Monopoly Man – the same image uploaded to Imgur 3.2M times? - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.kosiru.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but the analysis is a bit short. This was posted to Reddit five months ago with more discussion:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/2uzas7/i_found_out_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/2uzas7/i_found_out_that_roughly_1_of_imgur_images_are/)

They found (as I did, with a simple Google reverse image search) that the image was used to illustrate a Forbes article in 2011:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/venessamiemis/2011/04/04/the- ban...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/venessamiemis/2011/04/04/the-bank-of- facebook-currency-identity-reputation/)

[https://twitter.com/EricaGlasier/status/563770191440404480](https://twitter.com/EricaGlasier/status/563770191440404480)

Doesn't actually answer the question, but the source of the image is I think super relevant.

I could sort of imagine some automated process making Imgur thumbnails of images from links shared on some social media site, and going awkwardly self- recursive and getting to 3.2M.

<comment><USER3> Interesting speculation:

"Sorry to be boring, but Webdriver Torso already gave us the answer: it's a test image used in integration tests of Imgur itself. Silly image."

[https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/2uzas7/i_found_out_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/2uzas7/i_found_out_that_roughly_1_of_imgur_images_are/cod4cv3)

<comment><USER4> why would they have test data in production?

<comment><USER5> The 3.2 million number is highly suggestive:

        3263847/(365*6*24)
        = 62

It sounds like they've been running an integration test which uploads an image once per minute for pretty much their entire existence (they're a little over 6 years old.)

This is sensible. It's the only way to get instant feedback when the site stops working for any reason.

<comment><USER6> The sampling was done only for the old-style 5 character URLs. They've since moved to 7 character URLs. Depending on how that 3.2 million number was reached, you maybe should be calculating rate using just the time they were at 5 character URLs. I don't know when the switch occurred though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This chart is hard to read: [http://i.imgur.com/HJYmCLN.png](http://i.imgur.com/HJYmCLN.png)

Since the values are percentages, it's weird that the scale is out of 0.9 -- why not 100? Why leave out the other ~98% from the visualization? The radial arrangement makes it even harder to read and compare the values.

The effect (at least for me) was to make it seem like these images appeared much more often than they actually did. I actually found the raw numeric table below more illustrative!

<comment><USER8> Pie charts are already a terrible visualization, this is way worse. You're supposed to compare the area of these half circle shaped rotated slices easily? Should have just used a bar chart, in fact why wouldn't you use a bar chart? You could just have a single box and illustrate the percentage amounts by dividing the box up into different colors to indicate the percentages of a whole, but this? Nope. Tufte would probably not be pleased.

<comment><USER9> Pie charts are excellent for showing parts of a whole, and very poor for any other type of visualization. Just because people are misusing a chart type doesn't make it fundamentally useless, regardless of what Tufte thinks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What are the chances that imgur is throwing this image as an exploit prevention technique? Maybe there were 3000+ times the author triggered the rate limit, or some other metric?

The next one called "White Line" appeared 2000+ times too, maybe doing the same job.

In early days of reCAPTCHA at CMU, Luis von Ahn did a similar thing. There are a lot of sweatshops to type in CAPTCHAs, they detected that, and instead of blocking them, they threw at them longer (sometimes entire sentences) CAPTCHAs to get their help digitizing text.

<comment><USER11> This is interesting and it seems plausible. However, at the beginning of the article the author said they stumbled upon this image multiple times by manually entering random 5 character filenames. If it were an exploit prevention feature, I would hope it would be more difficult to trigger

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's an easteregg? that you get when accessing an imgur album as an individual image. Because the original user is scraping he basically found 3.2M galleries.

It only happens with older albums that do not have /a in the URL.

//EDIT: source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3clho3/1_out_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3clho3/1_out_of_every_120_images_hosted_on_imgur_are/csx6ho7)

</comment><comment><USER13> Clicking the link below creates a new imgur URL:

[http://imgur.com/upload?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.c...](http://imgur.com/upload?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Fy18.gif)

Perhaps someone had included a URL like the one above in some wordpress template.

<comment><USER14> I like this theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an old story. The answer is: this is a test image used in integration tests of Imgur itself.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd bet money that it's their standard test image.

<comment><USER17> Good call. What else would you bet on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is the author assuming that different URL ids necessarily translate to different images/uploads? The character based id could simply contain redundant parts, which favour certain images over others.

<comment><USER19> Seems 1:1

[http://imgur.com/blog/2013/01/18/more-characters-in- filename...](http://imgur.com/blog/2013/01/18/more-characters-in-filenames/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I find strange is the use of a hash of the image. There are other methods to detect whether images are visually the same while they have a different resolution, etc.

From what I remember is that you'd resize all images to a fingerprint of yxy (lets say 100x100 pixels), apply some filtering in order to normalize lighting and then you'd XOR 2 fingerprints in order to see how much they are similar.

<comment><USER21> That's more complicated, more likely to false-positive, and I doubt it would provide much more value. Very few people are resizing images and uploading a slightly different version; the overwhelming majority of the time, duplicate images are people uploading the exact same file, byte-for-byte.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I too noticed that imgur urls were short some time ago so I put some JS code together and let it run in background tab for some time and what I've noticed is that there is ever so often some images that appear from time to time. There are at least that coke/pepsi logo history image and then there is that man with big slash on his face.

Never seen that facebook man before for some reason.

If you have a hosting place I can share JS. But basically it just randomizes urls and if the resulting image is "if(e.naturalWidth == 161 && e.naturalHeight == 81)" it removes that image as that is the default size of the "image not found" image.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is this your site?

Have you tried any [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganalysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganalysis)?

<comment><USER24> They are comparing SHA256 hashes, so the images are literally identical (and don't just appear to be identical visually).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish there were more of these little experiments being done! What with just a little more time and resources, imagine what other weird quirky discoveries are out there.

<comment><USER26> I agree, I've seen lots of fun things like this on the internet. But good ideas are hard to come by. I did something like this a few years back, for favicons:

[http://tech.arantius.com/favicon-survey](http://tech.arantius.com/favicon- survey)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those wondering, "TARINGA" is an argentinian forum full of piracy. I assume some of those images are uploaded by users to illustrate their posts.

</comment><comment><USER28> Apparently this is the result of exercising a bug in imgur.

</comment><comment><USER29> monopoly mystery solved, but what's up with DJ David?

</comment><comment><USER30> Do they have some kind of data deduplication by the way?

<comment><USER31> Given how an image can be hashed with something like SHA256, it's kind of surprising that uploading the same image twice doesn't result in the same URL.

<comment><USER32> Well, the image title would be different, and that's a significant difference. "Smiling guy" and "Justin Bieber at my sister's birthday party" are very different :-)

Also, the "author" and comments wouldn't want to be merged -- different comment streams for different audiences.

<comment><USER30> The entry for the image can be different in the database, but there is no need to actually store the file twice, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yeah, I've stumbled upon this Monopoly image about 2 years ago, when I was developing a small JS-based website. It dynamically embedded random pics from image hosting sites like Imgur, and this Monopoly guy was everywhere.

I guessed that it must have been some sort of massive Facebook spam at some point in time, or something like this. After all, the guy waves dollars in your face in exchange for credentials.

</comment><comment><USER34> There is a link of DB attached([https://mega.nz/#!WBg1zAIA!dg0g2Q0kDm1q6r1WBMPe0-nrP3wxvokeF...](https://mega.nz/#!WBg1zAIA!dg0g2Q0kDm1q6r1WBMPe0-nrP3wxvokeF5XlNjTctdg)). Can anyone verify weather the images actually point to "The Monopoly Man" or is a test image.

</comment><comment><USER35> I tried this, and the _second_ random string I tried was the image in question:

[http://imgur.com/52nu1](http://imgur.com/52nu1)

</comment><comment><USER36> That was actually the first image I got when trying 5 random characters on an URL.

</comment><comment><USER37> Probably some kind of production canary or integration test in their deployments.

</comment><comment><USER3> weird project link [https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=TheGamble&subject...](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=TheGamble&subject=MONOPOLIED%20MEN)</comment>


Facebook Is Forming a Team to Design Its Own Chips - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/facebook-is-forming-a-team-to-design-its-own-chips?href= <comment><USER2> People are making fun of facebook/google for expanding beyond core competency, but this is a market (AI training / inference) where Nvidia has a very real monopoly that facebook and google must rely on for core competency products, so it's critically important that one or both of them break the monopoly by becoming a fabless chip designer and partnering with TSMC (or whoever) to make training and inference chips. It's absolutely the right decision today, and if there was one viable alternative to Nvidia (which AMD and Intel are not), it wouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER3> The entire reason that AMD hardware isn't considered a viable alternative to NVIDIA is that it doesn't run CUDA, which is going to be true of these custom chips too.

The chips FB are working on are probably far more similar to Google's TPUs than anything NVIDIA makes though.

<comment><USER4> This is something that I've wondered about. There is nothing about Tensorflow (for example) that is specific to CUDA. Why doesn't AMD dedicate a couple of engineers to port it? They don't even have to do a complete job. Only about half of the Tensorflow operations are used for most models.

