Ctrl-labs' armband lets you control computer cursors with your mind - sahin-boydas https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/16/ctrl-labs-armband-lets-you-control-computer-cursors-with-your-mind/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, if anyone from this team is reading this and needs a quadriplegic geek with experience beta testing would massively benefit from this technology. Let me know.

This could make my life 3.7 million percent easier. Seriously.

<comment><USER2> Would it work at all (assuming your quadriplegia is spinal cord related)? It functions by measuring signals sent from the brain at the forearm:

>How does it do that? By measuring changes in electrical potential, which are caused by impulses that travel from the brain to hand muscles through lower motor neurons. This information-rich pathway in the nervous system comprises two parts: upper motor neurons connected directly to the brain's motor center, and lower axons that map to muscle and muscle fibers.

Perhaps it could be configured to work with neck muscles instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

Fortunately, like most Quads I have some movement below the level of injury. If you're that way inclined, here's a YouTube video of the amount of positive control I have over my body below the neck (My Range of Movement [1]). It's using that and my voice that I can post here, work, bother Sam Harris on Twitter etc etc.

So ideally it would go on my finger, or somewhere on my lower forearm such that I could use both my finger and the muscles in my lower arm to do different things.

I definitely could not have anything wrapped around my neck as it's too fragile, and the thought of having something wrapped around my neck gives me horrors. Maybe scalp muscles could be used, that would be cool.

Thanks

[1]:[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjnBpiirfr7LL- mUk9uSpZw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjnBpiirfr7LL- mUk9uSpZw/videos?disable_polymer=1)

<comment><USER3> A product like Muse might be useful as a headband interface

[http://www.choosemuse.com/developer/#sdk](http://www.choosemuse.com/developer/#sdk)

Key Features

• Discover and connect to all Muse headbands

• Receive raw EEG, accelerometer, gyroscope, and battery data

• Leverage built-in algorithms for band powers, eye blinks, and jaw clenches

• Record and/or playback data to and from a file

• Full documentation

It's geared toward mobile, but I imagine you could have an iOS/Android companion app that acts as a remote for a computer over Bluetooth/WiFi.

I tried a quick search to see if anyone was working on this as a general input device for people who can't use mouse/keyboards but it didn't turn anything up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My experience working with EEG headsets is that you can create a few cool demos where you show people how you can control this or that very restricted interface, but only after you spend ages calibrating the system for you specifically and for that demo specifically, and make sure the power supply is very steady and there is no strong wifi or bluetooth around. And even then it'll be too frustrating to work with for you to want to use it for anything except showing it off as a demo.

This section: "Then he strapped the bracelet on my arm. I had worse luck — the thumb on the computerized hand reflected the motions of my thumb, but the index and pinkie finger didn't — they remained stiff. Berenzweig had me recalibrate the system by angling my wrist slightly, but to no avail." and this: "It acts like an antenna," he said, "so it's susceptible to interference."

Sounds a lot like my experience. If you can't make a system people can just pick up an use right away, I predict it will just be too much hassle for anyone to want to use. And throwing buzzwords like ML at the problem doesn't seem to change that.

<comment><USER5> When I read that section followed by "He chalked it up to the demo's generalized machine learning model." I also got doubtful, but then the second demo seems to indicate that they can drastically improve the results by adapting the model to the user.

In machine learning terms, it seems that they can manage supervised learning (given a known task, they can figure out how signals correspond to movements) but not unsupervised learning (given a new user's signals, they can't decode them without knowing what the user is trying to do).

So I can imagine this working if new users first had to complete a short initialization sequence (maybe gamified in some way) but could then use it without errors more common than typos when using a keyboard.

<comment><USER6> One would presume they have data collected from more than one individual to train their model.

<comment><USER5> The situation could be similar to accents in speech recognition, where you need some form of speaker adaptation. You would obviously use data from more than one individual to train a model that adapts automatically, but that adaptation will still take a little time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Normally I am bearish on this type of technology, given the number of previous similar attempts with similar marketing that all failed to deliver. This line gave me pause, though:

"Within just a few seconds, moving the cursor with thought became almost second nature, and I was able to steer it up, down, and to the left and write by thinking about moving — but not actually moving — my hand."

That's quite a strong statement. If true, I'd hop on that bandwagon.

<comment><USER8> The article mentions all the big investors too. They had to have impressed a lot of people to get that kind of funding.

Let's hope this device holds up when it's released, and doesn't turn into another Nintendo Power Glove.

<comment><USER9> > The article mentions all the big investors too. They had to have impressed a > lot of people to get that kind of funding.

On the other hand there's Magic Leap. Which from the sounds of things will turn out to be somewhat scam-ish. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment> crooked-v This seems like it could contribute to discreet AR tech in interesting ways. Voice control in public spaces is a bad idea for obvious reasons [1], but this gets you something roughly touchscreen-equivalent for e-glasses or whatever.

[1]: [http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-04-24](http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-04-24)

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it is actually a plus that they are shooting for a consumer product and not a medical one. If it's available to _anyone_ , that includes handicapped people, minus the stigma that "only crips use that." (Yes, I'm aware that is an offensive word.)

Bonus points: It will probably be more affordable as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> If I can keep my hands on the keyboard all the time, life gets a whole lot better.

<comment><USER12> Looks like the next step is almost there technologically, where we'll have programmers coding away while moving the mouse with their minds.

Next steps after that would be programmers coding away with their minds..?

<comment><USER13> Give me one of these and a set of Newgle Glasses, all connected to a wristwatch computer on the other arm and we'll be able to dump laptops.

Imagine literally being able to work anywhere. On the beach, climbing a mountain, anywhere the hardware works.

<comment><USER12> I can see it: virtual screens projected in our eyes (or directly to brain), with mind-controlled keyboard, mouse and/or other input types..

So programmers of the future might just look like high-tech monks meditating.

<comment><USER13> Dreaming up artificial realities using only our brains.

One day we will all be gods.

<comment><USER14> > _One day we will all be gods._

Or the entire world will be our cubicle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thinking about moving without doing so breaks the proprioceptic feedback loop that is important in precision motor control, so I wonder if using any device working on this principle will require some learning on the part of the operator, as well as the electronics. This may be more of an issue for me than most people - I find a mouse to be a much better control than a touchpad, which I think is due to having to move an actual object having a small but perceptible heft and drag, which gives me feedback.

</comment><comment><USER16> What's the difference to Thalmic Labs' Myo?

<comment><USER17> I have a Myo, and it's the device which taught me that what I'm actually interested in is interface technology that reduces my movement cost, and the Myo -- while being a pretty cool device and also one of the few that actually works within 10% of what's advertised -- unfortunately _increases_ my movement cost. It's also got a pretty narrow range of actions. More than a few, but not enough to make the increase in movement cost worthwhile, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The potential for accessibility seems massive here!

</comment><comment><USER19> This could be neat if combined with haptic gloves. VRchat or something of that class, will be the VR killer app with cheap haptic feedback.

</comment><comment><USER20> The comment about Minesweeper is a particularly smart observation that is true of AR as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if their error function is to sense the user's frustration when the model performs badly.

I have a feeling that actual human neural activity does not generalize well, but that ML models needs to be good at adapting to individuals.

</comment><comment><USER22> How do they close the feedback loop?

In all of these systems I've seen so far, there is a ton of calibration needed.

The user should be able to do that.

Edit: say it is a two way street.

System takes input and renders it right back as a shock, or vibration, something.

There then is an exchange.

System presents its message, user present theirs.

Simple things, like shock, or pressure, vibration on and off.

Then levels.

Then modes.

Together, that results in "thought as action", much like we get when we do things with our bodies.

Once there, mapping that to things like cursors, could be standardized, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER23> This can work.

Moving cursors with your hand means a use of calories.

Not using calories means less effort for the same work. That's a gain.

<comment><USER24> Leaves you with more calories to spend at the gym where we pay money to burn unwanted calories!

<comment><USER25> People seem to treat gyms are like carbon credits; you can do the wrong thing most of the time and then pay to offset it later.

<comment><USER26> It can be more efficient this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So mind control will be the replacement of vim movement and other stuffs with steep learning curve?

<comment><USER28> I dunno. There's some real lag you can see in the video, and, worryingly, the cart says "dogfooding cart." Typically dogfood is labeled "dogfood" for a reason--it's not really fun or stable or effective to use/interact with (yet?).

<comment><USER29> > Typically dogfood is labeled "dogfood" for a reason--it's not really fun or > stable or effective to use/interact with (yet?).

"Dogfooding" is also a term for using your own products like you expect customers / clients to use them. In that usage it isn't a criticism of the product's quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I believe that their problem will be finding the small group of users that derive enormous value from it. When you really dig into all the applications they've suggested, they don't quite make sense.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm waiting for EEGs to get vim keybindings

</comment><comment><USER32> Why is it so important that the office overlooks Herald Square, is that just poor editing or am I missing a deeper meaning?

<comment><USER33> It's an expensive location for an office. It doesn't much matter for the story, and regardless the fact may be lost on people who don't know NYC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My brainwaves are my own, no thanks, microsoft.

<comment><USER35> Next up, advertising based on your thoughts...

