What do you follow to get deeper and diverse understanding of technology skills? - <AUTHOR> Like I do follow changelog, reading article, courses, etc. <comment><USER2> For me, one route I went was simply to go up and down the stack. So:

machine code --> x86-64 --> C --> virtual machines --> JVM --> Java

I've never gone into the JVM itself, but I followed a course computer systems which gave me an idea how a VM works.

Another one:

machine code --> x86-64 --> C --> browser --> JavaScript --> ES6 --> EmberJS (it uses a vm as its rendering engine)

I've noticed that companies don't care though. They simply care about whether I have enough JavaScript experience. For me, personally though, it made me a lot calmer when solving bugs since lower level bugs are (usually for me) much more of a pain than bugs in JavaScript.

If you want to figure this path out, I'd recommend [https://www.nand2tetris.org/](https://www.nand2tetris.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I would love to explore this for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Usually, I read papers and blogs of tech companies. Not those famous magazines like Ars Technica or Engadget, but Red Hat, IBM, Microsoft, AWS, Cloudera (yes I'm a system engineer).</comment>


You Might Want to Uninstall VLC. – Immediately - <AUTHOR> https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/07/you-might-want-to-uninstall-vlc-immediately/ <comment><USER2> No No No

There Is No Vulnerability In VLC

From the bug tracker:

> Issue is too old libebml in Ubuntu 18.04: libebml 1.3.6 fixes this issue. > End of story: VLC is not vulnerable, whether this is 184.108.40.206 or even 3.0.4. > The issue is in a 3rd party library, and it was fixed in VLC binaries > version 3.0.3, out more than one year ago...

Cheers to Gizmodo journalists not even reading the pages they link to...

</comment><comment><USER3> Good to know about this vulnerability, but this article is distilled clickbait/blogspam

</comment><comment><USER4> > Thankfully, it seems no one has taken advantage of the flaw yet

How do they know?</comment>


How Startups Can Scale Without Mutiny - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/fighting-factions-how-startups-can-scale-without-mutiny/ <comment><USER2> "Ask candidates about conflicts — note if they focus more on plot or perspectives."

I give a fair amount of interviews and asking about how a candidate approached a conflict does bring out useful signal, mostly for raising red flags. A candidate will generally state a problem and say something to the effect of, "I talked to the other person, pointed on these facts X, Y, Z and the other person got on board." It's helpful to know that the candidate uses reason, but if they use facts to steamroll a teammate, that would raise red flags. If the candidate can articulate why those facts would help their teammate get on board e.g. empathizing with the other person, this is a good signal.</comment>


It's time to ditch passwords. Mobile-based biometrics offer a better way - <AUTHOR> https://metatony.posthaven.com/its-time-to-ditch-passwords-mobile-based-biometrics-offer-a-better-way <comment><USER2> Uhm, this is a bit of a bull.

It's long been considered that you authenticate through: * what I am (biometrics) * what I know (password) * what I have (token, phone...)

Depending on the sensitivity of what is being protected, you might need to employ all three.

The article argues for a 2 factor authentication without the password without any consideration to data sensitivity, what was actually breached with passwords (yeah, it's somebody's instagram account, but not instagram itself).

Like many services offer optional 2 factor authentication today (what I know + what I have), you could allow users to choose depending on their estimate of data sensitivity.

If I am getting it correctly, the article argues only for a single factor authentication by storing biometrics on the thing you have (so once your attacker gets your phone, they can replace biometrics as well).

Dropping passwords can only hurt those who employ them correctly.</comment>


New Cancer Drug Is So Effective Against Tumors, the FDA Approved It Immediately - <AUTHOR> http://://www.yahoo.com/beauty/new-cancer-drug-effective-tumors-fda-approved-immediately-16 <comment><USER2> Huh, somehow the URL for this post ended up as "[http://://www.yahoo.com/beauty/new-cancer-drug-effective- tum...](http://://www.yahoo.com/beauty/new-cancer-drug-effective-tumors-fda- approved-immediately-16") And if you click it, under chrome, it takes you to about:blank

<comment><USER3> Normally we'd fix it but the story is a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14524636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14524636).</comment></comment>


JavaFX RIA technology almost ready - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/18/JavaFX-RIA-technology-almost-ready_1.html

<comment><USER2> Does anyone think this will go anywhere? Since JavaFX was announced it's seemed like nothing more than an also-ran that was dead in the water before they even got started.

FTA: "Sun officials demonstrated JavaFX running with video capabilities, touting the ability to drag and drop video out of a browser and onto the desktop. With JavaFX, users have a single platform with both browser and desktop deployment capabilities, unlike Adobe, which provides Flash for the browser and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for the desktop, Sun officials stressed."

JavaFX seems useless in the browser because no one is going to download a 15+ MB installer when the Flash plugin can be installed in seconds without even having to restart the browser. Youtube was the real killer app for Flash and the fact that Flash is so ubiquitous and easily installed likely contributed greatly to Youtube's success. In comparison, choosing JavaFX seems like a risky proposition.

As for the desktop... Are they out of their minds? Java is more or less dead on the desktop except for maybe some crappy "enterprise" software. Besides, there isn't a rush to adopt AIR so it seems like there isn't much developer interest in that area.

<comment><USER3> unless Sun figure out how to install Java on a brand new PC, yes JavaFX won't go anywhere. IMHO Sun should put more effort on building Swing

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't this announced alongside Silverlight a while ago? Flash is still dominant and Microsoft has released Silverlight 2.0 in the meantime. Is anyone going to actually use JavaFX? Why was Sun so slow on this?</comment>


Programming Books for Babies and Toddlers - <AUTHOR> http://arthur-johnston.com/programming_books_for_babies/ <comment><USER2> "C++ for Kids I haven't read this one due to my aversion to unmanaged languages."

 _grins_

So at what age should I start my one year old on programming languages?

<comment><AUTHOR> My son's a little shy of 3, which is clearly too young to actually learn programming. But I wanted him to at least know some of the concepts like "computers talk in zeros and ones".

Also nothing beats coming home and having your kid ask "Did you shave any yaks today?"</comment></comment>


A Two-part Rule for Naming Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/06/21/a-two-part-rule-for-naming-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> So these web-archiving startup founders hire this "startup consultant" character to help them rename their company. What do they get for their money? He writes a blog post criticizing their current name, calling them Google- wannabes, and saying "it's a good thing" that they hired him. He then posts his three new name suggestions (one of which has a well-known history as another company), publicly taking any potential credit for the names away from his own clients.

Alternate title suggestion: How Not To Be A Consultant.

<comment><USER3> _one of which has a well-known history as another company_

I noticed this too; "Architext" was the original name of Excite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm afraid I must agree with the commenters on Om's site - what a fluff article! Honestly, if it weren't Om, I would say it was written by someone who named a startup for the first time and is overly-excited about his role in it... No substance, conflicting points (re: twitter) and bad conclusions (ArchWeb? names should _flow_ ).

</comment><comment><USER5> Another two-part rule for naming your startup: (1) pick a name, (2) move on quickly to something that matters.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't assign this article much credibility. He doesn't know 'Lycos' was taken from the name of a spider, nor that 'Architext' was the original name of Excite.

I'd agree Brightmail, PayPal, and IronPort are great names. But Lycos and Xobni are pretty good names, too. His case against them is weak -- and his criticism of Xobni is actually its strength: now that he knows it's 'inbox' backwards, will he ever forget it? (Vidoop may have issues, but it depends on their market.)

And the novel suggestions he makes -- PermaPage and ArchWeb -- are literal and clunky.

If you need outside advice on naming your company, demand some stronger linguistic/naming reasoning and experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> The name Architext is definitely already used!

Permapage makes me think of perma frost, but I could just be in a weird mood.

ArchWeb is ok, but doesn't flow as nicely as the other two.

I think rule number one of finding a good name is for it to be easy to say and catchy. Two or even three part names often do this, but it's definitely not the only way. Most people realize this. Probably the main reason people resort to weird words like vidoop or squidoo or whatever is because they are trying to find a domain name that isn't taken.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have no problems coming up with clever names. It's the clever businesses that I have trouble with.</comment>


GM Is Now Detroit's Smallest Auto-Making Employer - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-29/once-giant-gm-is-now-detroit-s-smallest-auto-making-employer <comment><USER3> They are pushing production and engineering to anywhere not the USA, so this trend of having fewer workers isn't going to stop until all that's left of GM is the headquarters. I'm not Chicken-Littling either. This trend has been many decades in the making, and it only has one logical endpoint.

