A one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition - <AUTHOR> https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/we-are-implementing-a-one-year-moratorium-on-police-use-of-rekognition <comment><USER2> The ACLU is doing a lot of great work to hold government accountable when it comes to facial recognition tech.

[https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-fbi- face...](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-fbi-face- recognition-secrecy)

[https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-dhs- face...](https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-challenges-dhs-face- recognition-secrecy)

Would be great to see Amazon's support.

The ACLU ran an experiment with Rekognition and these are their findings:

"Using Rekognition, we built a face database and search tool using 25,000 publicly available arrest photos. Then we searched that database against public photos of every current member of the House and Senate. We used the default match settings that Amazon sets for Rekognition.

... the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime.

... Academic research [0] has also already shown that face recognition is less accurate for darker-skinned faces and women. Our results validate this concern: Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition's false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress."

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance- te...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance- technologies/amazons-face-recognition-falsely-matched-28)

[0]: [http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a...](http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I tried to recreate this using Rekognition. I used a public mugshot database. Here are my results [0] if you're curious about what these false matches look like.

[0] [https://medium.com/ml-everything/how-facial-recognition- work...](https://medium.com/ml-everything/how-facial-recognition-works- part-4-comparing-congressmen-to-mugshots-bf08b72c3c2a)

<comment><USER4> Some of those false positives are laughably similar. I have no doubt an LEO would be convinced they have the right suspect.

I actually think it's probably better than most people's naked eye recognition in a crowd.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, seems to me like the real problem is that people actually have a _lot_ of doppelgangers, and applying facial recognition to the entire population, even if just as accurate as a real person is just not a useful thing to do.

<comment><USER6> If you had accuracy similar to a human, and assuming this is an existing procedure humans do use, then of course it's useful -- you're doing the same task cheaper/faster.

Presumably you'd also use the same techniques as used by humans today to narrow down further, like taking into account location, time, etc of match

<comment><USER7> Doing the same thing but faster and cheaper doesn't necessarily mean it's better. If there's a high cost to a procedure, then the user would need to show the value of checking a candidate in some other way for it to be worth the effort. Making it easier and faster means you're more likely to check against random innocent individuals.

<comment><USER8> Fast, cheap, good. You can only ever choose two.

<comment><USER9> Often, you are lucky to get one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Step 2: End Ring contracts with police departments.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/five-concerns-about- am...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/five-concerns-about-amazon-rings- deals-police)

</comment><comment><USER11> AWS is running a nice screen here. I recall reading about Rekognition being documented as having accuracy problems when individuals in question had darker skin [2,3].

>> _" The latest cause for concern is a study published this week by the MIT Media Lab, which found that Rekognition performed worse when identifying an individual's gender if they were female or darker-skinned."_ [1]

I can't really comment. Just recalled this in the memory banks and thought they might address this directly [they may have].

1 - [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197137/amazon- rekogniti...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/25/18197137/amazon-rekognition- facial-recognition-bias-race-gender)

2- [https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/amazon-is-pushing- facial-...](https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/amazon-is-pushing-facial- technology-that-a-study-says-could-be-biased/)

3- [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ai-experts-take-on- amazon-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ai-experts-take-on-amazon-after- researchers-findings-of-racial-bias-in-facial-recognition-2019-04-03)

<comment><USER12> There was a discussion on HN last week that I can't find where I was enlightened to find out that one of the big problems around doing facial recognition is proper lighting and without it you can't really build good models and be able to really use the image.

As an extension of this photographs of individuals with darker skin required more lighting than photographs of individuals with darker skin.

I don't know all of what goes into the ML for facial recognition and I am sure there are people far smarter than me working on it (and making way more money than me to boot), but I guess my thought here is that some variation of Poe's Law applies. I know that people are quick to jump to condemn something as racist but sometimes there really are just honest mistakes.

I have a hard time believing that anyone at any level of the AWS structure set out to produce a racist facial recognition, but rather it may have just been an honest over site and rather than rushing to crucify them we should instead look at it as a learning opportunity to help develop further the field of facial recognition.

EDIT: I wanted to clarify that although I don't think it was done purposefully I don't think it doesn't bespeak a problem; my intention was rather to serve as a suggestion that we should sometimes temper the often strong reaction produced when labeling something racist, and focus our efforts on identifying and solving the issue rather than trying to act punitive. To forestall objections I do recognize this is an issue that does require correction, and that it does bespeak a larger societal problem that has real consequences for real people ever day, but in my experience we will get more progress by attempting to work together in a spirit of cooperation rather than a spirit of anger and vengance.

<comment><USER13> This is EXACTLY what people are trying to raise awareness of. This is implicit bias. It doesn't matter if people have "good intentions" or made "honest mistakes" if the tool is implicitly biased. This is why having a diverse team working on a project is important, because it will help call out these issues early rather than after they have been put in production.

It's also not purely a technical problem, if you feed the model only pictures of white and asian male college students then it's no surprise when you get a model that biases towards recognizing white and asian male college students (which is exactly how several prominent models were trained).

<comment><USER14> Biased algorithms/models are particularly dangerous because they tend to provide a veneer of objectivity (plausible deniability if you want to put a more cynical lens on it) that could frustrate attempts to hold users accountable.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. A huge problem I haven't been able to think of is the (already happening in masse) practice of targeting black people because the data says so. However over time police Dept invests data capture resources in "bad areas" \- which may have a lot of black residents. I wonder how to separate the defense that some black areas are obviously bad and why would a dept put surveillance resources in a good neighborhood?

I personally feel it's wrong but that's one thing I've always got hung up on in building a critique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > We've advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to > govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, > Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year > moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, > and we stand ready to help if requested.

That's a little weak. If they were serious, the moratorium would extend indefinitely, or until such rules were in place.

One year might just be long enough for the fervor to die down, so they don't take such a PR hit when they resume sales.

</comment><comment><USER17> What about in the UK? At the BLM protest, the police rub around with their camcorder on the stick to justify kettling people for 4+ hours and squash people's will to protest. They require you to show your face or arrest you. All because they want to use Rekognition to cross reference everyone's face.

<comment><USER18> That is troubling. Do you have references for that?

<comment><USER17> [https://twitter.com/alessadavison/status/1270430150254084096...](https://twitter.com/alessadavison/status/1270430150254084096?s=19)

Plus corroborating anecdotes from people I've met at the protests.

I always make sure I'm out of the way when these monkeys start kettling protestors

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reads to me as simply "oops bad timing this year, let's try again next year". Yeah, sure, whatever Evilcorp.

<comment><USER20> I believe that you that's a fairly accurate assessment. More so, the whole thing is kind of a red herring.

Facial recognition technology is, after all is said and done, probably illegal in any country that implements the protection of basic human rights into its national laws. If countries (including the USA) do not, it says enough of its own about them. Nor has the idea of (national) exceptionalism ever produced a more equal and/and fair society. AFAIK, not a single in all history.

For those who like to argue that such technology could be legalized when people (collectively) agree with its use through political consensus (aka "the people", through politicians, voted for it), there are good reasons for why basic human rights are defined as "inalienable". Regretfully, many countries have nonetheless ignored that fact, whenever it suited the personal interests of politicians and those that stand behind them in the shadows.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power" ― Benito Mussolini

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wonder if that extends to the Bodycam analysis services running under a different brand, which allows searching for people based on various criteria and matching against a watch list?

[https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS88XH_2.0.0/iva...](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS88XH_2.0.0/iva/ref_analyticpbwc.html)

<comment><USER22> Wasn't yesterday's facial recognition news all about how IBM weren't making enough money ... oh, hang on <check notes> decided to take a moral stance against law enforcement use of facial recognition?

(while cynically trying to link an organisation who built themselves providing IT services to nazi genocide, with the ethical side of the current police brutality protests... :sigh: )

<comment><USER23> _built themselves providing IT services to nazi genocide_

Seriously?

<comment><USER24> They did make many sales to the Nazis, of computers as well as whatever software stuff that went along with that, including stuff designed to support their Jew/\+ extermination operations. I recall it from an article (on HN?) some time ago about U.S. companies that helped the Nazis. But there's tons of stuff about it on Google.

<comment><USER23> _of computers as well as whatever software stuff that went along with that_

Well, that is categorically wrong, given the history of computing.

But anyway, the implication in the previous comment was that IBM were built on the business of exterminating Jews, which is frankly ridiculous given that they started business 30 years before the Nazi party even came to power.

Note, I'm not claiming IBM didn't get involve with the nazis. The German subsidiary certainly did business with the Nazis, including with their processing of Jews and minorities. Thomas J Watson even received an award from them. But, IIRC, he realised he'd been set up as a publicity stunt and gave it back. Once the war started, the German subsidiary bought themselves out and became independent.

It should be noted that IBM in the US has a history of introducing policies ensuring equality and diversity in employment that precede similar federal legislation, sometimes by decades.

And yet it's only the Nazis thing everyone brings up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Has anyone ever here actually demoed Rekognition? I did two years ago, maybe.

From that, I felt like it doesn't work and shouldn't be used in production, never mind police production.