<comment><USER36> It would be nice to get some tangible benefits from the mind scanning satellites we're already paying for.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cloudflare 126.96.36.199 doesn't honor DNS ttl? - <AUTHOR> I have tried 188.8.131.52 recently since it shows up pretty good in benchmark.
I have a domain with DNS in namecheap and 5 mins TTl. I change the DNS and it isn't propagating. I thouhg namecheap DNS is bad but out of curisitory  I do
dig @184.108.40.206 my-domain
and it resolves to right ip!!!
Does anyone experience that? Or is it just me? <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729942)

<comment><AUTHOR> haha thank you.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cryptob.in – A snippet share tool with client-side encryption - <AUTHOR> https://cryptob.in/ <comment><USER2> 1\. Nothing like this is ever safe; the server can surreptitiously feed you JS that will fatally compromise your encryption.

2\. This one is even worse, because it loads scripts from CDNs, all of which can compromise the encryption on the page.

3\. If you're going to put Google Analytics on a page that purports to encrypt data clientside, you might as well just build a front-end to Google Docs, because you've given Google access to the content of the pages anyways. (I think a simplified Google Docs front-end is a fine thing to build, more useful for security than "clientside" encryption).

4\. You're encrypting with unauthenticated CBC mode, which is obviously insecure.

5\. It's unsafe to compress before encrypting; doing so creates traffic- analytic side channels. There's a whole thread of TLS vulnerabilities stemming from compression occurring at various points of the web stack.

If you really want to build something like this, my recommendation is:

1\. Switch from a web page to a web extension, which will obvious most of the serverside dependency problem.

2\. Stop using CryptoJS, which is extraordinarily difficult to use "properly", and use a Javascript NaCL implementation instead.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't it make even more sense to use the Web Crypto API instead of any JS crypto library loaded from the server?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that would probably make sense for the browsers that supports it. Which seems to be mostly everyone except IE.

It will be fixed in the next update!

<comment><USER2> Don't bother. You won't gain any meaningful security, and you'll be using the same error-prone, outmoded constructions. Even if you had built this application in perfect, error-proof Haskell, it would still be insecure because of the way you're using AES. Adopt a credible NaCL library.

Really though, if you're interested in crypto, I strongly urge you not to go the route of trying to build crypto applications. The crypto apps people really need are extremely hard to build safely.

A better place to start with crypto is to learn how to break it. The cryptopals challenges are programming intensive and don't have any prerequisites; or, check out LVH's Crypto 101.

<comment><AUTHOR> I took your advice from the other comment and started using TweetNaCl.js which had some pretty good endorsements :)

I'll definitely check out some more sources on crypto in general. Thanks for the input, really!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've implemented all points that @tptacek mentioned (except the web extension, that will be a future update), and will also activate HSTS when I feel comfortable with the server setup.

I switched from CryptoJS to TweetNaCl which seemed fit to purpose, and also moved all CDN depencencies locally as well as removed Google Analytics :)

<comment><USER4> I really appreciate how well you took the feedback and how quickly you acted on it. Refreshing to see such interactions online these days, make me think of times when the web felt more... amateur? Less pretentious? I fail to capture the feeling. Anyhow, thanks for the service. Will give it a try :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Snyggt! I really like the UX and layout. Clean, simple and at the same time really fresh and modern. Would love to see any other projects you've made!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's mostly Bootstrap so I shouldn't really take credit :)

Have a look at [https://github.com/picotorrent/picotorrent](https://github.com/picotorrent/picotorrent) for one of the more popular projects I run!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you a programmer with Parkinson's? - <AUTHOR> A friend, who is a programmer, was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's. He is in his late 30's.<p>Does any one here have Parkinson's? How many years has it been since you were diagnosed? Are you still programming? What advice would you give my friend? <comment><USER2> I do not have Parkinson's but I have a form of Muscular Dystrophy which acts a lot like Parkinson's (to the point where a number of people get it confused). In some ways I have been quite lucky; mine began to show signs when I was born and has progressed slowly my entire life. It causes tremors, spasms in my hands and arms (and neck and eyes), and muscle weakness. Because of the progressive nature I don't really notice it. Your body is amazingly good at adapting to things even rather quickly progressing things.

Luckily we don't move a lot in this business. I might type slightly less quickly than most people (though I am actually quite a fast typist, I think it's slowing with age), and I might make more typos (thank goodness for IDE's which help correct things like that!) Ultimately I can code all day without much problem at all. Maybe other engineers are less tired at the end of the day, but who knows? I can only judge how I do based on my own experience.

The one big problem with Parkinson's is that it can have cognitive effects. I have read that it can cause dementia and other issues. This could obviously effect coding.

Anyway, I am glad to answer any questions.

<comment><USER3> what kind of work do you do?

<comment><USER2> I am a software engineer, often a lead but still very deep into the code. I also consult and speak at conferences regularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was diagnosed about 5 years ago. Although programming isn't my primary job anymore, I still do it occasionally and did so for at least a couple of years acceptably. The main thing I noticed is that the ability to focus on complex logic or chains of events went seriously downhill so I had to do a better job of sketching out my algorithm before I started to code and making lists and diagrams for myself. I could no longer hold it all in my mind. Medication (Sinemet) does help somewhat with the ability to focus. Also finding times each day when you are clear from distractions -- this can be accomplished by setting aside time to deal with the distractions and time when you will not deal with them. I find I can focus for maybe an hour at most now, and then I need a break. This is manageable when you know about it and plan around it. As I've moved to more managerial type tasks, it actually works out ok. If you intend to stick to strict programming, I advocate being as organized as possible. I used to have an excellent memory and it's just not there anymore, but I mostly do just fine because I've learned to be diligent about creating a task for myself for everything I need to do and not relying on myself to remember it. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing your experience. It is encouraging to read about others in our field coping, and coping well with Parkinson's. Moving to more managerial type positions does seem like a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having been diagnosed with Parkinson's 15 years ago at age 36, I today still have no mental limitations and I can concentrate the same way as I could before the diagnosis (as has been tested several times by neurologists). Among other tasks, I am still programming and leading development teams. It seems to me that programming is the ideal job for someone with Parkinson's since one can do it independent of the fact that some motoric skills such as walking are reduced or one's voice is not so crystal clear anymore. I learned from my own experience that an illness or handicap does not mean to drop out of the professional world, in contrary I made very good experiences with ill/handicapped colleagues and employees since they are usually very dedicated. The most important thing from my view is to address any and all issues related to such a condition in an open, respectful manner so that your ill colleague does not feel pressed to hide problems and ask for help concerning things like commuting to work etc. (sorry for my inelegant English, it is not my mother tongue).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, your experience is very encouraging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing that you guys might be interested in: there has been some limited investigation into tandem cycling as a therapy for Parkinson's, though it's somewhat anecdotal. What research there is suggests that it's about being forced to cycle at 80-to-90 rpm at a lower resistance which still keeps your heart rate up, as opposed to cycling voluntarily at whatever pace you want while being coached to keep your heart rate at the same level: 5 people who were forced to cycle at the higher RPM showed dramatic improvements in symptoms, as opposed to 5 who set their own RPM with coaching.

Since those numbers are so low, there is right now a team at the Cleveland Clinic which recruiting for a much larger study (100 people total) that they're calling CYCLE: 40 people with PD will do forced exercise on a motorized stationary bike in the lab, 40 will do voluntary exercise on a normal stationary bike in the lab, and 20 will not be directed to exercise at all in the lab:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4415238/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4415238/)

This is right now still in the recruiting stage so it probably has a couple years before it yields results; but if your friend can't live in Cleveland for a year, you could try to find another way to keep yourself at the 80-90 RPM levels, whether tandem biking with your friend or else by jury rigging a motor or perhaps even self-discipline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Thank you for linking the study.

<comment><USER6> No problem; I'm glad it was helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great question! I am just starting to figure out adaptations to cope with multiple sclerosis (another neurological disease) that has stolen my ability to touch type. I'll be watching here for advice, too.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a family member with Parkinson's. She was able to work in a thought- requiring field for almost 10 years. It's gotten much more treatable in recent years. You friend might still have to get used to working at 60-80% rather than 100% though. It doesn't go to 0, but it's not 100 either.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hate typing, so here's a short reply. I type less every year. 6 years from diagnosis. I seek work that is more looking at stuff to find the fault, and less data entry. Voice recognition is fine for dictation, but sux for editing code. Riding my bike hard every day makes a HUGE impact on my typing speed, so a decent bike commute is mandatory for me. Glad I'm in the software biz, and not a musician or surgeon. Never thought I'd say that!!!

</comment><comment><USER10> One thing I would do is make sure that your friend has been evaluated by a neurologist who specializes in movement disorders and not just a general neurologist. In recent years we have gained a lot of knowledge about specific neural pathways.

</comment><comment><USER11> I suggest you to watch this talk on this years ng-conf.

[https://youtu.be/mAjjI35RcUE?t=11949](https://youtu.be/mAjjI35RcUE?t=11949)

<comment><USER6> "This video contains content from NBC Universal, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that." \-- in the US.

<comment><USER11> Well there is like 30 seconds from House TV series, so I guess they can claim the whole video (9:57:33) be blocked in US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are nuero rehab practices and physical therapists who specialized in this area. I would start by having a conversation with one of these folks.

</comment><comment><USER13> full upgrades score 100000</comment>


World's 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/05/world%E2%80%99s-2nd-deadliest-poison-in-an-aquarium-store-near-you/

<comment><USER2> Marginally related, the case of Karen Wetterhahn: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn>

_Wetterhahn, a specialist in toxic metals, was accidentally poisoned in her lab by a few drops of the toxic, colorless compound, which penetrated her protective glove... Wetterhahn recalled that she had spilled several drops of dimethylmercury from the tip of the pipette onto her latex gloved hand. Tests later showed that this can rapidly permeate different kinds of latex gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds_

<comment><USER3> IIRC it took like six months to kill her though.

