The Fed's imminent interest-rate decision – Is America ready for lift-off? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21679806-first-three-pieces-federal-reserves-imminent-interest-rate-decision <comment><USER2> I am feeling sad about this. The USA economy is clearly weak by any of its own measures, and there is the likelihood that weakness in Europe and China will further weaken the USA. Inflation has been subdued for years and has recently declined further, so there is absolutely no justification for a rate hike. Labor participation among prime age adults remains lower than before the recession. And yet the Fed seems absolutely determined to raise rates, even though there is no conceivable good that can come from this action.

Edit:

Please see:

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/eco...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/economists- dont-know-what-they-are-talking-about.html)

<comment><USER3> > Inflation has been subdued for years and has recently declined further

The reality is the free ride on inflation can't last forever and if the Fed fails to predict the future it can get pretty grim.

Similarly, there are a number of bubble like portents such as resource prices that are showing an excess of capital is being malinvested.

Its just one of those situations where you have to hope the professionals predict the future correctly.

> Labor participation among prime age adults remains lower than before the > recession.

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300060](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300060)

Its pretty clear the 90s it leveled off and now its dropping. It peaked 15+ years ago. It has nothing to do with the recession but rather, frankly.

I know it seems that way from the media but the fact is it leveled off ~25 years ago and began to drop ~15 years ago. The difference b/t the highest point and 1990 is very similar to normal noise.

<comment><USER4> >The reality is the free ride on inflation can't last forever and if the Fed fails to predict the future it can get pretty grim. >Similarly, there are a number of bubble like portents such as resource prices that are showing an excess of capital is being malinvested.

The thing is it's really easy for the Fed to slow the economy down, it's a lot harder to get it started again. So it makes sense for them to wait until they actually start seeing inflation before they decide to raise rates.

It's hard to say whether the mal-investment is due to the current monetary policy or the lack of better investment options in a bad economy.

FWIW, the participation rate for the wider population shows a more significant drop around 2009:

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART)

This might be due to early retirement, or more young people not finding work. I don't research this data much.

<comment><USER3> > It's hard to say whether the mal-investment is due to the current monetary > policy or the lack of better investment options in a bad economy.

Its probably both, honestly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The Fed is in a jam, though, because it faces asymmetric risks. If it raises rates too soon, its scope to cut them, should the economy then sour, is limited by the fact rates cannot fall far below zero. If it waits until inflation is stronger, it has unlimited capacity to raise rates to tame it._

This to me is the key paragraph. Why not wait until we reach or exceed target inflation, when they risk tanking our still very fragile economy, and then being unable to do anything about it since rates would still be close to zero?

<comment><USER6> Because we will have a recession sometime in the next couple years, and if the Fed keeps interest rates at 0, it will have no ammunition when the time comes.

<comment><USER7> Raising the rates prematurely, you risk accidentally triggering a recession or weakening the economy, then you're forced to raise rates to prevent a recession caused from prematurely raising rates.

Interest rates aren't something you can slowly raise without effect.

<comment><USER6> The economy is the strongest it's been in 5 years, and you can't keep rates low forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It will be very interesting how this plays out. We are in rather unexplored territory. On one hand raising interest rates could spook the stock market which would reverberate through tech. On the other hand without room to lower rates the Fed would be without it's best tool when the inevitable next recession arrives. Seems like _slowly_ raising rates is the best course.

<comment><USER9> What is interesting about this whole thing is precisely the second point: Are interest rates really the best tool to alter monetary policy? What's the real transmission mechanism by which anything the fed does affect the economy.

The view I'd most like tested is Scott Sumner's, who thinks that there's no such thing as running out of ammunition while trying to provide monetary stimulus: If a central bank wants to create inflation, all they had to do is print money and actively spend it, buying bonds, stocks, anything. It's not what a majority of economists believe, but at the same time, his model is very predictive. Unconventional monetary policy, like what Japan has been doing, has changed indicators in Japan in ways that decades of traditional intervention failed to do.

Either way, there's been so much talk about rate raising, that unless we think markets are very bad at prediction, I'd be very surprised much changed in the market if rates moved up a quarter of a point: The uptick has been priced into the stock prices already. It'd be news if it didn't happen.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say you'd want to throw printed money into any asset class; you're just going to create a bubble somewhere.

I'd advocate for printing it and dropping it in everyone's checking account. It creates immediate economic activity by people who are going to go spend that money today.

<comment><USER11> Isn't that inevitable with any sort of plan to stimulate the economy? Seems like there will always be _some_ sort of bubble(s), and that it is impossible to ever reach equilibrium or a smooth state.

<comment><USER12> No. The Fed buying stocks and bonds doesn't increase the price of anything else very much. Not very many people buy cars because the stock market went up. But if you hand out money to actual people (basic income, maybe?), then some will pay down debt, and some will buy stuff, and some will do some of both. But those who buy stuff increase the demand for stuff, which means people have to make more stuff, which increases the number of jobs, which means that more people have money to spend, and hopefully the economy improves on a sustained (non-bubble) basis. (It also cuts down on the amount of bad debt, which is helpful to the economy as well.)

The Fed buying stocks, on the other hand, does not increase jobs in any meaningful way. It just raises the prices of stocks. People with money then want to be in stocks, because the prices are going up. But they aren't buying stocks because the fundamentals are better; they're buying only because the price is going up. And their buying pushes the price up further, so more people see the price going up, so _more_ people buy, and away we go. "Price going up disconnected from the fundamentals": that's a basic definition of a bubble. Add in the positive feedback loop of people wanting to buy because the price is going up, and it's definitely a bubble.

<comment><USER10> I'm very interested how bad the fallout is going to be on the S&P when the Fed ticks up interest rates. If today's market activity was any indicator, hold on tight.

<comment><USER11> Seconding this, but for the Bay Area real estate market. My theory is that raising rates will reduce the number of people in the market because money won't be as cheap, however what I'm not sure of is the sheer massive amount of demand from people with money (investors and highly-paid techies) and whether it will be enough to cancel it out.

As someone who bought earlier this year I guess I'll see. Sure as heck hope it keeps going up for a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Raising rates it a good thing:

1\. It allows the Fed room to maneuver during the next recession ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_lower_bound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_lower_bound))

2\. It will all investors to normalize their portfolios ([http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/09/11/what-to-ask- before...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/09/11/what-to-ask-before-you- reach-for-yield/))

3\. Savings accounts and fixed income will actually yield interest.

The US economy is actually in pretty good shape:

\- Job creation has been solid ([http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf))

\- Unemployment has been declining for 5 years ([https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/U6RATE](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/U6RATE) <\- U6 rate, includes under-employed and those who quit looking for work)

\- GDP is 20% higher than before the recession ([https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDP](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDP) [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/A191RL1Q225SBEA](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/A191RL1Q225SBEA))

\- Average pay is increasing ([https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES0500000003](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES0500000003) all workers, [https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AHETPI](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AHETPI) not including supervisors)

</comment><comment><USER13> What I haven't been able to find out is how an interest rate hike by the Feds will change consumer borrowing (mortgages, cars, etc.).

If the rate is going from 0% to 0.25% for the Fed loans, does that mean consumers will not see a rate hike, a rate hike of 0.3%, or multiples of that?

<comment><USER14> As the article says, most American mortgages are on fixed rates. You may see an increase in rates for non-mortgage borrowing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rate hikes have been "imminent" since QE1.

</comment><comment><USER16> > If the Fed has been a bullish coach, the markets have been trusting fans, > continually believing that an increase is imminent, only to have their > expectations dashed. At last, however, the moment seems to have arrived. On > December 16th, when the Fed's rate-setting committee meets, it seems all but > certain to raise rates.

That's what the media said _last_ meeting.

<comment><USER17> For what it's worth, the Fed Funds future markets are priced at a predicting a ~70% chance of a rate hike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This story has been "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" for more than the past year. Every 4 weeks they threaten and no change.

I'm hoping they finally move, because rates have been too low too long. Yes I realize this is likely the worst time to raise rates in the past 5 years, but that's only because they waited too long.

<comment><USER19> "too low too long"

Is there something inherently wrong with being low for a lengthy period of time? "Too low" is obviously bad (if true - my understanding differs, but I'm no expert), but is there any concern over "too long" if "too low" isn't true? (honest question - is a too stable rate itself a problem?)

On to the "too low" part - My understanding is that Fed targets 2% inflation, and we've just not been there. Do you have reasons other than gut instinct to dislike the low rate? (Again, honest question, my understanding could very well be wrong).

<comment><USER5> In fact, the problem has been that rates aren't low enough, they are united by the zero lower bound. The natural interest rate would be several points in the negative.

<comment><USER18> In what universe could interest rates ever be negative and considered "natural"? Or even a zero interest rate being considered "natural".

If you believe that to be true, what rational entity would take the risk of loaning out money to either lose money or get back solely their principal at some future time?

