Let it RIP. It spent so much time being leaderless they couldn't decide what the hell they wanted.

We have to be more targeted about the changes we want. "We're pissed off about lots of stuff and you better fix it all _or else_!" isn't going to work.

At this point though, it's almost like the house is completely engulfed in flames. Which section do we put out first?

\- The corrupt banking and money system? Our capitalist system is an immense ponzi scheme. Economists act like you can have infinite growth. Forever. They're delusional. At some point, you run out of people's back to crawl on top of and your system collapses.

\- On top of that, we have a one-party system: the capitalist-imperialist party. _It is impossible to get a non-capitalist-imperialist elected in the United States!_ We need a voting system overhaul, but good luck getting that when everyone is bickering about abortion and gay marriage. The system has successfully turned us against ourselves on issues that do not affect the overall outcome of the nation, leaving the people in charge to do whatever they feel like.

\- We have a government agency with a bottomless pit of money spying on _everybody_ , effectively cutting off our freedom of speech (who is going to speak out against the government when a giant eyeball hovering over them at all times?) At this point, there's no ring to cast into the volcano either. Even if the NSA's activities are ruled unconstitutional, _who 's going to stop them?_

\- Our country's leaders are spending millions to create more terrorists by bombing countries in the middle east with drones. You take out some kid's house and family with a drone, what do you expect is going to happen? They'll thank you for keeping the streets safe? No, they grow up to be a "terrorist."

I hate to be one of those "the sky is falling" nerds, but if it takes as much work and pressure as it has to get the people around you to barely even raise an eyebrow at what's going on, you know you're not headed for something good.

<comment><USER15> Great post. I totally agree, and it is for these reasons I loathe anyone who defends the actions of the USG/NSA.

I also find it incredibly naive of others who make statements, here on HN and elsewhere, that the US is NOT a real tyranny as compared to others like Russia/CHina/Whatever.

Sure it is - its just much much more successful at population control.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Our propaganda isn't posters of people marching in support of our glorious nation. It's much more subtle. Instead you just make people think they're free when really, they are only free to march along the dotted line. Free to buy what they want. Free to watch 500 channels. The government doesn't even need to enforce it because it's engrained in our culture. Try bringing up how failingly stupid US capitalism is or how broken the voting system is and people spend every breath they have bitching you out for being unamerican. I feel like we got really close to people waking up a little bit around when the 2008 crash happened, but since then it's been business as usual for the most part, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apologies for being extremely clueless, I don't even understand advanced math, not to mention encryption, not to mention "quantum stuff" \- that's why I ask here: is it theoretically possible (or could it be in the future) to use quantum computers for encryption, too? If so, would that reduce options for breaking it to "brute force on the quantum level"? Does this question even make sense?

<comment><USER11> I don't know of any research into this area, but it's conceivable that you could have an encryption algorithm that is polynomial time (given the key!) on a quantum computer but exponential time classically, _and_ that has some better security guarantees given certain common assumptions. However, quantum algorithms of any sort are difficult enough to invent that we'll likely end up using classical algorithms that 'look' hard to break with quantum computers, i.e. ones where prime factoring doesn't help.

The real quantum defence appears to be something rather different. Quantum cryptography ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography)) uses polarised photons to create _very_ strong guarantees that your communication is secure. We can say that if you do the engineering correctly, the laws of physics would have to be violated to intercept your messages.

<comment><USER2> The "quantum cryptography" you describe here isn't a defense against quantum cryptanalysis; it's more like a novelty act.

[http://rdist.root.org/2008/10/24/quantum-cryptography-is- use...](http://rdist.root.org/2008/10/24/quantum-cryptography-is-useless/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Full version of the article, with sane paragraph measures and distracting teasers and social features.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa- se...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-seeks-to- build-quantum-computer-that-could-crack-most-types-of- encryption/2014/01/02/8fff297e-7195-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Good. That's their job. I'm not worried about the NSA using quantum computing, as fiscal realities dictate that it would have to be narrowly targeted at a small subset of the encrypted information out there. I'm fine with them recovering plaintext from pgp-encrypted emails sent between suspected al-Qaeda members. I'm not fine with them break encryption en masse and compromising the integrity of the Internet.