I was looking at their trucks, and left the showroom when I saw one that had 45% domestic content. I bought a truck that had the most USA content...a Honda Ridgeline.

<comment><USER4> Oooph, as someone in the automotive industry, I would avoid that thing like the plague. Have you checked the recall for going through the car wash causing that truck to light on fire[0]? One burned down at my neighborhood convenience store a couple of weeks ago... I would much much much more readily trust the engineering of GM on trucks, but that's probably only meaningful if you actually intend to tow something. I have a Ford truck, but that's mostly due to rust concerns in the Southeast Michigan area.

All of this is to say that I would trust the domestic manufacturers on anything truck related before I would trust one of the foreign companies, Toyota definitely included. It's simply a matter of core competency, regardless of percentage of US content.

[0] [https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/honda- ri...](https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/honda-ridgeline- recalled-over-fuel-pump-issue/)

<comment><USER5> 2015 Silverado owner, my first "American" car. Got it new, now have 75k miles on it. Went with an American brand because of "they know trucks". So far, replaced catalytic converter, have a driver seat that shifts when I turn right (quoted $800 to fix), have a touch screen that works when it wants and goes crazy switching between views on its own (dealer said they can replace it for $1000, but the new one may start doing the same because they have problems, those were service reps words), just a couple of weeks ago had a brake vacuum pump go bad (lost breaking power luckily just after exiting highway, $630 replacement)

Yeah it pulls a camper well but what good is that if brakes give out.

<comment><USER6> According to the page OP provided here:

> The Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LD and GMC Sierra 1500 Limited, both carryover > models from the prior generations, come from Canada.

[https://www.cars.com/articles/cars-coms-2019-american- made-i...](https://www.cars.com/articles/cars-coms-2019-american-made-index- what-about-the-least-american-cars-404549/)

<comment><USER7> I bought a brand new 1969 Chevelle SS and it was made in Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is true for Detroit, but GM is still the largest auto employer in Michigan. Lots of jobs at three plants in the state capital of Lansing and a handful in Flint and Grand Rapids.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm mostly positive about Andrew Yang but it's frustrating to know he would point to something like this and scream "automation" when GM's downsizing has more to do with outsourcing and a slowing market than anything remotely related to robots taking over jobs.

<comment><USER10> What's the difference between automation and outsourcing when what you care about is American's losing jobs and not having a backup?

<comment><USER11> They are subtle but there. Automation means the productivity is local - <USER2> concentrated in the automatees and implies an upwards trajectory to quality - giving a competitive edge. The industry is still there and likely growing stronger and more concentrated in skill.

Outsourcing implies going to the lowest bidder and less investment locally with fewer peripheral jobs. It is also "brute force" and commoditization. Inevitably the destination nation will develop competition which may be able to compete with the abroad nation who will have little special on them. It risks the loss of the industry even as an outsourcer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, Chrysler has made quite the turn-around, I just noticed from that chart. 10 years ago, I expected them to be out of business by now with their low reliability (which I believe is still one of the lowest). Chrysler has a pretty terrible reputation, but their minivans have a good reputation (I know, I own one with 90k miles, and it's an amazing value and has been very reliable). The Jeep brand is killing it, lots of die hard fans of the nameplate. They also made a good move rebranding Dodge Rams to just Ram.

</comment><comment><USER13> One thing that makes these employment numbers a little questionable is that car manufacturers are mostly component assemblers, with differing amounts of components made in-house vs bought from other companies which may be US companies or might not be.

I know this is true for a lot of things, but my occasional experience with the auto-industry gives me the sense that it is more true for the auto industry than other places.

</comment><comment> W-Stool I wonder how GM would compare to IBM, another once great USA engineering and employment leader?

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like they need another check from the US government.

</comment><comment><USER15> If GM were grateful for their bailout, how many employees would they have in detroit?

<comment><USER16> We're a decade past the bailout. How long after paying back the government would be acceptable to outsource production?

<comment><USER17> They'll never pay it all back:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury- idusbre...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury- idusbrea3t0mr20140430)

You have to count the losses from the Motors Liquidation Company half of the split.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Of the "Detroit three", GM is the only one based in Detroit. Ford world headquarters are in Dearborn, Chrysler is in Auburn Hills.

<comment><USER19> They've been building Fords in The Rouge for over a hundred years. It's less than 10 miles away from Detroit city center.

I'm not sure your nitpicking distinction really matters here...

<comment><USER18> The Rouge? The plant in Dearborn?

Oh, okay.

<comment><USER19> This is like saying Brooklyn is not New York City. This is silly shit.

<comment><USER18> Dearborn isn't Detroit. I don't know why y'all are upset about this.

I mean, I do, being from Detroit myself. I just don't know why you got this twisted.

(Grand River & Five Mile)

<comment><USER20> Also from Detroit. Dearborn is in Metro Detroit. I don't know anyone who would nitpick this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Venture capitalists writing their own law in Germany [german] - <AUTHOR> http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/bvk-wagniskapitalgeber-schreiben-ihr-eigenes-gesetz-13243632.html

<comment><AUTHOR> From the article: As politics moves too slow in their opinion, german venture capitalists are writing their own draft law. They want to remember the ruling coalition to create better circumstances for venture capital which they have promised.

According to Ulrike Hinrichs (CEO of the branch association BVK), it has been about one year since the german government has announced such an initiative in their coalition agreement, but nothing has happened. "Therefore, we deciced: now we're writing a law by ourselves". In January, it should be presented to the public.

Germany is the EU's biggest country by population.</comment>


Pair Locking Your iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://arkadiyt.com/2019/10/07/pair-locking-your-iphone-with-configurator-2/ <comment><USER3> If you want to keep your phone secure, enable a long passcode, turn on full device encryption, and turn it off. If you are a US citizen, you can't be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device. If you're not a US citizen or don't want to be harrassed by customs, bring a burner phone.

Tools like Cellebrite can and do take advantage of security vulnerabilities. Turning off pair locking lulls users into a false sense of security and is therefore harmful. Further, only restricting CBP searches to "manual" searches isn't enough and does plenty of damage to your privacy.

<comment><USER4> I really wish Apple would put something in place where you effectively have two user accounts. If you type your actually passcode, it's just your normal account. If you type another specific passcode, it's a burner account with minimal apps and information. It has enough info to make it look like it's being used, but nothing important.

Obviously border control would quickly know about this, but there's no way to verify.

<comment><USER3> Attempting to deceive CBP through hidden volumes and the like is not recommended.

[https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us- border-2017](https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017)

<comment><USER5> It's worse than that in some cases. I used to work for a big 4 consulting firm and they had some horror stories about border device searches.

The company policy for travel outside the EU was simple... Your own laptop would go into a server room and become a remote desktop host, you'd be given a blank laptop. When you got to your destination safely you'd call up IT who'd tell you where to download the VPN software and provide you login details. If asked why you laptop was blank by border agents you were instructed to give them a copy of the company IT policy.

Which is all well and good border agents demand you go through the above process and log in to the VPN and then remote in to your own laptop. It happened on multiple occasions in several countries and in most cases the employee was deported after refusing to comply.

<comment><USER6> Why did the big 4 consulting firm think that it was so important to hide the laptop data from the government during the border search?

<comment><USER7> Many companies have policies, especially when visiting China, to send in users with blank devices and wipe the devices on return.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that this disables the use of Activation Lock, so in case of theft the bad guy can erase the device and resell it.

Also this won't actually protect you against bootrom exploits.

<comment><USER9> I don't get the benefit of Activation Lock, a thief will find it out only AFTER your phone was stolen, I doubt they will give it back to you.

It's the same as with GPS / Position Car Alarms- it's great for your insurance company, but in most cases I don't want to get my car back damaged or in pieces

<comment><USER10> It's like herd immunity: if most phones have an activation lock, then thieves are less incentivized to steal them. Obviously they can still sell them for parts, but they're worth less.