And considering prices are inflating, this makes zero and negative interest rates even worse. Market interest rates reward the savers by risking their capital and loaning it to borrowers who can put that capital to work and pay back the lender both principal and interest.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, autocorrect. That was supposed to be _limited_ by the zero lower bound. You can't get below zero (or not much below anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminder, someone at the Fed thought _negative_ rates in 2015 and 2016 were appropriate:

[https://marketrealist.imgix.net/uploads/2015/09/Sep-dot- plot...](https://marketrealist.imgix.net/uploads/2015/09/Sep-dot-plot.1.jpg)

I'm not saying it was Yellen... But it was Yellen. If they were looking to shock-and-awe this market, talking hike and then going negative would do it.

I have no idea what is going to happen.

<comment><USER21> Well negative interest rates could be appropriate for negative economic growth. So if we never allow for negative interest rates we never allow for negative economic growth. But if we ever want to achieve singularity, we have to allow our economy to shrink to (zero).</comment></comment>


Never paid more money for so little a stake in a startup (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/1999/10/04/feat.html <comment><USER2> Great perspective, nice post!</comment>


Backbone.js tips: assemble modules by events - <AUTHOR> http://smagch.github.com/posts/2012-12-10-assemble-modules-by-events.html

<comment><USER2> It's hard to read your post - the colors are all dark with very little contrast.</comment>


The New Workplace Is Agile, and Nonstop. Can You Keep Up? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/technology/the-new-workplace-is-agile-and-nonstop-can-you-keep-up.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0 <comment><USER2> If you can't read: [https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjKnMChpMjQAhXiE5oKHa3OBZ4QqQIIHjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F11%2F25%2Ftechnology%2Fthe- new-workplace-is-agile-and-nonstop-can-you-keep- up.html&usg=AFQjCNFn9es12G1qEAa9i84bOSKcUK4yiw) (skip subscription by going through Google)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am glad to hear that other industries area also slowly learning about the benefits of "Agile" and "Cloud" :-)</comment>


New MacBook Airs may suffer from Wi-Fi connectivity issues - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/new-macbook-airs-may-suffer-from-wi-fi-connectivity-issues/

<comment><USER2> I use an iPhone 4 and Macbook Air as my main devices.

One of the first comments on the Ars Technica page is "you're holding it wrong". It's a predictable joke, but I'll begrudgingly admit that I laughed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have had an issue both with my previous mac, a second gen air and a first gen pro retina with sustaining a connection (I am immediately next to the wifi router and get wifi drop outs yet my colleague, a distance away using a PC, has no dropouts whatsoever.)

I also have a curious problem that has affected both of them - if I rest the laptop on my naked chest, the wifi connection degrades to the point that connectivity is significantly affected, and if the signal is not strong enough completely drops out. Seems to me to be related to the aluminium case. Quite frustrating as this is (an arguably not very healthy) common use case for me :)

<comment><USER4> I ended up running a script on launch that pings 127.0.0.1 every 5 seconds - my Wifi was disconnecting every few minutes and this has fixed the problem for the last 6 months for me.

edit: actually pinging the router, 192.168.1.1 etc. Script is:

#! /bin/sh

ping 192.168.1.1 > /dev/null 2>&1

<comment><USER5> That makes no sense what so ever.

Pinging your loopback address just shows that your localhost is still there.

If you were to write a script that instead pulled the local IPv4 address you are getting - that might be a little more sensical?

<comment><USER6> On Linux, that packet wouldn't leave the device either. You have to ping another host on your subnet or the kernel won't queue the packet for transmission on a hardware network interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Or, more likely, it's a few people who got dud hardware or are misdiagnosing marginal WiFi coverage and some tech "reporters" acting as an echo chamber to amplify it. This is a couple of forum posts run through Gizmodo and (disappointingly) ArsTechnica – i.e. the plural of anecdote.

<comment><USER8> OTOH, Apple is renowned for keeping hardware problems on the down-low and quietly swapping things out with no questions when people come in to complain. The only way this kind of thing gets out is through forum complaints and such.

<comment><USER7> > OTOH, Apple is renowned for keeping hardware problems on the down-low

Renowned on forums. I've received recalls for widespread problems (batteries, a video problem in the PowerBook G4 era, etc.) but many of the forum / mac blog fodder seem more like selection bias – people who don't have a particular hardware problem don't tend to search for threads so they can say "Nope, works fine here".

<comment><USER9> My MacBook Air fell into the camp smackfu is talking about. Big thread on the Apple website about the problem, no public acknowledgement of it from Apple. However, when I brought my out-of-warranty laptop in, they replaced the faulty parts free of charge. I ended up pleasantly surprised, and will buy Apple again in the future.

Most businesses do everything they can to get out of warranties. Apple seems more like a high value add business to me now, and less a seller of commodities like many of the other computer manufacturers.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, a relative had that with an iPhone 5 charger cable: walked into the store and the tech simply reached onto the shelf and gave him a new one. No waiting, filling out a 3 page form, 6 forms of ID, etc. Completely changed the mood from griping to "Wow, I'll buy from Apple again" – quite a contrast to the rest of the computer industry which is generally chasing Walmart down the short-term cost minimization rabbit hole.

<comment><USER10> You may fault Apple all you want for various decisions, but they are very good when it comes to product replacement. My iPhone 5 had a faulty screen (it just conked out one day.) Within 3 days I had a brand new one on my table having not walked into an Apple store and opting for pickup instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have owned several Macbook[Pros|Airs] over the years and consistently the biggest issue has been poor wifi. Either dropping or just being generally crappy performance wise compared to other systems right next to me on the same next work. It is annoying that it is still an issue several years later.

<comment><USER12> Same here. When Lion came out it was the worst. (always used quality APs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love my MacBooks, but every one I have had (totally three so far) have had wifi connectivity issues, usually which involve the connection dropping a few minutes after I resume from sleep and me needing to disable wifi and reconnect.

<comment><USER14> I love my MacBooks too, and in OSX I had this problem with some APs but not others. Hardware compatibility is hard, I think the only thing you can rely on is that everyone tests on Windows...

<comment><USER15> > Hardware compatibility is hard That's definitely it. I also think it's made > worse by the lack of tools to troubleshoot the issue.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried the built-in network diagnostics? There's even a shortcut: Option-click on the wifi menu bar item.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Been using the new 11" for days. No problems with WiFi, but I have noted a few recurring themes about WiFi connectivity.

802.11 b still works pretty well for most people.

802.11 g has better _in-house or building_ range than 802.11 n

802.11 n _can_ be faster. but I haven't notice that being true...ever.

5 Ghz spectrum connections sucks at penetrating walls.

<comment><USER17> You're confusing a few key points. 802.11n can operate on both 2.4 & 5Ghz networks. So while you state speed and range metrics the real question is the quality, capability and environmentals you're, likely, not taking into consideration.

Quality: not all antenna or radios are at all equal. Just because you have an N capable AP means nothing for client connectivity.

Capability: Is your AP MIMO? How many TX & RX? These things matter. Many of Apple's designs for Airport look pretty but are effectively junk for RF performance. This has always been a clear case of aesthetic over function. Many people often buy all in one devices to handle 30�Mbps Internet connections and also lump in 10� wireless and wired devices. These wireless 'enabled' devices are often horrible since they're often underpowered to handle the increased connection speeds as local transfer and Internet speeds increase.

Environmentals: Do you live in a shared living space with lots of neighbors contending for use of channels? Do you live in a 4000+ sqft house and have your AP in the basement? Etc...

TL;DR I look at this stuff in a lab on a daily basis. This generalization is quite bad.

<comment><USER18> > _Many of Apple 's designs for Airport look pretty but are effectively junk > for RF performance._

Interesting. You say "many". So which Airport models would you suggest?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm using one of the new MacBook Airs and I've yet to experience this (although of course, I'm just one data point).

<comment><USER20> Ditto. For what it's worth I've only connected via 802.11n so far, so it could be an issue with a/b/g.

<comment><USER21> for that matter it could be an 802.11ac problem as that is brand new with the Mac line in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have wifi problems with my MacBook Pro retina since I bought it. It's probably a recurring software issue.

</comment><comment><USER23> I used to do a lot of audio and video editing and the releases of OSX always seemed to have problems on launch day so much so that people in the industry always suggested to wait for the .1 release. Over the same time you've seen similar problems in apple's hardware. "It's mostly alright but some people are getting yellow cinema displays" "wi-fi connectivity issues" "a few models were XYZ" perhaps the same policy should be applied to hardware. Wait a month until they get the kinks worked out and you'll be rocking and rolling.

<comment><USER24> The same policy should _definitely_ be applied to hardware. It's fairly common knowledge in the Apple community not to buy the first version of any new hardware unless you want to experience all the highs and lows of the bleeding edge.

On the other hand, it's hard to say what constitutes a ".1" in the hardware. The latest Air is a relatively small revision to the current Air line that's been around for a few years now, so I wouldn't have treated it as something brand new like I would have with, say, the original Air from 2008, or the redesigned one from 2010.

But yes, if you're not in a big hurry and don't want to risk a fight with the hardware, just wait a month or so after any given release.

<comment><USER25> _The latest Air is a relatively small revision to the current Air line that 's been around for a few years now_

True, but doesn't it have a couple of new parts? (Haswell CPU and WiFi chip that adds AC support as I recall)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My first gen retina has problems connecting to certain WiFi points. Netstat shows an assigned ip that's out of range, while others continue to receive regular IPs. Renders it useless for helping teach Rails development/googling to find solutions to others' issues.