<comment><USER20> I thought the whole point of using quantum computing to break crypto, is that you can break encryption (e.g. RSA private keys) en masse for the same or less cost than traditional computing requires to break them one-at-a-time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated about whether the NSA's efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. Although the full extent of the agency's research remains unknown, ___the documents provided by Snowden suggest that the NSA is no closer to success than others in the scientific community.___"

Nothing to see here but false outrage and surprise, move along.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wait what? The NSA is still going? Surely it should be shut down after its discovery, and the mass outrage it caused worldwide.

The fact they're continuing their work, is blatant contempt and disregard for not just the citizens of the U.S. but for the rest of the world, too. American tax payer money goes to fund this, it's absolutely criminal. They're expecting you to pay for them to spy on you, for you 'safety'. We need counter measures or to target them directly. They need taking down.

It's absolutely insane, 'okay, you caught us! But we don't care!' is the message this act emits.

</comment><comment><USER23> Or:

How to reduce the value of the Internet as much as possible for everybody.

Nice, really nice.

</comment><comment><USER24> I honestly don't understand why the NSA bothers with this. All they have to do is claim that someone is a threat and they are then able to seize said person, secret them away, and make them an unperson in some government facility that we've yet to learn about.

<comment><USER25> What they want is information of such person BEFORE they were accused with the crime. Therefor they need all the information of everyone!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I didn't know when it was going to happend but i knew it would. That 80m investment is nothing, imagine if they will use it to crack sha256 from bitcoins ? A 9-10 billion "business" opened for them. Plus, privacy = lost

<comment><USER2> Quantum cryptanalysis doesn't meaningfully threaten SHA256.

<comment><USER27> But it does threaten ECDSA used by Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> PSYOPS101 - Make it public that you seek something you already have.

</comment><comment><USER29> I, for one, welcome our new quantum overlords.

Seriously, I don't think it's illegitimate to pursue new technologies that would render the old ones obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER30> so Bitcoin is doomed?

<comment><USER31> If we have quantum computers, yes. By that time, we'll upgrade our elliptic curve algorithms to post-quantum cryptography however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> RLY? OMG, who would expect that?!?!</comment>


Chrome 25 to disable silent extension installation actively and retroactively - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/12/21/google-chrome-25-will-disable-silent-extension-installation-kill-all-such-extensions-retroactively/ <comment><USER2> Here's the Firefox version of this:

[https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2011/08/11/strengthening- use...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2011/08/11/strengthening-user-control- of-add-ons/)

<comment><USER3> you can also disable plugins from being loaded from the local machine's registry by setting "plugin.scan.plid.all" = false in about:config. especially useful for portable installs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why did they even allow it in the first place? Or was it a matter of "not stopping it" until now? I've noticed more and more programs have been trying to install Chrome extensions in the browser lately.

<comment><USER5> It is not possible to stop this in the general case. All user-level software on legacy (e.g., Windows, OS X, Linux, etc) operating systems effectively has the same permissions to persistent storage. There's no application-level isolation, so Chrome cannot protect its own data files from other applications. In the limit, Chrome cannot tell whether a user installed an extension or some rogue software did.

Because of this, stopping sideloading is all about delicate balancing of incentives. "Carrots and sticks" so to speak.

We want to make it easy and effective for people to do the good thing (carrots), and hard and dangerous enough to dissuade them from doing bad things (sticks).

Previously our approach was to provide easy APIs [1] to install extensions into Chrome that we controlled. The result was that the Chrome team could monitor usage and see if it got out of hand.

Unfortunately, as Chrome became more popular, it did in fact get out of hand. So what you see here is us basically adding a few sticks, trying to reduce overall bad behavior. (We're also working on other things in other areas so that we don't just push the bad behavior into harder to monitor channels).

[1] [http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/external_extensions.h...](http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/external_extensions.html)

<comment><USER6> One approach to this would be to just ban extensions that are caught installing themselves without the user's permission. If the banned list is kept up to date it would make life hard for people abusing the system.