<comment><USER13> Yes, we ran it against our borrower image set and the results were atrocious, those this was now a couple years past. Never tried again after that.

<comment><USER26> > we ran it against our borrower image set

Why?

<comment><USER13> It was experimental for trying to help identify repeat borrowers, that way we could link to their previous loan.

Separately, we experimented with various vendors "face detection" (not whose face, but rather just "is there a face") just to see how many faces appeared in a photo, because for group loans you needed at least 75% of the borrowers present in the photo. If this didn't happen then it meant the loan didn't get posted and someone would have to go back and get all the borrowers together again for another photo which is laborious and inefficient. Much better if you could give the feedback upfront. Granted, as I noted in another comment, at the time all the major vendor's tools had abysmal accuracy and we abandoned the effort.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see this as an extension of the Facebook <moderating/censoring> discussion, which is really a broader question of what moral obligations do corporations have beyond following the law and trying to provide the optimal product to their consumers?

Also there seemed to be no substantive discussion prior this about the police using Rekognition until it became a hot button issue. What will the widespread effects be if corporations start allowing their decisions to be governed by <outrage of the mob/principled consumer pressure>?

Finally I wonder how they will implement this, I mean after all I can sign up and start using any AWS service with just a credit card what's to stop police departments from simply using a corporate card and signing up for a different account? Also does this apply to just local PDs or does it extend to the FBI, NSA, CIA, or other 3 letter government agencies?

Disclaimer: The purpose of these comments are intended to be observational not advocational.

<comment><USER27> Similarly, I would argue that we don't want to be reliant on corporations to determine what the lines are themselves, as they should not be de-facto moral authorities. Determining what is acceptable needs to come from our society as a whole, through reasoned debate and proper functioning of government.

<comment><USER28> > through reasoned debate and proper functioning of government.

Yikes. Is there a fallback option?

<comment><USER27> The other options seem to be the benevolence of Bezos or Twitter condemnation, so not really.

<comment><USER29> Still better in some cases than relying in government taking action :-(

Note that this is a one way relationship, corporations must comply with laws, but can also do other things.

<comment><USER27> I'd say "better" as in "more likely", but I'm still not a fan of a handful of SV folks being the moral decision makers for the world as the general order of things.

I'll gladly accept additional benevolence from them though! Just not as the sole power in the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's probably the legal and PR teams' fault, but this surely could have been worded to sound less like potential corporate doublespeak:

 _" We've advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested."_

Dead giveaway is that Legal and PR teams relentlessly edit out self-agency.

</comment><comment><USER31> I remember at the AWS summit maybe two years ago, they were casually showcasing how some police depts were using Rekognition. Oh my, what a culture shock. How can you basically foreshadow 1984 on stage without blinking an eye?

</comment><comment><USER32> "We've advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology"

Or you know... you could do it yourself. Ethics don't have to come from regulations.

<comment><USER33> That's exactly what they're doing?

But Amazon can only control its own offerings. It can't control what any other company that offers facial recognition does, and they probably know that as soon as AWS steps back, some other AI company with less ethics (or cynically, less care of public pushback) will swoop in without hesitation. The only way to stop that is regulations.

<comment><USER32> They've had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing and they actively worked against it. In the last year people were so upset about Rekognition that they organized a shareholder proposal (it was defeated)[0]

While it's good that they are doing the moratorium, I think it's hardly applause worthy for them to have needed this much backlash to act.

Also, I'm not impressed by the argument that other people might offer face recognition. This is about Amazon's actions. [https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/28/amazon-facial- recognition-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/28/amazon-facial-recognition- vote/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What prevents a private company (ex. Clearview) from using Rekognition to accomplish the same thing for the police as a government-contractor?

Without any kinds of laws, wouldn't things like this incentivize new niches to popup to milk money from the government?

</comment><comment><USER35> Isn't it open to anyone with an AWS account? So how are they even trying to implement this and what would be stopping any third party from using this to submit reports to law enforcement?

<comment><USER36> If you're spending enough on AWS, the interaction isn't completely faceless. You'll usually get an account manager assigned to you and they might suspect something is up if they have a lot of mug shots coming through.

If it's a third party with a new name unrelated to law enforcement, that complicates the chain of custody and probably wouldn't be worth it to any agencies to set it up to skirt a 1 year moratorium, even if someone at the agency thought it was a good idea to try and flout Amazon's policies (they definitely won't, agencies just don't move that quickly).

That being said, there's no way to guarantee that it won't be used, but it would be difficult for LAPD to be running at scale with nobody raising any flags.

<comment><USER37> >they might suspect something is up if they have a lot of mug shots coming through

Can AWS see the images used with Rekognition?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> [https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/10/amazon-rekognition- morator...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/10/amazon-rekognition-moratorium/)

> Amazon is known to have pitched its facial recognition technology, > Rekognition, to federal agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement. > Last year, Amazon's cloud chief Andy Jassy said in an interview the company > would provide Rekognition to "any" government department.

> Amazon spokesperson Kristin Brown declined to comment further or say if the > moratorium applies to federal law enforcement.

</comment><comment><USER39> AKA 'We're going to sell it to police but only after people stop looking'

</comment><comment><USER40> What is the difference between Rekognition and Clearview AI? I'm assuming that Rekognition is just using government photo databases rather than social media?

It seems that Amazon has a far better reputation on HN compared to Clearview AI. Is that deserved?

<comment><USER41> Rekognition is just their normal CV offering you can use for anything from what I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Anyone with a modicum of skill and a few GPUs can do what Rekognition does using code freely available on GitHub and public datasets. This cat is _way_ out of the bag.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's always a slippery slope when companies morally compel themselves to block use cases from their service.

I welcome this move from Amazon, but I hope it doesn't foreshadow more moral bans in future e.g. spurred on by the next angry mobs who will try to limit free speech in society.

<comment><USER44> I hope unpolished technologies that put already marginalized groups in more potentially deadly and unecessary interactions with the police get binned.

If anyone has a hard time empathizing here, imagine your kids in the false positive person's shoes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So i have a schitzo view on subjects like this;

1\. I am against places that say "photography prohibited - private property" — if i can see it, i should be free to photograph it.

2\. I am against ANY use of facial recognition ever anywhere. I own my face and i am allowed to keep it private if i choose to.

So,yes completely schitzo and i realize this.

But its not an evenly distributed spectrum of a problem. Its a weighted web of nuanced issues.

I just dont know how to balance it.

Id love to discuss this if anyone is open.

<comment><USER46> If you're showing your face everywhere, you aren't keeping it private.

You are in control of whether your face can be seen

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> What opportunities exist for use of facial recognition by protest groups and citizen watchdogs? Any products? Any success stories?

</comment><comment> 1-6 This reminds me of an FBI agent who likes to keep his gun in his back pocket and have it bulging out, just to impress people who knew what he did. I can't imagine how a few bad apples within the police force would sit behind a computer playing with Facebook profile pictures and matching them against Rekognition.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know how exactly is the Police integration done with Rekognition? I mean, they must have it integrated into their IT systems, right? Who did that integration? AWS itself? Or some consulting companies? Or the PD's Tech Department?

</comment><comment><USER49> Then won't departments just go to the highly secretive companies like Palantir?

<comment><USER50> This is why the blog post includes a note on how they want it to be illegal. It'll still happen, but in order to keep it secret, they'll need to employ it less often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> There's a lot of talk about the technology - but this aside, why are police even using this?

We don't need this kind of hyper surveillance for common crime, people with warrants, it's just too much of an intrusion.

I can see this being used in certain places for 'high value individuals' such as those marked by the FBI (major crimes, multiple murders) or literally 'terrorists' \- but for regular crime, I think it's way too much.

We can't be under constant surveillance by the police computers that's just no way to live.

</comment><comment><USER52> Arguing in the other direction, it turned out to be very important that Floyd killing was captured on video and the killer identified.

Since that happened, there have been dozens (at least) of murders and vicious, life-changing assaults, most captured on video. I'd be very happy to see every one of the bad guys identified, and this seems like it would be effective toward that end.

</comment><comment><USER53> Also check out 'Data for Black Lives' organization, they had been working closely with ACLU on this matter.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Police use" == contractors providing subsequent services to said police and bilking tax payer money for said service, with likely companies founded by public servants' significant others to do said billing (remember this actually happened in 2009 by wives of bankers setting up companies to get bailout funds)

</comment><comment><USER54> "We are implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition" ... until this whole thing blows over. /s

They're leaving money on the table, but it will still be there in a year, and they'll only miss whatever Amazon's functional analog of "compound interest" is.

<comment><USER55> Yeah holy... So in a year from now the cops can resume evil behaviour?

<comment><USER33> My guess is that they don't view facial recognition as an inherently bad thing, but they do view it as bad when wielded by bad actors (such as the current police environment).

The optimistic view is that this moratorium is to see if police departments truly do reform themselves over the next year to the point where they can be trusted to use facial recognition again. I hope a reevaluation takes place then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I wonder if this means that existing customers/products had to stop using the service? If so this might be the first time I recall seeing a cloud vendor flex like this.