<comment><USER2> It's slow acting, but close to 100% lethal, and you don't die nicely.

IMHO, that's just about the most horrible combination imaginable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked at an aquarium store (probably one of the ones mentioned in the story) for a long time, and was a pretty experienced and dedicated reefkeeper at my peak, and I never knew this.

This situation must be incredibly unlikely though because I've dealt with thousands of Zooanthids and hundreds of customers over the years I never had anything like this happen nor heard about it from anybody. However, I certainly wish I had known so I could have warned customers about the risks, because in the aquarium world Zooanthids are considered a great starter coral because they are very hardy and don't require much light.

<comment><USER5> The advice I always see online about handling zoanthids is "always wear gloves". I've always done so, but seen plenty of people who don't.

On the other hand, there are plenty of other (often hidden) things in your average reef aquarium that can potentially injure you and leave your local emergency department at a loss. People don't normally get stung by fireworms (or whatever) 5000 miles away from the tropical ocean.

<comment><USER6> From the Wikipedia article [1]: "each gram of the offending zoanthid contained enough venom to kill at least 125 grown men"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> second deadlist in the _natural_ world, not overall.

a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, _made it_ to the hospital, and survived

the real deadly biological systems don't even give you a chance to ask if that is a missile coming over the hill

<comment><USER8> "a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived"

I am not sure what point you are trying to make with that sentence. That this proves it's not very toxic? We know how toxic it is. The LD-50 has been determined with some precision. What this would therefore prove was that his dose was low, which considering the suboptimal delivery method isn't that surprising.

<comment><USER9> OT: This led me to the LD-50 wiki page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples>

Was very interesting to see Botox requiring 2300x a smaller dose than VX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Saltwater aquarium owner here-- I own many palytoxin soft corals and have never felt any danger whatsoever; however that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful with these guys (zoanthids, palythoa, etc). I've never cut them open or anything, so I'm safe I think :)

<comment><USER11> You may be interested in this guy's comment ([http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gj74k/man_cleans_fi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gj74k/man_cleans_fishtank_ends_up_poisoned_and_develops/c1nyfn6)): "I was changing out my water and as being the usual idiot I am, I didn't condition or warm the water before dumping in 5 gallons of cold water into the tank. The zoos didn't like that and started squirting a long thin streamer of black tar stuff. I scooped it out _with my hands_ to throw it away, a few minutes later I felt light headed and about 5 or so minutes later is when it kicked in full force."

<comment><USER10> WOW, I've never seen anything like that happen in my tank. I actually have moved them and got slimey stuff on my hands from them (as with all corals) and just washed my hands really well afterward. Irritating them is REALLY difficult to do though, they'll live through anything. Absolute beauties though, and well worth keeping :)

<comment><USER11> Not a saltwater aquarium owner myself, but given stories like this, I personally would not want to wear anything short of a spacesuit when the time comes to clean the tank.

<comment><USER12> No biggie. If you get a shot in your heart timely, you'd be fine.

"If delivered immediately, vasodilators injected into the ventricle of the heart can act as an antidote."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So it seems like there's an obvious omission in this story... what's the deadliest poison?

<comment><USER14> Botulinum, I'd guess (among _natural_ toxins). A casual Google seems to indicate I'm right.

<comment><USER15> Yup. 10x more toxic than palytoxin.

And we inject it in ourselves voluntarily.

Humans are such funny creatures.

<comment><USER16> There is a poisonous dosage of ALL chemicals. H2O among them. The question is, is there a dosage of botulism that has a therapeutic effect?

<comment><USER13> Botulinum toxin type A is known as "Botox." It has some therapeutic uses, but mostly cosmetic ones.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To get a scale of things I just had to find out what the weight of a typical grain of salt is. [http://answers.wikia.com/wiki/How_much_does_a_grain_of_salt_...](http://answers.wikia.com/wiki/How_much_does_a_grain_of_salt_weigh)

If one goes by the minimum value which is 0.05mg, an equivalent amount of this stuff can kill 2,500 human sized mice with 50% probability. That's potent stuff.

Well, had written 'people' in place of 'human sized mice' but the LD-50 values used were those for mice, so it is only fair that I measure in "human sized mice" units.

<comment><USER18> Also, massive mice.

Should we be keeping this stuff about in case of a Dire-Mouse invasion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In other news, post security-check airport janitorial closets and bathrooms contain tons of unguarded ammonia and bleach containers all over the place.

<comment><USER20> But, do they contain aquariums? That is the real question ;-)

<comment><USER19> Guilty of not reading the article; I thought it was going to be about cyanide (sold for for killing algea in aquariums) being readily available for terrorist misuse (probably from reading about the 80's Tylenol/cyanide scandals).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fear mongering much?

</comment><comment><USER22> Hmm, I think someone should update this page... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia#Dangers>

_In order for this toxin to be dangerous to humans, the average aquarist would need to ingest the zoanthid in sufficient quantities, or brush a recent cut over it. Average handling, propagation and aquarium maintenance is unlikely to pose any danger beyond a localized skin reaction.[citation needed] A 2010 study found toxic zoanthids in three Washington D.C. area aquarium stores.[7]_</comment>


Six Ways America is Like a Third-World Country - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/six-ways-america-is-like-a-third-world-country-20140305

<comment><USER2> The other, late submission of this article got flagged off HN.

For a site that's much about objective performance measures, some people sure had their big foam "We're #1" finger on as they hit the "flag" button.</comment>


New Google interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.co.uk/ I noticed yesterday a new google interface, with a blackish "header" on top of the page. Is this new or is it because I live in the blekko ghetto?
  http://www.google.co.uk/ <comment><AUTHOR> And the more i Think the more it reminds me the defunct cuil interface</comment>


Anime video-on-demand site Crunchyroll hacked to deliver malware - <AUTHOR> https://bartblaze.blogspot.com/2017/11/crunchyroll-hack-delivers-malware.html <comment><USER2> During my training, I spent about three months helping with a BIND4 to BIND9 migration. As the migration was the result of a security audit, security obviously must have been a top priority, or else they would not have let a trainee do it. ;-)

But I had plenty of time to learn much about DNS security and all (okay: some of) the ways it can be subverted. (A year later I met a member of the team where I had done this, and he told me he still keeps a copy of the report I had written on his desk as a reference. That made me very happy.)

Since then, I did not have much contact with DNS, except that I have run my own DNS resolver ever since. But I forgot most of what I had learned.

So, I kind of wonder, has the state of DNS security improved in the last 13 years? I remember DNSSEC was not widely deployed back then, and that it was kind of pointless, because none of the clients could be bothered to check DNSSEC signatures. I imagine it it is now more widely deployed, and I suspect clients still do not give a ____ about DNSSEC. Have I missed something?

Since the DNS protocol itself has nothing in terms of security, privacy, authentication, and given that previous versions of BIND (I do not know about the current ones) had bugs crawling all over them, I have wondered a couple of times, why this is not used more commonly as an attack vector. Or is it?

Can someone recommend a resource for learning about this?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For more detail, there is a discussion thread here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/7aq2s7/psa_dont_ente...](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/7aq2s7/psa_dont_enter_crunchyrollcom_at_the_moment_it/)

Contrary to OP's post, there are unconfirmed reports that this is indeed ransomware and that multiple users were affected.

</comment><comment><USER3> Earlier today, 32+ points

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624939)</comment>


Bankrupt Toys "R" Us wants to pay $16M in executive bonuses - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/16/news/companies/toys-r-us-executive-bonuses/index.html <comment><USER2> Sears Canada had a similar approach... millions to a bunch of sr. execs and complete default on pensions to the workers. "We need this to save the company" was their cry. We need those sr. executives to get us out of this situation that they've been in charge of for years.

Oh, Sears Canada is now out of business and the workers got nothing... but don't worry the executives that the company was so worried about received their bonuses.

<comment><USER3> That's a terrible situation, but this is exactly why people should want their retirement savings to be kept in an account with their own name on it.

When the music stops for a pension, your chair is up for grabs. When the music stops for a 401k, nobody can grab your chair.

<comment><USER4> Not entirely true, the government can always take your 401k

<comment><USER5> Government could also just imprison you indefinitely for no reason. There can't be rule of law if nobody expects rule of law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is incredibly common to see in a company on the long tail of failure. Attracting and retaining executives in such a company is difficult, but you'll often see board members and significant investors take executive positions in the company and extract and sell off whatever wealth the company has left -- for their own gain.

You can see companies like Support.com doing this now, for example.

</comment><comment><USER5> If your business is failing what else are you going to do? The company is asking executives on a sinking skip to not jump and even trying to get some people to jump on. We're talking hiring from a population who would be risking their future careers if TRS goes under and could find much lower risk well paying work somewhere else. Paying a premium is expected.

Don't fall for the clickbait on this one -- the company's revenue is 12.4 billion, don't act like this is a bunch of evil executives drinking the company dry. The pay is tied to the company's performance and if their team manages to hit those goals it will be 16M well spent compared to going out of business.

<comment><USER7> You don't know the backstory, which is that Toys R Us is a bust-out private equity ploy, where KKR acquired them and larded them with debt, which pushed them into bankruptcy when they would have very likely been solvent otherwise.