Waiting for a thin, light, no os laptop that works well with GNU/linux

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a recurring theme with new chipsets. I'm sure it'll get cleaned up in firmware/driver updates as usual, but at some point, you'd think Apple would figure out a better QA strategy for wifi.

<comment><USER28> There's only so much QA you can do - are they going to extensively test with every wifi router and firmware configuration ever made? At some point you have to ship and look at the logs you get back.

<comment><USER27> Virtually every major update to Apple products results in this problem. This is not true of other manufacturers. Given Apple's unusually large profit margins, there is obvious room for them to improve in this area.

<comment><USER18> > _This is not true of other manufacturers._

This is wrong. They just have smaller runs. A MBP goes --with the same hw configuration-- to 3-4 million people. PC runs are smaller and with tons of different configurations with regards to motherboards/CPU combos for the same vendor.

Also Apple tries newer designs/chips more often. PC manufactures keep at the same older chips for the tons of the low end machines the sell.

So: lot's of different + older (and thus tested) chips in smaller runs == less apparent problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've seen the exact same problem on the newest iPads as well. It sucks for development, because every time the wifi connection drops I lose (auto-closes) the window for the remote web development console in Safari.

</comment><comment><USER30> Features, features everywhere.</comment>


Please don't let gaming consume your life - <AUTHOR> http://buildstarted.com/2012/05/21/please-dont-let-gaming-consume-your-life/ Server died...here's a repost:
Over this past weekend a good friend and coworker passed away. He always had a good heart and would do anything he could to help you out. It was certainly a shock.
Monday morning he didn't show up to work. He always calls or sends an email if he won't be in but nobody could get a hold of him. I got a bit worried since I knew he was playing Diablo 3 since it came out on Tuesday and I've heard of people dying from exhaustion and what not from playing video games so much. I didn't want to think that but it had occurred to me. Especially since nobody has heard from him since late Saturday. I had called his landlord and asked about him. (The landlord, Russ and I are all good friends and we've known each other for a while) I was heading over and she was going to let me in but apparently she got too worried and went in anyway. She found him at his computer. He apparently had a heart attack. Poor gal shouldn't have had to do that. I kick myself for not going there immediately. I had gone in anyway at the request of the Fire Department to find his identification and cellphone. Not a minute goes by that I wish my memory of him had not been sullied in that manner.
I sincerely hope that he went quickly and didn't suffer, unable to contact anyone for help.
He was only 32 years old.
Please, if only for yourselves, take time out of your day to get some exercise. Go outside and enjoy the sun. Ride a bike. Do something active. Video games are great fun when played in moderation. This may be an extreme example but take it as advice to not go overboard. Or at least don't do it alone. He took 3 days off and played Diablo 3 pretty much the whole time. He called in and asked to take Friday off as well. We are placing the blame on ourselves at work wondering if we made him come in on Friday would he still be with us today?
It saddens me that we tried to get him to be healthy. Work offered to pay for a gym membership. Friends coaxed him to exercise and eat better. He took us up on our offers, if only for a short while.
We should have tried harder.
He will be missed greatly by all who knew him.
<img src='http://aws.buildstarted.com/russell.png' Title='Russell Shirley' /><h1>Russell Shirley 1979-2012</h1> <comment><USER2> There are more subtle ways of gaming ruining your life, as well: slowly losing the drive to do anything more than what's necessary to pay the cable bill, rent, and the gaming subscription. Slowly the only friends you have are people you know from your guild. When the only source & output of creativity and energy are all wrapped up in _playing_ a video game.

I've also seen people similarly consumed by pornography, alcohol, gambling, day trading, and I'm sure other things I can't think of now. Pot. I think any of those things can have their place, but please maintain connection to people who can and will say something if you start going overboard.

For instance, I'm in a pretty good place right now and still gave parental control to a friend for the D3 release, just in case. Six hours a week is arguably still too much, but seems reasonable to me, and they won't budge because A) I asked them not to; B) they care. That I've hit that limit is a good sign that I may not be as well off as I thought I was ;)

Take care of each other, and yourself.

<comment><USER3> How does this compare with what can be considered a 'gym' addiction. Is it ok when it is exercise? What is too much? What about work, startups? I rock climb at least 6 hours a week, it's not bizarre to hear someone dying from rock climbing though.

<comment><USER4> Someone recently tried to convince me, a frequent climber, that the health effects of getting exercise from climbing were outweighed by the risks involved. I did a bunch of research on the subject, and it is very clear that the benefits of exercise massively outweigh the risks of even a dangerous activity like climbing.

It's hard to find statistics for indoor climbing, but for outdoor climbing there is a death for every 320,000 outings. If you go on two outings a week, your chance of dying is around 0.03% per year [1].

Getting the proper amount of exercise (compared to being sedentary), though, can decrease the total risk of year-over-year mortality by a factor of up to 4.5 times [2]. The overall risk of death for e.g. a middle-aged man is something like 0.2% [3], so any significant reduction to this factor compares very favorably with the risk of death from climbing.

So, basically, if your options are either a) be sedentary or b) get adequate exercise by rock climbing, it is better for your health to choose b. This comparison looks even better if you're doing only gym climbing (which is much safer than outdoor climbing).

[1] [http://www.allclimbing.com/archive/2009/01/data-on- climbing-...](http://www.allclimbing.com/archive/2009/01/data-on-climbing- accidents-and-fatalities/)

[2] <http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/107/1/e2.full>

[3] <http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html>

<comment><USER5> You shouldn't compare the benefits of getting exercise from rock climbing to the chances of dying from it. The choice isn't rock climb or be totally sedentary. You can get exercise in ways where you can't fall and die. What you should compare is the marginal benefit of the additional exercise you end up doing because you enjoy rock climbing more than the next best activity. And, then compare that to the death rate.

<comment><USER4> So, if you look at the numbers, the risk of death from climbing is very, very low. Really, it's extremely low. You'd have to go on two outings a week for 3,200 years for the probability of your death to have an expected value of 1.0. Or, if you stick to top ropes, a lot longer than that.

Compared to how much you can benefit from the exercise, the risk of falling and dying is really insignificant, to the point that I don't think it's worth debating between climbing and any other common form of exercise.

[EDIT]: Fix an incorrectly worded statement about expected value.

<comment><USER6> Probability of 1.0? Are you sure you're doing the right math? What's the probability after 6,400 years? 2.0?

<comment><USER4> I meant expected value, but I wrote "expected probably".

<comment><USER7> That's still wrong. If you have x chance of surviving each day of rock climbing then you have an x^n chance of surviving n days of rock climbing, not a 0 chance of surviving.

<comment><USER8> OK, by now we all know that GP meant expected number of fatal accidents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've had conversations on similar aspects to this many times. There are many psychological issues involved but the highlights are:

1\. People eat for many reasons, sustenance being only one. People eat for enjoyment, because they're happy, because they're sad, to deal with stress, as a substitute for something else arguably more destructive and so on. The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as nothing more than fuel, the better off you'll be;

2\. American cities with their car addictions make it incredibly easy to lead a sedentary existence. Biking is a somewhat hazardous option that's not always realistic. The ideal exercise (in times of reward-for-effort) is probably walking. I live 7 minutes from work and the absolute minimum steps I could take in a day is probably 5000, maybe 6000 (I have a pedometer). 8000 is more common, which is still a bit low (10,000 is recommended). Live 10-15 minutes from work and walk to and from work every day and you _massively_ better off;

3\. People treat diets and, to a lesser extent, exercise regimes as a transitory effort to get back to some goal weight or fitness level, at which point they seek to return to the previous behaviour. This is a mistake. You're getting older. Your metabolism is, all other things being equal, slowing down (it requires more effort to keep it up at any rate). You should view a dietary change (in particular) as a lifestyle change, not a temporary adjustment;

4\. Psychological addiction may not be as "obvious" as physiological addiction but its effects can be very real.

I'm sorry for your loss. It may sound callous but ultimately we are each responsible for our own well-being. If someone chose to die that way, it's sad but there's not much you could do. You have to choose to be helped.

<comment><USER10> "The sooner you can adjust your mental view to treating food as nothing more than fuel, the better off you'll be"

Better off how? Eating for enjoyment is one of the best pleasures in life. To quote someone else, if you spend your life eating no butter, no lard, no salt; you're gonna feel like a damn fool lying on your hospital bed, dying from nothing.

<comment><USER11> _Eating for enjoyment is one of the best pleasures in life._

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I really think this is a sad statement and I truly hope one day you will understand why I think so.

<comment><USER12> I disagree, eating for pleasure doesn't mean overeating.

<comment><USER13> Nor does it mean gorging on McDonalds and KFC every day of the week.

It might cost a tiny little bit more to get the fresh ingredients instead of the usual stacks of shitty ready meals and frozen foods, but the variety and the balance (if you shop well) is hard to beat.