CTOs of city and law enforcement orgs are probably seriously questioning the vulnerability of relying on cloud SaaS.

</comment><comment><USER45> Super funny thought:

The reason why super heroes wear masks and capes is to avoid facial and gait recognition cameras!

</comment><comment><USER57> Why do they say Congress is ready to take on this challenge? Congress hasn't passed a thing yet.

<comment><USER58> "ready to take on" sounds more like the beginning of the funnel.

"hasn't passed a thing" sounds like the end of a Congressional funnel.

edit: this just purely a retort about the specific complaint of the parent. I don't deny that Congress hasn't actually done much useful to forward the policy changes I would deem desirable here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Does the same apply to users from mainland China or companies like Zoom? If not, why not?

<comment><USER60> China got their fair amount of Computer Vision companies anyway. Sensetime, yitu, megvii, cloudwalk and so on. I even heard one using Gait analysis but I forgot the name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Can someone explain what has kicked off this retraction from face recognition from IBM and now Amazon? I mean it's always had dubious uses. What has made this happen right now?

<comment><USER62> Probably that everybody is using masks so the system lacks of essential parts and does not work anymore until is rebuilt and fixed. There could be also a risk of database being tainted by masks with something print over it, like lips, wrinkles in the mask, or even the face of somebody.

And of course you can not require citizens to show the face and to cover the face at the same time, so to try to publicly denounce people with the face covered as delinquent wannabe is not possible at this moment.

But I'm just speculating.

<comment> 1-6 You have a point there. I can see people continuing to wear masks even after the order is lifted across cities.

<comment><USER62> Taking in mind the US healthcare system, americans should have a bigger incentive to wear masks than south koreans, if only for protecting themselves and their families from hospital bills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 1-6 I can see how this decision would stop immediate problems following recent events. However, in the long-term, wouldn't machine learning help regulate and fix human bias?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Better than nothing I guess but still not a perfect solution.

<comment><USER63> > Better than nothing I guess but still not a perfect solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Are they still sharing Ring doorbell videos with police?

</comment><comment><USER65> Is this a moratorium on sales, or are they shutting off the service of cops using this? Will this apply to feds and US military, as well?

</comment><comment><USER66> As we all know, every moral issue has a 1-year expiration date.

<comment><USER67> Every moral issue is also black-and-white and requires no practical (or ethical) implementation plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The cynic might say "because in a year this will all have blown over and we can get back to selling".

</comment><comment><USER69> You don't really need facial recognition once you have enough data from contact tracing.

</comment><comment> 1-6 Ahh, one more year until I finish creating my fake digital self and delete fingerprints.

</comment><comment><USER70> I call this profiteering on dilemma. Disgusting in my opinion. Just my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER71> "We are waiting until the current news cycle has blown over"

</comment><comment><USER72> Not Enough. Period.

Yet another PR move to placate rather than address the problem.

</comment><comment><USER73> Translation: We already made a bundle on this, but we're seeing too much pushback, so we're getting out before the downside eats into our profits.

<comment><USER74> It's reactions like this that make companies not want to even try. "People are going to bitch whether we sell to the police or not so there is no upside to stopping". Why not have a little positivity that AWS is finally restricting access to their technology beyond what is legally required?

<comment><USER75> Go all in then. Disallow the use of the technology without independent oversight. But don't do a half hearted measure because you're unwilling to commit, or you're going to grasp for some positive PR.

> Why not have a little positivity that AWS is finally restricting access to > their technology beyond what is legally required?

Because it's not enough. "Please sir, may I have some more" is not how you address the weaponization of technology by a trillion dollar org.

<comment><USER76> Independent oversight? So .. like from a government? Cause that's the definition of independent, from the people for the people. And if the next answer is "that's not how government is in reality" neither is any other 'independent' oversight. Humans are easily corruptible. We better find a solution for this problem or all that will happen is an endless line of watchers watching other watchers.

<comment><USER75> _Humans are the only solution_. Rational humans are never going to rely on technology alone for enforcement, governance, and/or oversight. If you have a problem with the humans currently making decisions, find better humans. Checks and balances.

Don't like the Big Tech corporate surveillance state? Write better laws regulating them. Don't like the people writing laws currently? Vote and run against them. Still not heard? There are yet more avenues for recourse.

The idea that technology is going to fix these problems holds no basis in reality.

<comment><USER76> Seems I misunderstood your previous post, cause everything you wrote I agree with completely.

My only point here is: Currently, people do not trust independent oversight (read: government). And there are probably a few good reasons. So, I don't see how saying "Amazon should only sell this technology with independent oversight" fixes anything as long as the trust problem isn't solved.

<comment><USER75> Definitely talking past each other. You must solve for X, where X=trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> This is an important step

<comment><USER70> No, this is more likely simple opportunism. They want to supply the police of course, just not yet when public opinion is against police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Keep it up

</comment><comment><USER79> Amazing news!

</comment><comment> 1-6 So... cloud service providers now have the right to determine what services they want to allow and what they want to shut off? HAL 9000: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

<comment><USER80> No, they have always had that right, as does any other private business. You can always refuse service if it is not on discriminatory grounds (gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion or disability).

<comment><USER81> Sexuality is only a protected class in some states, and sexuality isn't a protected class at the federal level.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of places in the US where one can experience legal discrimination based on their sexuality in housing, employment, education, health insurance and healthcare. There are several maps here[1] that show where those places are. Many of them don't classify violence motivated by the victims' sexuality as hate crimes, either. There's also a table here[1] that summarizes the discrepancies in the US.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_States#Anti- discrimination_laws)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_States#Summary_table_of_LGBT_rights_in_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Pretty soon you will see telephone companies refusing service, car companies refusing to service cars etc. based on a moral judgement of the customer. Then whey will finish the process of getting anybody accused of wrong-think purged from employment etc.. Hmmmm, where is history was that tried before? What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER83> This is already the case today under capitalism. A business may refuse service to anyone provided they are not a member of a protected class (the Civil Rights act and the ADA define a few).

<comment><USER84> It's more disturbingly the case under whatever economy China runs. [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas- soci...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social- credit-laboratory/)

<comment><USER83> China's economy is a form of capitalism called state capitalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Personally I am pro facial recognition being used, and believe it is very necessary if police budgets are cut and patrols are reduced. We need a way to hold criminals accountable and bring them to justice. Cameras with facial recognition let us identify their location and send police officers to apprehend criminals, instead of relying on the random chance that an officer spots someone while driving around and matches their face with a list of perps they've seen before.

I haven't heard of any police departments using facial recognition as a definite match. All of them use human confirmation. So basically, the number of false positives does not matter - it's more that facial recognition reduces the total amount of data to a more manageable number that are scrutinized by human eyes.

I don't know why people would be against this. Steps like this moratorium just seem like posturing or an overreaction. The recent policing incidents that have been in the news do not involve facial recognition and there is no reason to tie them in.</comment>


Don't build El Caminos - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/dont-build-el-caminos/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty interested in what the HN regulars say about this, and will be watching these comments for sure.

<comment><USER2> I can think of several lines of response.

The El Camino and Ford Ranchero had sales over several decades. I assume they were profitable over that time. I see no problems with finding a niche market and making money off of it.

Coupé utility vehicles are still being sold. They seem to be popular in Australia and South Africa. Some of the models are the Chevrolet Montana/Tornado, the Ford Falcon utility, and the Holden Commodore/Lumina Ute. Again, if there's a niche market, why not sell to it?

I don't see this as a "one size fits all" any more than a station wagon or an SUV. For example, the Wikipedia page for SUV says "Some SUVs include the towing capacity of a pickup truck with the passenger-carrying space of a minivan or large sedan." -- that's two different design goals in one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not that it has much to do with the point, but the El Camino came out in 1959.</comment>


Songwriters: piracy "dwarfs bank robbery," FBI must act - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/songwriters-piracy-dwarfs-bank-robbery-fbi-must-act.ars?utm_source=rss <comment><USER2> Well this should be in the related articles: [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2010/04/us-governmen...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2010/04/us-government-finally-admits-most-piracy-estimates-are- bogus.ars)

Losses from piracy are grossly over estimated. One download of pirated content does not equate to a lost sale.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, "dwarfs" bank robbery? That is quite amazing.

How many "Intellectual Property" Guards were injured during this giant crime spree? What's that? Not that kind of tort? Well in that case, I hope the songwriter's didn't notice that their comments would be public. How embarassing for them!

</comment><comment><USER4> Hyperbole dwarfs reason, drowns rational debate.

Also kills thousands of fluffy kittens and happy clowns.</comment>


The Fact and Fiction of the NASA EmDrive Paper Leak - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fact-and-fiction-of-the-nasa-emdrive-paper-leak <comment> david-given James Woodward's one of the old names in propellentless thrust --- he's been working on Mach Effect based systems for a long time now. His approach is my favourite of all the anomolous science thruster systems, because (a) he actually has a testable theoretical model to back up his experiments, and (b) he doesn't talk about it much; in the fairly rare interviews, he tends to be focused more on coming up with ways to _disprove_ his experiments, rather than self-aggrandisement; which to my mind is the main mark of a serious scientist.