Toys R Us Downfall Due to Debt, Not Competition [http://fortune.com/2017/09/20/toys-r-us-bankruptc-debt- lever...](http://fortune.com/2017/09/20/toys-r-us-bankruptc-debt-leverage/)

<comment><USER8> Perhaps it was the only way the company was able to get sold? If anything, blame the old shareholders for selling to an LBO player.

<comment><USER9> Why did the company need to be sold at all? Why is a steady state of respectable profits/meeting consumer needs seen as "losing" in "modern" capitalism simply because it isn't exciting drama to shareholders?

<comment><USER8> Maybe because the current owners were done with it, and were no longer interested in running it -- thus wanting to sell?

Companies are owned by people, you know? They might not want to pass down (large) companies for 10+ generations, due to different interests and passions.

<comment><USER9> Large companies are owned by people in the same way that representative democracies are (indirectly) owned by people. You can count the number of large US companies that have passed down any generations (much less 10+) on maybe two hands.

We have an economic reality where most major shareholders like to vote themselves short-term bread and circuses every quarter, and there is very little incentive to consider any sort of long term horizon beyond at most a fiscal year.

Furthermore, most major shareholders in any large corporation _aren 't_ people. They are companies themselves. At best they are sometimes hedge funds aggregating the interests of lots of little people, like representatives in a democracy. But there are also plenty of remoras and piranhas and worse, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Go use any gift cards you've got while you have the chance.

</comment><comment><USER10> Will anyone think of the executives?

</comment><comment><USER11> what a strange world where you can bankrupt your business, yet receive millions of bonus dollars anyway.

</comment><comment><USER12> I understand that it's hard to read these headlines, but if Toys 'R' Us wants to retain key qualified executives during these delicate times, they must do that and even greater bonuses than a company where an executive also has equity as an incentive.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps they shouldn't retain those executives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 16 mil to 17 exec's... for a failure... something is wrong in this world.

"Among the 17 executives who would get payments is chairman and CEO David Brandon, who joined the company in 2015."</comment>


'Lifemapper' shows where Earth's organisms live today and might go tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://news.ku.edu/2014/06/27/lifemapper-shows-where-earths-organisms-live-today-and-might-go-tomorrow

<comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/lifemapper-shows- where...](http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/lifemapper-shows-where-earths- organisms-live-today-and-might-go-tomorr/409655), which points to this.</comment>


The depressing truth about web stardom - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23319/ <comment><USER2> _And in fact video producers receive higher ratings for their later videos, even as their success rate declines._

Ah, so people are less successful over time _if_ we define "success" as "sheer number of hits".

Just because they're not reaching the widest audience doesn't mean that these people aren't reaching _their_ audience.

Isn't this how you _want_ it to work? The point of publicity is to get _everyone_ to look at your work _once_. But there's no way that all of those people are going to stick, unless your product is heroin. (Even then, some people are smart enough to say "no, thanks" to your first offer.)

If nearly 100% of the people who first see your product stick around, the most likely explanation is _not_ that you have invented heroin. More likely, _you have not reached enough people yet_ : Your product is still spreading solely via word of mouth, and there are potential fans among the general population who you would pick up if you cast a wider net. (Though, obviously, casting such a net has a cost. Your true fans may accuse you of "selling out" once your ads start appearing on daytime television.)

The important thing about a viewership curve is not that it declines over time. The important question is: What's the asymptotic value, and is that equilibrium number of fans large enough to keep you happy in perpetuity? If it isn't... what's the rate of decline, and is there enough area under the curve to keep you happy while you work out the next thing you want to do? The first scenario is _The Simpsons_. The second is just about every other successful TV series in history.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you look at Figure 4 in the actual article, you see that persistence _DOES_ pay off on YouTube. Although the probability of a particular video becoming insanely popular declines, the overall probability that at least one video from your collection becomes popular continues to rise as you keep uploading them.

If your first lottery ticket has a 0.01 chance of winning, but your next lottery tickets have a declining chance of winning, the overall chance of winning the lottery can continue to rise. In their example, it rises from 0.01 to approaching 0.20. Doesn't sound all that irrational, does it? Persistence increases your chance of becoming popular by a factor of 20X. It just takes many more than 20 uploads to accomplish that increase.

In fact, ... when you think about it, ... it could not turn out any other way. If the probability of your next video getting you in the "top 1%" on YouTube stayed fixed, ... then EVERYONE could be in the "top 1%". ... sounds like everyone wanting their kids to be "above average" in school. It's just not possible.

\-- dxjones

</comment><comment><USER4> "A more puzzling question is why the producers persist in the face of declining audience figures. "

i.e., why don't "one-shot wonders" recognize themselves as such and... give up?

It's a basic principle of the psychology of learned behavior: intermittent reinforcement: Having _occasionally_ been rewarded, s/he persists in trying to be rewarded (cf: win the big one in the lottery).

<comment><USER5> That aspect of human behavior is also mentioned here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485797>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any chance that the if you upload a lot of content to YouTube that you are uploading ripped off content, or minor modifications, whereas if you upload a few videos you may actually be uploading stuff you produced?

</comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't this fall into the category of correlation and not causation?

In either case, it's not the destination, it's the journey :) Being a 'star' might be important to some people, but I would argue that most will not waste their time if they didn't enjoy doing it.

<comment><USER8> I completely agree with you. The only thing that keeps me blogging every other day is that it sharpens my mind. It requires me to think, create and get thoughts onto paper. It's almost like a daily meditation.

My wife does the same thing with politics :)

<comment><USER9> I hope she's debating/participating and not simply watching cable news politics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems like a mistake to directly equate persistence and quantity.

<comment><USER9> The former suggest you weigh the results of your previous attempts and make improvements in order to increase your odds of success. The latter suggest simply applying the same approach over and over without major reconsideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I posted essentially the same article by Kevin Kelly, a week ago : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541394>

It includes a link to the original paper.

</comment><comment><USER12> reference: <http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0489>

</comment><comment><USER13> Didn't Warhol say something about this once? (15 minutes...)</comment>


Harald Bluetooth - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Bluetooth <comment><AUTHOR> I read this tweet and learnt something new. [https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1057178162399006720](https://twitter.com/susie_dent/status/1057178162399006720)

And it sent me down a rabbit hole.</comment>


Cyberattack from outside the U.S. hits newspapers across the country - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-times-delivery-breakdown-20181229-story.html <comment><USER2> This story is so bizarre. Despite the article being 20+ paragraphs, there are hardly any details. It lists a handful of newspapers spread across the country and just says they were delayed. Could it be any more vague? The most concrete detail provided is that the attack "disrupted a shared production platform" that apparently made it hard for the printing presses to work - but what does that mean? Disrupted how? What was the shared platform? Was it targeted at multiple newspapers, or was this an attack on a single platform that just happens to be used by all of these newspapers?

Then, in regards to the origin of the attack, the _only_ detail provided is this single line:

> The source identified the attacker only as a "foreign entity."

That's it. There is absolutely no other information given about the origin of the attack. And yet it's in the story headline? Talk about fear mongering.

They also either didn't report, or even more confusing, don't know if the attack was reported to the FBI.

And just to make it even more bizarre, this entire article is written by LA Times staff and posted on the LA Times website, and then talks about the LA Times (one of the affected newspapers) as if they have no idea how the LA Times was affected. Shouldn't they have a lot more information?

Overall, this article seems to be written by someone who has very little information about the incident(s), and very little knowledge about technology. It also reeks of knee-jerk "omfg hackers!1!". In reality, based on the few details that _are_ available, it sounds to me like they just got hit by some boring ransomware virus. It likely wasn't even targeted.

<comment><USER3> > The most concrete detail provided is that the attack "disrupted a shared > production platform" that apparently made it hard for the printing presses > to work - but what does that mean? Disrupted how? What was the shared > platform? Was it targeted at multiple newspapers, or was this an attack on a > single platform that just happens to be used by all of these newspapers?

A "production platform" in the context of a newspaper means the systems used to produce the newspaper. This can be anything from laying out pages and editing stories to making plates for the press.

(This is not a great thing to get pwned because it's not implausible for it to contain unpublished stories or confidential source material.)

> _All papers within The Times' former parent company, Tribune Publishing, > experienced glitches with the production of papers. Tribune Publishing sold > The Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune to Los Angeles businessman Dr. > Patrick Soon-Shiong in June, but the companies continue to share various > systems, including software._

So this sounds like an internal Tribune problem that also affected some of their former papers that still use their systems, including the LA Times.

> _It also stymied distribution of the West Coast editions of the Wall Street > Journal and New York Times, which are all printed at the Los Angeles Times' > Olympic printing plant in downtown Los Angeles._

Apparently the WSJ and NYT contract out some of their printing to the LA Times, and since the LA Times' (i.e. Tribune's) production system was down, they couldn't do the contract printing either.

This part is funny:

> _"We believe the intention of the attack was to disable infrastructure, more > specifically servers, as opposed to looking to steal information," said the > source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not > authorized to comment publicly._

It sounds like they asked one of their IT staff what happened (or maybe one at Tribune) and got an off-the-record answer because IT isn't allowed to "talk to the press" even when they work for a newspaper.

Then they published it before corporate PR finished deciding what to tell them because deadlines don't wait for PR departments.

<comment><USER4> > Then they published it before corporate PR finished deciding what to tell > them because deadlines don't wait for PR departments.

It _is_ kind of funny to see this happen under one roof, though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Cyberattack from outside the U.S. hits newspapers across the country, preventing distribution, source says_

Let's go in with Occam's Razor: RLY? No.