<comment><USER9> In theory it's not needed since you could report your phone's IMEI as stolen and the phone would be block, for some reason it's not common among operators

[https://www.gsma.com/services/gsma-imei/imei- blacklisting/](https://www.gsma.com/services/gsma-imei/imei-blacklisting/)

<comment><USER8> An iPhone can still be used without cellular data as a "premium" iPod touch, plus blacklists aren't worldwide and phones can be sold in foreign countries (a worldwide blacklist can be problematic due to standards of proof for theft and corruption being different - do you really want a third-world country to be able to dictate which phones can and can't be used worldwide?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An alternative: make a full backup of your phone, then restore your phone with a different backup with less personal information, and then once you cross the border you restore your phone using the first backup.

<comment><USER12> This was super easy when I had TWRP recovery.

Is there an official Android way to pull a full system backup?

<comment><USER13> Since the release of Android 6 apps have the ability to back up data to a Google account. I don't know if all apps make use of this feature, but many of the important ones I use do. Just signing in to the right Google account will pose the question of if you want to restore data from a different device or not.

There's also a backup mechanism built into ADB. This is a manual process that puts a copy of all apps and information (but probably not security keys) on your computer, optionally encrypted with a PASSWORD. Google deprecated this functionality though. See here for a short guide: [https://9to5google.com/2017/11/04/how-to-backup-restore- andr...](https://9to5google.com/2017/11/04/how-to-backup-restore-android- device-data-android-basics/)

There's always TWRP/Titanium Backup if you have root access, or in the worst case scenario, starting a root shell over ADB in recovery mode and just DD-ing the entire data partition to a file in your computer.

<comment><USER14> > Since the release of Android 6 apps have the ability to back up data to a > Google account.

That does have the unfortunate side-effect of giving Google your application data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _Pair locking is a useful feature to protect yourself against invasive > device searches._

Probably also a good way to get onto no-fly lists, and spend hours in detention, etc.

<comment><USER16> I find this whole discussion (including the above comment) surreal, given that we are talking about the country that used to be called "the land of the free" and that claims superiority over countries that restrict freedoms.

<comment><USER17> The more I hear about the U.S. the less I want to go there, for any reason, ever.

I'm sure the people are lovely but the government is scary.

<comment><USER18> Aussie/British here so YMMV if you're from somewhere less white.

Go to the States. It's _amazing_. Almost none of what you read here actually happens. I've been a bunch of times in the last few years and the border people have been nothing but lovely.

The countryside is amazing. The food is ridiculous. The people are extraordinary — and I'm a leftie who happily says that of the good folk of Alabama.

We can't wait to go back. Next road-trip will probably take us from Washington state to Chicago.

<comment><USER19> while i agree (i absolutely love visiting the US, i travel there once a year at least), the problem is not the country itself.

it's getting there. it's getting a visa, being harassed by CBP officers and TSA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can also do a hardware mod by swapping some data pins on the connector and soldering a special cable just for you.

<comment><USER21> Any reason one couldn't remove the lightning port entirely? And charge only wirelessly (Qi), using Bluetooth for audio?

<comment><USER22> The only reason might be something only available through the lightning port. The only thing I can imagine is trying to restore from backup if the OS got messed up for some reason or the screen is broken and touch UI is not an easy option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > If you lose access to your laptop or pairing record then you will also be > locked out of connecting to your phone.

I never understood why people do this. What if you pour coffee over the laptop and it'll never boot up anymore? Buy a new phone too?

<comment><USER24> I would assume this supervision identity is part of your keychain as usual on macOS and could even be exported. It is not bound to any physical property of that particular laptop. A backup should be enough to avoid the scenario you are describing. You should be able to acces the iPhone after importing the supervision identity on any another Mac.

<comment><USER25> It's not in the keychain. You can back up /var/db/lockdown, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Securing a single phone is a half measure at best, and your phone might get seized. Also, CBP, TSA and colleagues will do what they can to fuck you extra hard when sensing resistance to their ramming their noses up your cavities. The only true remedy is to get the US back on track with being a democracy and respecting the Constitution again.

<comment><USER27> Is simply crossing a border a "reasonable" search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment? Is there a legal precedent for that?

<comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception)

Since the first border search statute was enacted in 1789, customs officials have essentially been authorised to search anything crossing the border, without warrant. It was approved by the first US congress, which counted James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and John Adams among its members. The original target was ships that might be carrying taxable goods.

Warrantless border searches are literally older than the fourth amendment, which was only ratified in 1791.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the pointer.

It seems like it's not so clear-cut, with lots of fine legal points around search on person vs. property, digital vs. analog/physical "goods", the individual suspicion requirement etc etc.:

>>At a minimum, the Eleventh Circuit's decision makes clear that this issue isn't likely to resolve itself. The case for clarity from a higher court—or from Congress—is only getting stronger.

[https://www.lawfareblog.com/summary-circuit-split-device- sea...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/summary-circuit-split-device-searches- border-us-v-touset)

I find it lamentable that the people who sued the US Government for the legality of these searches were both involved with child pornography.

<comment><USER29> It's the unfortunate fact that any privacy protecting program will also protect people generally deemed morally reprehensible. There's no way to make software tell the distinction between the two groups so it's something both programmers and privacy advocates are going to have to deal with because there will always be people both in and out of government who will use those cases to push for their abolition. (see the never ending boomerang of anti- encryption legislation around the world)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I do wonder if supervising devices lowers security overall.

Apple has been moving a number of the 'heavy hand' management permissions to only apply to supervised devices - for example "global http proxy" [1], which can be loaded onto a device through safari on a link to an plist on an unlocked device or through a management server (MDM), forces all http/https traffic though a proxy only applies on supervised devices.

Also Apple announced at WWDC [3] that blocking host pairing in Configurator is going away in favor of the restriction setting blocking it [2]

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/g...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/globalhttpproxy)

[2] allowHostPairing restriction at [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/r...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/restrictions)

[3] [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/303/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/303/)

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a dumb idea if you want to actually take your flight in this situation instead of spending hours discussing privacy with TSA agents.

But I also wonder what is it that they expect to find during these searches. In the world where I can transfer my criminal activity data through the likes of Dropbox (in encrypted form, of course), why would I have it on my phone or a laptop? What's the goal here?

<comment><USER32> As a US citizen i would only expect someone to force me to unlock my phone at a US port of entry, not when leaving. And yeah i'm willing to waste their time on my way back from the trip if they try to waste mine.

<comment><USER31> That only works if you don't have a connecting flight to catch. If you do, your willingness to waste time might plunge considerably. That's what they count on.

<comment><USER32> Yeah that's why I said port of entry. I meant that this is fine for me if I'm exiting the airport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Asking general HN audience: Are you willing to do this?

I don't travel often, but this looks like a good option to have... although I don't really do any finicky stuff with machines/phones/etc that I use regularly. if I were using a RPI3 as a phone then I'd 100% do something like this (hope you understand the analogy).

<comment><USER34> I would say the only good option is to try only travel to countries that respect privacy and realise scanning phones is security theatre. Because if you go to a country and they want access to your phone these kind of tricks will prevent them from opening it but ultimately I imagine you would be sent back to where you came from.

<comment><USER35> I don't think avoiding the USA is a realistic option for a lot of HN readers.

<comment><USER8> I somehow manage to have a comfortable career & good money while having never stepped foot in the US (and no intentions to do so). It's not impossible or even that difficult.

<comment><USER36> _"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I 've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Very interested to hear if anything like this exists on the Android side.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wish Apple would introduce a "Border crossing mode". Not gonna happen.

<comment><USER39> Luckily Android has that mode. They call it "Lockdown".

Here's some info on it: [https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-use- android-9-pi...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-use- android-9-pie-lockdown-mode/)

<comment><USER40> Does this provide any protection? I've never undergone any sort of 'digital search' do they force you to provide your passcode? Do the forensics tools they use bypass user level protections like pin codes/finger prints?

<comment><USER41> They can ask. You can refuse. If you refuse they can seize your device. If you are not a US citizen, they can deny you entry to the country.