By which I mean to say, in the nicest possible way, that he's not an impartial observer when talking about this thing, so it's worth being careful about what he says.

</comment><comment><USER2> As an electric propulsion engineer used to measure thrust in the uN range, what disturbs me much more than thrust levels close to the sensitivity threshold is the fact that thrust is only detected some 10-20s after the RF is turned on (figs 9,8,13). I am rather confident that there is no physical time scale in the RF generation process that would account for a 10-20s ramp, and this would contradict their own report of the fast RF power stabilization. It definitely looks like thermal drift; in fact, thermal drift is _always_ the first thing to suspect when you get strange measurements with a low thrust balance.

It appears as well that the authors have conveniently prepared an answer for this objection with fig.5 which attempts to mislead the reader by suggesting that the very slow evolution of the balance displacement is to be expected as an artifact of the combined effect of thermal drift and RF pulse onset. But conveniently, the time units are arbitrary so that hopefully nobody will notice that RF onset was assumed in that figure to have exactly the same characteristic time as the thermal drift... When all measurements actually show that RF power stabilizes much faster.

<comment><USER3> > _which attempts to mislead the reader_

Even if you're right, assuming malice seems premature and pessimistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> NASA seems to be minimally involved.

The group has been working five years in their own time in this small laboratory with shoestring budget. White has a day job in NASA and he and others are working with this project in their free time. To best of my knowledge - and correct me if I'm wrong - NASA only gave them $50,000 and a room in Johnson Space Center 2011. They don't seem to be involved in any other way but "NASA Eagleworks Laboratories" makes it sound like official NASA organization.

Their results are consistently close to the detection threshold of their sensors. They are always flirting with the measurement error.

<comment><USER5> the paper is reporting milli newtons and claims the measurement device can measure micro newtons - or am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> The paper is actually reporting measurement of millinewtons with 40/60/80 watts, and estimating that when pushed up to a 1kW it would generate micronewtons.

<comment><USER7> Wait ... a millinewton is 1000 micronewtons, not the other way around. Not taking a position on this issue, just posting a clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Actual paper from NASA recently on EmDrive (from Eagle Works) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12906254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12906254)

Actual paper: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7kgKijo-p0ibm94VUY0TVktQlU...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7kgKijo-p0ibm94VUY0TVktQlU/view)

</comment><comment><USER9> So far I've failed to grok the many arguments for and against this drive's "impossibility". I'd love to find an ELI5 for it.

I think at this point, I'm resigned to waiting for an emdrive cubesat to just prove it once and for all: [http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a22678/em- dri...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a22678/em-drive-cannae- cubesat-reactionless/)

<comment><USER10> Against is pretty simple

Argument #1: it violates Newton's Third Law of Motion.

Argument #2: every time they improve the test apparatus, the measured force declines and is "coincidentally" close to the measurement limits of the apparatus.

Argument #3: It was originally designed based on a misunderstanding certain principles of Physics. Now they are trying to find a new explanation for why it works. What are the odds that you misunderstand physics, design something based on that misunderstanding, and that it then works in a barely-detectable way due to "unknown mechanism"?

<comment><USER8> Aren't new physics drawn from violations of old laws?

<comment><USER11> Yes, which is why violating a known law isn't automatically disqualifying. But it is _highly_ suggestive, and requires extremely good evidence to surmount. So far, such evidence has not been forthcoming, so this remains a good reason to doubt.

Every so often, something comes along that overturns an established law, like the photoelectric effect or the Michelson–Morley experiment. But the vast majority of the time, the laws remain intact and it's the claim which is somehow flawed. (See the Pioneer anomaly for a recent example where new physics was long considered as a potential explanation, but it ended up being a completely mundane effect.)

<comment><USER12> So, thermal radiation slowed the Pioneer spacecrafts. 'Thermal' is a type of Electromagnetic (EM) radiation, right?

Doesn't that make it an EM Drive?

Why the cone apparatus? What is preventing the intentional design of a spacecraft that uses thermal radiation (or Thermal Recoil Force) similar to the Pioneer spacecraft?

e: The replies indicate the answer is that this could be built but the effect is to weak to be practical. Which I find to be a completely acceptable answer, thanks.

<comment><USER13> Light has effective mass. It's well known that you can shoot light in one direction for a tiny amount of thrust the other way.

The device under consideration is special because if it works it is a reactionless drive. Nothing is coming out of it.

<comment><USER14> Light actually has momentum but not mass. Calling it effective mass isn't far off, but sometimes my pedantic physicist kicks in.

<comment><USER13> The proper term I'm used to is "relativistic mass", but I didn't want to make the discussion complicated. Would you not phrase it that way?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I know absolutely zero about rocket physics or quantum mechanics but isn't this a fairly easy and "cheap" thruster to prototype and test _in actual space?_

Nothing beats real world results, and this doesn't seem that hard to test. It might even be faster and cheaper than what's already been done, no?

<comment><USER16> No one will pony-up the millions of dollars it will need to design, build, test and launch a satellite based on (possibly) unconfirmed science.

<comment><USER15> Yet they will gladly throw away ten times that amount investing in a silly app idea on the off-chance it will be the next facebook or snap chat...

<comment><USER17> In fairness, we know Facebook is physically possible. Not so reactionless drives. If a Facebook is unlikely, a reactionless drive is spectacularly so.

If they are possible, the question of where all the aliens are becomes much more acute. If it's actually cheap to accelerate mass around the universe we ought to be crawling with visitors.

<comment><USER18> If it's cheap to accelerate mass around the universe, spreading beyond one planet is easy, but provides less insulation against non-natural disasters, like species-ending war.

<comment><USER19> Couldn't you theoretically take one of these way out from Earth, turn it 180, and wait for a massively powerful kinetic energy weapon to return?

"Cheap to accelerate mass" just sounds like a crazy weapon

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's been breakthroughs in a fully quantified theory of how electromagnetics can be used to create propulsion reliably and at (still incredibly small but) orders of magnitude larger than prior designs provided by the aeronautics research team from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an.

The research team published their breakthroughs in 2008, and excitingly, they've been highly reproducible.

Unfortunately, the paper appears to be behind a paywall: [http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL- YHXB200805027.htm](http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL- YHXB200805027.htm)

Does anyone on HN have the background necessary to explain the mechanics of EM propulsion to laymen?

</comment><comment><USER21> If they feed electricity into the microwave horn, how strong is the induced magnetic field around the wires? Would that push against anything? How is that compensated for in measurements?

</comment><comment><USER22> Sad to see this nonsense pseudoscience constantly making HN's front page. Whenever it appears I debunk it using the same post[1] (in short, conservation of momentum cannot be violated) but it keeps coming back. Looks like even highly intelligent people like HNers are easily fooled by pseudoscience.

[1] [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp- dri...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/26/warp-drives-and- scientific-reasoning/)

<comment><USER23> > in short, conservation of momentum cannot be violated

Why?

<comment><USER24> Speaking somewhat loosely, the relationship between the local state of spacetime and its energy, the Lagrangian density, does not seem to depend on where you are or when you are. Emmy Noether gave us a straightforward proof that each such "differentiable symmetry" (in this case, translation invariance) implies that the state of spacetime maintains a corresponding "conserved current" (in this case, momentum and energy density).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would YOU do with a technology that passes the Turing Test? - <AUTHOR> What would you do if you created technology that passes the most popular interpretation of the Turing Test? Imagine that you have a technology capable of having a "normal" conversation with you (via text/chat) that is indistinguishable from a regular human. Let's call it "Chatty". Chatty understands "common sense" in the way most humans do (i.e. that if you get hit by a bus the consequences are much more serious than if you are bitten by a regular mosquito), has some cultural background that lots of you can relate to (i.e. someone who lived in North America for 10 years, maybe has't seen Cheers but knows about the Simpsons and the Game of Thrones) and a very good command of English.
Chatty learns and remembers all of its previous interactions with you and is capable of convincingly faking emotional responses.
This is not AGI by any means, but it does push state of AI forward, far surpassing anything that has been done before in many subareas of the field.
How would you use this technology? Would you try to commercialize it and if yes then how? Would you open source it? Would you apply to YC with it? Would you try to sell it to any of the big players (Siri would become just awesome if it used Chatty) and if yes how much do you think it would be worth to them? <comment><USER2> I'd really like to have something like this running on hardware I controlled, using open source, because I'd want to load it up with _all_ my personal information with the goal of creating a smart assistant that eventually can be upgraded to full AGI status when the technology becomes available. Unfortunately, what will likely be available in the near future will be a "smart assistant" running in the cloud, using proprietary code, and storing your personal data with truly horrible privacy policies. I'd be willing to pay $$$ for an assistant I can run that will truly protect my privacy.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a really interesting topic. The first thing that came into my mind was Jarvis from Iron Man. Sure, the suit is something else but having a computer that is capable of understanding nearly everything you say (and hopefully also some sort of sarcasm) is more than just "cool". I think as the developer of such an advanced technology I would like to open source it but I couldn't image if this would be a good or bad decision.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it would have to be agi. Otherwise you could stump it with word problems or make up a simple game on the fly and see if it can't learn it.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. There exist examples of system displaying very non-trivial, open- ended behavior, and yet they are still not agi. A good example of this is [https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.01417](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.01417) . When trained it is able to answer free-form questions about images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Make it a chef so I can have new dishes everyday</comment>


Fred Wilson: Affiliate Marketing Undervalues The Link - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/01/affiliate-marketing-undervalues-the-click.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps, but then the value of that link is driven down by the fact that anyone can post it, and that it's no special resource that you have. The value is based on how easy it is to get 500 clicks, not on the potential of those 500 clicks.