<comment><USER5> If they make CUDA the industry standard by porting it to AMD, and then Nvidia is still able to control the standard, over the long term AMD will always be in the position of having to catch up.

<comment><USER6> I think the GP is suggesting AMD port TensorFlow to OpenCL to break up the CUDA monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So they are going to design their own chips for the consumer devices (Oculus Go and the speakers)? Those are two very different use cases, heavy 3D and speakers generally are simple. I am not sure Facebook will have sufficient volume of either of those to justify making its own chips. Apple sold 250M iPhones in 2017. Facebook sold less than 1M Oculus Rifts in 2018.

The other place that Facebook could use its own chips is in its datacenter. This would make a little more sense as it is easier to deploy custom chips into a datacenter you fully control. There are theoretically cost and energy savings possible from switching from Xeon D to ARM in the datacenter at Facebook's scale.

<comment><USER8> I think the point is not to become a chip producer, but to cut a hard point of dependency. My point is easier to understand for software development. Imagine a society outsourcing 100% of its software development. If it has a problem with a provider, it has no other solution than to ask another one. As all providers have similar business logic, the problem may not be solved. Imagine the society outsources only 95% of its software development. It has a lot more power over its providers because it can decide to do conflictual projects in- house. IMHO all societies should keep technical expertise of their key technologies by having some internal developments (software and if possible hardware).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is likely the FB job listing: [https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/a0I1H00000LgnqFUAR/](https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/a0I1H00000LgnqFUAR/) Looks like all of the difficulty of building a hardware startup, while maintaining all of the downside of being part of a large company.

[IIRC, Cisco used the "spin-in" model to great advantage in order to address some of the downside. However, that was 10-20 years ago, and I don't know any recent examples.]

<comment><USER10> A more recent example for Cisco was Insieme from 2013, which became ACI and Nexus 9k products.

[https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/cisco-sharpens-sdn- foc...](https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/cisco-sharpens-sdn- focus-683m-insieme-purchase)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yann LeCun posted the ad for this yesterday on FB.

Maybe they are doing Oculus too, but it sounds a lot to me like they are doing custom A.I. related silicon.

There's a well proven path showing that custom silicon can save energy relatively easily on inference ML tasks. Competing with NVidia on training is harder of course, but maybe possible for specific tasks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Frightening to think of how FB will manage a chip platform given their reckless behavior with our data. I hope it never leaves the whiteboard.

<comment><USER13> You do realize that FB has been designing their own servers for years, right? Also, what does personal data privacy have to do with silicon design? I know that FB privacy rules are a hot topic right now but how does that have anything to do with this article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They can spend say $5 million in employee time and fpga devkits and know within a few percent what the chip performance is, and they have a huge corpus for testing. Doesn't seem to be a huge financial risk.

</comment><comment><USER14> This makes perfect sense. It's all about economics both w respect to intel and nvidia. You can't be paying 8-10k per gpu, and you are not going to pay that when you can make something far cheaper and faster. Google got this done in what two years?? All the debates around the tech comparisons miss the economic picture. Who cares if 4tpu's being compared to one volta. Point is those 4 chips together cheaper than buying one v100. Bitcoin mining no different. Do you care how many chips (196) are in an antminer s9? No! What matters is that it mines 13000x faster than a gpu for roughly double the price. Facebook, Amazon and the likes have every incentive to go down this custom ASIC path. Google is now hiring sales folks for their tpu cloud. There is a reason they are not selling the hardware. It's more valuable to them to get tenants the other hyperscale competition can't match. So think all the hyperscale guys now looking for ways to keep up which obviously is horrible for nvidia. A lot of people have missed how much of nvidia's story been about essentially killing it on one very narrow use case, ml training, in a very short time. This is basically 50%+ of all profit growth they have achieved last two years. Nvidia has got some serious challenges ahead.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would these new chips be based on ARM, RISC-V, or some new ISA?

</comment><comment><USER16> Hardware-level user tracking? You just know they must be thinking about doing this.

<comment><USER17> Sorry you are getting down-voted. In fact, Intel and AMD have thousands of undocumented instructions that folks have only started [1] to enumerate. Even then, some of the instructions may not be visible through this method of enumeration. FB would have the option to add their own instructions. I would be curious to see how transparent they might be around the production and documentation of these chips.

[1] [https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/sandsifter](https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/sandsifter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Intel ME on steroids ...

<comment><USER19> Possibly. Copyright laws protect closed source hardware/software everywhere, so anyone putting spyware into a closed source chip would gain one more perfectly legal layer of protection against auditors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Heartbleed? Get ready for Facegash!

<comment><USER21> I prefer Clusterzuck.

As in "The handling of Cambridge Analytica was a complete clusterzuck from the start".

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love when companies wander beyond their core business and venture on something they are not familiar! That idea has everything to work it out just fine, don't worry!

<comment><USER23> Microsoft should stick to basic interpreters.

Apple should only do desktop PCs. Music players, that's ridiculous.

Oracle should only do databases.

Google should stick to search. What do they know about operating systems? They also have no business running their own datacenters, what could they possibly know about allocating ten billion dollars in capital annually to such an operation.

Amazon is a retailer. Cloud services, artificial intelligence, devices, is that a joke?

Intel makes memory chips, what do they know about processors?

Facebook has $41 billion in cash. They're about to start piling up $20 billion per year. Zero debt.

They can do almost anything they want to within reason and not worry about the financial consequences. Their shareholders will be a lot more upset if they don't take pragmatic business risks and pursue opportunity.

<comment><USER24> "They can do almost anything they want to within reason and not worry about the financial consequences."

No, they need to make the soundest possible investments with that money. Lots of free cash flow is not license to do "anything they want to within reason," especially for a publicly-traded company (sure, if you're talking about a private partnership and all the partners agree, go nuts, I guess). If they don't actually need it to run the business making the profits, they should return it to shareholders since, you know, that's whose money it is.

<comment><USER25> But there's no point paying dividends to shareholders who aren't demanding them.

Why would a company 'throw away' surplus cash to passive uncomplaining shareholders instead of intercepting it upstream and ploughing it back into tax-reducing activities? Like burning cash on R&D that provides opportunities for pivoting in the future. Now that is prudent and sound.

Eventually shareholders might gain enough voting power to demand dividends but there's no point in piling-up taxable cash until that happens.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Space Thief Or Hero? One Man's Quest To Reawaken An Old Friend - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/289628696/space-thief-or-hero-one-mans-quest-to-reawaken-an-old-friend

<comment><USER2> "But at that point, Dunham says, who knows if the spacecraft would still be alive."

Something about this line struck me. The story is about an "old satellite"; an "old friend", and it needs "old equipment" and "old documents" to be made to run again. That word is packed with a lot of meaning because for us it means not just the passage of time, but maturity, senescence and, eventually, death.

But there's no reason yet to think that the capabilities of the satellite are in any way degraded. Unless there's been some kind of accident, it could well be in pretty similar condition to when it left. It's had a long life, for sure, but in a sense it hasn't aged at all.

Compare that to the situation back on Earth. The equipment NASA used to communicate with the satellite is gone. A lot of people who worked on it have retired. Maybe we don't even have the knowledge left to operate it. If you shift your perspective to that of our old friend the satellite returning home, it's us who have grown old and forgetful while it remains disgustingly young.

And ultimately, this is the story of Bob Farquhar and his creation. Farquhar is 81, the article says, and not in the best health. The satellite is his life's work: he coined the term "halo orbit", proposed the original mission, and came up with the idea for what that mission has now become. No wonder he feels a personal connection to this satellite; it's essentially a part of him.

And if this plan works, who knows how long that part could keep going, bumbling around its lab at the Sun-Earth L1, doing science just like always. Sure, it could be damaged or destroyed, but it'll never get old. Never wonder when the next attack's coming. Never feel a little worse than the day before.

And if we miss the timing window and the next one isn't for two hundred years? Well, who knows if the spacecraft will still be alive? Two centuries is a long time. Longer than we've got, at any rate.</comment>


Kleiner Perkins Partner Ellen Pao Sues Firm for Gender Discrimination - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120522/kleiner-perkins-partner-ellen-pao-sues-firm-for-gender-discrimination-over-sexual-harassment/ <comment><USER2> It sounds like the senior guys didn't take her complaints very seriously because she had been in a relationship with the guy. It was only when _another_ woman complained about the same guy that they got rid of him.

It also sounds like the firm is controlled by men who tend to favor men for promotions and compensation.

Ultimately I think lawsuits like this are what will move the industry forward. It forces complacent old powerful men to take young women seriously.

Hopefully she gets paid for her trouble and KPCB significantly improves their environment for women.

<comment><USER3>
      In the suit, Pao alleges that she was sexually harrassed
      for years by Ajit Nazre, a former partner with the firm
      who left last year. The two took a business trip together
      in February 2006, the suit says, during which Nazre made
      sexual advances toward Pao and she rebuffed them, causing
      him to become "brusque and distant."