Read the EFF Digital Privacy guide for the Full Monty: [https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us- border-2017](https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think a cool product would be a cloud phone, where your phone is actually a VM in the cloud and your physical phone would be a bland minimal image. That way if they ever look at it they find nothing. But you can access your VM cloud phone from any device even a burner. You could even buy a burner at the airport after clearing customs and then log into your VM cloud phone.

<comment><USER43> Because the govt cant get your data from a cloud ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm all for privacy but isn't this paranoia with device security a distraction ? It's likely that half a dozen companies have access to your contacts list, and Google, Facebook etc. almost certainly log information about the people you call and are in contact with. Anyone who uses an iphone for 'nefarious' purposes is not very smart.

<comment><USER45> It is not a distraction, because suspicionless electronics searches at borders are becoming increasingly common. Facebook knows a lot about you, but do you really want to give all that information to CBP?

<comment><USER44> It's only a matter of time before Facebook integration with security services (not just the NSA) becomes seamless. In fact it's already happening - <USER2> has made social media scanning a pre-requisite for US visas (it's likely this will be extended to US citizens). In contrast, the device itself holds relatively little information that can't be obtained from other sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> You could also create an MDM profile from Apple configurator and disable the lighting port to only be used for charging.

<comment><USER29> Is there a way to do that that doesn't also disable it's use as the headphone jack?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Break the lightning port and charge wirelessly.

"Yeah the charging port doesn't work anymore sorry."

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there really a need to connect to your phone at all, ever? I've never found a use for the feature since iCloud

> If you lose access to your laptop or pairing record then you will also be > locked out of connecting to your phone.

</comment><comment><USER49> Looks like Apple Configurator is only available on Macintosh devices. I only use Windows 10 and Linux computers. Is there any way to lock it using a different OS?

</comment><comment><USER50> Using an additional burner phone won't cost much and it's probably better than relying on a second device for unlocking your phone, or wiping your phone and restoring it when you arrive, because it's less time consuming and won't raise as much suspicion. I've heard of people shipping their phone to the destination before they fly but I'd be concerned if it gets lost or tampered with.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't travel internationally very often, but I'm considering just backing up my entire phone/laptop and wiping it, then restoring from the cloud when I arrive.

</comment><comment><USER52> Im not sure I will bring a phone with me if I travel abroad. I may get a burner flip phone or something, but no smartphone for sure.

</comment><comment><USER53> Isn't this dangerous if you ever loose your computer?

</comment><comment><USER54> Isn't it possible that searching your phone at the border is security theater? I think it's likely that the US already has permanent, remote access to most phones.

<comment><USER55> > Isn't it possible that searching your phone at the border is security > theater?

I mean, many people believe that many of the things that the TSA or CBP do are a security theater.

> I think it's likely that the US already has permanent, remote access to most > phones.

There seems to be a large number of cases where law enforcement were denied access to a device and seemingly were stymied by this fact (detaining the owner, etc.) What makes you think that they're doing this just because?

<comment><USER54> _> What makes you think that they're doing this just because?_

I don't think they'd do it "just because". I think the NSA has access to all devices, but they don't necessarily share that access with lower-level agencies. And yet, the NSA wouldn't want people to know that they have such good access, and so it would be necessary to a) not act on everything, and b) maintain the appearance that they don't have that access.

I think it's likely if only because of the complexity of devices, and the fact that it is easy to hide both intentional and unintentional flaws that would permit access. Certainly there is a huge motivation to use modern devices as part of a panopticon network, which would give anyone a huge advantage in almost every aspect of life - economically, politically, and militarily. Plus, with new and egregiously powerful exploits constantly being found in the wild, who knows what's possible with the total cooperation of manufacturers?

<comment><USER56> I think there's a difference.

Could the NSA get into any phone?

I'm pretty sure they could.

Did the NSA do a massive attack and introduce backdoors?

I don't think so. I think that large of a scale thing would be likely noticed and it would have to involve a lot of players that would need to keep silent. Players that don't work for the US government or in the US. It's pretty obvious that it's hard to keep secrets.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How BitTorrent Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexkyte.me/2016/10/how-bittorrent-really-works.html <comment><USER2> Also, [http://mg8.org/processing/bt.html](http://mg8.org/processing/bt.html)

<comment><USER3> Whoa that's a pretty cool visualization. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want to learn more about Bit Torrent and want to build a client, to learn more about protocol and networking. Any resources to get started (other than Wikipedia page and official spec)?

<comment><USER5> You can start by going through the docs of popular open source bit-torrent clients like qBittorrent ([https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent](https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent)) or Transmission ([https://github.com/transmission/transmission](https://github.com/transmission/transmission)).

Join the respective IRCs on freenode, observe the chats and ask specific questions when you don't understand something and Google can't give you good answers.</comment></comment>


Zappos is offering to pay even more employees to leave - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/410461/zappos-is-offering-to-pay-even-more-employees-to-leave/

<comment><AUTHOR> _" The company has yet to announce exactly how it will compensate employees in coming months, but it will be tied to "badging," where employees earn badges based on their skill sets instead of being compensated for holding a single title."_

As someone working in the gamification space for employees I find this fascinating.</comment>


Review my site megamsg.com - <AUTHOR> http://megamsg.com/

<comment><USER2> This is interesting, nice start. I think it might work nicely for an internal forum since there's not captcha, sign-up or spam control.

Also, the threaded comments are confusing, you can reply to a reply, but it drops it to the very bottom and doesn't thread.</comment>


Clinton: Zuckerberg should 'pay a price' for hurting democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/hillary-clinton-zuckerberg-should-pay-a-price-for-hurting-democracy/#ftag=CAD-06-10abe3d <comment><USER2> They should also pay taxes.

But seriously - ignoring that they explicitly stated they would host objectively false political ads - how do you choose to say FB should be punished for hurting democracy, when they are in effect duplicating the Fox News business model of pushing hyperbolic nonsense and not showing a distinction between opinion/entertainment pieces and actual news.

The "engagement" is clearly profitable, and clearly has just as much, if not more, political power.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yea that's rich after the avoidance strategies she used.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not just Zuckerberg. The problem is centralized social networking platforms. Twitter, Facebook, and others.

Here are just some of the consequences of centralization:

[https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can- chang...](https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-change-the- world/)</comment>


Simple command-line utility to create test accounts for your Facebook apps. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/frestyl/facebook_test_accounts

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

Does this actually register profiles?

I've had to do some FB development recently, and was really surprised (and annoyed) that I couldn't test my private application without having to register a new, public profile, where people could see wall posts pointing to localhost from a test service I wrote.</comment>


x86 SIMD superoptimizer in ~100 lines of Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zwegner/x86-sat/blob/master/optimize.py <comment><AUTHOR> (author here.) I started the x86-sat project about a week ago, which parses Intel's pseudocode for all of the intrinsic functions and converts it into a Z3 SAT model. I got a basic prototype working in around a day, and I've done some cool things with it since.

The next logical step was obviously writing a superoptimizer. You provide it with a whitelist of intrinsics to search over, a set of inputs, a set of free variables (for things like creating constants/lookup tables), and an output, and it will recursively search over all applications of the intrinsics to find the shortest instruction sequence. This is still a toy at this point, so don't expect any miracles.</comment>


USB soldering iron test and teardown [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-8D5t6TJYU <comment><USER2> I am obsessed with big clive, mostly with his teardowns of very dangerous and dodgy electronics.

<comment><USER3> Yes, his channel is wonderful. I love his low-key delivery; he's kind of the anti-Dave Jones (eevblog - also excellent).

<comment><USER4> I feel a strong need to throw Mike of mikeselectricstuff[1] into the mix.

His dayjob involves building awesome bespoke electronics, and his vlog has teardowns of heaps of really unique items.

Clive/Dave/Mike make up the entirety of my YouTube electronics subscriptions.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff](https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff)

<comment><USER5> Mike is great, but I can't understand a word he's saying half the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pleasantly surprising to see it actually works (even if on an isolated power supply for safety)

<comment><USER7> I don't really understand how there's 120V at the tip when it's plugged into the Apple USB powers supply. Isn't there a gap between the AC and DC electronics?

<comment><USER8> It's normal for these sorts of power supplies to have a small leakage current. Hopefully someone else will be able to explain the details, but as I understand it it's the result of capacitative coupling across the transformer and filter capacitors.