Hey I could refer someone to popular store, but if they're popular eventually someone else would come by and refer them if I don't. The store's ability to monetize the customer is not largely dependent on my specific referral. Perhaps that conversion at that specific _time_ was, but converting the customer is a commodity in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some programs undervalue links more than others. I am avtualy quite cool with Amazon's system, but recently got burned really, really badly by eBay. They don't allow you to post affiliate links on Twitter, but we ran Twitter posts about the NIN eBay auctions that drove hundreds of thousands of viewers to eBay. I was lined up to make nearly $2k in commission when I got a notice that all my commissions were canceled because we used Twitter.

I don't understand why that means I shouldn't earn commission for the traffic I drove.

Additionally, I am banned from ever joining again.

Unfortunately the revocation and ban happened while I was (and still am) on vacation to Egypt, so I don't really have time to deal with it.

Yes, affiliate programs take advantage of you. You have to decide how comfortable you are with that, and at what level. It's still better than no affiliation at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> Affiliate programs generally try to account for click-now buy-later behavior by setting a tracking cookie on the user's browser that lasts for a period of time - 30 days is pretty typical. Provided the user doesn't click another affiliate link (since credit is generally only given to the last affiliate clicked), Fred should eventually get credit for those future purchases. (Edit: I looked into it and Amazon only gives credit for purchases made 24 hours after the click. Ouch! This is abysmally bad for an affiliate program.)

What affiliate programs (and all performance-based advertising, really) _actually_ undervalue is the view. Fred spent all that time talking about that product, but he gets no credit for it unless the link is clicked. That's why publishers with market power sell ad space by the view, not the click, and why the rates brand advertisers are willing to pay are much higher than the number of clicks the ads generate would justify.

</comment><comment><USER5> Affiliate marketing is more than Amazon and eBay. The vast majority of the industry is built on continuity models that pay closer to $40 for a purchase of a free trial, which usually results in making $2-$3 per click.

Very few people have actually made serious money with Amazon. Successful affiliates get much better payouts. If anything, I think affiliate marketing OVERvalues the link. When you're making $2-$3 a click, you end up raising PPC bid prices significantly, which ends up forcing out anyone other than affiliates.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've gotten tired of Fred's blog. I really don't like seeing requests made from my browser every other second. I don't like how slow it is because he has every social hook in there, many to his own companies.

He's a venture capitalist, why is he wasting his time with affiliate marketing? In the amount of time it takes him to build the link to amazon, he should have been working on closing a million dollar deal or doing research into companies or finding a better justification for supporting web fraud companies like zynga who make the internet worse like a lot of his investments, bit.ly to name just one more.

I also find him to be a bit hypocritical. He blasts conferences, then blogs all about having gone to them. He's lost a lot of credibility in my book. I don't think he or his investments make the web better.

<comment><USER7> i am "wasting my time with affiliate marketing" because i want to understand this stuff and possibly make it better.

and zynga is far from a fraud. it's the most successful social gaming company on the web, it has innovated on the virtual goods model and proven that you can build a very large business with that model.

i don't like to go to big splashy conferences and that's what i blogged about. i do like to go to niche conferences where i can meet real people and entrepreneurs.

i'd like to understand why you think the investments we make don't make the web better.

<comment><USER8> Fred, as someone who felt your wrath earlier today all I can say is that we (the loosely dev/hacker community) feel that Zynga, playfish,et al. peed in the pool by having bad offers in the first place and made it much harder for the rest of us.

We also placed lots of stock in you personally as the older, wiser voice on the Web, and then the shitstorm broke out over "scamville" and you were nowhere to be found on this subject. It hurt to see someone we looked up too as a "grown-up who gets it" not say what you were clearly thinking.

<comment><USER7> i think you need to understand the limitations of what i can say when our companies get in the news. i can't talk about stuff twitter is doing without clearing it with them first. i can't talk about stuff zynga is doing without clearing it with them first. i can't talk about stuff that etsy is doing without clearing it with them first. etc, etc.

and my wrath is not at you, it's at all the misinformation out there, spread by blogs who did not work and just repeated the misinformation about zynga

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This will all correct eventually, and it will be huge for those who are currently getting themselves in position to reap the benefits.

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems obviously correct. But how do we really measure this? More importantly, how do we value it? What if I click through a link to the book, having heard about it before, and then hear from a friend about the book. It seems like the same problem that valuating billboard traffic - its above the line at some level.

<comment><USER11> Ads are not only used for conversion, they are also good vehicles for building brand awareness. Sometimes they're just fancy "Spite Fences"; look at the harbour skyline of any major city like NYC, Hong Kong or Sydney; you will see a row of giant buildings, each with an electronic manufacturer's name (Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Hitachi, LG, etc.) They have the appearance of "head quarters", but look close .. it's most likely a rented spot. Why do they all congregate at that corner? why not spread somewhere else?

A good chunk of advertising, specially billboards, is actually "defensive" in nature.

<comment><USER10> Yep, I agree. Thats what I meant by the 'Above The Line' reference.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Below_the_line_(advertising)>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think that $25 for posting a link one time is a reasonable rate.

<comment><USER11> For Fred Wilson? No it's not. I don't know why he chooses to use Amazon affiliates, but the man's personal brand, the quality of his traffic, and his stature in the "community" allow him to negotiate directly with advertisers in an endorsement model.

His readership is the most coveted in all of the industry. Educated and affluent 30+s. Ignoring the personal brand for a minute, if Amazon wanted to compensate quality publishers with bonuses, it wouldn't cost them anything to see him in their matrices immediately. 40 purchases is _very_ high. He would make bank pushing financial products, even more if he stooped low to gambling.</comment></comment>


Security Breaches Don't Affect Stock Price - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/01/security_breach.html <comment><AUTHOR> Posted the link to the Bruce Schneier abstract instead of the actual paper [1] because it's behind a paywall. There are a couple of links to an older version of the same article and a similar article at the bottom of the linked post.

[1] [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15536548.2017.13...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15536548.2017.1394070)</comment>


Negative Option (Collecting a credit card at free-trial signup time) - <AUTHOR> http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/negative-option

<comment><USER2> Personally, I think that any business model that relies on your customers forgetting to cancel your service is fundamentally flawed and consumer- unfriendly. And let's face it, that's what you're doing when you use Negative Option billing, even if you provide all the disclosure in the world up front. If I love a service, I'll sign up for it after the free trial.

<comment><USER3> 37signals does this, iirc... Do you think they're consumer unfriendly and, dare I say it, evil?

<comment><USER4> 37signals offers a 30-day free trial for paid plans, but clearly states: "If you cancel a paying plan within 30 days of signing up you won't be charged a thing. We'll send you an email 5 days before your first charge to remind you."

In addition they also offer FREE plans for their services - which require no CC at sign-up and allow you to upgrade at any time.

Edit: Any comments on the downvotes would be helpful as I was just trying to supply more detailed information on the actual process being discussed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article reminded me of RescueTime. I think RescueTime might be OK, but not for me. I tried clicking the unsubscribe link in the emails, which did indeed unsubscribe me instantly. However I did not get to opt out of paying them another $75 at some point in the future that I can't identify.

Ah, it took some digging, but I found the account link. This could seem unfair, since the link was actually right in the middle of the page. But it was small, hard to see, and it didn't uninstall the RescueTime bot from my computer.

Now I have an OS X process running for a service that charged me one year in advance. And I have to go find this stupid thing. Just fuck off and die.

</comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that "1 month free trial" != "30 day money back guarantee" and many companies conflate the two.

If there is a 1 month free trial, then you shouldn't be _billing_ a credit card upon sign up (whether you take it up front or not is a separate issue). Billing the customer and then offering to refund within the month if they don't like the service is not a free trial.

Offering a 30 day money back guarantee seems the most sensible for most SaaS plays IMHO. If someone likes your service, they should be happy to pay even for the first month. If they didn't like it, then they get their money back. Seems reasonable enough.

<comment><USER7> I agree completely.

I think one reason companies charge you the money immediately (for the "1 month trial") is to test out the credit card. I know some companies that charge a cent (or something) then refunds that to verify that the credit card is valid.

<comment><USER6> Well, that is a crap way of doing things because in credit-card world you can 'hold a charge' for $x rather than actually execute the charge transaction. Holding a charge checks the credit card can pay the dollar amount and I believe also reduces that against your spending limit - but it doesn't actually put the charge on your bill. It only lasts a short period of time and so if you don't complete the transaction the charge is dropped altogether.