      Nazre continued to pursue Pao and the two had a brief
      relationship, which she broke off soon after, according to
      the suit.

"And the two had a brief relationship". Wait, so then it wasn't harassment? During that time I'm sure she thought his persistence had paid off. It is all too reminiscent of this satire:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBVuAGFcGKY>

<comment> brown9-2 You seem to have missed this part of the article:

 _but after breaking things off with him, multiple Kleiner Perkins partners and an outside human resources consultant allegedly ignored Pao's complaints about repeated harassment and retaliation, and rejected her requests to transfer away from Nazre._

Having once been in a relationship with a person does not open the door to continued harassment after the relationship is over.

<comment><USER4> Certainly it introduces a new complexity to the case, no? I'd go as far to say _significantly_ more complexity, especially if their break up was anything like the average break up today and the ensuing drama--where depending on the time of the day, each partner could be found guilty of harassment if they chose to pursue.

On the larger topic of sexual harassment, I often wonder if there should be a word for sexual harassment just as we have one for rape(where stop means stop). With sexual harassment, seemingly normal conversation could be construed as criminal.

Alas, don't shit where you eat.

<comment><USER5> _"Certainly it introduces a new complexity to the case, no?"_

No.

Which means, no.

<comment><USER6> Except it meant yes, for a while.

When she first said no, and he persisted, and then she acceded, she trained him into believing that persistence pays off. So when she says no again, it seems to me that it is almost mathematically predictable that he will re- double his persistent efforts to win her back.

'no means no' does not apply when it sometimes means yes. With added flakiness, 'no means no' means : 'no means yes once in a while, and no means no when I feel like it, and you're a rapist and I'm still an angel if you cannot figure it out'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The part where he boss tells her she should just give up and marry her harasser (Fact 13) is gross.

Fact 29 is also pretty damning. If this is true, it's clearly not just a problem with Ms. Pao in particular, but all women.

I agree with all the other posters who have said this is why you don't have personal relationships with people at work. Especially not in the same group.

I do have trouble understanding the part where Nazre is continually harassing her, so she just gives in and has a relationship with him, despite him apparently being married. This is all kinds of wrong.

<comment><USER8> > I do have trouble understanding the part where Nazre is continually > harassing her, so she just gives in and has a relationship with him, despite > him apparently being married. This is all kinds of wrong.

That's from the complaint. The weirdness shows that we haven't been told the whole story yet.

Still, this whole thing is disturbing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting discrimination lawsuit by her husband last year:

[http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/the-money-manager- who...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/the-money-manager-who-is-suing- the-dakota/)

<comment><USER10> The apartment building wouldn't let him buy a second unit, even though he's worth $10's of millions. Something fishy for sure.

<comment><USER11> A co-op like the Dakota (which is one of the oldest and most historic large apartments buildings in New York) may be less than thrilled with having someone own two units, especially if the intent is to do a bunch of renovation and knocking down walls to join two adjacent units.

Given that the co-op board doesn't actually own the unit being sold, their only option to stop that is to block the sale to him, and there's relatively little cost to them. Even for the seller, it won't be that hard to find another buyer so it's not a huge deal.

<comment><USER9> Actually in a coop the unit is owned by the association and you get the rights to use it and I believe that is either defacto or dejure what gives them the right to decide who gets to occupy it.

<http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/real-estate/condos1.asp>

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

<code> "In a cooperative says St. John, an attorney whose firm represents more than 600 condominium, cooperative, and homeowner associations, the building containing the residential units or apartments is owned by a 'cooperative housing corporation.'"</code>

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

<code> "In a condominium, each unit owner owns an individual apartment in fee simple. In addition, the buyer owns an undivided interest in the common elements such as the exterior walls, roof, pool and other recreational areas." </code>

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

Edit: Any idea why my code tags don't work?

<comment><USER11> The co-op association legally owns the units, but the board and board-members don't directly own the unit being sold.

I was trying to point out that the board members don't have much economic incentive to approve a particular buyer - if the unit eventually sells for less, it doesn't directly harm the occupants on the board unless one of them is the seller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suspect it's here because it ties into a) gender issues being a hot topic among developers over the last few weeks here at HN, as well as b) the fact that KP is a power player Silicon Valley and impacts the lives of many startups.

Perhaps not developer-oriented, but certainly in line with recent posts here on HN.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. I hope "brogrammers" take note.

<comment><USER14> You can be a "brogrammer" and be outraged at this all the same, you know… Your association of brogrammer == sexist is just as offensive and discriminatory as the attitude you accuse all brogrammers to have towards women.

<comment><USER15> I am outraged at this.

No company should have to suffer employees doing stupid things like this.

If she wants to sue over his behavior, why not sue him?

Oh right, who has the most money?

<comment><USER16> If the company allowed the discrimination and harassment to occur even after several complaints, why shouldn't they be held liable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I respect and admire her courage and bravery to do what's right, in light of her career.

<comment><USER18> Isn't that a bit premature? It may be a civil case, but presuming innocence until proven otherwise is still a pretty good policy.

<comment><USER17> You're right, and I had that very thought in mind that these are just allegations. And, anyone familiar with the justice system should be cognizant of that by default.

My point is that she's seriously jeopardizing her career and everything she's worked for professionally by bringing these issues to the forefront. Whatever outcome occurs, Kleiner Perkins will still be standing.

That is a big sacrifice for a chance at a "payout" or validating some feminist rhetoric.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems to me that the significant allegation in this case is the fact that she asked to be moved and KP said no.

I believe some of the other details are incriminating as well and in the end it doesn't matter that she had a relationship Nazre, but as soon as something like this is muddied many people will say its complicated and therefore not worth the time to look at it.

But, no matter these other details, she felt uncomfortable and asked not for retribution, but to sacrifice her current role in order to escape an uncomfortable situation and KP said NO. That seems unacceptable to me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Never have relationships with people at work. Avoid the ambiguity. You're colleagues. Period.

<comment><USER21> Sure, that might be good advice, but such absolutism isn't viable as a workplace system. Research into propinquity (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity>) tells us that romantic relationships are actually quite likely in the workplace. We should develop systems that handle this less-than-ideal(sometimes) behaviors. One of those systems is anti-discrimination law.

<comment><USER22> There was even another recent HN submission in the same spirit: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4005906>

Smoking is forbidden on airplanes. But if someone does smoke, it's better that they have an ashtray available rather than starting a fire by trying to dispose of the ashes improperly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How does this relate to John Doerr's quote that "[The world's greatest entrepreneurs] all seem to be white, male, nerds".

I'd love to be running discovery for this case. How likely is it that someone, once, wrote something really stupid in an e-mail between senior partners, regarding Pao's allegations?

</comment><comment><USER24> Her side of the story sounds awful, and to the extent it's true KP's inaction and behavior is despicable.

I'm curious why she stayed though. VCs move between firms in the valley not irregularly, leaving previous firms on both positive and negative notes. My top two guesses are that either she wasn't able to find anything else, or she wanted to stick it to them by collecting enough evidence to win this case.

Both make me sad - the former because it means everyone else was blind to her apparent talent, and the latter because even if she wins this she'll never get that time she was miserable back.

I hope that the truth comes out and justice is served, but can't help wondering if success elsewhere might have been the best revenge.

<comment><USER25> Actually most VCs do not switch firms. This was made clear by Ann Winblad in her epic TED talk located here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HybHcXGvrGM>

If you spent your whole life to reach the top of your profession, you wouldn't want to walk away just because some douchebag was harassing you.

Many women do just what you suggest, which is right on an individual level but doesn't help the cause of the gender. Ms. Pao, as a wealthy and successful woman has the opportunity to change the game. And the resources to fight a firm with very deep pockets. If people who make it don't fight to change the system, who will?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe it's just how such briefs are written but this thing doesn't seem to lay out evidence or argument that she should have been promoted and bonused. Nor does it trouble itself anticipating obvious benign explanations -- she wasn't good at her job, didn't work hard, etc. Doesn't she have to make some showing that her performance merited the compensation denied her?

<comment><USER7> It's going to be more difficult to prove performance when her performance reviews for the past few years are being challenged. At any rate, I'm sure merit will be discussed during the trial. IANAL but the brief is supposed to be a list of complaints, not a hagiography of the plaintiff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wait a minute. If Ellen is married, why was she having sex with colleagues at her firm?

</comment><comment><USER28> In the complaint, page 10, line 3. Chi-Hua Chien organized a dinner for partners and explicitly excluded women because "they would kill the buzz."

Reading the complaint shows that KPCB was following the standard playbook for removing an employee cleanly. A lesson for the kids out there: HR works for the company, not for you. Never reveal anything to HR.

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/94433811/Kleiner-Perkins-Ellen-Pao>

</comment><comment><USER29> True Hacker News!