<comment><USER9> I can't explain the details, but I was able to measure the current. Interesting that I didn't measure any current from a genuine Apple charger, but enough current to cause a tingle from the cheap import chargers. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjz4I69YoUA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjz4I69YoUA)

<comment><USER10> > but enough current to cause a tingle from the cheap import chargers.

You should try using a multimeter!

<comment><USER9> Um, I did, as shown in the video...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have an earlier version without the movement sensor. It does not work too well in far-out places, because there is no AC or radio field to trigger the 555. I mended this by adding another button connected to USB-minus. My hand now closes the circuit and causes negative edge which triggers the 555.

</comment><comment><USER12> A question that comes often from a bunch of young people is that they ask me about where to start learning about hardware, soldering, leading into networking (TCP/IP, BGP, etc).

I don't really know how to answer their question.

Does anyone know what I should tell them for future reference if these things keep coming up?

<comment><USER13> Arduino is the de facto starting place for new hobbyists. It's a very low barrier to entry and runs on pretty much anything.

If you want to learn networking at an Internet of Things level, look at the Spark Photon (basically an ARM dev board with a TI CC3000 WiFi module). It's only $19. The documentation is fantastic, hence I would recommend it over say the ESP2866 which is super cheap but a bit more... hacky.

<comment><USER14> I think they actually switched away from the TI CC3000 module with the Photon because it had some quite severe, unfixable firmware issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> (Software person here, so excuse my ignorance). If you run one of these via a laptop USB, won't it put a lot of stress (heat) on the power / usb circuitry? The soldering iron end is basically using all that current to generate heat so my assumption is that the current flowing through the circuits will have some sort of heating effect as well. I always assumed USB was for relatively low power appliances.

<comment><USER16> Let's put it this way: if you attached a light bulb (which can get fairly hot) to USB, would you expect the same problem? What about plugging a soldering iron in the wall plug -- would you expect that to heat the socket (and cable)?

It's not the current that makes it hot, it's how the current flows through it.

EDIT: It's basically about resistance (the things that get hot are the resistors): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_heating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_heating)

EDIT2: I'm not an electronics person either. Please feel free to correct me if I'm grossly misrepresenting how things work.

<comment><USER17> And by "fairly hot", you might use as an example the tungsten filament in a Christmas light bulb - which can be 2500 C!

Power (and therefore heat) is current squared times resistance, or equivalently voltage drop times current. A copper wire or PCB trace has very low resistance, and a soldering iron tip or thin tungsten filament has high resistance, so one stays cool while the other gets hot.

<comment><USER15> Ok, thanks for clearing it up. I had kind of assumed PCB trace would have some resistance due to the relatively small size of it (compared to say a cable on an electric appliance), but I guess the heat is coming from the soldering iron tip and doesn't need to be huge to get it hot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So what does this mean? Do I get one of these or what?!

<comment><USER19> If he didn't like it you would know it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASnLL6ebaco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASnLL6ebaco)

In the end you need to balance the pros and cons and see which comes up on top in your particular use case.

Personally, for my use cases (field repair of RC gear), I might buy one after this review.</comment></comment>


Nfectious disease expert: We're only in the second inning of the pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/opinions/bergen-osterholm-interview-two-opinion/index.html <comment><USER2> Is that baseball or cricket innings? Because if it is ODI cricket, we are good.</comment>


Simulate Amazon job interview as an Airbnb experience - <AUTHOR> https://www.airbnb.com/experiences/277118?_set_bev_on_new_domain=1565141974_%2FPrbKPo6adcJY8AF <comment><USER2> I'm surprised people still want to work for amazon and would pay 1k/h for a simulated interview.

If people are actually using it I must admit I'm impressed by the idea. You probably can't get closer to printing money without getting into illegal things.</comment>


French "startup" doing reduction of fuel consumption / polluting gas emissions - <AUTHOR> http://www.econokit.fr/

<comment><USER2> Bogus.

This is called water injection and has been around since the 70's. The theory sounds great - put some water vapor in the intake, and it will expand as steam, increasing power, lowering consumption, and even lowering temperature.

The trouble is actually in the emissions, which is why no manufacturer uses it.

Catalytic converters require enough heat from the exhaust to kick off the catalyzation to reduce the NOx and oxidize the unburned Hydrocarbons. Cold temperature is such a problem that BMW started using electrically heated cats in late 90's so they could reach firing temp sooner and lower start-up emissions.

Unfortunately, water injection cools the exhaust so much, that cats no longer work, thus radically _increasing_ polluting emissions and eventually damaging the cats.

Not so much an invention as it is warmed-over wishful thinking.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Featured on the french TV today. Looked like a scam at first but it's apparently already quite widely used and being deployed abroad.</comment>


Privacy threats in intimate relationships [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/academic/paperfiles/Privacy_Threats_in_Intimate_Relationships.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract:

This article provides an overview of intimate threats: a class of privacy threats that can arise within our families, romantic partnerships, close friendships, and caregiving relationships. Many common assumptions about privacy are upended in the context of these relationships, and many otherwise effective protective measures fail when applied to intimate threats. Those closest to us know the answers to our secret questions, have access to our devices, and can exercise coercive power over us. We survey a range of intimate relationships and describe their common features. Based on these features, we explore implications for both technical privacy design and policy, and offer design recommendations for ameliorating intimate privacy risks.</comment>


Could open email work for you? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/could_open_emai.html <comment><USER2> It's an idea I've had before. In fact, I alluded to it on a previous news.YC thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=8545>

I still think that creating the technology for this would be a great startup.</comment>


How a business increased their sales 18 fold by using online promotions - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d4u1b/update_reddit_beef_jerky_sales_stats_graphs/ Granted that selling meat to people who post on the internet is like shooting fish in a barrel, this is still an impressive use of discounts and online presence to attract new business. <comment><AUTHOR> Selling meat products to people who post on the internet is like shooting fish in a barrel, but this is still an impressive use of discounts to attract new customers.</comment>


An Attempt to Classify GitHub Issues as 'Critical' [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://williamrfry.com/public/statistics_paper.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Interested in everyone's thoughts in improving the model. This is just a first swing as part of a final project - will be digging deeper this summer. Need to drive down the misclassification error.</comment>


People Fear They've Got Too Much Cash in Their Bank Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/americans-look-for-alternatives-to-high-yield-savings-accounts <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/uZve4](http://archive.is/uZve4)</comment>


Ask HN: Why are techies so interested in Japanese culture? - <AUTHOR> Another thread made me kind of curious about geek fascination with Japan? As long as I can remember be it Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Reddit, HN! or any other techie-oriented forum, the only foreign the western tech culture western seems to have a fascinating with is Japan. So what is it? Why does our community have a more vocal interest in Japanese culture than others? <comment><USER2> Very few countries are successful in exporting culture at all.

For instance, the EU is requiring that 20% of content on Netflix be European in origin and considering the population size and economic weight of Europe that is more a guarantee that Europe doesn't get shut out instead of a level playing field.

India has a huge movie industry (which is unusual enough) but it gets almost no attention from outside India except by expats.

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

Another aspect is that Anime has developed a postmodernism that is very different from the navel-gazing postmodernism of Hollywood which could be characterized by the movie "Pulp Fiction" Anime is easy to relate to, if you are inclined to relate to it, is because it is about a very small world. When you see anime for the first time (for me some early inputs were "Star Blazers", "Urusei Yatsura" and "Nadia") it looks like a huge world. Nadia in particularly uses the trick of making it seem like the world gets bigger in every episode.

After you have seen enough anime you realize that Ataru Morobishi, Usagi Tsukino, and Haruhi Suzumiya all go to the same high school, that the monsters in "Nadia" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" look the same, etc. It's not about a large universe, but it is really one of those closed spaces that Haruhi wants to move into.

<comment><USER3> > India has a huge movie industry (which is unusual enough) but it gets almost > no attention from outside India except by expats.

Do you have enough evidence to support this claim? Anecdotally, I have seen a lot of folks in Africa, the Middle East obsess about Bollywood movies. To me, anime (outside Asia) is a niche whose obsession is heavily correlated with young American/Western/white men. Could possibly be a reason why tech (with its demographics) has a lot of anime lovers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're in your 20's or 30's, you'll probably remember when you were young that Japan was synonymous with technology. The best electronics were made in Japan and they were at the forefront of innovation. That is not really true anymore (although Japan does still lead in areas like robotics) but the stereotype persists.