It comes down to whether your credit card processor exposes to you such functionality and whether you are smart enough to know to use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anybody have good data on conversion rates for credit card info at the beginning of the free trial or end of the free trial? That is, let's say you e-mail the user 5 days before the 30 day trial is over in both scenarios, but if they entered the credit card info beforehand, then to sign up the user has to do nothing, but if you require it at the end of the trial, they now have to enter credit card information to continue. So basically you have to add the credit card burden at some point; do you get a higher conversion if you increase the barrier for the trial (by asking for cc info up front) or the barrier for continuing (by asking for it at the end)? I'd guess that asking up front has the higher conversion, but I'd want to see the data.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hate when services I really want (many hacker news types of businesses for instance) do not let me give a Credit Card up front. I mean sure: Credit me a free month of service. But damn, don't make me give you one 30 days later if I want to provide one now.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like they're mixing up Free Trial with Sign Up Now. Free Trial: I want to try this and I'll pay if I like it. Sign Up Now: I already like it and want to start immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> due to this discussion, i spent a few hours this evening changing the signup process and backend billing scripts for corduroy (<http://corduroysite.com/>) to no longer require a credit card to start a free trial (but still allow one to be entered if desired, since someone here mentioned they prefer to do that).

hopefully it won't result in an influx of new accounts that use it once and never return.

<comment><USER11> I would love an update on this in a month or three to see what the results are of this change. * Do signups increase for the free trial. * How well do the free trials convert to paid. * How many people put in their CC details up front.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple just lured me into doing this, because of their new Mac App Store. [I've only tried out some free apps yet - TextWrangler looks interesting].</comment>


Who Has the World's No. 1 Economy? Not the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-18/who-has-the-world-s-no-1-economy-not-the-u-s <comment><USER2> Measured by GDP (PPP) in 2016 China was the largest economy, EU was the second , US was the third.

It's important to consider EU as economy because EU negotiates trade deals as single entity.

Brexit makes US second again, I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: it's China</comment>


The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/07/29/the_crypto_king_of_the_NSA_goes_corporate_keith_alexander_patents <comment><USER2> _> 'What insights or expertise about cybersecurity could possibly justify such a sky-high fee, some wondered, even for a man as well-connected in the military-industrial complex as the former head of the nation's largest intelligence agency?'_

The same sort of insights and expertise that athletes put into stuff sold by Nike, Adidas or Gatorade.

It's an endorsement deal.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a little more than an endorsement deal. He knows deep inside information into what surveillance programs the NSA operates. I read it as follows: "we guarantee your company's IT infrastructure will no longer be seen as a low hanging fruit to the NSA"

<comment><USER4> He's not a clueless career bureaucrat. He's been in the cybersecurity business for a very long time (from his Wiki page):

> Alexander worked on signals intelligence at a number of secret National > Security Agency bases in the United States and Germany. He earned an MS in > business administration in 1978 from Boston University, an MS in systems > technology (electronic warfare) and an MS in physics in 1983 from the Naval > Postgraduate School, and an MS in national security strategy from the > National Defense University.

While the government is often woefully behind the private sector, it's also sometimes several steps ahead.[1] You might not like his views about the right balance between security and privacy, but I wouldn't underestimate the kind of insight Alexander can bring to the table, for reasons that have nothing to do with his political pull with the NSA.

[1] Anecdote: I worked on a DARPA project about a decade ago. Commercial implementation of similar technology is probably another decade out. And that was pretty run of the mill stuff, nothing classified. I can only imagine the type of shit you run into at the NSA. The military often just hits a particular pressure point before the private sector does, and they have the money to throw experts at the problem.

<comment><USER5> I remember watching as a kid a History Channel documentary on the NSA, or maybe encryption in general, with the name or theme at least "The Code Breakers and the Code Makers." Essentially, it ended with the observation that the NSA was in trouble: as advantage by the end of the 20th centry shifted from code breaker to code marker, and non-commerical and free encryption tools of higher quality than ever made government-sponsored code breaking many orders of magnitude harder than before.

As a budding nerd, I was thankful for this. HC painted the NSA as being painted into a corner, and even then I wondered for a moment what this would mean for them. Little did I know a decade later how angry the result would make me, and perhaps the exposure of the Clipper Chip was just some ironic leak so they could laugh at later successes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty amazing that the former director of the NSA can start a company in his former employer's space without being sued and yet as programmers we can't get a job anywhere without signing huge stacks of papers that make doing the same nearly impossible, or scary enough to where we don't even bother.

<comment><USER4> The NSA's job isn't private cyber security. Also, non-competes are evil.

<comment><USER7> The point is there seems to be different rules governing people who come from different positions or social classes in our society.

<comment><USER8> That doesn't sound right at all. CEOs are more likely to be bound by noncompetes than line employees. Equally importantly, the noncompete of a CEO is _much_ more likely to be enforceable. Contractual restrictions on competition probably become more onerous as economic status increases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Alexander is believed to be the first ex-director of the NSA to file patents > on technology that's directly related to the job he had in government.

I wish purely out of spite this schmuck could be the source of a whole class of new lawsuit by which certain government employees, like projects they work on, are legally required to do public domain work only. Like, their employment at a company becomes caustic so people who works at orgs like the NSA who have access to state secrets dedicate themselves to the cause for life and there is no chance for profit.

In short, this is disgusting and I dislike him more than even before.

</comment><comment><USER9> Government agencies about to be inundated with sales pitches from General Alexander's company in 3...2...1...

Same thing happened when Admiral Fallon retired and suddenly discovered his long hidden cyber security talent at NeuralIQ.

This is a way for these guys to use influence to sell things to agencies they used to run.

<comment><USER10> How can we forget Chertoff, and his lobbying/fear mongering on behalf of body scanner manufacturers. He very transparently used his credentials as former Secretary of Homeland Security to get his client's devices installed in every airport in the country.

<comment><USER11> And Tom Ridge, who joined the board of Savi Technologies/Lockheed Martin to push the use of RFID tracking on military shipments and port security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't hire a security company run by the former head of the NSA. Is there any question in anyone's mind that if he was approached by the government to put a backdoor in your company's product or infrastructure, he wouldn't hesitate for a second to say yes?

<comment><USER13> The government never paid him a million dollars.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you know? The US intelligence budget clocks in around $52 billion. You don't think a few million could be allocated if it was the most-expedient way of making something happen?

<comment><USER13> If you mean that the government could offer him a million _now_ to expose a client's network, sure, but they could offer that to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Alexander said that if he determines that he needs to use technology or methods that the NSA has patented, he will pay for a license".

Why can the NSA patent anything at all, preventing the public from using the technology it generated with taxpayers' money?

<comment><USER15> Why not? It is just like many other companies that invent technologies that might happen to also be funded by the public. See DARPA.

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

<comment><USER16> Can I call up the NSA and obtain a license for say... XKeyScore? Probably not... so this is egregious.

<comment><USER15> Not everything developed by the government is automatically supposed to be available to the public so I guess I don't understand your point.

<comment><USER16> The point is how is it acceptable that a previously-public-servant can have insider knowledge about "secret" government patents and he can obtain a license to use the technology but I cannot? That's absurd and an abuse of power and privilege.

<comment><USER17> Did it say he was going to use secret patents?

Or just that he was going to use NSA patents?

Because the NSA maintains a list of patented technologies that they offer to the public on various terms: [http://www.nsa.gov/research/_files/tech_transfers/nsa_techno...](http://www.nsa.gov/research/_files/tech_transfers/nsa_technology_transfer_program.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Even if he uses knowledge, methods, practices, routines, guidelines, etc from his time serving at the NSA -- I would expect a NDA to prevent him from using _any_ of that knowledge -- my company made me sign one, and so do most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Wiper is a cousin of the notorious Stuxnet virus, which was built by the NSA -- while Alexander was in charge -- in cooperation with Israeli intelligence._ Have the Stuxnet creators actually been proven to be the US and Israel? I thought it was still speculation (but almost certainly true).

<comment><USER19> There was a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to this fact already, and Snowden finally confirmed this last year in an interview with Der Spiegel [1].

[1]: [http://cryptome.org/2013/07/snowden- spiegel-13-0707-en.htm](http://cryptome.org/2013/07/snowden- spiegel-13-0707-en.htm)

<comment><USER18> Ah thanks. I had read about a lot of evidence pointing in the USA's direction, but didn't realize Snowden also confirmed it. Arguably still hearsay, but certainly adds more weight to it.

<comment><USER19> In addition to the Snowden confirmation, there were some press leaks in 2012 that appear to have confirmed it earlier [1]. Apparently there's still some investigations going on within the U.S. government about who leaked it.

I'd say it's a pretty clear-cut case who was behind Stuxnet.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2013/06/general-keith-alexander- cyberwa...](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/general-keith-alexander- cyberwar/all/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Asked why he didn 't share this new approach with the federal government when he was in charge of protecting its most important computer systems, Alexander said the key insight about using behavior models came from one of his business partners, whom he also declined to name, and that it takes an approach that the government hadn't considered. It's these methods that Alexander said he will seek to patent._

Quite the patriot--and one wonders why Millenials have no faith in the senior .gov folks.