<comment><USER5> What do you ban? How do you establish identity for an extension? Remember that the bad guy can just change his ID each time he installs. Soon you are shipping blacklists with hundreds of thousands of entries to every client (or sending the ID of each install to the server to ask permission).

Also, where do you store the blacklist? Remember that the bad guy can just modify it to remove his entry. Or he can modify Chrome itself to not check the blacklist.

There are a long series of escalations you may propose here (encrypt the profile, try to detect changes, store the profile on the server, add a developer key system, etc). I'm just going to summarize and say there is no perfect solution to this problem. You can make bad behavior somewhat harder, but you cannot eliminate it without true application isolation.

At each escalation you increase the complexity of the product, make genuine features harder to introduce, add bugs, and make the experience for legitimate developers worse. It's a challenging environment to write software in.

That said, the team has some pretty clever ideas in development for future releases. We fight on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i'm seeing a lot of the good old "ie toolbar" behaviour lately: chrome extensions (typically developed by big portals) get installed with third-party applications without user consent.

this looks like a proper (if a bit delayed) measure to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is welcome news. Us browser vendors should probably get together and try to standardize on what we consider acceptable user consent. Far too many extensions get installed into browsers in ways that are just not OK.

<comment> mh- I think we get enough WONTFIX's from browser devs as-is. How about just ship sane defaults, enforce permissions as configured, and let us determine what's acceptable on a case-by-case basis?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be happy if installing Chrome didn't install a Google Update plugin in Firefox without asking me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd be happy if the updated chrome for android to anything above 18. With that new update I'll be 7 versions behind. WTF Google?

</comment><comment><USER11> "Chrome 25"

Wow. Version numbers are a joke these days.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is beyond welcome. The title doesn't really convey what they're doing here, though I'm not sure how I'd phrase it either.

This is blocking the sort of extensions that get installed with other desktop software. So, like, for whatever god damn reason Microsoft thinks it needs to install Office addons into Firefox when I install Office. That wouldn't fly in Chrome now.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I guess Microsoft wants you to believe that "you can read Office docs on the web" or something, when in fact it's the plugin opening them in the browser. This is what worries me about Windows 8, too. That they will try to tie too many "HTML5" apps with OS-related plugins.

<comment><USER13> Why does that worry you? They started out with _all_ plugins, including their own, entirely disabled on Windows 8 and only added plugin support back after much begging and crying from Flash developers. How do you make the leap from that to Microsoft secretly sneaking proprietary plugins into HTML5 applications?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth to make promotions of your Apps?(XX% OFF sales) - <AUTHOR>

A hackaton project of ours turned out to be pretty successful. It's an Android app which climbed the ranks quickly, now being in top 10 grossing in it's category in most countries, a month after launch.
Our app costs $9.99, and we're wondering if it would be worth putting it on sale (ex: $4.99 for a limited period). Two of us are already doing full-time support, and just doubling downloads for the same revenue wouldn't make sense.
In your experience, is it healthy to put your app on sale ?
Thank you! <comment><USER2> Cross-reference the data on www.appshopper.com with www.appannie.com ranking information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We've been using appannie.com, but their data simply doesn't answer all the questions. Especially on how sales affect long-term and short-term health of the app. Often sales attract bad reviews (people complaining they paid too much before/after the sale), and often you can't really tell how much the sale actually increased the revenue.

Appshopper is just for iOS for now. Thanks for the tip though!</comment></comment>


How Y Combinator Helped Shape Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2007/sb20070926_082638.htm

<comment><USER2> Was the change in the Reddits' idea really as complete as it's portrayed here? I've heard this story told before, but I always got the impression that Reddit was a variation on the theme of the original idea, not a complete change.

<comment><USER3> I had heard this story from Alexis, it's true. Their first idea had absolutely nothing to do with reddit.

<comment><USER4> Yep. Our original startup (based on Steve's idea from a trip to a gas station in central VA) was mobile-based and 100% rejected by YC. Heh.

We left that meeting with PG (Steve and I still have the notes in our notebooks) aiming to build a "front page of the web." And we didn't have a clue as to what it'd look like. Case in point: <http://reddit.blogspot.com/2006/12/time-machine.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> YC has wonderful PR! pg, care to quickly tell us how you guys manage to get into Time, BW, WSJ etc? Do you have someone doing PR for YC companies? How does it happen?