I love being able to cook good food, and as a result, the food is enjoyable, and I'm encouraged to learn more recipes so I can enjoy more.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. I love cooking with fresh ingredients and hate fast food, and most restaurants for that matter. Although I may love cooking some foie gras a few times a year, what I cook is generally a lot healthier than what a person who doesn't particularly enjoy eating eats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gaming? So fast food with no exercise would not have killed him if he had just not played games?

I had a friend with diabetes, he was way over weight. One day we talked about his new apartment, WOW and girls. He mentioned he had a good view of the joggers from his window. I mentioned I am frequently one of those joggers, and you see a lot more of the cute girls that way.

The topic of conversation moved to WOW, and I mentioned how I hate to touch a computer after spending all day at work sitting in front of one.

Despite subtle and not so subtle hints he did not start to exercise and died alone in his mid 30s.

And you know what, a lot of people die exactly the same way, with no gaming what so ever involved.

This whole heart attacks are a top killer, so eat well and exercise deal pre- dates computers by decades.

<comment><USER15> _I hate to touch a computer after spending all day at work sitting in front of one_

The funny thing I have discovered is that while I don't like it on a high level of thinking, it actually can be relaxing. As a consequence, I am trying to slowly add physical activities instead of going cold-turkey- it isn't a leap I can make in one day, and finding myself with no stress relief is murderous.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Server died...here's a repost:

Over this past weekend a good friend and coworker passed away. He always had a good heart and would do anything he could to help you out. It was certainly a shock.

Monday morning he didn't show up to work. He always calls or sends an email if he won't be in but nobody could get a hold of him. I got a bit worried since I knew he was playing Diablo 3 since it came out on Tuesday and I've heard of people dying from exhaustion and what not from playing video games so much. I didn't want to think that but it had occurred to me. Especially since nobody has heard from him since late Saturday. I had called his landlord and asked about him. (The landlord, Russ and I are all good friends and we've known each other for a while) I was heading over and she was going to let me in but apparently she got too worried and went in anyway. She found him at his computer. He apparently had a heart attack. Poor gal shouldn't have had to do that. I kick myself for not going there immediately. I had gone in anyway at the request of the Fire Department to find his identification and cellphone. Not a minute goes by that I wish my memory of him had not been sullied in that manner.

I sincerely hope that he went quickly and didn't suffer, unable to contact anyone for help.

He was only 32 years old.

Please, if only for yourselves, take time out of your day to get some exercise. Go outside and enjoy the sun. Ride a bike. Do something active. Video games are great fun when played in moderation. This may be an extreme example but take it as advice to not go overboard. Or at least don't do it alone. He took 3 days off and played Diablo 3 pretty much the whole time. He called in and asked to take Friday off as well. We are placing the blame on ourselves at work wondering if we made him come in on Friday would he still be with us today?

It saddens me that we tried to get him to be healthy. Work offered to pay for a gym membership. Friends coaxed him to exercise and eat better. He took us up on our offers, if only for a short while.

We should have tried harder.

He will be missed greatly by all who knew him.

<comment><USER16> How is him having a heart attack in any way related to him playing video games all weekend?

<comment><USER17> It isn't. We can infer from the rest of the post that the person in question was unhealthy, but OP took an unnecessary shot at gaming. One can argue an unhealthy focus on anything can kill you in the same way, and gaming wasn't a symptom.

Frankly, this entire thread is about as bad as mass media blaming video games when a kid shoots up his school.

<comment><USER18> > infer from the rest of the post that the person in question was unhealthy

And we can also infer that he was unhealthy, in larger part, due to spending too much time gaming.

> One can argue an unhealthy focus on anything can kill you in the same way

And in this case that thing was gaming. It's a cautionary tale, not an indictment on all gaming.

<comment><USER17> > And we can also infer that he was unhealthy, in larger part, due to spending > too much time gaming.

Very much, emphatically, not. I know someone into World of Warcraft who spends ~40 hours a week playing, and just ran Bay 2 Breakers. Gaming and being unhealthy are very definitely unrelated, and any attempt to paint them as being related is FUD.

If someone is out of shape because they "spend too much time hacking", are you going to blame hacker culture next? Gaming is an easy target. Admit it.

<comment><USER18> Very much, emphatically, yes:

> Work offered to pay for a gym membership. Friends coaxed him to exercise and > eat better.

Instead he was gaming.

> If someone is out of shape because they "spend too much time hacking", are > you going to blame hacker culture next?

Yes, in part. BTW, I'm not "blaming" gaming.

<comment><USER17> Here's a thought, oh, I don't know: it was _his_ fault, not _gaming's_. Radical concept, personal accountability. It's almost like the choices we make in life shape who we are, or something else absolutely crazy like that.

<comment><USER18> You responded before I edited to be clear that I'm not blaming gaming. It was his choice but that doesn't change the fact that spending his time gaming instead of getting some physical activity likely had something to do with a 32-year-old dying of a heart attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> First off: I am really sorry you have to lose a friend like that.

But please, don't blame yourself. Asking him to come in or not might well have not changed anything. While gaming certainly can be addictive, he had a heart attack. That has _nothing_ to do with gaming. You can get a heart attack at any moment. Heck, you can have one while sleeping. (You can even have one without any recognizable symptoms)

So, instead I suggest people learn what the symptoms of a heart attack are - so if you or somebody close to you has one, you can actually recognize it and get help in time. Here's one link giving more detail: [http://www.webmd.com/heart- disease/guide/heart_disease_heart...](http://www.webmd.com/heart- disease/guide/heart_disease_heart_attacks)

</comment><comment><USER20> First things first, I'm very sorry for your loss; it's never easy to lose a friend, let alone one so young. With that said...

This hit so close to home that it's scary. I'm 24, and my weight hovers between 350 and 385lbs. I've always been fat and otherwise unhealthy. While I don't eat a lot (I definitely eat more than I should, but I don't think that I eat to excess by any means), what I do eat is terrible; that's gotten worse since I moved to NYC and had money to get delivery effectively every night, meaning I eat at my computer and pay no attention to what I'm eating. In my case, it's not gaming but programming that's killing me; I don't get away from the computer and exercise effectively at all, and even if I ate perfectly I'd still be screwed for that reason.

But with that said, blaming programming/gaming/whatever for my health problems is like blaming the manufacturer of my chair for making it so damn comfortable. At the end of the day, it's an excuse to take the attention away from the real issue: sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy and _will_ kill you.

I don't want to get too far off-topic here because this is about your friend, not me or anyone else here, but the focus really needs to be put on a healthy lifestyle, not on isolating one specific component as the failure point. A serious change in my life (and I imagine Russell's) wouldn't involve removing the object of obsession, but changing a million factors, and it's definitely easier said than done; that said, it's something I'm working hard on myself if only because... I want to live.

Edit: Something that I missed while writing this initially, as I got caught up in it.

> We should have tried harder.

I know you say that with the best of intentions, and I know that you're beating yourself up over this, but you shouldn't be. Speaking as someone who's been on the receiving end of that _many_ times, I can't describe how deeply embarrassing it is to be in this position and how much shame is involved. I know you can't exactly hide being this fat, but you damn sure try to put it out of mind and keep it from being a topic of conversation. That absolutely makes it harder to get help. Think of it like someone being a closet alcoholic, but they always reek of beer regardless.

<comment><USER21> >While I don't eat a lot (I definitely eat more than I should, but I don't think that I eat to excess by any means), what I do eat is terrible

I would argue that you do excessively eat. Contrary to popular ignorance, the reason people get fat is simply due to a caloric excess. The idea is that if your maintenance intake is 2500kcal/day, and you eat exactly that much, you will not gain (store) or lose (use) any fat (energy). So even if you eat three meals a day consisting solely of chow mein and orange chicken from delivery, and all meals add up to be 2500kcal, you will not fluctuate in body fat percentage. Of course, you will otherwise have terrible health due to the high consumption of saturated fats and sodium, but that's another story.

In this vein, I think everyone should tally caloric intake for a week and compare it to their daily caloric needs which can be calculated using all sorts of tools (e.g. <http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html>).

Hopefully this discussion is not completely irrelevant, but I thought it was all worth noting. I'm certainly not trying to pick on you either, just thought this was a good outlet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm sorry for the loss of a friend; I don't pretend to know how you currently feel.

That said, I think there's a pretty big leap you're taking from "playing a lot of games" and "had a heart attack at 32." Obviously, I don't know this person; but I do know a lot of folks who have gone on binge gaming sessions who have never had heart attacks.

I'm not saying there isn't any connection or that it didn't contribute in any way; however, let's be honest with ourselves and admit that a binge gaming session, while not in any way healthy and certainly a likely contributor to this person's poor health, most likely did not cause a heart attack.

<comment> k-mcgrady I don't think the connection the OP is making is that binge gaming session == heart attack. I think it's that the person spent a lot of their time playing games. They spent too much time sedentary and this was the unfortunate result. It's something that can happen easily with games - some people find them very addictive (I don't have the attention span for gaming but I know people who have days where they wake up, play games, and go to sleep). The same result could happen if you sat and watched several movies every day and didn't exercise or eat well.

<comment> UK-AL Considering most desk jobs are roughy equivalent to watching a few movies on end. What do you do then?