Theory: We don't have useful backups and suffered a IT meltdown. Soz.

<comment><USER6> Right. They arguably have no clue about the source.

<comment><USER5> To be fair: I am only theorising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Outside the US" is such a weird thing. I regularly VPN out through [insert random country] and then poke at "interesting" websites over Tor. Were am I coming from? It's almost impossible to tell, and for 99.999% of all orgs (including government ones), it basically is impossible.

<comment><USER8> Venn's diagram between people who can achieve this supposed attack and people dumb enough to use their own IP (or any IP from their own country) is blank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's more likely that some commonly-owned group of newspaper syndicate has been hit by a variety of cryptolocker taking out their windows XP/Vista/7/10 PCs, due to poor network security practices, than they've been maliciously attacked.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://outline.com/2jWMpj](https://outline.com/2jWMpj)

</comment><comment><USER11> Did I misconfigure my nmap port scan again? /s

</comment><comment> n-gate One thing I'd guaranteed- it's not china. China is very well adept at paying newspapers and tv firms journalists as my friends from south asia tell me and that is a much cleaner approach.

<comment><USER12> How would that be a cleaner approach, when it requires a conspiracy? Which countries did your friends operate from?

<comment><USER13> Conspiracies are cleaner, that's why rulers use them, all over the planet and beyond.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The NSA's logs will show exactly where it came from. I don't think they will let us know, as it could also be a False flag cyber attack to push a cyberwar against NK, Russia or Iran. A strategy that is so common these days.

<comment><USER15> So common that there is not one reliably documented case of it ever happening.

<comment><USER16> > So common that there is not one reliably documented case of it ever > happening.

Not exactly full of examples up to this very minute, but the history of false flag operations is long and well documented. I see no reason to think that it isn't in the playbook for modern world powers.

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

<comment><USER17> Now here is an actual example of a very, very common strategy

> Hyperbolic statement to push a narrative

> "Please back that statement up"

> Silence, or "Not exactly full of examples up to this very minute"

<comment><USER18> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods)

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

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Washtub_(Nicaragua...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Washtub_\(Nicaragua\))

Why people continue to put such blind faith in government is beyond me.

<comment><USER19> > Why people continue to put such blind faith in government is beyond me.

This attitude seems really misanthropic to me. Government is people. Elected people here in the US. Yeah, there have been mistakes and there will continue to be mistakes, but this "burn it all down" response to that fact of reality isn't going to make anything better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://10print.org/ <comment><USER3> It bothers me way more than it should that this line of code has become known as "10print". Like, 95% of BASIC oneliners out there start with "10 PRINT". It's like calling a McDonald's Super Size Big Tasty Meal With Diet Coke And A Side Salad a "Mac".

It should've been called 205.5+RND or something. Grmbl.

<comment><USER4> It's like using "Dear" to refer to some particular famous letter.

<comment><USER3> That's the analogy I was looking for. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Video here [https://youtu.be/m9joBLOZVEo](https://youtu.be/m9joBLOZVEo)

<comment><USER6> Live version here ;)

[https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/c64.html?input=${wait:200}...](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/c64.html?input=${wait:200}10%20PRINT%20CHR%24\(205.5%2BRND\(1\)\)%3B%20%3A%20GOTO%2010%0ARUN%0A)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://snek.dev/10print](https://snek.dev/10print) :)

<comment><USER8> Should fix the line height so the lines connect to each other.

<comment><USER7> which browser doesn't show that right? chrome and firefox have connected lines for me

<comment><USER9> Firefox doesn't - but it probably falls back on system fonts for me - <USER2> the line height needs to be at around 1.15em...

Not that that helps in any way, since you never know which font might be used^^

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can recreate the magic in bash:

      while true; do printf "\u$((2571 + ($RANDOM & 1)))"; done

<comment><USER11> Doesn't quite work on my mac :/

<comment><USER12> Got it! This works on macOS. It encodes the same characters in hex UTF-8:

       while true; do printf "\xe2\x95\xb$((1 + ($RANDOM & 1)))"; done

<comment><USER11> Excellent work! Thankyou, that's awesome and very fast....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15680668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15680668)

2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4856207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4856207)

</comment><comment><USER14> Javascript version:

        for (let i=0;i<10000; i++) document.write(String.fromCharCode(9585 + Math.random()*2) + (i%100 == 99 ? '<br>':''))
        const  b = document.body.style;
        b['font-family'] = 'Courier New';
        b['font-size'] = b['line-height'] = '16px';

[https://jsfiddle.net/qxjdtru6/](https://jsfiddle.net/qxjdtru6/)

And a fun curvy variation:

[https://jsfiddle.net/qxjdtru6/1/](https://jsfiddle.net/qxjdtru6/1/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wrote it in JS at [http://10print.art](http://10print.art)

Source: [http://10print.art/__repl](http://10print.art/__repl)

</comment><comment><USER16> This Maze Does Not Exist: an AI-powered labyrinth generator

<comment><USER17> I snickered at first but couldn't stop imagining ways to implement this. Thanks for giving me something to kickstart my brain today.

<comment><USER18> I'd start with [https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse](https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In 2013, I recreated the output as a shader in ShaderToy: [https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ld23DW](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ld23DW)

</comment><comment><USER20> For powershell:

for(){Write-Host(Random("\","/"))-N}

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice. This brings back some great memories. I used to do a similar one-liner that alternated between white and black blocks, which created crossword- puzzle-like patterns. I'd sit across the room and squint at the display, hoping to see some sort of emergent pattern.

</comment><comment><USER22> I also built something in JS inspired by 10print with some customisation [https://jauny.github.io/10print/](https://jauny.github.io/10print/) :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Alas! I was hoping the pattern would change every time I refreshed the page.

</comment><comment><USER24> Love it! Brings up so much nostalgia from the days of programming on my old TRS-80. But is it really a maze? Once you start, you don't seem to get much choice of path...

<comment><USER25> Of course not, there is no logic behind it, save for printing "walls" that line up with each other.

It's a (neat) graphic trick.

<comment><USER26> My maze generator at [http://tromp.github.io/pearls.html#maze](http://tromp.github.io/pearls.html#maze) produces arbitrarily long proper mazes on the fly. After compiling and running, enter -1 as the requested height.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A nice companion to [https://nostarch.com/hemingway](https://nostarch.com/hemingway)

</comment><comment><USER28> That's a great read! The book inspired me to port that BASIC one-liner to Game Boy flavored assembly. Still having a Game Boy lying around? Now you have portable mazes:

[https://github.com/svendahlstrand/10-print-game- boy](https://github.com/svendahlstrand/10-print-game-boy)

</comment><comment><USER29> This was my favorite thing to do on TSR-80s at Radio Shack, then walk away, although I would do all characters instead.

</comment><comment><USER30> In the same book, an old one-liner called "BURROW" from Pet Gazette:

1A$="[up][down][left][right]":PRINTMID$(A$,RND(.5) _4+1,1) "_[left]";:FORI=1TO30:NEXT:PRINT"[rvson][space][left]";:GOTO1

</comment><comment><USER31> Frogger, TRS-80 Model 1

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh7gRoYgUpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh7gRoYgUpc)

</comment><comment><USER32> A bit disappointed that this page doesn't generate the maze with each visit

</comment><comment><USER33> This is poorly documented; I don't see a REM statement.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why the 205.5? Why wouldn't this work as 205 + RND(1)?

<comment><USER35> RND(1) returns a value between 0 and 1, but always lower than 1. Thus, the result of 205+RND(1) will always be 205 point something, which in turn will be truncated to 205. Thus, it will always result in the same character.

<comment><USER34> I see. RND returns a float.

<comment><USER36> It's more that the decimal is always rounded down. So you don't want a value between 205 and 205.9999999, as it'll always be rounded down to 205. you want a value between 205.5 and 206.49999999, so when rounded down it has a (practically) even chance of landing on either 205 or 206.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> this book reads like an article on a modern art piece.

</comment><comment><USER38> Lacks randomize()

<comment><USER39> I think Commodore BASIC had a more complex way of seeding the random timer: [https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/RND](https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/RND)

        POKE 56328,0    : REM real-time clock activate with 1/10s -> clock runs ($DC08)
        PRINT RND(0)    : REM Random number addicted by timer and real-time clock

<comment><USER40> You could also do I=RND(-TI)

Providing a neg number to RND would "reseed" the random number generator. TI was a "system" variable that updates every 60th of a second.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> tl;dr: the output looks like this: [https://ibb.co/Ypp9DZ3](https://ibb.co/Ypp9DZ3)

<comment><USER42> Why does ibb need to know my location to serve an image?

<comment><USER43> It's requesting permission to send notifications, not your location. And it's because it loads [https://cdn.siteswithcontent.com/js/push/subscribe.js?v=1.1....](https://cdn.siteswithcontent.com/js/push/subscribe.js?v=1.1.0) whatever that's for. That domain is on various adblock lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is there anyone here who still writes code in BASIC? If so which interpreter/compiler do you use?

<comment><USER45> I do so professionally. Our 35+ year old application is written in what was once VAX BASIC running on OpenVMS (Now on Integrity and called HP BASIC).

<comment><USER44> Wow! Can you share your story more? What does your application do? Why did you choose BASIC 35 years ago? Did the question about rewriting it another language come up anytime? How did such discussions go? Do you enjoy writing BASIC code?