<comment><USER6> Jessica Livingston has apparently had a very successful career in marketing. I'd bet she has a hand in much of the PR.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really seems like from this and from other things I've read that Reddit was either PG's idea or was very heavily inspired by him. That true PG?

<comment><USER4> Yes, as I mentioned above, we left that conversation with PG thinking about how we could build a destination for all the best & freshest content online. The catchy slogan (front page of the web) was pure PG. But how the actual site would function came about while Steve and I toiled in our Medford apartment. Perhaps the biggest inspiration was actually del.icio.us/popular -- we thought that site (albeit a byproduct of the actual site) was on to something.

We really had never heard of digg until we'd already been online for a month and change, but by then reddit had already developed a unique identity. I believe that ignorance turned out to be quite an advantage.

We just tried to build the best site we could.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, and it's still my #1 place for surfing, nice work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For more info from the reddit guys, check out [http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/09/posterboys-for-yc- emphasi...](http://reddit.blogspot.com/2007/09/posterboys-for-yc-emphasis-on- boys.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like YC just got a little more ultracompetitive.

/Just the way I like it.</comment>


Ask HN: Would it be feasible to send a Curiosity-like rover to an exoplanet? - <AUTHOR> I know exoplanets are a long way from earth (nearest is 4.2 light years away). Would we be able to build a rover like mission that would get there in say 50 years time? Assuming we're using all the technology we currently have, so not excluding nuclear energy. <comment><USER2> No.

From a traveling point of view, sending a probe to Pluton (New Horizons) took us 10 years and the probe had a nice pull from Jupiter. The closest exoplanet is 6 700 times farer than Pluton.

From a communication point of view, the probe/rover would not be able to send us back any kind of signal. Even if we were able to communicate, a round-trip message would take 8 years.

And remember, we are not always successful when sending a probe/rover to Mars, which is the closest planet to Earth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why wouldn't the probe be able to send us any kind of signal? Would it be too weak to get here? And what if we were to point a super sensitive telescope to it?

<comment><USER2> The signal would be too weak. See free space propagation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation#Free_space_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation#Free_space_propagation).

Remember, we are already using super sensitive telescopes for looking at the _star_ nearby the exoplanets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No, because if we sent one now by the time we got to year 40 we'd probably have the technology to send one to overtake it (only slightly facetious).</comment>


Britain's spaceman - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21651929-pioneer-small-satellites-laying-plans-infrastructure-and-services

<comment><USER2> SST are only a few miles from me, but I never realised they employed so many people. Between space and computer games Guildford is doing pretty well for tech.</comment>


Tesla is holding a hackathon to fix two robot bottlenecks in Model 3 production - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/05/13/tesla-hackathon-robots-model-3-production/ <comment><USER2> I love electric vehicles, however Electrek is a very pro-Tesla "news" source. The owner is a massive fan and finds the most positive spin for Tesla on essentially every story. It's sort of sad that it's one of the main electric vehicle news sources on the web now, since it's basically Fred's I Love Tesla blog.

<comment><USER3> I actually read most of their stories and have not yet seen a story that has turned out to be false. Mean while almost every story / comment posted on Hacker News will receive up votes if it has a negative spin and down vote if it has a positive spin, no matter the content. Yes Elekrek is filled with Tesla fanboys but HN is also filled with Tesla haters. See my comment for example of down voted positive comments with no counter argument offered.

<comment><USER4> Just because something isn't false doesn't mean it's not highly biased.

<comment><USER5> Biased and true is better than biased and false.

Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it.

<comment><USER6> "Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better."

<comment><USER7> > Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring it.

and

> Perfect doesn't exist so I'm going to ignore better.

are not analogous. Now if the line were instead something like

> Unbiased doesn't exist so I'm ignoring less-biased (or efforts to reduce > bias).

then you'd be onto something, but as it stands, what you've got there is a false equivalence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any news on whether the hackathon is internal or external? If it's come-all- takers, it looks like Tesla is airing the unspoken point of hackathons (to provide the company with unpaid innovation). A bold move...

edit: _is_ , it's going on as we speak

<comment><USER9> Even simple things like having two robot arms for the same task with one idle but ready in case the other fails; or being able to electronically label some assemblies as rejects and no-op everything on the down the line until they hit an eject point. Ability to re-insert them again later. On-off ramps with even 20 minutes of buffer capacity would be extremely helpful in building redundancy into the system.