It's not so bad at small companies where socialising with freinds is not frowned upon. However at many large companies, spending 30 mins socialising would be frowned upon.

<comment> k-mcgrady I think the difference is that at most desk jobs you get up every so often to use the bathroom, have lunch, get something from the printer, go to a meeting etc. And at the beginning and end of the day you have to move to go home. The problem is sitting in a chair playing a game (or another activity) and not getting off that chair for to do anything for a very long time (the gamers I know often sit for 12 hours only getting up to use the bathroom for a few minutes).

I honestly don't know very much about this but I think those minor distinctions are very important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not really sure what this has to do with gaming. Spending days at a time hunched in front of a computer with little sleep is like the quintessential image of working the start-up life. He could have spent those three days working in vim rather than playing Diablo and he'd probably still be gone. More importantly, don't blame yourself for letting him take that time off, a heart attack at thirty isn't something that a day in the office could prevent.

<comment><USER24> I dunno, I've had some pretty epic hack sessions in my life, but none of them even compare to when I get sucked into a video game.

Diablo 3 came out last week, and I literally had stretches where I didn't even go to the bathroom for 12+ hours. I got severely dehydrated when Mass Effect 3 came out to the point that the effects lingered for a couple of days.

That sort of complete absorption has never come to me while hacking. I might forego sleep, but I've never forgone basic bodily functions while programming, whereas I find it dangerously easy to get into that mode with games.

<comment><USER25> Out of curiosity, have you been to a gambling environment? Did you find it hard to eat and drink there?

Do you play board games with a similar intensity? What about marathon TV shows, do you wait until the end of an episode (or story arc) before ablutions?

<comment><USER24> Nope, nope, and nope, but yes on the TV shows.

To elaborate: I've been gambling many times, but have never felt the same compulsion as I get when I drawn into a good video game. Heck, I have trouble sitting at a blackjack table for more than half an hour.

Ditto board games. I've done some all-night Risk games with friends in the past, but those were out of sheer machismo, and no food/bathroom breaks were missed.

On the other hand, for really strongly arced TV shows I do find it hard to tear away. When I discovered the West Wing last week (how did it take me this long to find this show?!) I ended up marathoning the first season over two days, entirely unintentionally.

I might have an addictive personality...

<comment><USER25> Aww, you saw through my veil of mystery:P I was just curious to see if games are more addictive for you personally then other "common" addictive activities.

I wonder if it's because games and TV have something in common that the other activities don't: A storyline. I personally get a little engrossed in media, but only for a few hours then I'm bored. Games, however, I can play all day. Other activities just don't have the same pull for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> At what point is it wrong to engineer a product to be addictive?

Tobacco companies are evil for doing this. But when it comes to things like fast food, gambling and _games_ , I hear things like "everyone knows those are bad for you" so you should "be responsible"

Like all things, not everyone submits to urges. But I bet most gamers don't know there are sophisticated teams fine-tuning the gaming experience to maximize time played (or whichever metric). Some people are outmatched by those teams.

I had been thinking about this earlier today when I saw this quote from Bing Gordon: "World of Warcraft has 0% churn from levels 35-40" [1]. Those guys at Blizzard are _good_.

[1] <https://twitter.com/ericries/statuses/204601761560932352> \- I put faith in Eric Ries for the accuracy of this statement

<comment><USER25> Evil comes when the user is expected to lose significant amounts of something for no return.

Tobacco companies expect you to lose years of your life, tens of thousands of dollars and return you yellowing teeth and nails, smelling bad and lessened taste and smell. Evil.

WoW expects your monthly subscription fee and you'll probably put some time into it as well. They don't actually care how MUCH time you put into it, just that you're engaged enough to keep playing. In return they give you fun, a sense of achievement, a vibrant community and new content. Not Evil

Zynga games are _boring_. In fact they're worse, they're work. They guilt you into playing, they try to manipulate you into harassing your friends, they're designed to nickle-and-dime and get you playing as much as possible. In return you might get a sense of achievement, but you irritate your friends and waste a bunch of time on a game that isn't any fun. Evil.

I think it's always evil to engineer a product to be addictive. Compelling yes, addictive no. If you don't return a positive benefit to the user then even compelling is evil.

<comment><USER27> There are people who enjoy smoking and playing Zynga games, though. Positive benefit is relative. Just because you don't like cigarettes or Farmville doesn't mean that no one does. The argument that Blizzard doesn't care how much time you put into World of Warcraft doesn't hold up, either. The lower levels have a lot of grinding and the higher levels have multi-hour raids. World of Warcraft has addictive properties baked in to keep you playing, just like Zynga games. You could make the argument that Zynga is "evil" for milking addicted players for thousands of dollars, but Diablo III's auction house creates a similar dynamic. Isn't it enough to say that you think Zynga's games suck, but Blizzard's are good?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this does the dead man a disservice. He was unhealthy, had unhealthy habits, and he played video games because it was easier to do that than other leisure activities. If he were still alive to be offended, would you have said he played too many games, or perhaps that he didn't exercise enough?

There are people who have real, legitimate behavioral addictions to things. There are sex addicts, video game addicts, gambling addicts, even fitness addicts. However, the great majority of people are unhealthy for a large number of subtle and difficult to address reasons. If you've ever known someone who's struggled with their weight, or their general health, you shouldn't be as ignorantly reductionist as the person who posted this.

Video games (almost certainly) didn't kill, or even harm, your friend. His poor health killed him, and playing video games gave him a way to enjoy his free time. I understand the idea that endemic boredom would have saved him, but I think that is the result of a fundamental misunderstanding about motivation.

Also - if he didn't play video games, but was a voracious reader, would you have posted, "Please don't let reading consume your life?" "Writing?" "Programming?" Etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I always heard of people in other countries dying while playing video games. I never thought it would ever be someone in this country let alone someone I knew. It's one of the hardest things to hit me in my recent life...so sad...please take care of yourselves out there. Stay healthy.

<comment><USER29> Do you actually think the game was related to his death? If enough people play video games an hour a week it's guaranteed that some of them will die while playing.

I understand that he was marathoning this game but that shouldn't cause a heart attack.

<comment><USER30> I think the subtext was that his sedentary lifestyle is what killed him.

<comment><USER29> But how much of that was actually tied to games? Maybe I'm being needlessly nitpicky but I didn't even notice the comment about lifestyle as I first read the article, tucked away near the end.

<comment><USER30> For a guy who took 3 days off work to play D3 and died at his computer? Probably a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Having spent way more time than is healthy playing WoW I realized one day, after I had spent 12 hours collecting virtual materials to make virtual armor so that I could go with folks into a simulated environment without dying so that I could get other armor that would replace the armor I had made, that there were _much_ better ways to spend a Saturday.

The challenge of course is that it is so damn easy. And by that I mean that one of the things video games have over programming (what I had previously spent 12 hrs on a Saturday doing for fun) was that in the game everything is set up so that you can get right toward making progress against your goal, and you can stop, and then come back later and get right back into it. From power up to 'engaged' was like 3 minutes, vs programming which seemed to have an hour just to get to the point where everything was in shape to work on it.

Since that time, I've been trying to make programming as easy as gaming in that regard. Things like 'screen' can help since you can pop right back into a session, everything is setup your cd path is current, as is your history etc) and stuff like picking one editor and using it everywhere helps too. A USB keyboard is essential because switching between Macbook keyboard to desktop keyboard can generate a lot of mistyped keys. Finally there is the 'questing' system, where in the game you log in and the quests you have to complete are sitting there in a list with a short note about what needs to be done. I use a notebook for that but it has the same effect. Open up the notebook to the book mark and the things that need doing are highlighted and circled, stuff that is done is lined out.

I'm still not there yet, work to do. But I am long past being 'hardcore' in WoW.

<comment><USER32> How a procrastinator faces a todo list: you read the first item, realize that its a hard one and you should game for a little while so your subconscious can work on the problem and generate creativity.

(But I always end up realizing that conscious effort/thinking about the damn task gives better results).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not knowing anything about this individual I don't want to make too many assumptions but the broader point here is valid. The whole culture of 'hardcore gaming' is pretty creepy to me. There's a fine line between fun and mental illness. It's too easy to look at this as just a harmless eccentric hobby when, past a certain point, it really needs to be treated more like a serious problem with interventions & rehab. I really dislike how the culture around it is so supportive of obviously destructive behaviors. It's eerily similar to hardcore drug culture at times.

<comment><USER34> s/hardcore gaming/competitive horseback riding/d

s/hardcore gaming/competitive Go playing/d

s/hardcore gaming/dedicated Iron Man competition training/d

s/hardcore gaming/frequent weekend get-away-ing/d

s/hardcore gaming/dedicated volunteering/d

Perhaps I'm not familiar with the hardcore gaming you've seen, with exception, perhaps, of WoW addiction, but you need to be careful of looking at a particular use of a person's pass-time, or even an entire culture's use of their pass time

<comment><USER35> Well two differences... one only applies to some of those things. In the case of all of the physically active ones they to some extent self-regulate. There is really only so much power-lifting you can do in a week, and very few ways around that max (even assuming steroid use)

But I think the more relevant issue is far fewer people seem to be prone to obsession in any of those other spheres. It's not that hardcore gaming is any worse than an obsession with chess, it's that far fewer are obsessed with chess.