</comment><comment><USER21> He's most likely using inside information from the NSA. This warrants an investigation and constant monitoring by DOJ (not that they'd actually do anything about it if they saw Alexander _selling_ secret NSA information to companies).

As someone else was saying on Twitter - at least Snowden gave back the information to tax-payers for _free_. Keith Alexander is just trying to profit from it, and only giving it to a few elites.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm tempted to make an analogy with 'protection' money paid by some small businesses to the mafia in order to be able to operate without being 'hassled' ... Of course, it's just subjective image that popped into mind as I read this.

</comment><comment><USER23> >"It was those kinds of hackers who Alexander, when he was running the NSA, said were responsible for "the greatest transfer of wealth in American history" because they were routinely stealing trade secrets and competitive information from U.S. companies and giving it to their competitors, often in China."

Oh, and here I thought the greatest transfer of wealth in American history was the massive rise in disparity over the last thirty years between the nation's top 0.1% and everyone else.

<comment><USER24> That's _consolidation_ of wealth -- transfer (in this context) implies it leaves sphere of American influence.

<comment><USER25> No, the analogy holds. One is across national borders, the other across economic strata. Here is an article from Forbes describing welfare as wealth transfer:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/07/15/mak...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/07/15/makers- takers-and-wealth-transfer-in-the-modern-welfare-state/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Buy security from a company run by someone who lied to Congress? Um... yeah.

<comment><USER11> Looking forward to the terrorist hacker false flag that will scare banks into paying this racket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ok, I didn't read it. But I am of the strong opinion that what is for sale is political expertise and connections, not any particular technical expertise.

Perhaps toss in some particular narrow-band legal and program (as a human endeavor, not a technical skill) knowledge.

Most "revolving door" activity in DC centers around these areas of expertise and influence (politics, connections, legalese), as far as I have observed from my distant perch.

</comment><comment><USER28> Whenever a company starts off by talking about patents, I suspect they are going to claim some trivial shit and troll everyone.

</comment><comment><USER29> i just read several paragraphs of absolutely nothing.

really. how this person considers himself a journalist? or even a blogger?

the central argument appears to be patents, yet not even the titles are mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can't wait for the patent paperwork to come out. I see it just showing up in open-source security distros.

</comment><comment><USER31> $600k-$1m a month apparently gets you a cyber security company with no website.

<comment><USER32> It's very secure.

<comment><USER33> They will fax you the details.

<comment><USER34> [http://goo.gl/GZ4P8m](http://goo.gl/GZ4P8m)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure he'd charge them even more if it weren't for Snowden devaluing some of the information he knows.

<comment><USER33> Without Snowden no one would take him seriously Id venture to say.</comment></comment>


Why Saving is for Suckers - <AUTHOR> http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/learn-how-to-invest/why-saving-is-for-suckers.aspx

<comment><USER2> I agree with the math in the article as well as the fact that interest paid on liquid accounts is rather low. The author suggests that higher interest can be returned by investing in a domestic stock index.

The author ignores one very important concept faced by individuals: risk. It would be just plain stupid for most people to keep an emergency fund in the stock market. At the same time, it would also be stupid for a person to keep long term investments in a low interest savings account.

It would be a mistake to conflate these two goals while ignoring risk.

<comment><USER3> Right. Putting all your eggs in one basket is for suckers.

Keep some of your eggs in the fridge. They won't hatch many chickens, but they're unlikely to get eaten by foxes, either.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

<comment><USER4> That's not what the article says. It says you have to deliberately move your eggs around according to the business cycle.

A pure cash investing strategy (money market, CD, T-Bill/Bond) now has a track record as good as the US stock market over 30 year periods. Except the much lower volatility of cash makes it superior.

Plowing money into stock indexes is for suckers. To get any decent returns one is forced to analyze macro economic conditions and allocate accordingly between cash, equities, and inflation/currency hedges. The article makes this point in different words.

<comment><USER5> I've seen the claims that a pure cash investing strategy has a track record as good as the US stock market over very long periods of time. I've looked into them. They are wrong.

The basis of the claim is the stock market index. You look at where it was at one time, look at where it was another, then figure out the effective interest rate between them. And lo and behold, at the bottom of the crash that interest rate was not very good!

The problem with this claim is that the indexes just aggregate stock prices. But companies frequently pay dividends. When a company pays a dividend, the stock price drops by the value of the dividend. This money is not lost though, it is returned to the investor for cash and is free to be reinvested.

When you add back the dividends, stocks perform _much_ better than they do when you don't. As an extreme illustration, look at the DOW through the Great Depression. Before the crash the DOW hit a peak of 381.17. It then crashed and did not return to that peak until November 23, 1954. So it looks like you lost money for decades. But the classic _How to Buy Stocks_ looked at how investments would do if you reinvested dividends. That story is very different. Over many decades they could not find a 5 year period in which the stock market lost money, or a 10 year period in which you made less than 7%/year, compounding annually. (The worst period was actually the early 70s.)

Now how realistic is that analysis? If the money is in a tax sheltered retirement plan, very. If the money is not tax sheltered, then you're going to be taxed on your dividends, and your returns are going to suffer. (But you're also going to be taxed on returns in a money only strategy.) Working out the full details is very complex. But no matter how you look at it, there is no lengthy period of time in the USA in the last century in which cash only strategies have been competitive with the stock market. None. And if you find a study that says otherwise, then look at how they computed the numbers. I guarantee that they got that result by ignoring dividends.

Now this is not to say that there isn't a role for cash in your investment strategy. Of course there is. There is real value in limiting volatility, and there are times when it makes sense to adjust how exposed you are to the market.

<comment><USER4> [http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/03/inflation- adjusted...](http://econompicdata.blogspot.com/2009/03/inflation-adjusted-w- dividend-s-500.html)

This chart (last one on the page) indicates to me that during the greatest bull market in history, rolling ten year inflation and dividend adjusted returns on the sp500 only rarely touched 8%; usually much less. This excludes transaction costs, I'm sure.

I'd have to look into it more.

<http://www.itulip.com/realdow.htm>

<comment><USER6> First, transaction costs on following an S&P index are tiny.

Second, I'm not sure how you got 8% from a graph showing a 10-year return of around 300%.

<comment><USER4> > I'm not sure how you got 8%

Basic algebra?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was totally expecting this to be something about automatically-persisting document interfaces.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not saving that is for suckers, it's savings accounts.

This is link bait. You have to get to the second page to find out he recommends investing in the stock market when savings accounts and stocks are two entirely different things and have much different risk/reward ratios and he doesn't explain the difference.

</comment><comment><USER9> Right, because the SUCKERS like me who spend far less than they earn and keep their money in a savings account with the highest interest rate they can find (at essentially NO risk) were hurt so badly last time the economy crashed. Right?

<comment><USER10> Which is better, to live wealthy with high risk or to live poorly with little risk? Sure you can make out good when the economy crashes (which is rare) but in the meantime (while things are good) those taking high risks are sure enjoying themselves. Remember; it's just money, you can always make more, try to enjoy yourself a little bit while you have it and don't wall yourself off from the world just to keep what little (or a lot) you may have.

<comment><USER11> Having a savings account lets you do some really amazing things, though. I quit my full-time job as of last Friday (although they retained me as a consultant for part-time remote work), and will spending the next year or two (a) focusing on my new company, and (b) traveling.

Having the freedom to make that happen, especially when nearly everybody around me is burdened by debt, is incredibly valuable. I couldn't do this if I had spent all my money on 'enjoying' myself all the time.

True, you shouldn't wall yourself off from the world, but at the same time, spending every penny you earn, when you earn it, is just folly.

<comment><USER12> Congratulations and all the best!

<comment><USER11> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> author of article is kind of an idiot. you too can buy us bonds (the 4% he refers to) you just are locked in for 30 years. banks give you less yield because you can get your money out quickly.

what he should say is that the us govt programs to support the market are really used to prop up bank earnings through the yield curve instead of a direct recapitalization. an individuals choice not to save does nothing to "screw the man."

<comment><USER14> What's worse is that point--that banks profit off spreads--doesn't actually do harm to consumers. It's the long-term lending, short-term borrowing structure of banks that enables them to offer higher interest rates than the market short-term interest rates. That's how banks came about: people got higher interest by pooling their money with money-lenders than they did lending money themselves. Both the consumers and the bankers capture some surplus. Welcome to free trade.

You don't have to take my word for it. Compare the rates on short to medium- term CDs with the rates offered by Treasuries. Both of these have the same risk to the consumer, but which offer higher interest?

(Some CDs have excessive withdrawal penalties. Go to a bank that doesn't have this, or use brokered CDs.)

<comment><USER13> banks traditionally borrow short to lend long. that is how profit and loss capability is generated. that is the s&l proverbial plan. its built into the design and is not a flaw. the problem is expecting the taxpayers to bail the players out when things do not go according to plan and the banks turn out to stink at their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To say that savings is for suckers is to downplay the role that banks have played in making savings such a bad thing nowadays. Why save your money when you can invest in a mutual fund, right? Then the banks can trade away your money, misspend it, lose it, and get bailed out, while you're left with nothing to show for it.