<comment><USER5> yeah, i think for me this is the case, much of the newest coolest and best tech, not to mention games came out of japan and cyberpunk was at its peak around that sort of time too, seeing various images of this incredible neon wonderland of technology that was often described as "10 years ahead of the rest of the world" stuck in my mind heavily

and after a very long 30 odd years i got myself there and you now what? even in this era it didnt disappoint, and in some cases they are still years ahead although maybe not a decade, i read an article just this morning on how "pepper" was being launched in the US, i saw both pepper and the more impressive (if less useful) NAO in softbank stores in tokyo two years ago (although pepper and NAO are technically french they were bought by softbank a few years back)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the fascination comes from an early introduction to Japanese culture, even if we're not aware. Japan probably has the largest cultural footprint in America for Eastern countries. A lot of cartoons I watched growing up were Japanese anime. Then there was Pokemon. And Nintendo. And Playstation. And the Mario Brothers. The list goes on for geek entertainment. I think the question could be juxtaposed with "Why do other countries have a fascination with Western culture?" \- Hollywood, our entertainment industry. Or why is Soccer/football the most popular sport in the world? - people have access to it all over the world starting at an early age.

</comment><comment><USER7> Moved from SF to tokyo. Japan happened to be one of our bigger markets (among doing well/better in asia).

I was a gamer who grew up in Michigan, so I saw the downfall of the automobile scene at the hands of toyota among others as well as lived and breathed japanese games.

Japan's dominance is all too familiar in that space.

Tokyo today tends to not be very good at software. That coupled with the tech scene here trying to revitalize itself (see the work by 500 startups japan as a great example) is an interesting time to keep an eye on the culture as well as the country to see if it can rebound.

It's definitely a combination of things but that with the vastly better quality of life here has lent itself to what I believe is a big interest from a lot of people. As mentioned in other comments, japan also knows how to export its culture well.

I'm not sure it's 1 thing but a bunch of small things that make a difference here.

Not sure if that helps or not.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't say HN is a strict part of geek culture or that trend (while Reddit et al. are). As far as the manga etc obsession goes - many geeks have long had a penchant for all sorts of Fantasy [0]. And the Japanese managed to capture a lot of that "market". That obsession is almost solely directed at the parts of Japanese culture that are acutely distinct from Western culture, hence it might feed into the craving for fantasy.

There's also I think a separate trend of people (who might happen to be techies) that like East Asian countries (Kor, PRC, HK, Spore, Taiwan, Jap etc) for certain cultural values [that are actually mainstream] (tho of course it can still be based on unrealistic assumptions).

[0] I'd even venture to say it's a defining feature. Or that it's worthwhile to make it so.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe the question can be reversed—anime/manga/video game fans are usually drawn to technology because of the content in the media and also because these people tend to spend a lot of time online and may see tech as a "natural" thing to do.

<comment><USER10> I suspect this too. At least for me, Japanese video games from my childhood inspired me to learn to program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The quintessentially Japanese focus on _Mastery_ underpins the global obsession. Think about it! Or just watch _The Last Samurai_ for the hundredth time ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> Techies are interested in Japanese culture, for the simple reasons, techies are hungry to know more and understand new things, and because they see a lot common interests with Japan, and moreover, things that bring similar but yet novel developments, these techies feel japan brings something new to be discovered. Yet, they feel like they can relate to it, like they do in the West.

Lets look at history, even before world war 1, the Japanese government was developing an inspired European military strategy, more and more in fact till well we know what happened in WW2, it's not to far from the Napoleons, and English rule for example. Now this is the interesting thing, Japan did not just acquire western technology and throwed it away, they actually culturally integrated it, but they used it to their advantage even way before the culture shocks of today, and by doing that, well they excelled in it.

The Japanese culture since the 60s and more so today has had a fusion of cultures, which today the young generation of Japan, feel much more Americanized and westernized. As the youth of Japan, today is more and more Americanized,they also feel partially like they are missing out, because so much of what they like comes from America, or other western countries. Japanese techies are as curious as the western techies, why we share the mix. Whats happening in the western world? Well the same thing is happening On the opposite side, here as well in the western world, we feel we are missing out on new and interesting things, which go hand in hand with what techies or other non techies like. As the Japanese culture has brought commonality and newness to many industries, think products such walkman (that device even blue Steve Jobs mind), think anime's(stuff that makes physicist dream big), think ruby(programming), think videogames(biggest entertainment industry). And today, science and many more areas of expertise, share a lot of curiosity and interests with the western world and the rest of the globalized world. I would say this is due to simple reason that the Japanese culture has merged with the western culture to some point and that produces very interesting stuff, mixes are always very interesting and unique. So to close my thoughts, I would say the world is in a better place, because of this relationship we have between the West and the East, and we are hopefully moving towards a unified, peaceful and interesting human civilization type 2, referencing Kardashev Scale. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

</comment><comment><USER13> Techies are naturally curious , wanting to know more about everything. Now, japanese culture is so deep and vast that it just stokes their curiosity. Another factor could be the huge amount of technological innovation that came from Japan.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's just observational bias, really. Though Japan gets more exposure in tech media than, say, the Philippines.

</comment><comment><USER15> Because it's new and very different.

</comment><comment><USER16> It could be Zen Buddhism.</comment>


Panel says problem schools hurt nation's security - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/03/19/panel_says_problem_schools_hurt_nations_security/

<comment><USER2> Many folks in NYC feel that under Joel Klein the schools actually went down in quality -- and now he's working as a flack for News Corp so his credibility is really non-existant. There are schools out in Queens, NYC that are so over- populated with students that they are being taught in "temporary" trailers. Most of the kids can't speak English, but extra money that might help them is given to small charter schools which are pretty much segregated (including segregation of students with special needs). And after school most of the libraries that the kids might hang out are closed due to budget cuts. We're adding new cops which cost a tons of money (some who retire before age 40), but letting go of qualified teachers. A starting programer in NYC won't make less than $75 (and that's without a CS undergrad degree) while a teacher who has a grad degree can't get enough to live here.</comment>


Ask HN: Good small mouse? - <AUTHOR>

I want it to be: - small
- wireless
- tics in the scroll wheel - easy to press wheel - 1600dpi or more - not too expensive<p>I like the no-names for 10 bucks, but especially the wheel/middle buttons keep failing. (like http://www.amazon.com/Perixx-PERIMICE-710R-Wireless-Mouse-Laptop/dp/B006UIFTTS ) I bought a logitech M325, but the resolution is to low for my preferred mouse speed and I keep scrolling by accident or while pressing the middle button, because there are no tics. <comment><USER2> Sometimes you get what you pay for. Not small, but I paid $70 for a Logitech gaming mouse. That was about 4 years ago and it's still running strong.

Sometimes better to buy quality and take care of it, than looking for a new $10.00 mouse ever six-months to a year. Expecially when you're complaining about the quality of your current product.

As fat as best, you will need to reseach that yourself. Go to Newegg and read a lot reviews before buying.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just didn't find any small mouse fitting my description... I researched quite a few logitech and microsoft ones...</comment></comment>


How to get hired at a startup - <AUTHOR> http://workawesome.com/your-job/how-to-get-hired-at-a-startup/

<comment><USER2> Why does it always have to be low-paying? I was hired at a start-up and was paid about 15% higher than any other job I'd seen with my experience and skill-set. The increases were good and the stress wasn't unreasonable. We went from a 5-man team to a 80-person team until the company was sold to one of the biggest companies in the world (after about 5 years). My boss (who'd started the start-up retired a multi-millionaire an 45). I never got rich on it, but none of us employed there were ever paid badly, and he even made sure that we got very good retention bonuses during the buy-out. Perhaps my experience was unusual, but I wonder if more start-ups respected their workers enough to put a higher value on them if their companies wouldn't do better. There were none of us in that company that wouldn't have done anything (legal that is) that our boss asked of us, because he treated us with respect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool article about establishing relationships, but I have a question...