I found this article (which came off of hacker news in the first place) to be super relevant. <http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does it really have anything to do with gaming?

It's not like he was a physically healthy guy who sat down for a 30 hour Diablo 3 bender and died, right?

Regardless, I'm sad for anyone who dies so young.

</comment><comment> chao- Echoing others' sentiments in this thread: I don't see the link between video games and the man's death being all that strong here. I can understand if sharing details of his health isn't something meant for the internet, though, and I am sorry for your loss.

As someone who spent the majority of their teenage years "gaming" (6 hours per day average in an MMO), and despite benefiting socially and financially (you read that right) from it all, I have since quit and become a bitter ex-gamer. I speak with that hat on when I say that this is not an article about gaming and its personal costs. I could write such an article, but it's been done before, and you just end up preaching to the choir. Instead, this is an article about the loss of a friend. We always wish we could have spent more time with friends who have passed, regardless of what their hobbies were.

To close, I will share the reason behind my own transition. It boils down to one simple notion:

 _Do you want to spend your days living in a world someone else created? Or do you want to build your own?_

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe he died doing what he loved...

<comment><USER36> I think this is actually a perfectly reasonable idea. When I look back on past 15 years one of my absolute favorite memories is playing FPS games with my friends, brothers, and father. Those times were more real and more meaningful to me than many other more socially acceptable activities.

But...you shouldn't die at 32 because you're eating burgers and playing games too much. That's a terrible way to go, and it ultimately means you get far less time gaming!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's about a game but it can be about anything. Specially, work kills many more people than video games, for exactly the same reasons. (that even include non-computer work)

</comment><comment><USER39> If you're a gamer and are looking for a way to get some physical activity, I suggest trying out fencing. I recently started taking lessons and I'm having a blast!

Fencing is a sport that appeals to many aspects of a gamer personality: it requires the use of the mind as much as the body; it is competitive; it has clear feedback as to whether you are improving or not. It will get your blood pumping and also stretch you out -- something that most of us need since we probably are sitting at computers all day!

When I first thought about trying fencing I watched some videos online and had no clue what was going on. Things happened so quickly that it seemed like people were just moving at random to get a touch. But now that I've fenced, I see why fencing isn't so popular as a spectator sport: in order to appreciate what is going on, you have to understand the techniques. It is only then that you can appreciate the brilliance and athleticism of a high level fencing match. It's much like watching chess or go: largely indecipherable to a layman.

I know that I don't have the patience or discipline to run on a treadmill, but fencing is a different story... and it's even motivating me to the point where I might hop on a treadmill or jump rope to improve my fencing. Give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER40> Regular exercise really is the solution. I know exercise makes me more hungry to the point where everything tastes good. And if you've put in enough effort, you will not want to waste that by eating junk. Solid exercise involves a lot of physical pain and once you learn to deal with that your willpower will be off the charts and sticking to the right food will be a breeze.

I was out of shape until I did P90X last summer and now I'm a different person altogether. You would be surprised how much can be done in three months of proper hard work. But it does not have to be a full blown fitness program. People aren't always aware of the options. When thinking of weight loss, jogging is the first thing that pops to mind. I have always found it extremely challenging mentally and I was never even overweight. Commit yourself to a few basketball games a week, or a cycle, a climb, a hike, skiing, whatever you enjoy. If you push that little bit harder every time and get some sweat going, get your heart racing, you will be surprised what it will do to your body.

Also a tip for motivation is to focus on performance. If you can run faster and farther, jump higher or feel better, just keep progressing and the weight will come down naturally.

</comment><comment><USER41> I used to be a gamer but then I realized something. While gaming is fun, sometimes fulfilling and a source of "flow" it's ultimately without higher meaning. Imagine spending hundreds of hours playing WoW, DI:3 or whatever, now imagine what you could have done with that time.

It's better to game your life than spending your life gaming. I Enjoy gaming in certain amounts,prefer gaming over TV, but prefer creating, socializing and learning over gaming.

</comment><comment><USER42> Sorry to hear about your friend Ben.

I actually had to kick the video game habit I have to get my electronics cert by August (or I am jobless, will be the first time in 30 years) and I haven't played any game at all since early December last year. Console (an apt word) or PC games certainly are addicting, some people say it can't be since it isn't an opioid drug (some say the same thing about weed) but it's your world when you're alone.

It will be nice if, maybe, someday technology will be so seamless that you won't sit and browse the web or play video games maybe it will be a part of our lives all the time but more subtle. Like the telephone was so futuristic when it came out people had no idea it would become so ubiquitous and easy to use. Maybe information won't have to be sifted through on Google or Duckduckgo it will just be there when desired.

I remember reading about stimulus response reward training given to US Army soldiers so they would instinctively fire at the enemy it pretty much removed the thinking part of the procedure. That's what it seems like for me anyway when I played, really I had trained myself to play without thinking and kills in the game were my reward.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm sorry you had to lose a friend. I understand that you're trying to find meaning and place blame but playing a game for 3 days is not likely to end your life. It's possible he had an underlying medical condition. If he had been sitting for 3 days straight writing code would you blame it instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't placing blame on the game but on himself. The game was the final straw that broke the camel's back. Yes, there were other health issues which I addressed later in the post.

<comment><USER44> People who are 32 years old don't die of sudden heart failure for lack of a gym membership or a poor diet. He almost certainly had a serious health issue, possibly one he wasn't aware of. That kind of progressive heart disease comes slowly, with lots of warning.

Gaming certainly didn't help him, but it certainly didn't kill him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Sorry in advance for this but... Is there chance that this could be a hoax? It's not that it couldn't happen but I couldn't find the obituary or any other reference to this other than the same text reposted on another blog.

Also Buildstarted's account was just created to post this entry, which it is not helping me to sorting this out in my mind. I don't want to be skeptical but I take very serious these kind of news and it would be really sad that somebody would be joking with these matters.

</comment><comment><USER46> Kickstarter idea: A USB connected exercise bike with a keyboard and mouse tray on it and a VESA display mount. If you don't pedal fast enough the screen dims. If you stop the screen blanks and the network connection drops.

You'd need a "break" button that you can recharge every so often so you can coast or grab a drink, but otherwise it'd be the ultimate "hard core" mode for gamers.

</comment><comment><USER47> How sedentary does one have to be to be at risk of a heart attack at age 32? This story seemed a bit odd to me, like it could have been entirely contrived. I certainly hope it wasn't.

Exercise (really just walking and getting up on a daily basis) is vitally important, and for those of us OCD enough to program or game 12 to 18 hours straight, it is important to remember such facts.

</comment><comment><USER48> One of the problems is right here on this thread: lots of conflicting advice, everyone claiming their advice to be true.

</comment><comment><USER49> Some have questioned whether it was gaming that killed him, obviously playing video games won't give you a heart attack. However sitting in one place for hours on end could give you one (or a stroke). Playing games, coding, flying, in all those cases you should be getting up every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER50> > We are placing the blame on ourselves at work wondering if we made him come > in on Friday would he still be with us today?

I'm sorry for your loss. It is not your fault. Please don't beat yourself up over it.

I know how this feels, I've experienced survivors guilt over my direct family before.

</comment><comment><USER51> These days I won't get near an addictive game - I tend to favor games that I can easily pick up and put down, like collectible card games or board games. Also, as a "game designer" I often question whether I should intentionally make my game non-addictive.

</comment><comment><USER52> Managing distractions is incredibly important, be it reading useless stuff online, or gaming.

</comment><comment> UK-AL Remember most jobs are like gaming. Sitting at a desk for hours on end, maybe a few breaks.

I don't think it is gaming alone, it is bad life styles in general. The worst part is most people HAVE to adopt that lifestyle for a desk job.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think it's really interesting to see so many people here jumping up to defend gaming. Nobody is blaming games or gaming, the original post simply states that like everything else, you should make sure that you moderate the amount of gaming you do and also try to do things that are good for your body. I think it's a good message for Hacker News given the number of gamers we have here (I can easily log 20-30 hours a week when I have a new game and some free time).

If you game a lot but you don't let it get in the way of your health then this message wasn't intended for you (except perhaps as a cautionary tale).

</comment><comment><USER53> So hard to decide if I should read this article or play Skyrim.</comment>


MXNet implementation of Pix2Pix - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Ldpe2G/DeepLearningForFun/tree/master/Mxnet-Scala/Pix2Pix <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment></comment>


Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Phone release date set – June 25th - <AUTHOR> http://www.meizu.com/en/ubuntu/features.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Price: €299

Purchase by invite only after signing up at: [http://meizu.com/en/ubuntu/index.html](http://meizu.com/en/ubuntu/index.html) (link currently not active) from tomorrow, June 25th.

I currently use the BQ 'uPhone' and for the price/performance have been satisfied. Another 4 cores + 4G/LTE would be interesting though.