</comment><comment><USER30> Here's what I know:

1\. She's beautiful, smart, terrific, and reasonable

2\. Her husband is extremely wealthy, so this isn't about money

3\. Her husband sued the Dakota building for discrimination (she lives in SF, he lives there, they commute between)

Make of that what you will.</comment>


Neanderthal 0.5.0 – Getting Started with Fast Matrix in Clojure (CPU and GPU) - <AUTHOR> http://neanderthal.uncomplicate.org/articles/getting_started.html <comment><USER2> Still only OpenCL 2 support... I have nvidia. I wish I could try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The engine for nvidia is in the works.

But, in the meantime, you can try the native CPU engine. It is as fast as the underlying ATLAS. Almost no overhead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Works great. Glad to see new version is finally released.</comment>


Show HN: Bravo – Turn designs into native iOS and Android apps without coding - <AUTHOR> https://www.bravostudio.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN!

This is a project we've (ten people team, four developers) been working on since about May this year. It currently supports importing a design from Figma (more to come), setting up API requests and binding the output of the API requests to design elements from your Figma document. From this, we then generate native applications (no webviews nor React Native) that you can preview directly in the phone. You can also create a build where you get the full native app as a binary (IPA for iOS and apk for Android) that you can ship to the app store.

Bit behind the scenes:

\- Android version using Kotlin

\- iOS version using Swift

\- Backend written in JS with NestJS

\- Frontend (built by my) made in ClojureScript with reagent and re-frame

Been a fun experience setting up everything from 0 and it's probably the largest project I've done myself with ClojureScript and it's been an absolute bliss to use it. If you're a frontend developer (or developer who wants to do frontend), you should definitely try out ClojureScript and see how it feels.

Hoping to share more experiences and lessons in the future around the development of the platform. In the meantime, any feedback is good feedback, so please don't hold back, y'all usually pretty good at that!

Hope you like it, Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Congrats! Any reason you didn't go with clojure/clojurescript for backend also?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're two different people building the backend and frontend. I'm building the frontend and I'm the most productive with Clojure/ClojureScript and the developer building the backend is more productive with Node.js/TypeScript

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a good start. I've often wondered why someone hasn't recreated something akin to a modern VB6. Allow users to drag/drop things, add some glue code in some intermediate language, and output to Android, IOS, or even native. Java came somewhat close, but I think if done well could be a huge success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, "a good start" is what we think too, still long way to go. Yeah, I think that's a step further than what we're focusing on now, enabling Figma (and Sketch et al in the future) users to import their designs, add API connections and bind design elements to API output/input. Basically making designers avoid having to write code (hearsay here on HN but here we are :) )

<comment><USER4> I think you meant heresy...

But don't underestimate HN as a codemonkey hive; there are plenty of folks here who understand the value of business velocity and low barriers for market entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker, but thank you for correcting me so I don't repeat it.

Yeah, absolutely, it wasn't called Startup News before for nothing. Was more tongue in cheek but hard to transmit that fully I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure it's useful to some people at this stage but for me I see that logins and real rest api support are future goals which makes me deeply suspicious since this kind of product has burned me about a half dozen times now... starting strong but never getting to a point where I can actually use it for real serious business work beyond the demo pre-prototype stage.

So how far away are the rest api and user login features? Bonus points if your looking to support OpenID Connect for user authentication.

<comment><AUTHOR> > real rest api support

Currently we do support "real REST API" as-in you can use any HTTP API. What's missing is making sure POST and other methods actually are useful in that they can use/deliver values from other requests. Let me know if there is something specific you're missing for this.

> user login features

User login features are definitely on the roadmap but unclear right now how it will be integrated. We might go with something like Auth0 which gives bunch of different integrations built-in (like OpenID Connect). If you'd be open to talk more exact needs and I can give a more exact answer. (happy to answer as a comment here or email [firstname.lastname@example.com])

Thanks a lot for the feedback, super helpful!

<comment><USER5> That's great to hear about the rest APIs, I was looking on the website and couldn't find the documentation about them, I'm guessing it might be harder to find while browsing on my phone so my bad if it's somewhere obvious and I missed it.

And on the topic of user logins, I actually mentioned OpenID Connect because I'm using Auth0 at work and for my own personal projects, so if you're looking at supporting Auth0 directly that's fantastic news for me! :-D

<comment><AUTHOR> > I was looking on the website and couldn't find the documentation about them

Yeah, we have plenty of great documentation already but doesn't mean we don't want more. Just takes time :)

In the meantime, there is a tutorial that goes through how the flow works with APIs here: [https://www.notion.so/bravostudio/Tutorial-Connect-data- to-d...](https://www.notion.so/bravostudio/Tutorial-Connect-data-to- design-02ff42fdaa34414babb328d996f1a243#4ed3462b51354abe945394db0b67fb20)

> And on the topic of user logins, I actually mentioned OpenID Connect because > I'm using Auth0 at work and for my own personal projects, so if you're > looking at supporting Auth0 directly that's fantastic news for me! :-D

Ah, that's cool, great data-point to have! Thank you for the overall feedback

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a similar project called Neonto Studio: [https://neonto.com/nativestudio](https://neonto.com/nativestudio) The code Neontov generates is not exactly perfect, but it's still a nice starting point.

Bravo seems like a nicer version of this since it generates Swift / Kotlin code.

<comment><USER7> Well that's not exact, Bravo it's free.

Also Bravo doesn't generate any code at all, it's built with Swift and Kotlin, but it's a nocode platform, where you get the final packages (ipa and apk), but not the code.

Also Bravo allows to add all the backend and API logic from the same tool, so it's pretty fast to create a working app with API calls.

Hope I brought some light!

<comment><USER8> While I get what you're saying, I do find it a bit silly to say "Bravo doesn't generate any code at all", when it plainly does - the app developer (or whatever you want to call them) just doesn't get to see it, since all they get is the binaries built from the code.

<comment><USER9> "doesnt output source code" would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, but your website is awful.

Vertical scroll, then horizontal scroll, then finally a video that appears on a button's hover.

Yeech!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, happy that you wrote concretely about what you didn't like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea but Figma is not the best...Build for sketch!

<comment><USER12> Don't build for sketch, I am not going to buy a mac just to use your app.</comment></comment>


Launch HN: Guggy (YC S17) – Make your friends laugh with personalized GIFs - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I'm Rotem from Guggy (https://guggy.com). We help you make your friends laugh by turning your text messages into personalized, funny GIFs. We're currently serving 4M GIFs daily.
It works like this: Whenever you want to spice up your conversation, you click on the Guggy button and get a selection of GIFs with your text in them. If you find one that you like and that you think is funny, you click it and a link gets copied to your clipboard.
When we started Guggy, we were trying to provide non-technical users with an easy way of creating funny GIFs, and for that we built a GIF editor, only to discover that the real problem was that people had a hard time combining the right text with the right GIF. That got us thinking that we should try to automatically create the text/image pairing, relieving users from the need to search and match. To do that, we've built an NLP engine that understands 'messaging language', that is, slang, excited writing (e.g. "soo amazinggg!") and leetspeak, to name a few.
We've also built a fast image rendering engine that generates the final media for the user in real time. This stands out from existing solutions, which rely on existing media files (served via CDNs). We don't store the files at all, we generate them on the fly at each request. That gives us flexibility in personalizing the content to the user.
We're two co-founders who are also cousins. We have been working together on numerous projects for several years, and always wanted to build something related to humor. Of all the projects we've tried, this is the one that just sort of took off, and we've been following where the users want to take us. It's kind of a dream project because the technical challenges are interesting and we get to work in a space that amuses us.
Here is a real example from our users of how a regular message can become expressive and engaging using Guggy - https://img.guggy.com/media/iL1rqhoZE7/animated/2/h/guggy.gi...
We offer our own Android/iOS GIF keyboards for natural experience, or you can just use our standalone apps. We also have bots and an API so you can use Guggy via messengers such as Facebook and Slack.
I've heard that this place can be a bit serious! but if you don't find it annoying, we may reply to bits of your text in the comments with Guggy URLs, just for fun and to show what the system can do.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on our product, and feel free to head to guggy.com and reply with Guggy GIFs :) <comment><USER4> Wow, this is awesome. I've been toying with the idea of creating a GIF search engine (I find Giphy's search results rather weak). I'm impressed with Guggy's search results.

Any chance you guys could talk more about how this is implemented? (I'd be interested in the tech stack as well)

Edit: Your about page is 404'ing [http://guggy.com/about](http://guggy.com/about)

<comment><USER5> Thanks! What we can share is that we have essentially three main parts - <USER2> custom NLP engine that is built specifically for texting (consists of numerous phases of filtering and normalizing), this is the core of Guggy and will be also used in the future for more entertaining applications.

The second part is the creatively tagged image repository. Even though tech enables now to tag objects in images, it still can't do it in a creative and funny way, so for the moment we were aiming for quality rather than quantity (I do agree that massive existing GIF repositories do not yield desired results), whereas we have plans for extending our repository significantly in the future.

The third part is also what we consider a big advantage of Guggy, and that's the image rendering engine. That allows us to personalized each request, such that different users could potentially see different results for the same texts (imagine seeing them in a font that you like, and your friend sees them in a different font, but there are also other applications for this). The images are therefore rendered on the fly per each request and are never stored.