<comment><USER45> I've been with the company 20 years so wasn't involved in the original decision. I believe the company started out on PDP's before moving to MicroVAX (and later Alpha and Integrity). BASIC will likely have been the best fit at the time. It is business software for the Agri industry, originally a terminal text entry system. Now we also have a web front end (running on Windows IIS, communicating to VMS/BASIC via Apache Tomcat/WSIT webservices). We did try converting to VB6 back when it was a thing, but then .NET happened so we abandoned it as conversion to VB.NET wasn't so straight forward. A rewrite in C# was briefly considered before finally going for the web front end/web services option to avoid rewriting the BASIC business/data layer. Sadly the application will go end of life in a couple of years, as we're now part of a larger corporation who have similar applications. Ours lost out due to the OpenVMS layer being a hard sell to new customers. I've never really thought about when I enjoy it! It's mostly a data entry / reporting application, so generally not very exciting :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What music makes you a productive programmer? - <AUTHOR>

What music is good for being productive while coding?<p>Also, do you think that listening to the same album a lot puts you in the same state of mind and makes it difficult to think outside the square? <comment><USER2> Most consistently, I find that light classical (Bach, Brahms, etc.) helps me to focus on my work.

But more interestingly, many days it's as if there is some particular "song of the day" that my mind wants to hear, and if I can determine an adequate song of the day, I can get _very_ focused listening to that one song over and over all day. There doesn't seem to be any particular rhyme or reason to selecting such a song, and I'll poke around in my music library until I find something that works.

Does listening to the same thing over and over hinder creative thinking? For me, I think it enhances it.

It doesn't help me every day, but ever since I first heard it circa 1998, Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky" has helped me to focus on many occasions. Some of my best work has been done while listening to that song...

Bizarrely, a couple of years ago I was required to do some overnight systems testing, and as I struggled to stay awake, I found myself listening repeatedly to the "Snow Miser" song from the old Rankin & Bass stop-motion Christmas special. I am at a loss to explain why that helped me to focus, or why I even thought to listen to that song in the first place...

<comment><USER3> I understand the "song of the day" concept. I'm a musician (trumpeter), so often classical or jazz distracts me too much. Instrumental rock and/or electronic music seems to work well. I've actually found one specific instrumental track that has been my go to track for _years_ \- The Brazilian by the band Genesis. When I'm focused and coding, I can listen to that track for days on end.

I have often wondered why it seems to help so much, but I am not going to complain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably not the answer you're looking for but I work best in silence (or rather, the sound of tapping keyboards). I know others strongly prefer music but I zone out anyway so eventually I don't even hear music (or am cognitively aware of it rather). I like the computer lab scenario where its just a bunch of background tapping keyboards at most.

</comment><comment><USER5> Generically speaking, people are easily distracted by the human voice. Therefore anything that has no vocals should lead to less distraction and more focus. This doesn't affect ability, only focus.

Personally, I go for breakbeat, old skool trance (Germanic Trance circa 1990-96), Experimental Techno.

<comment><USER6> For me, the human voice doesn't distract me, as long as I don't understand the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Internet radio, typically DI (Digitally Imported). Minimal adverts, and the various trance stations play looooong sets.

Can't say that listening to the same album has ever made it difficult to think outside of a square. In fact, I used to listen to albums that I knew I was productive on whenever I needed to be productive, regardless of what I was busy with.

I find though, that music generally helps to get me through the mechanical motions of doing something that I know what/how to do - coding, documentation, etc. If I need to think about what to do or how to do it first, pure silence (circumaural Sennheisers) works best.

</comment><comment><USER8> The soundtrack for _The Social Network_ by Reznor and Ross is my staple. It's all instrumental with a good beat, and gets me in the entrepreneurial mindset.

Hand Covers Bruise: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SBNCYkSceU>

In Motion: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yczul_609Gg&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yczul_609Gg&feature=related)

Outside of that, anything techno-trance or industrial works. I definitely don't like too many voices, it's distracting.

<comment><USER9> +1 for The Social Network. Also stuff by Hans Zimmer (Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean & Dark Knight).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Trance. Put on a 5 hour set, and youre good to go.

<comment><USER10> btw, this set by Gareth Emery is amazing

[http://www.dropbeatsnotbombs.com/2011/11/tatw-400-live- sets-...](http://www.dropbeatsnotbombs.com/2011/11/tatw-400-live-sets- tracklist-downloads/#)

<comment><USER11> +1 for Gareth Emery. I couldn't help leave a comment since I'm literally listening to his latest podcast at the moment. :)

(For those unfamiliar: <http://www.garethemery.com/podcast/podcast_182/>)

<comment><USER7> No link available, but if you like Gareth Emery, you should really look into Protoculture. He features quite often on Armin's ASOT sets :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tend to listen to the radio, that way I don't have to make a concious decision about what to listen to other than the channel.

I don't mind the adverts and the channels I listen to have no-repeat workday playlists.

Services like spotify or wimp are interesting but for me, they require to much focus whilst I'm coding whereas the radio is simpler.

</comment><comment><USER6> In addition to PsyTrance, foreign language songs where I don't understand the language work for me. I've been liking the darker Megurine Luka stuff, recently. <http://beta.mindcast.com/ui/rokglvdz88hh> (The Japanese songs are on the left...)

</comment><comment><USER13> As long as it doesn't have words, I listen to any genre of music that fits my mood. Sometimes white noise does the trick as well.

Somewhat related: I've found audio of rain, wind, chimes, rivers, but never any ambient people noise--i.e. groups walking around on the street and talking in the distance.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if I'm in the minority here, but I just _cannot_ have music pumping into my ears when I'm trying to focus. I do a lot of self-talking when I'm trying to learn or work out a problem; so if I just can't hear my 'head voice', I can't get a single thing done.

</comment><comment><USER15> A Turntable.fm room that won't kick me for inactivity. Usually one of the house/trance/electro rooms.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Classic rock and shitty pop. All kinds of classic rock, but only certain, catchy pop songs can do the trick. I can completely ignore lyrics, they've never been a problem.

And I agree, a given album will put me in the same mentality every time.

</comment><comment><USER16> a) no lyrics b) or lyrics that I've known by heart for 10+years and that anyway don't matter much to me (no emotional attachment).

Everything else is distracting. Apocalyptica is a favorite for coding, but anything that fits (a)/(b) would do.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anything on Ninja Tune.

</comment><comment><USER18> Mostly metal and/or japanese otokei doujin (like IOSYS).

And yes, listening to the same thing puts me in likely the same mood.</comment>


Ask HN: "Didn't know I needed this. Now I can't work without it" - <AUTHOR> Hey HN.
Most people seem to "get" what our app does only after they use it at least once.
One of the most common feedbacks is "I didn't know i needed this. Now i can't work without it."
How could we communicate it better? http://snappy-app.com/ <comment><USER2> I just went to the site and looked at it.

Your demo is confusing and not very communicative to me. Even after seeing it I couldn't figure out what you were trying to communicate with it.

I think you'd do better to have a video demo showing a specific use case, and explaining better how it works.

Also, Facebook sdk is complaining about an invalid app id.

BTW -- I am on a mac using chrome on the site, if that helps as far as the demo experience.

<comment><USER3> No, I don't want video. Tell it to me in _simple_ words and pictures.

I have two complaints about video: 1) I don't want to enable JavaScript or use Flash. Most video fails one of those. 2) I don't want to spend the time to watch a video. Tell me in words and pictures, in less than a minute. I.e. an "elevator pitch".

I'm absolutely _astonished_ at how many companies have horrible websites. In many cases I can go to Wikipedia and learn much more about a company, much faster, than from that company's website.

Major FAIL!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From only reading the site, my guess is that the product allows you to select a rectangle, and whatever apps' window surface is in that layer stays there. So I could highlight the bottom 40px of my slack window and those bottom 40px would always be visible and updating even if I open another window over the "snap".

That's how I'm reading it. If that's actually true, that's pretty compelling. A "bring to front" of any portion of any app that keeps it live.

If not, then either I'm way off base or the site isn't clarifying the purpose behind keeping a snap "floating" \- why is that a marketable point?

Edit: typo and clarification on final question

</comment><comment><USER5> Just a quick list:

1\. You use the name "snapshots" in the header, yet call it a Snap everywhere else.

2\. You don't outright define what a Snap is anywhere on the page. I have to infer what it is from the screenshots and specific, single words you use.

3\. Platforms in the header are disjointed. Put both on one side. Information should be modular--the OS X/iOS parts should be close together--so the user doesn't have to look around for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good points. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Had me interested enough to look at the App store and then I saw a bunch of in-app purchases are required for full functionality. Lost interest at that point. Would rather just pay for an app and not have to worry about unlocking features.

<comment><AUTHOR> The base functionality is free. In app purchases enable annotations and other more specialized features.

Would you say most people prefer paying for an app upfront rather than pay per feature?

<comment><USER7> Definitely, especially for a business focused app like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok. Makes sense. Truth is, we're not really pushing for monetization right now, it was more of a try out with the in-apps. Maybe, at our stage, power users working with the full app are more valuable than the earnings from a bunch of purchases.

<comment><USER7> You'll also get more detailed feedback from them, meaningful bug reports, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You're trying to upsell the act of taking a screenshot. From that perspective, you have about thirty seconds of my attention before I close the tab. Your site has a B2B design for a B2C product.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, it needs to become clear what it does in under 30 secs, preferably in the header. Ok. Why do you think the website has a B2B design?