I'm 22 right now and have no family; the idea of having a project that I can completely immerse myself in (the type of things I see being linked on this website almost constantly) is more than enticing. (edit: to clarify, there are projects of my own that I've immersed myself in. The enticing part is being around other people that feel the same way about it. Writing my little news aggregator website on the weekends, or making arduino projects in my kitchen is fun, but it would be great to be doing this [working on projects] full time.)

To those who have had the privilege (and believe me, to the people on the outside looking in, it is a _privilege_ ) of working in these types of environments, what is a realistic set of required skills and how did you gain them?

I've been coding in perl and python since I was in about 14 or so and feel like I can accomplish pretty much any task I want in it, but I know that I'm nowhere _near_ good enough to start applying for jobs as a programmer.

To those working in this environment: how did you finally _know_ you were good enough, and how did you get there?

<comment><USER4> What? You've been programming for 8 years and you think you're not good enough to work as a programmer?

I used to think this way as well. You know what changed? I started doing freelance work and a lot of the first jobs I did was taking over from a crappy programmer. I fixed bugs in their code and had to work with horrible designs.

It's a great confidence boost once you start seeing real code being used and think "I can do this much better."

<comment><USER3> Wow, thanks for the confidence boost, Matt. :).

I guess I'll have to start poking around for some freelance work, then.

<comment><USER5> Freelancing is the bootcamp of software engineering; you will see stuff that will shock you. I have seen everything, from a medical billing package done in Excel, to a DSL in Ocaml for generating apache configuration files for a hosting company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: Blog. Have a GitHub repository.

Longer: We just had a good conversation about this at work in anticipation of new hires next year. Here's the thing: we know nothing about your day job aside from what you tell us. But your ability to communicate in code and English is plain to see for your public side projects. And you don't even need to blog about code; you just need to be interesting about whatever it is you're passionate about outside of work.

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again I am no expert in hiring folks for a startup, I find it hard. But I have personally hired a couple of dozen people in my startup companies (there are some overlaps between them).

The advice given is good, but if you work with software or design, make sure your work is visible. If you only work on stuff that you can't point to which is obviously yours, work one some open source projects. Build some cool Android/iPhone app in your spare time. Do something that makes it obvious that you have passion, that you like working in a small team, that you can be flexible on work on a number of different things, as these things are often key in a startup.

</comment><comment><USER7> And of course attend a Co-Founders Wanted Meetup (<http://www.meetup.com/Co- Founders-Wanted-Meetup/>)

I know it's self-promotion, but it's also a service for everyone who wants to join a startup at the earliest stage possible. An experience that I highly recommend (it will change your life).

</comment><comment><USER8> As someone reading resumes a lot these days, I'd say there isn't a magic formula. If you're local, you've made something cool in the past and know how to write well (in English, not just code), you'll have a much better chance than most of the people who apply.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly the reasons why I was offered a job at a local startup. I did a presentation at a local open source mini conference on some software I've been working on. Since then they have been tracking my commits, comments & how I interacted with others online. One month later I'm working for them. It's not just code, but how well you communicate with others that matters to startups.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: 1,500 entrepreneurs downtown Mountain View tomorrow - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN,
Tomorrow, Mountain View (the home of YC), is the Startup Village. It's outdoors. It's free. And we're already 1,500 entrepreneurs coming.
Address: 500 Castro St, Mountain View.
Stop by during your lunch break to check out the startups and meet your fellow entrepreneurs. <comment><USER2> Is this at city hall / performance arts theatre? Are you providing free lunch? :-)</comment>


Facebook is blocking posts to the Eyetap Mcdonalds incident story - <AUTHOR>

Any attempt to post the link to the Eyetap McDonalds incident (http://eyetap.blogspot.ca) on your Facebooks, results in an alert stating:<p>"The content you're trying to share includes a link that's been blocked for being spammy or unsafe" <comment><AUTHOR> I know for a fact this is an automatic process, so this is just posted as a curiosity. If enough people mark a post on facebook as 'spam' or 'offensive' it will kick in some automatic restrictions on its content.

</comment><comment><USER2> Facebook has not blocked this specific story. I am willing to bet any link from the eyetap.blogspot.ca domain will be blocked, because it has been flagged a "spammy" either by an employee or an automated defense. This could also just be a mistake with the automated systems; just yesterday facebook accidentally blocked imgur.com for a short period of time (and the developer responsible found the related post on reddit, appologized, and offered recompense).

</comment><comment><USER3> Also some URL shortners, but not the hacker news discussion link (yet). Let's a Streisand Effect begin!

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, it is being spammed... I don't like the implicit insinuation that Facebook is acting maliciously. It appears to be an automated defence. Don't rave about, submit a bug report, if you think it isn't actually spam.</comment>


Tell HN: The solution to Wikipedia's funding - <AUTHOR>

So I keep noticing that wikipedia keeps changing their pleas for funding on their site. While not quite as annoying as public radio interrupting their programming with boring people asking for money with ringing phones in the background that I never give to, I'm starting to wonder why Wikipedia is free if they need money (and the same goes for public radio). Unlike many of you, I grew up with encyclopedias. Real encyclopedias, not some encyclopedia on a disk or CD. They were huge and intimidating books of knowledge. When I read them, I felt like I was holding the last bastion of knowledge- that I had something substantial. Parents appreciated this and would shell out the money for them. Today, we have an incredible amount of information in Wikipedia and rely on it during the year without giving it a second thought. Why aren't we paying for it? I pay for Pandora and appreciate it. I would pay for Wikipedia, but for some reason non-profits think they they are doing a greater service to us by being free. But, libraries could buy subscriptions to Wikipedia and still provide those services for free. The only way to get people to pay for it is for them to give everyone a deadline for donations, then shut it down, and then startup a for-profit with the same information. <comment><USER2> I think you're not understanding what their goal was/is. Not everything is a business. Not everything is paid for. As I recall, the last time wikipedia did a request for funding, they were very happy with the results. It's a charity asking for funding. Not everybody has to pay. Not everybody can pay, but even those who can't pay benefit for free.

"shut it down, and then startup a for-profit with the same information", is completely wrong, as the people who created the content did it for the purpose of providing it for free to the world as a resource. That is the value. They would likely loose the submissions and quality if they did this. Though it has been done before. Gracenote CDDB was open sourced, then they closed it and left the open source version unapdated which was the instigator for MusicBrainz to create an alternative.</comment>


4k, HDMI, and Deep Color - <AUTHOR> http://www.toonormal.com/2014/01/10/4k-hdmi-and-deep-color/ <comment><USER2> I hate HDMI and wish it would die in favor of DisplayPort for everything. HDMI even makes manufacturers print HDMI on the front of their monitors for a discount on the royalties. That's why your new $3500 monitor says "HDMI" on the front of it for no reason: to save ten fucking sense on licensing HDMI for the unit. Meanwhile, DisplayPort is free.

HDMI must die.

<comment><USER3> My laptop (Thinkpad) outputs over DisplayPort. I tried to pick up a DP to HDMI cable from Best Buy when my DVD player died right before we were trying to have a movie night, and the sales clerks had never heard of DisplayPort. Every time I brought it up, they handed me either a VGA or HDMI cable, or insisted that DisplayPort didn't exist, that there was only Mini DisplayPort. Why the hell would they name it Mini DisplayPort if a full size DisplayPort never existed?!

So yeah, in the "real world", DisplayPort doesn't exist outside of last-gen Macbooks.

<comment><USER4> Well, "Best Buy" is not the real world though.

Beyond your DisplayPort incident, Best Buy in general is a provincial consumer electronics store, with ignorant sales personel and quite narrow selection. It might have been good enough for 1995, but not in 2014.

It's like visiting a Walmart for delicatessen items.

<comment><USER3> People _do_ go to Wal Mart for delicatessen items. Wal Mart sells packages lunch meats, sliced cheese, etc. Wal Mart even has ready to eat sandwiches available. They're terrible, but it's cheap and they're not bad enough to make people stop eating them. Likewise, Best Buy is indeed the real world. Mom is going to go to Best Buy to pick up a new laptop. Dad's getting his new TV there (with Monster cables so he doesn't get an HDMI virus). Your cousin was there last weekend buying the camera that looks the best on the display stand. Because, if Best Buy doesn't have it, there's no one to sell it to me. That means I need to go on Amazon and shop around, or ask the family tech guy, and he always gives weird suggestions or asks questions around what I'm really looking for. Best Buy just tells me what to buy.