Hope that clears up the questions you had in mind.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the reply! It certainly does.

Something that you guys might find interesting. Even after a day I already forgot exactly the name of Guggy, instead attempting to navigate to [http://guppy.com](http://guppy.com) and [http://gubby.com](http://gubby.com). Probably just my bad memory, but might help you guys out if you see bad retention.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting.

We will think how to make our brand more memorable, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where are you guys serving 4m gifs? the API? Doesn't seem like the apps are that popular. Also the name might need work because it doesn't sound very appealing

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, most of our traffic comes from places like Viber and FB messenger extension, we only started to really focus on our apps recently. Guggy sounds to us like a funny and casual word. It's actually very similar to the word funny.

<comment><USER7> It sounds to me like the noise a baby makes when giggling with food in it's mouth; dribbling everywhere!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like a really cool project. Congratulations on the momentum!

I have some feedback to share:

\- A thing that bothers me a bit is the extremely long URL that Guggy generates. It's probably not a priority, but those would look and play nicer as shortened links.

\- As always there's a slight "uncanny valley" problem when computers match up images with natural language. I sent this to a co-worker as a test, and she complained about the insincere looks on the Seinfeld cast faces: [http://bit.ly/2viBamB](http://bit.ly/2viBamB). It achieved the opposite of what I intended :I

\- Let people re-caption existing Guggies

<comment><USER5> Thanks

> A thing that bothers me a bit is the extremely long URL...

Most platforms on which Guggys get shared either do not show the URL or shorten it. Could you say where did it bother you?

> As always there's a slight "uncanny valley" problem...

Interesting point. The thing is that if we have only the scope of the short message, such as "it's great", it's hard to predict whether you're being slightly cynical or sincere, so we try to provide with a few options to choose from.

> Let people re-caption existing Guggies

I see. It's more relevant to the website but I can think of a few ways we can do it on our apps too. We'll give it a thought.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where's the website?

here: [https://guggy.com/](https://guggy.com/)

[https://img.guggy.com/media/tLJNhkLj2I/animated/2/h/4UEhAtc4...](https://img.guggy.com/media/tLJNhkLj2I/animated/2/h/4UEhAtc4xiLALdRsZC23eoMMLqNs1ZuHGVhZME2AXtuzwsQ7pH7bYtDHTmyTvTWEvfLb94z3kQcavYR1pXf3ton5KX1rERCzbsiP2-cq5QJJEC8iWVyLDGBpSX-0/guggy.gif)

<comment><USER5> It's [http://guggy.com](http://guggy.com)

<comment><USER9> Here are some comments:

\- When I search for "the universe itself is a giant ocean of distraction.", I see few options and a lot of empty colored boxes which I assumed was empty - but they were loading. So maybe it's better to put a spinner?

\- It can be very good if embedded inside FB or Reddit. So a focus there would be better. FB embed (edit- FB shows it on the timeline without a need to click away) worked for me.

\- Slight customization of font color, stroke and size could be good - <USER3> as an advanced setting. But simplicity and defaults are good.

\- May I upload my own photo and make my own gug (or whatever).?

<comment><AUTHOR> \- The colored boxes should be replaced very quickly to the gif. We find a spinner to be too much of a distraction. We may change the colored boxes to a thumbnail of the gif.

\- You can post the gif to FB and reddit using the share buttons. What do you mean by embed?

\- Advanced customizations and photo upload are on our roadmap, we can't tell yet when we will do it

<comment><USER9> > The colored boxes should be replaced very quickly to the gif.

In several attempts, 4-5 of them were GIFS and the rest waited colored- it was enough for me to assume they were meant to be empty. I have a fast LTE connection. Spinners are a distraction but the slightest, faintest spinner concept can do- and they don't need to spin just maybe just wave or show something is coming.

or maybe don't show the colored boxes at all ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice idea but please spend a couple of days browsing 9gag for inspiration on your frontpage. The examples are (imo) note even remotly funny. Would they be funny they would surely inspire usage of your website.

Edit: The tech behind that seems to be interesting, tho. Good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

As you mentioned, front page results are meant to demonstrate our tech. We are constantly trying to balance the humor side and that, however, making sure every result is funny is not very scalable.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I see. Maybe a few funny examples would suffice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we will try change some of the results to funnier ones

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nifty product! I think I'd purchase an app if I could get gifs without the watermark. It's a bit annoying to me. Nothing against your product, just giving feedback from this users perspective :)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's completely understandable. To tell you the truth, we would also want to provide the GIFs without a watermark. However, we need to create brand awareness. Let's hope we will get to the point when we can remove it very soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you talk about how your realtime gif infrastructure works?

Have you considered some sort of lightweight machine vision for pinning text to the scene, similar to many of the gifs in Reddit's /r/highqualitygifs / Instagram's stories?

<comment><USER5> > Can you talk about how your realtime gif infrastructure works?

We generally store necessary data for generating the GIFs within the URLs themselves. Then we use stateless servers to generate the files. These read the data and overlay the text on top of the GIF.

> Have you considered some sort of lightweight machine vision for pinning text > to the scene, similar to many of the gifs in Reddit's /r/highqualitygifs / > Instagram's stories?

Yes, it's in the roadmap. We used to have text effects such as the ones appearing here:

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*Ws-pXgOsNkLwhVbyl9...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*Ws-pXgOsNkLwhVbyl9DALg.gif)

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*YiT8QgLZ1JAr7DmjX-...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*YiT8QgLZ1JAr7DmjX-YkwQ.gif)

But we came to the conclusion it's too distracting. The thing is that Guggys are essentially an enriched text message, maybe even more than they are GIFs, so we want to make sure that while keeping it visually appealing, we also allow our users to send their message in a clear way, a trait we feel is absent from current GIF products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure I quite get it, will the readers of the posts then have to click these links to actually see the words? That seems a bit impractical. Wouldn't it be better to put the gif itself on the clipboard in that case?

<comment><USER5> Also important to mention that Guggy is mostly made for messaging/texting. Our main products are iOS/Android keyboards which allow you to share GIFs in messaging apps such as iMessage, FB Messenger, WhatsApp etc.

<comment><USER13> Ok, that makes sense, but then instead of linking simply to a gif like you did as an example in your post, perhaps link to a whole conversation on twitter/fb, or at least a screenshot of one. To show it in action.

Even better would be an animation showing the whole work flow, since that is your USP, not the end result per se.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats on your launch.

FYI: I tried visiting your about page [1] and get 'Error! We can't find this page'

[1] [https://guggy.com/about](https://guggy.com/about)

<comment><USER5> Thanks, will be fixed soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> firstname.lastname@example.com returns: 'Address not found Your message wasn't delivered to firstname.lastname@example.com because the address couldn't be found. Check for typos or unnecessary spaces and try again.'

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for letting us know. It is fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >>We don't store the files at all, we generate them on the fly at each request.

How do you manage to get right image for a text?

<comment><USER17> Looks like some sort of "sentiment" analysis give the ability to vote/train whatever underlying logic they've built so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is great, love it. Even if it doesn't match up with the text quite right, it's still entertaining

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! an insider tip: you can add # following a search term to change the meaning of your sentence. For example: you are so beautiful #ugly

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wanted to write my own message on the images but it did not work. Not sure I understand the concept...

<comment><AUTHOR> You can go to [https://guggy.com/](https://guggy.com/) and just write anything in the input on the top of the page and click on Make GIF.

Is that not working for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just installed and tried out the iMessage app (99% of my messaging is in iMessage) and I for one really like it!

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

[https://img.guggy.com/media/8gwTJKPnI5/animated/6/h/2WM179sE...](https://img.guggy.com/media/8gwTJKPnI5/animated/6/h/2WM179sEseN4faKHghU24DogPup2mtrATzJaDU4PUGXgrMJTjD5GqYg1DFULWoNztX4PvnaKioBk9nUpBJRzxciWSKLQyi3z1QA8C5sPCZipyPKC3uowT6R5-ZJahrgm524gbhsefxqxs-0/guggy.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love guggy on slack. It's always way more fitting for a reaction than giphy.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! I wonder, are you missing the ability to choose from several options? We haven't implemented that there yet.

<comment><USER22> Yep, adding that option thing would be great. This could be done similar to the way giphy implements it at the moment. Also, guggy.com/slack doesn't seem to be working at the moment (along with the about page itself)

<comment><USER5> Just launched a new landing page, will be fixed shortly. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How can you offer all those GIFs without infringing copyright?

<comment><USER5> There hasn't been a precedent so far in considering GIFs as infringing copyright. GIFs generally are considered fair use, contradicted only by cases thus far where the content owner has specifically directed not to create GIFs (which we do not). There are other traits of Guggy (as opposed to other GIF products) that make it even less subject to infringing copyrights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What about porn gifs? Do you do safesearch?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have any porn, all of are GIFs are PG13.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've worked with these guys and they're awesome, good luck Rotem and Shahar you're doing great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ran!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Congrats on the launch.

> We'd love to hear your thoughts on our product

I find it useless and just another dash in the ocean of distraction.