\--

Source: Newsletter from Canonical received this morning.</comment>


How Asian test-prep companies swiftly exposed the brand-new SAT - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-sat-two/ <comment><USER2> Why don't they try and develop a model that takes into account that students will study directly against the test?

The current model seems to rely on what could be called "security by obscurity". Of course students shouldn't be able to spend hours analysing a single text before the test, but if you publish a corpus of 200 texts, then anyone who read and analysed them thoroughly before the test aren't really cheating anymore, they are just educating themselves.

<comment><USER3> No multiple choice test can protect against a list of questions and answers.

<comment><USER4> America uses a multiple choice test for university admission?

<comment><USER3> Both the SAT and the ACT are mostly multiple choice, with one essay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Saw an interesting proposal on HN a few months ago WRT entrance exams:

 _My university just allows anyone into first semester, but then has quite hard courses and exams there already – by the end of the second semester, 90% have already failed.

That's another way to solve the >10x applicants issue._

Seems like a great way to reduce administrative overhead, judge based on merit, and get students to realistically self-select a college (if you don't, you waste a semester and the associated costs). Problem is that the exams select only for people that are good at taking exams - not always the most interesting/well rounded students.

<comment><USER6> This doesn't sound like a great idea for the U.S. system. Students would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars and spend many precious months for an experience with a 90% failure rate. I have a hard time thinking that anyone with other options would accept that proposal. On top of that, even if you're in the select 10%, you're attending classes where almost all the other students are failing. I can't imagine that class discussions are going to be helpful for you.

If this school was free or very cheap, maybe it's an option for some, but with the way things work in the U.S., this seems more like a scam than a college.

<comment><USER7> I agree. The University of South Carolina (and maybe more) has a nursing program.

They let you into "lower division" for 2 years before giving you a test to gain admission to "upper division."

Fail that test and you just wasted 2 years. Worst is that there are limited spots, so qualified people still get cut.

<comment><USER8> In many ways this sounds identical to the process of becoming a medical doctor. Fail (to either perform or get lucky enough to get a slot) at any stage and you wasted X years + Y amount of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We're working against cartel-like companies in China and other countries > that will stop at nothing to enrich themselves,

That's how I felt about College Board.

<comment><USER10> I still don't understand how then can call themselves a non-profit while charging ridiculous prizes and monopolizing the standardized test market.

<comment><USER11> Given that Ikea is legally run and registered as a non-profit charity, I think that the term is fairly meaningless at this point. We can only judge them by their actions, just as we do any other company.

<comment><USER12> Not for profit and non-profit are actually different in different tax and law scenarios. I'm not going to try and butcher the explanation, but it pretty much boils down to how employees get paid and expenses get deducted- which, in my opinion, has made me look at not for profit companies as companies that want to appear nicer than they really are.

<comment><USER13> That sounds like a US tax law distinction, but the IKEA structure is non-US (as are the owners/founders).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is time we abandon SAT and ACT tests.

<comment><USER15> SAT II's are more predictive of college performance on their own than 4 years of high school grades, but standardized tests like these take a fraction of the time, as opposed to years of intimate teacher evaluations.

The compromised operational security of these exams don't stop them from being more predictive than teachers. So if we want to retire these tests, then we need something better. What we should really be talking about is improving these tests and beefing up operational security.

<comment><USER16> Serious question; on what basis is "how well they will do at college" the right metric to use for selecting who to accept?

<comment><USER17> Flip it around; how is it good to accept someone to college who does _not_ have a good chance of doing well? How good is it to accept their money, probably put them in debt (even if not the catastrophic $100,000+ debt, even $20,000 debt can be quite a lot for a young person, and it's hard to get out of 4 years without at least that much), and claim very significant portions of some of the most important years of their life [1] if you already have good reason to believe they are unlikely to do well? (And remember we're judging lots of people so statistical bases are all we can use.)

It may not be the only criterion of use, but "do we have good reason to believe they will succeed in college?" is at the very least a critical bar that ought to be passed. It's can be the difference between college as the empowering, education experience it's _supposed_ to be, and college as the meat-grinder wealth-extraction tool it _can_ be when you feed in students who shouldn't be there.

[1]: Not necessarily "best", but being "earliest" in a world of compounding interest makes them quite valuable in their own way.

<comment><USER6> It's also true that the better less-selective (or non-selective) colleges provide more help than very selective colleges. I went to community college for a year and then went to a selective private college. The community college had far more help sessions, tutors, and study aids available. There was even a program at the community college that specifically sought out first-generation students to make sure they were getting extra support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The bottom line... with rampant cheating on standardized tests, fabricated school records, and massive "assistance" in college applications, it has become almost impossible to accurately measure the merit of most applicants from east asia.

First order effects arising from this are not that big a deal, those students will either wash out in in the university setting, or will end up cheating their way through school to the degree that they will be useless to many employers afterwards. The bigger issues is that, whether due to malice or not, schools have limited enrollment spots and people who try to "play fair" will be left at a disadvantage. Some might say that this is not all bad; that it prepares students for the real world. But I would like to think that we want to protect our culture/society from devolving into the sort of low trust free for all that exists in some other parts of the world. Anecdotally I've heard that this shift has already started to permeate our universities, where many students feel immense pressure to cheat because so many other people are doing it.

I'd be lying if I said that this didn't have a big effect on the way I view recent east asian immigrants in the workforce. Let you say I'm xenophobic, "recent east asian immigrant" would accurately describe many people in my family and social circles, and if I didn't open my mouth, the average bystander might assume I would be in that category as well.

The college board and individual colleges are not exactly innocent bystanders in all of this, and I'm glad I got through the system before these issues became acute, but I feel really badly for students from anywhere who actually play by the rules.

</comment><comment><USER7> If a test is this easy to game, perhaps it's not a very good test.

Does Math and Language really correlate to ability? We know the answer is no. We sent humans into space, we can do better.

</comment><comment><USER19> Has IBM/Google/etc attempted to plug Watson or any of the other advanced knowledge AIs into the SAT/ACT yet? I would be curious to know if they could consistently score a "high" score on tests without having previously seen the material (obviously excluding the essay portion).

</comment><comment><USER20> Broken link.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra As a society we should totally rethink how we handle children.

Employment is as personal and customizable as ever, but we increasingly treat kinds not even as blue-collar workers but as poultry on industrial farm.

Stick them in cage with artificial light, force feed with unnatural excuse for knowledge, disregard their personality, rank on how good they pass tests (we weight poultry at this point)

<comment> atom-morgan I recently wrote about this [http://atom-morgan.github.io/child-labor-laws- are-outdated](http://atom-morgan.github.io/child-labor-laws-are-outdated)

I'm fairly young (25) and I agree 100%. I think I was treated like a child for far too long in an environment that doesn't make any sense. From the age of 5 until I was 22-23 I was sitting in a room studying the same shit over and over.

<comment><USER21> I'm in the same boat. It never hit me until my last couple years at university. I had professors teaching obsolete material who mandated attendance to fill out missing words on a PowerPoint that they purposefully left blank. I realized I was paying large sums of money to have my education actively inhibited.

>The traditional classroom is an obsolete detention home, a feudal dungeon.

-Marshall McLuhan</comment></comment></comment>


The Most Important Scientist You've Never Heard Of - <AUTHOR> http://mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scientist-who-determined-age-earth-and-then-saved-it <comment><USER2> That's industrial analytical chemistry for ya.

20% to 30% of assigned tasks are based on superstition, holding steady for decades now.

</comment><comment><USER3> this was horrific to read.</comment>


Ask HN: Companies – how do you keep up to date with Government regulation? - <AUTHOR>

HN, as someone who works in Government:
(1) I wanted to get a sense of /how/ you keep up to date with regulatory changes that affect your industry?
(2) And how you try to /change/ the policies themselves, if you do?
I want to get a general sense of the start-up tech. community's engagement with politics and the establishment.
Do you just ignore the Government? Do your have an outside agency that does all your Government stuff for you? Have you ever tried to get your message across about some-or-other piece of legislation, did you succeed or fail? <comment><USER2> In the US, the barrier to government approval is very low for most businesses. Often no more than going down to the local city hall and paying a small fee for a business license. The barrier is so low that for something like developing software out of one's home few people will bother obtaining a license and few local governments will bother enforcing licensure requirements even though they exist.

Likewise in the US, forming a legal business entity has a very low barrier to entry. Closely held corporations and Limited Liability Companies can be filed online in many states for around $100 using boilerplate documentation [which may or may not be an appropriate alternative for legal advice].

In the US, proposed changes to laws tend to go through formal drafting processes which include periods for public comment before being put to a vote. Regulations [almost] always go through formal review and comment periods. The court system provides [almost] everyone with the opportunity to challenge the legality of existing regulations and approved regulations prior to their effective date.

In more heavily regulated industries, rule changes often occur slowly and by reference. DSM VI is an example in the US health care industry where after a long period in which a standard was developed by consensus, the change to regulations is occurring because the latest version of DSM is incorporated by reference into the regulations. Everyone effected has had many years of lead time.