<comment><USER8> Because if it was B2C you would be treating the customer like an ADHD addled child. You should have a 3 or 4 pane slideshow above the fold that explains why they need your app.

<comment><USER9> Slideshows suck. Don't hide important information behind a slideshow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's one million apps that do what yours do. Tell me in one sentence why I should use yours (+ an explainer video maybe?)</comment>


IRS Tax Calendar for Businesses and Self-Employed - <AUTHOR> https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/irs-tax-calendar-for-businesses-and-self-employed <comment><USER2> Is it just the FF or the text is all janky?

<comment><USER3> It looks okay in FF 66.0.5 on Windows 7

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this new?

<comment><USER5> The format and customizations are new. For ex, here's the 2012 version [https://www.irs.com/articles/2012-tax- calendar](https://www.irs.com/articles/2012-tax-calendar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I need to do this for the first time this year, any tips on how to streamline it?

<comment><USER7> Take the time to add all of the important deadlines to your personal calendar. The days shift slightly year by year, so a repeating reminder didn't work for me. The last prepaid tax payment for 2019 is due on January 15, 2020 and any 1099 to contractors are due at the end of the month, so don't forget those as well. There's a couple of miscellaneous dates around there as well, so it really depends on the business. For me, I refresh the calendar once a year when I file my federal return and mark all dates until the return the following year.

Also, get an account with EFTPS ([https://www.eftps.gov/eftps/](https://www.eftps.gov/eftps/)), which makes it easier to make payments. They have to snail mail you a pin code, so register sooner rather than later to account for the delay.

<comment><USER8> This is really good advice.

Also, if you'll be sending out 1099s to contractors (and a 1096 to the IRS), put a link to [https://www.irs.gov/businesses/online-ordering-for- informati...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/online-ordering-for-information- returns-and-employer-returns) in your calendar/reminder for January 2nd, so you can order the printed forms by mail, fill them out, and get them out to your employees by January 31st. (Move the reminder to December if you might need a bit more time.)</comment></comment></comment>


Causes of differences in model and satellite tropospheric warming rates - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2973.html <comment><USER2> The original title of the webpage/paper is "Causes of differences in model and satellite tropospheric warming rates".

The current title, "Climate models still don't reflect whats observed," seems rather heavily editorialized.

<comment><USER3> It also changes the meaning of the paper completely. The authors were likely very careful and deliberate about how they chose that title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >We conclude that model overestimation of tropospheric warming in the early twenty-first century is partly due to systematic deficiencies in some of the post-2000 external forcings used in the model simulations.

WOW. And one of the authors is "Hockey Stick" Michael E. Mann himself. These guys can actually admit they were wrong? I honestly never thought I would see the day.

<comment><USER5> That is the difference between religion and science. It is the very fundamental base of science to be able to be falsifiably wrong. What I do wonder is what it would take for climate change deniers to admit being wrong?

<comment><USER6> And what would it take for a climate alarmist to admit they are wrong? With respect, this sort of questioning is tedious and only serves to try and shutdown discussion.

Mann's name against this synopsis is really remarkable given his relentless and unyielding rejection of anything that contradicts his held position on climate change being dangerous and imminent. Specifically this very claim that models to not replicate/overstate warming that is observed is something he has spoken out on often. e.g. a paper he co-authors ([http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064888/abst...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL064888/abstract)) seeks to square the circle between models and observations. I wonder to what extent the synopsis captures the content of the paper itself or if it is another paper that seeks to explain variation according to Mann's strong preference towards a more aggressive characterisation of climate change effects & impacts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the paper: In conclusion, the temporary 'slowdown' in warming in the early twenty-first century has provided the scientific community with a valuable opportunity to advance understanding of internal variability and external forcing, and to develop improved climate observations, forcing estimates, and model simulations. Further work is necessary to reliably quantify the relative magnitudes of the internally generated and externally forced components of temperature change. It is also of interest to explore whether surface temperature yields results consistent with those obtained here for tropospheric temperature. Our analysis is unlikely to reconcile divergent schools of thought regarding the causes of differences between modelled and observed warming rates in the early twenty-first century. However, we have shown that each hypothesized cause may have a unique statistical signature. These signatures should be exploited in improving understanding. Although scientific discussion about the causes of short-term differences between modelled and observed warming rates is likely to continue19, this discussion does not cast doubt on the reality of long-term anthropogenic warming.

</comment><comment><USER8> "All models are wrong, but some are useful." -George Box

<comment><USER9> That is true. Now we have to see if this model or these models are useful. Are there other models that provide a better answer?

<comment><USER10> The new model still only changes the timeframe by a few years if accurate...

<comment><USER11> What "new model"? The abstract makes no mention of such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Science does have all the answers. The problem is we don't have all the science. -James Morrow

</comment><comment><USER13> Not a huge amount of experience with models this big, but a common problem I see in Ecology is a bit of a misunderstanding of how models can be used - they're only really useful as a representation of what is going on and a way of trying to look at a few variables.

A lot of the time models are seen as a kind-of black box, where you stick data in and get the right data out - doesn't quite work that way!

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is this flagged? Are HN readers sanitizing scientific papers they don't like?

<comment><USER15> The title violates hacker news rules - should be the name of the paper.

<comment><USER14> Seems to be one of those rules that gets applied unevenly. There are at least three unlfagged articles that fail this rule on the front page at present.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, crowd-sourcing your rules enforcement is going to create some inconsistencies - this one was politically fraught and actively misleading, so getting more aggressive scrutiny on that front seems appropriate to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will Twitter Start Charging? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/06/26/will-twitter-start-charging/ <comment><USER2> My prediction is that they will charge for certain search routines and other such tools for corporate clients. ie: selling tweets to advertisers that sell whatever it is you say in your tweet that you need or want. At least that is what I would do.</comment>


Tokyo's Underground Discharge Channel - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Area_Outer_Underground_Discharge_Channel <comment><USER2> These enormous underground projects are so interesting.

I've been following the Chicago Deep Tunnel project, which is nearing completion after half a century of work.[1] Because Chicago was built on swampland and next to the lake, rainwater used to be a huge problem because it didn't have anywhere to go when it rains, except into sewers - which used to be well under capacity for burst rainfall, which led to basement flooding etc.

So the city is building (and almost finished with) a set of _huge_ tunnels across the entire city that regular sewers will drain into during flash floods, and then pump the water out to reservoirs repurposed from abandoned quarries on the edge of town. The target capacity is 17 billion gallons, which is apparently the volume of twelve football stadiums stacked together? [2]

I'd love to tour that construction. Not sure they offer public tours though. :)

[1] [https://interestingengineering.com/chicagos-deep-tunnel- proj...](https://interestingengineering.com/chicagos-deep-tunnel-project- holds-17-5-billion-gallons-sewage-underground) [2] [https://www.mwrd.org/irj/portal/anonymous?NavigationTarget=n...](https://www.mwrd.org/irj/portal/anonymous?NavigationTarget=navurl://9c5c7fe35c89b6ac5694df01de50b07c)

<comment><USER3> >twelve football stadiums stacked together

I understand that football stadium play area is standard, but how do you measure height? Is it a foul to kick the ball too high in the air? The play area, I assume isn't limited vertically.

<comment><USER4> It says "volume of twelve stadiums" so maybe by treating an entire stadium as a giant bowl up to the top of the seating? But who knows what stadium is the reference stadium - that's not a consistent thing like the size of a football field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun fact:

There is a software for modelling drainage systems called SWMM (Stormwater Management Model) that has been around since 1970s (!) and is programmed in C and released as free software. Still most modern drainage and sewer research is modelled via this software and there are several companies that built a GUI for simpler usage. However the core is often still based on this nearly 50 year old software which I find amazing [edit: it has been updated since then and originally it was written in Fortran].

The model has hydraulics and hydrology capabilities [0], i.e. it can model stuff like pipe pressure but also takes infiltration of stormwater (aka "rain") into the surface into account. When using it you have to define your sewer (which is mostly a directed graph) and so called catchments where you define which areas drain into which nodes (inlets) by defining parameters like impervious area, slope, etc. You can then let it rain on your area of interest (e.g. a city) and find out which nodes get flooded at specific points in time (or hopefully not).

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Water_Management_Model#H...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Water_Management_Model#Hydrology_and_hydraulics_capabilities)

</comment><comment><USER6> As of last year, they now offer hourly guided tours 7 days a week for about USD$10. (In fact, I was just there earlier today!)

Note: it's about 1.5 hrs (each way) from Tokyo, and you need someone in your group who can speak Japanese.

Reservations here: [https://reserva.be/guidetour](https://reserva.be/guidetour)

<comment><USER7> Here are some pics from when I took this tour last year:

[http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2018/11/18/maoudc](http://www.lucashayas.com/journal/2018/11/18/maoudc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's amazing just how much stuff there is under Tokyo - not just infrastructure like this and the usual transport links but entire multi-storey shopping malls. There's almost a whole city beneath the city. It's possible to travel for miles without ever seeing daylight!

<comment><USER9> My favorite part is the JSDF underground bunkers where they store the giant robots used for disaster relief.

<comment><USER10> Where is this and how do I see it ?

<comment> barry-cotter It's a joke, a mecha robot reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Saw this BBC story on it last year:

[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181129-the-underground- cat...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181129-the-underground-cathedral- protecting-tokyo-from-floods)

</comment><comment><USER12> > 78 10 MW (13,000 hp) pumps that can pump up to 200 tons of water into the > Edo River per second.[4]

Wow, I hope the grid can handle the relatively sudden appearance of 780 MW of load. I assume they have some protocol in which why turn on one pump at a time and coordinate with the grid operators.