<comment><USER9> And it can be succesful because:

[https://img.guggy.com/media/b7E41wFSJh/animated/4/h/1XhEYqMy...](https://img.guggy.com/media/b7E41wFSJh/animated/4/h/1XhEYqMyJJQfMnnnPf6vA4N2XpdepfwcFTKMp12bRkTqpgUYGSNNSewRcX2uF3Vg3BLtqYeJ2kFnFAYbasWrrSVRcrN9i1RdTw1bxnX6g2SqRCyeVxpL8KaFbWgvw8SBvsDkVMm8e54Nnh8K4xmGNeE2BAFYXrHgbzhUVoUGV11b1-3ZTmZxuVud0dMO5w1qNw-0/guggy.gif)

<comment><USER26> > The universe itself is a giant ocean of distraction.

Well said. What makes me a bit sad is that generations of scientists and engineers poured their sweat into building chips, network and a giant incredible infrastructure and what we cheer to is a site with gifs.

I want technology to solve more pressing needs, millions of people commute to work and pollute the environment even tough we have all these internets. And so much else is wasted. Why cannot we have a nicer world - the tech seem to be is here?

<comment><USER27> Making people smile and cherishing their souls is also a serious endeavor in addition to all that you mentioned )</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Launching a niche community - coding choices - <AUTHOR>

We're preparing to launch a niche social network for Media Professionals later this month.
Since this is going to involve mainly professionals, we're planning to offer only serious usage type of functionality, at least in the initial phase (e.g. profile builder, forums, group formation, private and group
messaging, member directory etc.).
While we already have most of the features working now (with proprietary code, stable and working satisfactorily), we're wondering if we should ditch this in favour of a ready-made SN platform such as ning - or some other one.
What do HNers suggest? Which way should we go? Roll our own or go ready-made? If ready-made, why, and which one?
Please share your views.
[Those interested can check it out - pre-registrations already on:
http://www.AllMediaPeople.com ] <comment><USER2> If you already have something working, why would you ditch it? If you are expecting to spend most of your time doing non-coding stuff to get your site going, then going with a readymade solution might be a good idea. But then you are at the mercy of the provider if you want to iterate fast and add new features.

I'm wrestling with the same question for a project of mine, and although I'm tempted to go with a readymade solution, I fear it will come back to bite me sooner than later. So, even if I go with the readymade option, I will do it only as a way of vetting the idea and quickly move to my own codebase once I get some traction.

</comment><comment><USER3> I launched a site using Community Engine which is a Ruby on Rails plugin - <http://communityengine.org/>

I've looked at launching a community site on Ning. It sounds like your team has coding chops. I was frustrated with Ning because if you wanted functionality that was out of the box and you were able to create it, at the time you couldn't add it to the site. I'm not sure if that's changed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link:

<http://www.AllMediaPeople.com></comment>


Intel's erratic Core M performance leaves an opening for AMD - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/202991-intels-erratic-core-m-performance-leaves-an-opening-for-amd <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, AMD's Carrizo is in no way competitive with Intel's Core M (Broadwell).

1\. Carrizo isn't shipping yet. Broadwell shipped in September, and Intel's next microarchitecture (Skylake) ships late this year.

2\. Carrizo will be fabbed on a 28nm process.[1] Broadwell is 14nm. When it comes to fab tech, AMD is over 3 years behind Intel. Ivy Bridge (22nm) shipped in April of 2012.[2]

3\. Carrizo's lowest TDP is 12W.[1] The Core M version of Broadwell has a 3-6W configurable TDP.

I compliment AMD's PR department, but when it comes to performance or efficiency, AMD is not a serious competitor. Intel's fab tech is simply too far ahead. I'd love to see a repeat of the Athlon days, but for the foreseeable future AMD can only compete on price.

1\. [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/amds-carrizo- system-o...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/amds-carrizo-system-on- chip-more-transistors-more-performance-less-power/)

2\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_(microarchitecture)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_\(microarchitecture\))

<comment><USER3> Isn't it a bit worrying to see AMD drop off so much? I've stuck to Intel CPUs since the Pentium 4, but I shudder to think where we'd be today without the competition AMD brought to Intel over the years.

<comment><USER4> Don't worry. AMD was just replaced by ARM (and the manufactures who use their designs).

That's why Intel did so much R&D in power efficiency. ARM CPU are sometimes still favorable to Intel ones, in some markets Intel still doesn't have a chance.

PC is dominated by Intel. Smartphones by ARM. Intel invades the tablet market, ARM the notebook.

Personally I would love me an nice ARM based notebook, but other factors like housing, keyboard and display are often better on Intel devices. But I don't think until ARM steps up and produces a high quality device like Google did for their Chromebooks, no manufacture will switch from the thinking that ARM is for cheap devices only.

My god I could already live with a Apple A7 level CPU and modern E-Ink display, which I have in my ebook reader who also can run linux and all tools I really need to work, fast enough to not limit or annoy me. Only thing why I don't use it as daily driver is the missing physical keyboard.

But you have to see, I use to roughly 80% of my time with just two consoles: vim and command window for running scripts and git. So I'm not the norm.

But what about the norm?

Germany has magazine called c't, who just recently published an article how the life with a smartphone as your work pc looks like. Speed wasn't the concern, because their ARM CPUs where powerful enough to run a browser or office software on a full screen monitor without problems. Connectivity was the only problem, which could negated with the right smartphone.

There was also an online article about a reporter test drive, who switched from his notebook to a smartphone and a Bluetooth keyboard for his mobile work setup. He liked it, except it was harder to deploy on the lap and he often needed a table to work. (I think it was engadget, but I can't find at the moment and I run out break time, so please look for yourself.)

TLDR: ARM is the new AMD.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, Microsoft has kind of killed ARM's entrance into Windows notebooks, now that Windows RT is essentially dead. And Google - Google of all companies, with their architecture-agnostic Chrome OS - has also helped _push_ Intel into its now near-monopoly in Chromebooks. At least with Microsoft it's somewhat understandable why it would kill Windows RT - no compatible apps. But ChromeOS?!

Google should be pushing ARM in notebooks like crazy. If ARM doesn't end up with at least 70% market share in Chromebooks (due to the _multiple_ ARM chip makers, just like Android has the majority of market share in mobile operating systems), then I'll consider that a major competition failure.

Granted it's not all Google's fault for pushing Intel. Intel managed to enter the Chromebook market with some shameless lies:

1) First lie: promoting the new Intel Chromebooks as "Haswell Chromebooks". I have a good memory and I remember at the time most people thought that was basically _Core i5_ Chromebooks - at least for a while.

2) Second lie: Those chips were Haswell Celeron, but at those device price points of $200-$250, it would've been _impossible_ for Intel to sell them profitably. So they sold them _below cost_ , so people then can have the choice between what is essentially a $110 chip and a $20 chip, yet the devices cost roughly the same ($250). So of course the choice was made for them, and people would rather get the $250 device with the $110-value chip than the $20 one.

It still pisses me off to no end that governments aren't taking action against Intel over this. It's highly monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior. It's no different than Microsoft eating the cost of IE and bundling it with Windows. Intel has also wasted over $8 billion in subsidizing their mobile chips so far, to be able to sell them under-cost, and competitively against ARM. No ARM maker, not even Samsung or Qualcomm, could ever afford to do something like that. So why is Intel allowed to do it to take out the competition from the market in this way?

3) Third lie: After people got used to $250 Celeron (Haswell) Chromebooks - Intel did a _bait and switch_ and switched those more powerful Haswell Celerons with _Atom_ -based Celerons, which are no more powerful than ARM chips, but people now _think_ those "Celerons" are.

It gets worse. Now that people remember that the ~$110 or so "Celerons" were relatively powerful (thanks to the Haswell/Core architecture), they are now starting to charge _that much_ for the Atom-based Celerons. Even though as I said, they are the equivalent of $20-$30 ARM chips. But this is what monopoly can get you (at least in Windows PCs and Chromebooks, where the ARM competition has been all but wiped out).

The lies also continue with the way Intel is now calling its new Atoms - "Braswell", as if they had anything to do with Haswell or Broadwell.

Intel has become (or perhaps has always been, I've only been following this stuff _closely_ for the past few years) an _incredibly shady_ company. And it saddens me that more people don't see it, and that Intel gets away with it stealing ever more market share in nefarious and anti-competitive ways.

<comment><USER6> I mostly agree regarding Intel... A lot of this is all pretty shady, I will make one exception to your comment about MS eating IE's costs.

When MS started including IE with windows, every other graphical OS included a browser (OS/2 Warp, and early Linux distros). I think the irritation was how deeply they embedded the browser, which does make some sense as it allowed them to create the CHM help files, which is a pretty nice format. As well as some of the push desktop stuff early one, which I kind of liked. The down side is that support for newer browsers on older OS versions was effectively made into a cliff for IE.

I'm glad that Chrome and Firefox carry as much weight as they do. Seeing a roughly 1:1:1 split among the top three is best for the larger community. The down side being how long it takes for an IE version to ship (still), which means that IE while ahead at launch quickly falls behind and becomes our least common denominator for public websites for years.