<comment><USER10> 20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large supermarket.

Buffering space is a big cost. Here's a Coca-Cola bottling plant.[1] This one has an extremely low employee count. It's mostly buffering space. That gives employees time to move to the trouble spot and deal with problems. Since Coca- Cola has been at this a while, they must need all that buffering.

In an auto final assembly plant, you don't have the luxury of big buffers. On a rigid line, there's no buffering at all - if any station stops, the whole line must stop. That leads to quality problems - if someone drops a bolt, that bolt never gets inserted. A few seconds of buffering between stations helps. That's what Toyota's kanban system introduced. If you watch videos of Toyota production lines, they have a big timer showing the cycle time of the last cycle. It's not always the same. Sometimes a cycle takes a few seconds longer. If something goes wrong, like a tool breaking or a bad part, the stations upstream use up their buffering capacity and stop one after another. But the whole line doesn't have to stop for a one minute tool change.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V6JO0Rfgas)

<comment><USER11> Disclaimer: I work for GM, any opinions are solely my own.

This is enormously context-sensitive, but it is not at all odd to have a buffer with several hours worth of vehicles in auto assembly, for example between shops (ie between body and paint and between paint and final assembly).

As you get closer to the end of the line, the buffers get much smaller, but you may have a 5 minute buffer between the last few lines in Final Assembly.

One other thing to point out here; The two main styles of conveyance in vehicle assembly are fixed position stop and stop stations (also known by many other names).

\- Fixed position stop is what you call rigid line, and it is used where humans work on cars. The conveyor runs at a constant, slow speed through constant size work areas called footprints, such that each worker gets about a minute or so to do a set of assembly tasks. Humans can attach parts as the vehicle moves down the line. With fixed position stop, there is no buffer as the vehicle carriers are physically connected to a conveyor chain.

\- Stop stations are used where robots work on vehicles. It is very difficult to get a robot to work on a moving vehicle (but possible). Generally these conveyors move about twice as fast as the rigid stations, but all work is done while the vehicle is stopped. Also, each vehicle moves independently between stop stations as fast as the conveyor can move, and there is some buffering between each station.

> 20 minutes of buffer in an auto plant? That's a building the size of a large > supermarket.

Yes, but it's in a mezzanine above the work area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This doesn't inspire too much confidence, Tesla at one point asked for volunteers to ramp up Model 3 production and now a hackathon to solve a bottleneck. We get they burn cash like there's no tomorrow ( pun?) but this reeks of desperation. He should at least pay the winners.

<comment><USER13> Seems like a better way to solve the problem than doing nothing, or continuing on business as usual.

<comment><USER12> If rewarded accordingly I agree. But the fact he could get a HUGE payout if certain milestones are met and has the nerve to not only ask for volunteers but now for programmers to fix his issues for free is ridiculous. Source: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could- earn-55-bill...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/elon-musk-could- earn-55-billion-at-tesla-with-new-pay-proposal.html)

<comment><USER14> How is this different from any other situation where an employee contributes to the company and the CEO benefits from their results?

The pay disparity between workers and executives is important and worth discussing, but what makes this particular example of it worth pointing out?

<comment><USER15> Well one, the employee is getting paid to do the duties their job asks for. They aren't working for free.

Tesla/Musk appears to be following the model of massive greedy billion dollar corporation that would rather take free work than appropriately compensate workers/consultants.

There is a massive difference between BEING PAID and NOT BEING PAID when asked to do work. Seeing how Musk overworks and underpays his workers I'm not surprised by this move.

<comment><USER14> Where do you get that these people aren't being paid?

<comment><USER15> From the User you were replying to: lechiffre10

Also if only the winners are being paid, what about everyone else? They've invested just as much time and their contributions were still valued by Tesla. This isn't Glengarry Glen Ross, these are real humans.