You hear all this noise about companies going bankrupt, people going broke, and living paycheck to paycheck. If financial regulations made saving a little more attractive, instead of encouraging everyone to channel their money (borrowed or not) into risky investments - or even investments that seem stable, but end up being part of some larger fraud - maybe we wouldn't be in as bad a mess as we've been through.

<comment><USER16> A dramatically higher savings rate would likely be disastrous for the US economy. That is why financial regulations (I presume you meant to suggest tax policy or other government incentives rather than regulation directly).

Why is that? If you double the savings rate, at a high level, money changes hands about half as often across the aggregate economy. Halving the aggregate amount of economic transactions would represent a huge missed opportunity for profits (by individuals and corporations) and taxation (profits for the government).

Don't believe me? Imagine a savings rate of 10% (far higher than the US rate; far lower than the 1970s/1980s Japanese rate). Inject $10 into the system by A buying something from B. B now saves $1 of that and spends $9 with C. C now saves $0.90 and spends $8.10, etc, etc.

Tracking that until the next spend is under $1, with a 10% savings rate, that $10 turns into $91 of total spending.

Making the rate only 11% reduces the spending to $83.

15% is a disastrous $62.

20% is $47 in total spending.

5% is a stimulative $181 and 3% is the taxman's dream of $301.40.

While I don't believe that the actual economy is so simply modelled, this "Fiscal multiplier" has more than a grain of truth to it, explains why "small" stimulus programs have a disproportionate effect on the economy (providing the savings rate stays low), and why the government is NOT incented to raise the savings rate substantially, assuming you think their goal is a steadily growing economy.

<comment><USER17> But doesn't a higher savings rate infuse money into credit markets? B's $1 in savings is at least $1 available for capital and consumer credit alike, and with fractional reserve rates, even more.

Most of the boom that preceded the current bust was fueled by credit expansion - and the bust was largely due to poor risk assessment, not the high availability of credit itself.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure there is some need for balance, but from the (smallish) amount I recall of Macro in college, a small positive savings is the "optimum" for economic growth without unbounded inflation, etc.

If the savings rate were negative, then availability of credit may be the overall bounding factor. In the situation the US finds itself currently, I believe that an increased savings rate will slow or stall the recovery. (That doesn't mean that I don't think individuals should be prudent and save, which I continue to do, but rather that I want _OTHER_ people that I don't know or care about to continue to spend freely, ideally on products my company sells. :) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Summary:

Don't put your money in a bank, they're just profiting from your capital.

Give your money to a broker instead! Then you can "play the game" and not be a sucker!

From the article:

"Adding sectors and specific regions will increase the complexity of your portfolio but probably won't add much more in returns, which could well exceed 15% per year after the recent crash in value."

Could well exceed 15%? Holy awesome, that's great! Because you know, right? You're not just making numbers up?

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe the headline should be: "Why Doing Nothing But Saving is for Suckers"

<comment><USER20> I agree. I fear that many people will read that headline and say, "yeah, banks suck, I am going to go buy a flat-panel TV".

Then when a crisis strikes, they will default on their loans and I will have to pay higher taxes and higher interest rates on borrowed money. Wait, the author is right, saving _is_ for suckers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The headline seems a bit misleading - it seems to be in favor of spending all of your money as soon as you get it - the article's actual point, that it is better to put your investments in places that do better than 1% per year, is quite valid.</comment>


The Sims Game Design Documents (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/ <comment><USER2> MaxisSimRules.pdf is a gold mine of distilled wisdom all by itself.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the heads up. You're right.

There are gems like,

"Players occasionally need to abandon long term strategy in favor of short- term success."

and

"Because of the interleaving data sets in the simulators, players may not initially understand why certain actions have unexpected effects. One of the compelling reasons to play is to discover and understand various causes and effects."

Good advice for any game designer.

<comment><USER4> > "Players occasionally need to abandon long term strategy in favor of short- > term success."

That reminds me in a way of this article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/opinion/28radosh.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/opinion/28radosh.html)

"Like cinema, games will need to embrace the dynamics of failure, tragedy, comedy and romance. They will need to stop pandering to the player's desire for mastery in favor of enhancing the player's emotional and intellectual life."

It's true, games often cater to this expectation of gradual, linear improvement without major setbacks. One thing that is nice about the Sims is that it allows for a longer developing series of ups and downs. It's kind of like feature movies (linear games) vs the more recent TV series in that regard.

<comment><USER5> I don't like the way it's phrased like an exclusive dichotomy, and that games must stop "pandering" to mastery to "embrace" intellectual life. This reads like someone who just likes film but doesn't like videos games turning their nose up at something they view as aesthetically inferior, as if their shitty aesthetic opinions are informed by universal objective truth itself.

Yeah, absolutely, video games that enhance the emotional and intellectual lives of the audience are better for it, but games that give the audience a sense of accomplishment and reward curiosity are _also_ better for it. There is no reason to stop doing one to do the other. Video games don't need to be movies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is super cool. I wish there were repositories of older, well known games and their design documents.

<comment><USER6> There was a site, gamepitches.com, that wanted to archive these types of documents but it only existed for a few years. Here's a Wayback Machine link to the document archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150406082704/http://www.gamepi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150406082704/http://www.gamepitches.com/game- designs/)

Some classic design documentation is available for Karateka and Prince of Persia by the creator: [http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/](http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/)

Gamasutra postmortems are a good resource for modern games. They don't usually have design documents but they often talk about their plans and how they had to change during development: [http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/](http://www.gamasutra.com/features/postmortem/)

<comment><USER7> Wow that's a valuable resource; were you the author?

<comment><USER6> Sorry, no. I believe it was Gabriel Pendleton (@GabeTHEGeek).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was on HN yesterday, see also for insightful comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997725)

<comment><USER9> These PDFs, as contrasted by the brevity of the Motive.c, is story greater than the sum of its parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don is an active member of the HN community.

Hi, Don!

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting enough they considered implementing feng shui in Ch09-Architecture.pdf.

Feng Shui Analysis TBD.

<comment><USER12> Effectively, the Sims themselves are the Feng Shui analyzers, in the way that the layout and open spaces of their house and the objects in it affects the routing efficiency and creates flows and bottlenecks, which affects how much time they have for other more productive uses of time than walking across the house to the bathroom, queuing to walk through doors, navigating through crowds, which indirectly affects their overall happiness and other motives scores.

To show how happy your Sims are, the antlers of the Beaver Pelt Moosehead occasionally moves up and down to reflect the overall happiness of the family members!

[http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Beaver_Pelt_Moosehead](http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Beaver_Pelt_Moosehead)

If your Sims get really depressed, and have a Tragic Clown Painting on the wall, a real Tragic Clown arrives and performs annoying tricks that make you even more depressed, and he is very difficult to get rid of.

[http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Tragic_Clown](http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Tragic_Clown)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Awesome. Finally I know how to summon Satan (TheSimsPieMenus.pdf)!</comment>


Ask HN: Applications for extreme low- and high temperature RFID tag? - <AUTHOR> Applications for extreme low- and high temperature RFID tag.
Are there (creative) people who want to think along with me for an application of a technological development? Are you working in an industry where extremely low or high temperatures (-190°C to 450°C) occur? Or do you just want to think along? Then I am looking for you!
We have developed an RFID tag that can withstand extreme temperatures (-190°C to 450°C), tags that are currently on the market can only handle temperatures from -20°C to 150°C. For the development of an application for our low- and high temperature tag I am looking for input through an online brainstorm / braindump. Through the following link you can enter your ideas in an online padlet (no registration necessary and completely anonymous). https://padlet.com/tvanorsouw/f7wbwyn2o9es
More information about the RFID technology, the development that we've made, the purpose of the brainstorm and explanation about padlet can be found via the following link. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1evaa1XS1439syr4EByM0cFTXu1Kkvucbw7XuVfusGkc/edit?usp=sharing
If you want to know more don't hesitate to contact me! (E: email@example.com) <comment><USER2> This is probably best rephrased as an "Ask HN:".

The -20C to 150C existing range is instructive- you don't need to hit both your extremes, merely occasionally deviate past those extremes. -20C for instance occurs throughout the world, so any outdoor vehicle or asset rental tag would benefit from a hardier version.

If the RFID tag can employ a bit of logic (it's dipped below 140 C, or above -10 C and that's only when it emits, for example) then the world is replete with applications in the food service and manufacturing industries.

Yup. Freezer alarm beacons are your bread and butter with this technology, but only if you can put some signal to them.

I'd consider instead of touting your larger gamut of temperatures, developing technology to tune predictable failures (and perhaps permanent ones) at bespoke temperatures. It'd be very handy to scan a pallet of eggs and know that the -1.4C threshold had been crossed, with frost damage a likely result.

Reach out to me directly if you want some US engineering support- know a startup in the food service industry that has a market for this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER3> Best HN comment I've seen in a while. Good detail here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are we supposed to do your work for free?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not asking you to do my work for free or to deliver a complete business plan. I'm just asking for input in the form of ideas for a extreme low- and high temperature tags.</comment></comment>