In particular, while I don't mind using JS transpilers like Babel/6to5 to get new features today, the fact that I can't use these without such tools for the next 4-5 years is kind of sad. As an aside, I really wish there was a common background worker abstraction that worked in both node and the browser... I know I can fork/cluster in node and use webworkers where available, it would still be nice to see a common interface for this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing is the performance isn't exactly erratic.

It's purely a function of the cooling available and the target skin temperature. This doesn't mean you can't "trust" it.

It just means you should do what you should have -always- done which is buy machines in metal chassis (and of reasonable size) if you want passive cooling or get a machine with a decent thermal design and active cooling (fans).

Trying to spin this into FUD seems a little desperate.

<comment><USER8> Yes, the author expects something unrealistic and than presents his unfulfilled expectations as the problem. There's no technical reason that every notebook had to have the same cooling technology. That the processor can adjust to the cooling available is actually a good thing. And mobile phones behave exactly the same.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't matter if it is unrealistic from an engineering perspective, what matters is end-user experience.

I've heard technically clueless people complain that their new highend Core-M laptop is slower than their old laptop when they just do work (ie+powerpoint+excel+mail), and they are frustrated.

Right then it doesn't matter that the new laptop only weighs half of the old one and still has much better battery life, work is still done mostly at a desk with power nearby.

<comment><USER8> The top speed is actually the function of the heat generated, and you can generate more when you have better cooling, as simple as that. If some "expert" claimed to the users that by looking at the processor name they can know how fast something is it's the "expert" who isn't.

<comment><USER10> > top speed is actually the function of the heat generated

That knowledge is rather dated and probably goes back to the Pentium 4 era. Top speed is a function of heat, but also of the process technology and the concurrency available+used. It's best to wrap your head around it by going back to first principles:

> The dynamic power consumed by a CPU is approximately proportional to the CPU > frequency, and to the square of the CPU voltage:

> P = C V^2 f

> where C is capacitance, f is frequency, and V is voltage. [1]

Capacitance goes down with smaller transistors, voltage and frequency goes up with higher sequential performance given the same architecture. So, by replacing the need for sequential performance with more concurrency (vectorization/multicore/gpu acceleration), the need for power goes down dramatically. Process technology is another big factor.

On a related note: Comparing ARM with Core M just using some concurrency using benchmarks is not really comparing Apples to Apples - I expect Core M to have a higher sequential performance - so if you want to have the same performance on ARM, you'll need more concurrency in the software.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation)

<comment><USER11> I believe you mean parallelism, not concurrency right? Concurrency is dealing (correctly) with more things at the same time, parallelism is doing more things at the same time.

The Pentium 4 had a very deep pipeline, which got very hot and wasn't fast compared to its clock. The pentium M went back to more instruction level parallelism via shallower parallel pipes (multi core came later).

I don't think ARM is competitive with Intel even with parallel benchmarks; Intel does performance well and doesn't play many tricks with it, ARM's advantage has always been power efficiency and cost.

<comment><USER10> > I believe you mean parallelism, not concurrency right? Concurrency is > dealing (correctly) with more things at the same time, parallelism is doing > more things at the same time.

Yes, parallelism makes more sense in this context. I wanted to express it in a more general way because running multiple programs on different cores at the same time I understand as concurrency, which is _also_ made more efficient by parallel performance rather than sequential - IMO the terms are a little bit fuzzy at times, i.e. it's not that easy to convey the ideas behind parallel programming easily such that there is no ambiguity.

Edit: About ARM vs. Core M in benchmarks: After looking at it again, apparently the two are still quite far apart, you were right about their performance numbers: [1]

[1] [http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/22/intel- corpo...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/22/intel-corporations- core-m-significantly-outpaces-a.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to see AMD try and differentiate by being the hardware vendor that supports zero binary firmware blobs anywhere in the stack and provides reference boards where Core Boot is king. Being the open choice for geeks and security paranoid governments, with open firmware and drivers for everything they build is probably the biggest thing AMD could do right now to carve out market share against Intel that doesn't involve tons of R&D.

</comment><comment><USER13> This chart suggests there's no competition at the moment: [http://cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html](http://cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html)

I'm always wary of the charts on cpubenchmark, however. To a desktop/laptop user, single core performance is usually much more important than total performance, as they're not using all the cores. Even for my use case, software development, compiling uses multiple cores but doesn't take any significant time these days anyway (C# in VS, JIT for .NET and JavaScript), so I tend to check:

[http://cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html](http://cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html)

AMD A4 Micro-6400T APU: 607 Intel Core M-5Y10c @ 0.80GHz: 1,115

Almost twice the (benchmark) speed for the Core M. I'd like some real world usage reviews, but it's still looking like Intel is the best choice if you can afford it.

<comment><USER5> It's easy for Intel to "win benchmarks". Those benchmarks last for a few minutes, which is perfect for Turbo. Do a benchmark that lasts for an hour or even 30 minutes, and then you'll see the limitations of Intel's chips with Turbo.

And it's not about affordability in the case of Core-M. It's about poor performance/price ratio. You get very little for a lot of money, all to get that 5W TDP, which is also misleading because those chips needs to be put into devices that support more like 10W TDP, not 5. That's why most Core-M devices overheat. Intel overpromised on the TDP, and now OEMs get the blame for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's be honest, the most computationally intensive thing anyone does is to open Chrome and have 20 tabs each with five different Flash ads.

For the average user, it shouldn't matter what CPU they have in their machine. If their computer is slow, it's because that CPU is busy executing crapware.

<comment><USER9> Yet reviews of Core M machines by average users are almost all of them pointing to sub-par performance including premium products such as the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, for which they paid $$$.

Leaving this impression with users is not good for your brand in the long run.

I think Intel optimized too much for battery life and TDP with Core M, and it was also priced and targeted at the wrong highend market.

<comment><USER14> It's tough medicine but it needs to happen so that Microsoft, Apple, Google and all us programmers stop shipping slow, bloated crap. (Google can start by enabling click-to-flash in Chrome by default)

Imagine if you installed Windows 98 on one of these things. It would _fly_.

The CPU is perfectly capable of the workloads that users want to throw at it. The software isn't yet.

<comment><USER15> It's a GPU problem.

The difference between Win98 and OS X 10.10 is screen resolution, animations and virtual desktops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Frankly I think people are far too concerned about these performance numbers, I think they're excellent. It's on par with the Sandy Bridge CPU in my 2011 Macbook Air, which is an excellent performer. In fact I have plugged that MBA into a 27" external and been quite happy with it.

Combined with 8gb of RAM and a very fast SSD, a decent iGPU and I think performance will be very satisfactory indeed.

<comment><USER17> CPU performance in 2015 on par with a CPU from 2011 is a terrible, even when considering the lower power consumption.

<comment><USER18> The CPU's in the Air haven't really gotten that much faster since Sandy Bridge. The 2013's were actually a slight step down from the 2012's in many benchmarks.

<comment><USER17> That is Apple's choice for the Air (and they are notorious for slow refreshes in general). But the article is talking about the CPU industry as a whole, which is why I strongly disagreed with the "good enough since 2011" line of thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> AMD seems to only succeed with outside help. K6 was all NexGen, K7 was practically a DEC Alpha, new mobile chips were only possible due to ATI takeover. Sadly there is no one in sight to buy out/poach from/take over to make the next performance bump. Intel and AMD bought everything that moved. AMD even picked up Cyrix leftovers from National Semi (Geode). What is left? insignificant VIA(centaur)? Vortex86(Rise mP6)? Not to mention they seem to be taking ages coming out with v8 arm, all they do is talk and produce slides, with no products in sight.

<comment><USER20> When youre competing against someone that 70 times larger you take all the help you can get :). AMD however has provided its fair share of innovation to the x86 ecosystem over the years - AMD64, integrating memory controllers, launching multi core chips, current work with integrating GPU's and CPU's (HSA and shared memory spaces).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Core M chips cost $281. That seems crazy high to me, especially when compared to ARM.

</comment><comment><USER22> I still remember the days when AMD was clearly outperforming Intel. But these days are over.

<comment><USER23> Yeah. I still build AMD because they're the underdog (and I'm familiar with it, and I run integer heavy multithreaded apps, which is it's best use condition).

By some chance I have managed to find myself with an AMD Athlon 760k system with 32 GB Ram, and SSD, and a R9-290x GPU. It's pretty much fastest, top-of- the-line components (144 Hz monitor, too!), with a budget AMD chip. This is a 32 nm chip, with 2x2 MB of L2 cache (there's no L3 on the Athlon line these days). But coupled with a fast GPU and crazy amounts of RAM. The CPU is watercooled, too, with a double-sized radiator and 2 120mm fans. And just to be stupid, I picked up a killer bigfoot NIC as well.

I can't say I've noticed any real limitations on the CPU itself. I know it's hampered pretty badly, but I think I'm going to hang on to it as long as it's relevant and see what happens. I don't find myself being limited by that much. It plays Shadow of Mordor at highest detail settings (I bump it down a bit to get 100+ FPS).