<comment><USER14> Well where did _they_ get it from?

As far as I can tell, this "hackathon" is being done by employees on company time, so I'm extremely confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Hackathon" - oh weee I'd love to work 100+ hours to "win" the prize. This isn't worker exploitation or overworking at all. /s

</comment><comment><USER17> The headline is evocative of the introduction to the book "The Goal" by Eli Goldratt. That book was transformative for me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Said it once, will say it again. Elon needs to provide stochastic simulations of his production line with realistic failure rates of each component. Understand where those high failures are and build in the same redundancy he does to the Model 3's frame.

<comment><USER2> Is it just failure rates, though? He's said in the past a lot of it that they have 30,000 parts and a massive number of suppliers to rely on. For instance, with the model X doors, there were substantial delays because their contractor said it could be done hydraulically, but it wasn't completed, so then Tesla did it itself with electromechanical systems. To me, that massive delay wouldn't be captured by your production line simulation.

<comment><USER18> Managing suppliers/supply chains, testing their designs, integrating their designs into yours is _the_ major challenge for a manufacturer, IMO. It goes well beyond the challenge of testing and verifying elements of your own design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I assume Elon meant an internal hackathon here I doubt anyone with the skills needed is going to work for peanuts

</comment><comment><USER20> Okay, I don't know what else to say at this point: HN needs a filter function so users can screen out content.

Said it yesterday, say it again today: I'm fucking sick of seeing every tiny little irrelevant thing involving Tesla in the news. It's STUPID. I bet google's holding a hackathon to fix something too but I don't see 45 upvotes on that....in fact nobody's even writing about it. This is just clickbait bullshit.

<comment><USER21> HN is on the web, which until the copyright vultures get their way, it's still a platform which the user can mold quite freely. There's no need to beg the site owners for that feature.

Ex: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do you discover new music? - <AUTHOR> <comment> dawid-s I just literally go to Spotify/Tidal app and look for new albums, disregarding the genre. Another one is listening to themed or artist radio. This way I have discovered many artists of which I would never have heard of otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER2> For rock and jazz music: by finding out who my already-favourite musicians have been playing with.

For classical music: by word of mouth and by reading musicologists.</comment>


U.S. Energy Mapping System - <AUTHOR> http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.cfm <comment><USER2> Esri / ArcGIS is great for analysis, but people should know by now that it is a terrible web-scale presentation tool. I'd guess that the majority of visitors to this site bounced before the markers showed up!

This is classic government contractor fodder, though: I bet it works great with only a handful of users (like during a demo).

<comment><USER3> So true. I clicked the link. Tried to work out what it does. Decided the map had nothing on it at all. Wondered if maybe that's why hn was linking to it, so came back here to see. If I hadn't read your comment above I would never have seen the actual content of this thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat, you can explore all sorts of comparisons.

It's interesting how renewables are basically absent from the deep south, apparently because there aren't as many renewable resources there.

Calm winds weren't surprising, but I was caught off guard to see that Mississippi and Alabama don't have the same solar potential as states to their west and east at the same latitude.

Wood power plants are huge there and along the coasts, I thought those were only used in third world countries.

<comment><USER5> The largest power station in Europe is partially converting from burning coal to wood (or biomass) much of which apparently is supplied from the southern US.

It's a bit complex as to whether this is a good thing or not. The main worry is the source of the wood. They claim it's mostly leftovers from sawmills which would be fine if true, but some have thrown doubt on that claim.

<comment><USER6> If is wasn't scrap, wouldn't it still be from tree farms, and not a problem?

<comment><USER7> Farms, maybe. Not without problems, though:

> In North Carolina, the heaviest logging is occurring in flood plains and > wetlands that are among the region's most productive natural habits. In > Georgia, where most of the trees for wood pellets are grown on pine > plantations, natural forests are rapidly disappearing as landowners see new > opportunities to make money, said Ben Larson, forestry and bio-energy > program manager for the National Wildlife Federation.