<comment><USER13> I'm a bit worried that systems like this make the continued existence of large cities dependent on the availability of power and the resilience of power grids. It all works well enough usually, but when things go wrong, systems like that can make a bad situation a lot worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been there. The containment tank is positively MASSIVE, way more huge than what can be conveyed from those pictures. It took a good 3-5 minutes of walking down stairs just to reach the bottom of the tank floor, and once you're down there it takes some more to appreciate the expansiveness of it all. Definitely recommended if you're in the area.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looks similar to the old Houston cistern - [https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2016/05/13/...](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2016/05/13/150402/buffalo- bayou-cistern-opens-to-public/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is intake into that discharge channel controlled?

Flash flooding is a thing. In Hong Kong, the Drainage Services Department puts up warnings and runs TV ads to tell people to stay clear of discharge channels, lest they get swept away by flash flooding during heavy rains.

So if intake into the discharge channel is not controlled, isn't it kinda dangerous to film there?

<comment><USER17> The "temple" where filming is done is a secondary reservoir, it only receives water after the primary detention silos are full. So there is plenty of warning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The picture "Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel" is startlingly similar to one of the scenes in the Mines of Moria (Lord of the Rings - Peter Jackson's movie.)

</comment><comment><USER19> Tokyo was a city of canals before the Allies firebombed the city. Apparently the canals boiled due to the incendiaries used, so there was no escape from the fire during that tragic phase of life in the city. 100,000 deaths in one night is a statistic that few people think about, the Nazi death camps worked at a glacial pace in comparison, the craziness of WW1 campaigns gains a new perspective too, the bombing of Tokyo, with the loss of those canals, was something else. Hard to imagine. So we don't talk about it.

Tokyo was built on an estuary so the canals came from the management of the water that was already there. The final evolution being the water being pushed completely underground is pretty predictable. Other cities have dealt a similar fate to their rivers, London being a prime example where only the Thames is really 'welcomed' as a river, everything else is kind of banished underground.

<comment><USER20> Dresden was also completely destroyed by Allies (for no good reason) and its firebombing caused between 200 000 and 300 000 victims (largely women, children and elderly). We don't talk about it much even though it was a crime against humanity as well.

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

<comment><USER10> From the Wikipedia article supplied:

"Large variations in the claimed death toll have fuelled the controversy. In March 1945, the German government ordered its press to publish a falsified casualty figure of 200,000 for the Dresden raids, and death toll estimates as high as 500,000 have been given.[15][16][17] The city authorities at the time estimated up to 25,000 victims, a figure that subsequent investigations supported, including a 2010 study commissioned by the city council.[18]"

It's a tragedy none the less but that figure doesn't seem actuate ?

<comment><USER20> Nobody actually knows the real number of victims since it was not just the population of Dresden but also refugees from all over the place who had taken to live in Dresden. These are not accounted for by the city statistics, so 25 000 people killed is probably on the low end of actual numbers.

You want a different source? [https://www.britannica.com/event/bombing-of- Dresden](https://www.britannica.com/event/bombing-of-Dresden)

> The U.S. Eighth Air Force followed the next day with another 400 tons of > bombs and carried out yet another raid by 210 bombers on February 15. It is > thought that some 25,000–35,000 civilians died in Dresden in the air > attacks, though some estimates are as high as 250,000, given the influx of > undocumented refugees that had fled to Dresden from the Eastern Front. Most > of the victims were women, children, and the elderly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436943)

</comment><comment><USER22> looks like a mirror's edge scene.. :)

<comment><USER23> Well yeah, the article says the location is used in mirror's edge.</comment></comment>


Building a second brain / Yearly playlists - <AUTHOR> http://mtsolitary.com/journal/xxix.html <comment><USER2> Nice post. Seems to be hot topic lately. And always nice to see a simply designed and well-written blog.</comment>


Hyperloop and our misplaced love of futuristic technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/14/hyperloop-elon-musk-futuristic-technology-transport <comment><USER2> Another example of this phenomenon: when Segways arrived, here in Spain every mall and airport jumped into buying as many as possible for any employee that had to move frequently (such as security personnel). Then I flew to Frankfurt airport and I was shocked when I saw all these roles... with a small inexpensive bicycle! So much for trends...

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of us are developers who can sanely look at that and say, yeah...that's not gonna work anytime soon.</comment>


Newsweek journalist (Nakamoto/Bitcoin) private info leaked in pastebin - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/jK84UxYX

<comment><USER2> This isn't right either. Doxxing Nakamoto was wrong but also is doxxing this journalist.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found it in this thread [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504463.msg5560970#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504463.msg5560970#msg5560970)

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady So after the outrage on HN yesterday at Nakamoto's personal info being published it'll be interesting to see if this is flagged off the front page multiple times.</comment>


Rosetta mission scientist Dr Taylor cries during apology over 'offensive' shirt - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/11231320/Rosetta-mission-scientist-Dr-Matt-Taylor-cries-during-apology-over-offensive-shirt.html

<comment><USER2> Tl;dr version:

Everyone offended with everything and everyone reading about what they should be offended about in a media outlet using one liners suggesting that they should be remembered for a clothing choice rather a scientific achievement all so that in future some groups can maintain moral superiority via public humiliation for their own agendas.

Edit: Oh diddums I upset the PC squad.

Edit 2: Oh the maturity. Some of my other posts have been downvoted at the same time.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I believe in the free speech argument and all, but considering that:

1) in the technology in general but also in astronomy the women are a minority.

2) in almost every field the women are paid less for the same job.

3) He was representing the elite in the world of science.

So I think that you might be right that today we are haunted by the hater speech so "Everyone offended with everything" might be true and I probably agree to a certain point but is an over simplification.

If someone is offended is in his/her right claim an apology. If he is a good man with good will and made a mistake say sorry is a great gesture.

Now. I'm particularly worried that there are people offended by certain facts and do not care by some aspect of the reality.

<comment><USER2> 1\. Have you asked any women who aren't in these specialist areas why they aren't or have you read the arguments by the politicians and (I hate using the word) extremists? I have listened to both sides. Women aren't in tech because as a general rule, it's not interesting to them. Both sexes have different motivations. It doesn't mean they cant do it.

2\. Yes you're probably right. All out engineers bar two are male. All our QA team bar two are female. QA get paid less than engineering because the role demands less, not because they are women. I'll say that the women have a better memory and attention to detail and the programmers have more patience and work better together.

3\. No he wasn't. He was representing himself.

Fed up of this argument. Its horse shit propagated by a few people.

Throwing some science into it, if we weren't specialised into genders we would be hermaphrodites. We're not equal and that's why the majority of us form couples and step forward together.

<comment><USER3> 1)I didn't discus with many girls/women why/why not choose a scientific or IT career. In fact I didn't discuss that with many men/boys.

I'm studying Computing Engineering and as far I know there are between 2 women for 8 men or 3/7 at best (usually, it could be better or in some classes there are none).

Assume that "is that way because it is" it's strange. Considering how many women I know use technology and are gamers this turns to be strange because the penetration of technology is almost equal in both genders. Yeah I know more techno savvy boys than girls but why.

I could argue about mechanics/electricity engineering that there is something there. For example I don't know many women that love cars or planes but I (and probably my bias, I) know many guys whom are into that.

Then it's strange that boys like technology better, but we are exposed equally...

When Kid I played CS tournaments and girls where pretty rare (I don't remember a single one). I was surprised recently by the number of women playing games as Lineage, it turns they are more than when I played CS, but there are scarce yet.

In the other hand, there are many girls I know whom play Sims, pokemon, Sim City, PES, and Guitar Hero... (not mentioning games as Farm ville).

So they might play different games, but they play games as frequently as men. So this puzzle me.

2)Rationalization does not help. Sometimes that turns into an excuse that keeps justifying a bad habit. It is a reality.

3)I have the opposite though. The whole team didn't receive the same exposure, if that was the case I would totally agree, but he was representing people whom wasn't there.

For the last part I know we are different. I'm not saying we must be equal. That's not the point. If you are saying that there are less women in technology because they are not into for unspecified reasons then I don't know what to say.

And please don't claim because science when neither me nor you gave any scientific reason for our postures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's the shirt.

[http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article4614233.ece/alternate...](http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article4614233.ece/alternates/s615/Rad- scientist.jpg)</comment>


YouTube Stars Are Being Accused of Profiting Off Fans' Depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/youtube-stars-accused-of-profiting-off-depression-betterhelp-shane-dawson-phillip-defranco-elle-mills/572803/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> In other news, the psychiatric industrial complex is making untold billions by profiting off of depression and related forms of acute and chronic mental trauma. Which is part of the plan, therefore not newsworthy.</comment>


The man who mapped Kazakhstan - <AUTHOR> http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2011/07/google_map_maker_turns_average.shtml <comment><USER2> I'm 27 years old, and I'd feel odd if someone referred to me as "The Man Who X".

</comment><comment><USER3> Great success!</comment>


Could this usher the end for Ruby on Rails? - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoenixframework.org/

<comment><USER2> Please don't editorialize the titles of stories you submit to HN.

Also, it's a good idea to use HN Search to find previous posts. Reposts are ok, but only if the story hasn't had significant attention in the last year.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably not.</comment>