It's sad to see them struggle, but Intel has superior technology right now, and everyone depends on technology to survive. I hope they can continue to stay relevant in the next couple of years until they get another home-run platform out of the door.

HSA is very interesting to me, but I don't know how important it will be to others. A few algorithms that I write can burn a lot of time being transferred to GPU and back. A gigantic FPGA is what I need, but I can't afford one of those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What do you guys think of the new 12" macbook that carries one of these cpu's as a development machine ? Is it a really bad choice ?

<comment><USER25> What are you developing? Simpler web apps with all your heavy tests running on a remote server, sure no problem at all. Heavy duty 3D applications in C++ with large data sets and long compile times, not so much.

Basically spend some logging how much you stress your CPU and GPU during a normal day developing. If the results are "basically never rises above 5-10%" then the macbook will be fine.

<comment><USER24> I see your point, thanks for the feedback.

Although my work is mostly based on infra nowadays, i use vagrant & docker to test things locally so i think i should move my worry over to the 8 gb memory part :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r The whole article is based on a false premise. If those different OEMs had put in the heat sinking required for the AMD part, the significant performance differences they saw in the Intel chips would disappear and they'd whup the AMD because they'd be running turbo all the time.

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps this is more of an opening for non-x86 mobile chips (MIPS, ARM, etc.) than for AMD.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if AMD will perhaps bank on ARM-centric models for low power winners.</comment>


Fight the New Drug - <AUTHOR> https://fightthenewdrug.org/ <comment><USER2> I think calling things drugs causes stigma between generations. I think the tytle should be.more about the topic at hand is all

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny thing is, I can't think of a bigger bunch of useless jerkoffs than the anti-porn crusaders.</comment>


Can Uber, Lyft and company co-exist with transit? - <AUTHOR> http://thesource.metro.net/2017/10/11/can-uber-lyft-company-co-exist-with-transit-how-we-roll-oct-11/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone really think Uber or Lyft will be less expensive than transit once the venture capitalists' subsidies to undercut (and undermine) the market run out?

Heck, in NYC even the shortest, most subsidized Uber ride costs almost twice as much as a subway or bus ride. And given that most transit riders are towards the lower end of the income spectrum (even more so in other cities than in NYC), do you really think they're going to switch from $3 bus rides to $20-50 Uber rides?

The danger I see is that the upper middle class stops using transit in favor of ride hailing services, and then starts to resent their taxes funding it, leading to funding cuts, service cuts, and fare hikes - badly damaging the less well off.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article says that there's a 3% to 6% reduction in transit usage. That's too low to mean anything yet.

The biggest hit to transit will be when such a ride-hailing service launches an autonomous electric UberPool-like service, because it could be much more effective in routing traffic than a human driver would be.

It's also funny that, right now, the article title contradicts Betteridge's law of headlines.</comment>


Uk's Trident Nuclear Submarines Vulnerable to Catastrophic Cyber Attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/01/uks-trident-nuclear-submarines-vulnerable-to-catastrophic-hack-cyber-attack <comment><USER2> "The report comes after the cyber-attack last month that disrupted the NHS, which uses the same Windows software as the Trident submarines." :S</comment>


For sale: Systems that can track where cellphone users go around the globe - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/for-sale-systems-that-can-secretly-track-where-cellphone-users-go-around-the-globe/2014/08/24/f0700e8a-f003-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html?hpid=z1 <comment><USER2> Why would it be "bad" for Iran to track people this way, but there is not so much concern for the NSA tracking people this way?

The USA has already killed people based on trivial amounts of data such as, "A had dinner with B who is C's relative. Thus even though A is US citizen in a foreign country, we will blow up his car with a Hellfire missile fired from a drone because C is a known terrorist."

<comment><USER3> >The USA has already killed people based on trivial amounts of data such as, "A had dinner with B who is C's relative. Thus even though A is US citizen in a foreign country, we will blow up his car with a Hellfire missile fired from a drone because C is a known terrorist."

Do you have a link for that?

<comment><USER4> The US also has a rather repugnant taste for targeting funerals, weddings and the rescuers of such attacks:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/yemeni...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/yemeni-victims-of-us-military-drone-strike-get-more-than-1million-in- compensation/2014/08/18/670926f0-26e4-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html)

[http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama- terror...](http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror- drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/)

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/us-drone- str...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/us-drone-strikes-are- said-to-target-rescuers.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's unbelievable that at&t / verizon / tmobile / uscellular / sprint would freely make this available to overseas companies / just anyone, no? Or am I wrong? I mean, those companies are scum, but damn.

       Verint, which also has substantial operations in Israel, declined to comment
       for this story. It says in the marketing brochure that it does not use
       SkyLock against U.S. or Israeli phones, which could violate national laws.
       But several similar systems, marketed in recent years by companies based in
       Switzerland, Ukraine and elsewhere, likely are free of such limitations.

       At The Post's request, telecommunications security researcher Tobias Engel
       used the techniques described by the marketing documents to determine the
       location of a Post employee who used an AT&T phone and consented to the
       tracking. Based only on her phone number, Engel found the Post employee's
       location, in downtown Washington, to within a city block — a typical level
       of precision when such systems are used in urban areas.

But apparently SS7 -- the network-to-network connection -- freely lets you query anyone's last cell tower. Un-fucking-believable.

<comment><USER6> If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.

<comment><USER7> I guess you leave the door open when you go to the toilet, because after all, _you have nothing to hide_.

<comment><USER8> Haven't you heard of Russian toilets? [http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/02/article-2550427-1B...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/02/article-2550427-1B25997500000578-502_634x445.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Which is not to say I'd be happy about the NSA using this method to collect > location data. But better them than the Iranians.

I have the opposite concern. There's really not much that Iran can do to an American citizen continents away. The NSA, on the other hand, can target, track, and detain me without any recourse.

<comment><USER10> >There's really not much that Iran can do to an American citizen continents away.

This is a very naive illusion.

Their intelligence agencies have a long history of doing things to their own citizens around the world too.

<comment><USER9> > This is a very naive illusion.

It's naive to think Iran is more dangerous than the US government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2997.en....](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2997.en.html)

slides from CCC in case someone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER12> Actually, everybody who posesses a credit card or paypal account could start tracking a location of any mobile phone with country-level resolution. Any bulk-SMS sending company has a service called HRL Lookup, which is normally used for optimization of SMS-sending costs to users in roaming. Though VLR address (which is the result of HLR Lookup) can be used for user tracking purposes - the first few digits of this address is just a country code of the country which the user is visiting now.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find personalized 3rd party tracking objectionable, unless the person volunteered or consented.

That said, it would be quite nice to have an open API where I could query an area for the count of cell phone users active there. Of course this should have upper and lower bounds on the area, perhaps on its shape too. I emphasize that it is just count that I seek, not querying the location of a specific cellphone.

Is anything like this available, free, for a fee, for specific providers ?

</comment><comment><USER14> The technical part of this article is partially wrong. I will post the real way it works later along with a real demo you can try on your own number. Stay tuned!

</comment><comment><USER15> When I travel outside my country, I always put my phone in airplane mode, then purchase a local SIM card when I arrive.

Would that thwart this particular tracking?

<comment><USER16> Not necessarily due to each phone having its own unique identification number, the IMEI.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Station_Eq...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Station_Equipment_Identity)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how this scales? Would it be possible to get bulk data on phone locations? You could imagine an unscrupulous company repeatedly grabbing the location data for _every_ phone on a list to improve their own customer profiling or advertising.

</comment><comment><USER18> Would have been nice if this tech applied to Malaysian flights.</comment>


NotABug.org: Free code hosting - <AUTHOR> https://notabug.org/ <comment><USER2> What do you do differently to Gitlab/Github?</comment>


Pruning neural networks without any data by iteratively conserving synaptic flow - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.05467 <comment><USER2> Most of the pruning algorithms depend on training data iterations to evaluate which synaptic weights can be pruned/removed to make the network optimal without affect performance on test data. New class of pruning algorithms have been developed which prune during initialization without looking at the data which however suffer from catastrophic layer-collapse or require an impractical amount of computation to obtain them. In this study, the authors claim to present a method that is (i) data independent, (ii) computationally efficiet, and (iii) achieves better performance to existing pruning algorithms.

Key idea of their iterative approach:

"..conservation alone leads to layer-collapse by assigning parameters in the largest layers with lower scores relative to parameters in smaller layers. However, if conservation is coupled with iterative pruning, then when the largest layer is pruned, becoming smaller, then in subsequent iterations the remaining parameters of this layer will be assigned higher relative scores. With sufficient iterations, conservation coupled with iteration leads to a self-balancing pruning strategy allowing IMP to avoid layer-collapse."</comment>


Google warns of system-controlling Chrome bug - <AUTHOR> https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/08/30/google-warns-of-system-controlling-chrome-bug/ <comment><AUTHOR> How can this happen? And now that we're moving toward a browser monoculture, these attacks are very serious!</comment>