> The landscapes most at risk, Larson said, are traditional Southern savannas > with a canopy of tall pines and an understory of grass and shrubs that > provide food and shelter for wildlife. With more land converted to pines to > make wood pellets, the vital understory is disappearing, replaced by stands > of fast-growing pines that are raised as a cash drop.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/how-e...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/how- europes-climate-policies-have-led-to-more-trees-cut-down-in-the- us/2015/06/01/ab1a2d9e-060e-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It needs some way to filter or scale by power output; currently, there's no visual distinction between Diablo Canyon and some random Bloom Box installation, which makes the map pretty much uninterpretable.

</comment><comment><USER9> The landing page has a map, but where are the interesting overlays? Strike that. Maybe they weren't planning on having a bunch of visitors. Lots of stuff popped up after a few minutes.

<comment><USER10> It's a government agency that used some horrible contract vehicle to contract with a horribly inadequate contractor to build something half-assed. That's why performance is bad and I guarantee won't be notably better on even the best day.

My guess is that map cost about $150,000. I'd go look through records to find out if I had the time.

<comment><USER11> sadly it's not anything that malicious, they're just using a wms type map setup which involves requesting a bounding box of the viewing extent and the server responding back with it, it's really really bad because it's impossible to cache and really slow. But sadly it's a 'standard' that many gis people think is a good idea.

<comment><USER12> I appreciate the technical details, but this doesn't really contradict the parent. It's very possible that "horrible contractors" would implement ill- considered "best practices" like the one you describe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Neat idea, disappointing execution. I actually just worked on a site with a similar concept. I think it delivers more palatable results, but I'd love to hear what others think: [http://usofenergy.com](http://usofenergy.com)</comment>


A permalink for your MIT License - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/remy/mit-license

<comment><USER2> The reason you include the license in your project is so that if the person clones the repo or downloads the tar.gz/zip, they get the license with it, even if it is offline.

While it is a kind thing to try to do this for folks, linking to a license is not a good idea.

Also, while it isn't as commonplace as it was in the early 2000s, legally, I'm told it is still the best idea to include the license in every file of your project where there is significant value. I don't personally think the clutter is worth it, but then again, I've not written something so important that if the license were pissed upon that I would "gather guns" and sue.

Additionally, even though MIT is still bread and butter as far as I'm concerned (and I'm a Ruby guy and Rails, etc. use it), some claim Apache is better if you are concerned about the strength of the license.

<comment><USER3> The MIT license is also tiny!

I could possibly see this as a novel way to generate a license the first time for a project (eg. save it in the source tree). However, linking to a version has such a slight benefit, and many potential negatives, that I can't really see why someone would want to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is bizarre. Developers are donating to remy to pre-pay a domain name forward to 2032, to host something that can be easily (and much more correctly from a legal perspective) be included in the root folder, README.md + source headers of any open-source project.

I suspect nobody involved in this 'project' has really tried to understand OSS licensing or why it's important - instead let's just Host All The Things!

</comment><comment><USER5> I've made a habit out of just linking to the OSI page: <http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>

<comment><USER6> And I'm quite a fan of <http://www.tldrlegal.com/license/mit-license>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just spotted an increase in pull requests and auto-generated user pages from the curl command and spotted HN had found this project.

Thought I'd chime in an reply to a few of the comments here.

1\. Will it be online in 10 years? Yes - .org domains can only be registered up to 10 years in advance (though we've had donations going up to 2032). Check `whois mit-license.org | grep Expiration` and you'll see 16-Oct-2021 (I need to add this year).

2\. "This is bizarre...just Host All The Things!". Partially you're right, but if you read the very first line of the README.md I explain why I wanted to host it:<https://github.com/remy/mit-license>

TL;DR: because I _nearly always_ forget to include the file, and if I do, I usually forget to change it from project to project, and from year to year (also why I don't like to the opensource.org url - the date is a placeholder).

This would let me include just the url in my script headers (and someone else noted, and you're right on, what if you're offline? Arguably, the "mit- license.org" part of the URL should help the reader know what the license is - even if they can't read the contents).

Like I said, just chiming in. I'm not saying anyone here is wrong or right - it's just something I made for myself, and figured it might be useful to more than just me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Will it be still there 10 years later? That's how I decide to use such a thing.</comment>