My understanding is that other countries have processes which require significantly more bureaucracy and associated expenses, so it would probably help your data collection to be more specific about contexts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm probably alone here but my view is to ignore the government until you actually start making decent money.</comment>


How Hackers Hijacked a Bank's Entire Online Operation - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hackers-hijacked-banks-entire-online-operation/ <comment><USER2> Oh, that's bad. Shows how critical DNS control is. They had control for some time because they used it to generate Let's Encrypt certs well ahead of the switch.

Nice pitch for Google's cloud service in there though:

 _" the attackers were able to change the registration simultaneously for all of the bank's domains, redirecting them to servers the attackers had set up on Google's Cloud Platform"_

They knew switching all the bank's DNS records would bring an unpredictable load, so they went cloud for their phishing sites. Heh.

<comment><USER3> I don't know where they got the information about the certificate being issued 5 months prior to the attack, but that's not what Certificate Transparency shows. Here's the certificate that was issued on the day of the attack[1]. Let's Encrypt hasn't issued any certificates prior to that[2].

Another fun fact: It took them about a month to revoke the certificate in question. They didn't even bother revoking a second certificate[3] (valid for a subdomain). Heh, at least this will make a good example when discussion the pros of short-lived certificates.

[1]: [https://crt.sh/?id=47675898](https://crt.sh/?id=47675898)

[2]: [https://crt.sh/?Identity=%25.banrisul.com.br&iCAID=16418](https://crt.sh/?Identity=%25.banrisul.com.br&iCAID=16418)

[3]: [https://crt.sh/?id=47630635](https://crt.sh/?id=47630635)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Based on their description of the bank, it appears to have been Banrisul: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banrisul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banrisul)

It checks all these marks:

 _" the firm says it's a major Brazilian financial company with hundreds of branches, operations in the US and the Cayman Islands, 5 million customers, and more than $27 billion in assets"_

</comment><comment><USER4> Question: can bank defends themselves when the DNS attacked is client-side?

I am from Brazil, and many, MANY, MAAAANY times I saw my bank webpage be slightly off, and I noticed it was fake, every single time after tracking down the problem was some DNS interception, for example once was a virus on my PC, another time was a virus on my router, another time someone used a bug on my modem to change its DNS configuration without knowing the password, another time the local ISP got hacked and their DNS servers polluted with fake IPs for all major banks.

So, can the bank somehow defend itself from that? (not that they care... from what I've seen so far banks just tell the costumer that he lost the money due to his own fault...)

<comment><USER3> HTTPS with HSTS would be a mitigation for the attack you describe. An attacker would not be able to obtain a valid certificate for the bank's domain, and HSTS would block SSL stripping attacks as well as prevent users from bypassing any SSL warning pages.

To prevent it on the server-side (i.e. hijacked DNS or web servers) and/or to prevent rogue CAs from issuing certificates for their domain, they would need to use key pinning (for example via HPKP).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is what Public Key Pinning is designed to mitigate: you send hashes of your certificate chain with responses, and the browser will disallow subsequent requests for the same domain if the hashes don't match.

Banks should probably be using this. Though none of my 3 banks do, or even use HSTS.

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

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

<comment><USER6> HSTS has plenty of issues.

<comment><USER7> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER6> If there is any issue with the certificate. Your site will be entirely inaccessible:

\- Let's say that the certificate expire too soon (every year if you don't pay attention) and you didn't replace on time.

\- a domain doesn't match (it's fun with CDN, aliases and international sites with domains by countries)

\- a subdomain doesn't match (if you enable strict sub domains)

\- you test a new certificate and it's not set up right

\- it's broken for all non-public certificates, so never try that on test domains, internal domains or private cert chains.

The issue with HSTS is that if any of this happens. Your site is entirely locked down and gives a very scary error to ALL your users. (There is no "ignore certificate" button, HSTS certs errors have a special page).

It gets worse from there. HSTS is IMPOSSIBLE to disable.

The only way to stop it is to send a "HSTS header: 0 duration" header along the page, that you cannot send because all connections are dropped before they are established. You are fucked! (speaking from experience :D).

Last but not least: The HSTS is cached by browsers in a special way. Asking your customers to clear the cache has no effect.

<comment><USER8> With HKPK (which I think you're talking about here - HSTS just requires that https be used at all) expiration is not an issue as you whitelist the key, not the certificate (and are required to list a backup key, which should ideally be offline). By listing the server's own key, possibly in addition to a trusted CA, you ensure that in the worst case you can renew using the same key.

Obviously when you're first rolling it out you should use a short duration to allow for a quick rollback if something goes wrong.

Of course nothing about this truly prevents someone who didn't take proper precautions when setting it up from screwing it up. Unfortunately it's hard to make a more tolerant system without also making it vulnerable again...

<comment><USER6> I am definitely talking HSTS. You only need HTTPS enabled and send the "Strict-Transport-Security" header. It is very easy to setup, it can also backfire pretty bad.

Not HKPK.

<comment><USER9> I still think you have this wrong:

HSTS says "This domain uses TLS and ONLY TLS. Ignore insecure connections to this domain. Remember this for x seconds." (should be harmless these days, why should it backfire?)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security#HSTS_mechanism_overview)

HPKP says "This domain uses this certificate. Also, remember this and ignore/complain when different in the future." (which is the problematic part)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Public_Key_Pinning#How_It...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Public_Key_Pinning#How_It_Works)

<comment><USER6> You don't seem to understand. Read again, I gave many scenarios where a certificate will be invalid, that will block all access to your site if HSTS is enabled.

<comment><USER9> I read your posts. Your examples apply to HKPK (key pinning), not HSTS (enforcing TLS only).

<comment><USER6> My examples are for HSTS. I gave examples where a certificates is invalid. TLS fails when the certificate is invalid and HSTS blocks access to your site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/05/hackers_take_over_b...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/05/hackers_take_over_banks_dns_system/)

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Could certificate pinning have mitigated the damage? Although service would have been denied until the DNS was back under control, that's better than leaking credentials and cards and security questions and account balances.

<comment><USER5> It can also be used maliciously by the attackers too: they could set HPKP to their own certificates with a 5 year expiry time, then sell them to the bank after DNS is reverted. The bank might pay to have all those chrome/firefox users back.

<comment><USER11> Presumably there is a manual process to ask browser maintainers to invalidate fraudulent pins. Hell, list maintainers could charge a processing fee to ensure manual review of each case, and frequent update cycles that don't require browser restarts. The spec makes this possible but not necessary or even outlined, which I think is an oversight.

       UAs MAY choose to implement additional sources of pinning
       information, such as through built-in lists of pinning information.
       Such UAs should allow users to override such additional sources,
       including disabling them from consideration.

       The effective policy for a Known Pinned Host that has both built-in
       Pins and Pins from previously observed PKP header response fields is
       implementation-defined.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7469#section-2.1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My bank returns an icon I chose after I enter my username, I think that would have helped me recognize something was wrong.

<comment><USER13> Hijacking dns means that when you connected to the bank's website you would connect to their servers first and then they could have just proxied your connection to the real servers, that image->username check wouldn't have saved you from it since the bank's servers still operated normally

<comment><USER2> Nginx, in proxy mode, even has a nice sub_filter where you can rewrite the response body. Pick a tag that generally occurs once, like </head>, and replace it with arbitary text. Like maybe "</head><script src="whatever"></script>".

That would be perfect...no need to recreate the target site's look and feel. Just whatever js you need to scrape the credentials.

<comment><USER14> and now the bank just have to block Google's cloud ip range.

<comment><USER2> The idea is the bank may not notice, since the site would be functional and serving customers.

Certainly, there's ways to see this is going on, but you could, for example, round robin the DNS and only attack a percentage of traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Instead of the cert key pinning as it's easy to obtain an SSL cert (with LE) coudn't we imagine that as banks do own EV certificates that the browser remembers them.

In case the browser sees a new non-EV certificate on a site that was previously EV-certed then it throws an error/warning ?

</comment><comment><USER16> So to protect against this, don't have all your domains registered at the same place?

<comment><USER17> Interesting line of thought.

I suppose in theory for the sacrifice of some latency and processing overhead you could treat SSL/X.509 as busted, explicitly include multiple domains in a given page, cryptographically validate a signature supplied by each to the other (potentially both server side and in javascript), and thereby replace the SSL/X.509 assumptions of trust within the browser.

All this would do is raise the bar for the attacker so they had to hijack all domains at once. By varying them dynamically you could further frustrate.

You could potentially SaaS this (eg. expose an SCP/SFTP endpoint, from which you automatically deploy across disparate domain infrastructure including signatures) and/or provide a passive content-based pinning mechanism as standard, wherein the included JS or HTML raises hell if the version of a site you've received does not match that observed elsewhere. Inefficient as all hell, already attempted at different layers of the stack, but perhaps an idea whose time has come.

If you do this and make lots of money buy me a beer :)</comment></comment>


Easy-Peasy Deep Learning and Convolutional Networks with Keras – Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://ricardodeazambuja.com/deep_learning/2017/03/05/easy-peasy_conv_deep_learning_two/ <comment><AUTHOR> Very simple tutorial series showing how to go from multilayer perceptrons to convolutional nets using Keras and Kaggle's Dogs vs Cats dataset.</comment>