There's a reason your local deli has one store with three clerks and is only open until 9pm, while Wal Mart is bigger than Jesus and open 24/7\. We don't live in the real world. The real world doesn't demand 4K with cables that can carry the signal at full color because they have different priorities than we do.

<comment><USER4> > _People do go to Wal Mart for delicatessen items. Wal Mart sells packages > lunch meats, sliced cheese, etc. Wal Mart even has ready to eat sandwiches > available. They 're terrible, but it's cheap and they're not bad enough to > make people stop eating them._

I was using the term "delicatessen" as a quality indentifier, not merely as a product category. Any old cheese and lunch meat won't do.

> _Likewise, Best Buy is indeed the real world. Mom is going to go to Best Buy > to pick up a new laptop. Dad 's getting his new TV there (with Monster > cables so he doesn't get an HDMI virus) (...) Because, if Best Buy doesn't > have it, there's no one to sell it to me._

Sure, but it's not like it's 1995 and the local Best Buy at Boise, ID is the only option. Tens of millions have an account and order from Amazon and lots of even more dedicated electronics sites.

What's difficult about "going on Amazon and shopping around"? We're not talking about our cousin or dad here, you were relating your story of visiting Best Buy for that cable for your Lenovo. Why even go there?

<comment><USER3> > _What 's difficult about "going on Amazon and shopping around"?_

It makes people have to think, and in a lot of cases people don't want to have to think. I posted something longer on this subject recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7105674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7105674)

> _Why even go there?_

Because I needed a cable today, not tomorrow or the day after. Amazon can't match that in my location. That's where I ran into the issues that DisplayPort is not mainstream, and Best Buy only carries things that Uncle Joe is going to need for the TV and laptop he bought at Best Buy.

I understand you used the word deli to mean quality, but there's a reason Apple still has less than 10% marketshare of desktops/laptops. People are more often than not satisfied with "good enough".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article asks: _Which is the better trade off? More color range per pixel, or more pixels with color channels?_

The answer is more color range per pixel.

Chroma is subsampled compared to Luma because that's literally how vision works: the Human eye has far more Rods (brightness sensors) than Cones (color sensors) per unit area. Increasing the color resolution on a TV[1] to match the luma resolution is literally a waste of bits[2]. On the other hand, the color receptors are very sensitive to the exact shade of color[3], so increasing color bit depth is not a waste.

[1] Increased color resolution on a computer monitor _is_ useful because you sometimes closely examine a small section of the monitor -- and possibly lean in to examine it better.

[2] The old NTSC analog system used the same principle: color was encoded using less bandwidth than the luma.

[3] As the author mentions, this is best observed in a gradient where the TV must present the gradations in sufficiently small steps to fool the eye into seeing a continuous gradation.

<comment><USER6> If screens move to deep color, does that mean their contrast ratio would also change to show such great variations? Ie an extreme would be the brightness of the sun down to pure darkness. Or would it basically be the same as now, just we could fit more variations of color into the same contrast? It's hard to visualize because 8bpp color already seems like it covers every RGB I would need to see...

<comment><USER7> The ability of a screen to display large contrasts is important, and tends to improve with every generation of displays, but it's entirely separate from the way colors are represented digitally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure why this is important. Obviously the author is much more knowledgeable than I am, so perhaps I can be enlightened.

As noted in the article, Deep Color is important so that sampling errors do not accumulate while images are filtered, processed & combined. But a television or monitor is the final step, it should be performing very little image processing. (Should is the operative word here, that's not necessarily true).

If you used HDMI to connect cameras to recorders or to connect effects processors, this would be important. Does anybody do this for 4K?

<comment><USER9> It is possible to see banding at 8bit with a final product. Imagine a flat gradient across the screen from black to white. 255 levels over say 2000 pixels (close enough) on a screen like... 6 feet across. Unless the gradient is dithered (either in the TV, or at the source...), you get ~8 pixel wide bands, which works out to 1/4th inch bands, which is definitely visible in certain situations.

Dithering is certainly a solution, but higher bit depths also works, and in a way that's much cleaner.

EDIT: This implies of course that the final display is also capable of high bit-depth display. Obviously, if the display is limited to 8bit, then it's kinda useless. I think the author's point was that HDMI 2.0 -should- be kinda future proof, and -should- anticipate widespread adoption of high bit-depth displays.

<comment><USER10> > It is possible to see banding at 8bit with a final product. Imagine a flat > gradient across the screen from black to white. 255 levels over say 2000 > pixels (close enough) on a screen like... 6 feet across. Unless the gradient > is dithered (either in the TV, or at the source...), you get ~8 pixel wide > bands, which works out to 1/4th inch bands, which is definitely visible in > certain situations.

If you have a RGB image were each color component uses a byte to represent it, you should have a effective Luma bit depth of 8 bit. Well, this is false for LCD screens because they have a effective Luma bit depth of 7 or 6 bits (or worst), so even using a VGA signal (analog signal) you get banding on these screens, were on a old good CRT screen you never appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder why we don't use the CIE XYZ color space for monitors - in practice, humans see much fewer blues than reds, so having the same pixel dedication to both seems like a waste. I'm not a panel manufacturer here, so I imagine it is hard to architect a panel with subpixels of varying signaling depth, right?

Also, are there even 12-16 bit color panels in production? I like to hope 4k / 8k mean the end of the pixel race, because we really need adaptive vblank (from Displayport) of at least 100 hz before we keep pushing the pixel density. Hell, most of my family don't recognize the difference between 480 and 1080p already because the colors are so bad on most consumer tv panels.

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome highly-detailed write-up. Thank you.

I agree that deep color is fascinating, especially in light of the fact deep color for end users has been right over the horizon for so long (I've ranted previously about my disappointment that 24-bit color has been the pinnacle of desktop computing for well over a decade). I personally find 24-bit banding quite annoying, especially with animation and fade effects, which visually exaggerate the limitation.

I would absolutely love a 50" concave OLED display with high-DPI, high-speed deep color. For the time being, in the real world of compromises, I'd be happy with either HDMI 2 or DisplayPort 1.2+, since I am presently dealing with 30Hz at 4K. Given that GPUs available today support 4K at higher refresh rates on DisplayPort, my current very slight preference is DisplayPort over HDMI 2 (which as far as I know is not supported by any GPU I can buy today).

</comment><comment><USER13> Filled with wrong information.

First and easiest. Anything that you can display over DVI can be displayed on a display that has implemented DVI over HDMI, so DVI doesn't look better than HDMI for any technical reason. This is how all those non-standard resolutions over HDMI work, and allows for color combinations that are not part of the standard.

Now that is established. 4k doesn't actually require HDMI 2.0 to work because any combination of resolution and color that is supported by the "speed" of the wire and can be communicated in the "handshake" between devices can work now.

Unlike most standards HDMI has "requirements" for certification, but those are not the upper limits they are the lower limits.

So 4k 24 FPS at 4:2:0 could be negotiated on an HDMI cable that is 1.1 compliant.

Author should read less Wikipedia. When I was at Microsoft's Media Room I had to have IT block Wikipedia because engineers were getting so much wrong information from its articles. Read the standards, talk to device manufactures. Wikipedia is not a place for deep tech, it is a place for a quick answer. If it isn't a knol of data like a stat for transfer speed, assume someone like this author wrote it, and it will be inaccurate.

<comment><USER14> I have to agree. I didn't see any mention of H.265 (edit: excuse me, HEVC), yet I'm sure I've read that it's what's going to speed up 4k beyond current HDMI 1.4 limits. (Though I see now via Google that HEVC requires quite a bit of hardware for real-time compression of a live signal at broadcast quality.) That said, I wouldn't bash Wikipedia too much. Write up better sources and I'm sure the editors will notice ;-)

<comment><USER13> Nope. We'd fix things and they'd come back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Using 12-bits per color would seem to give more precision within that axis, but doesn't seem to say anything about the dynamic range covered. sRGB is a subset of what human vision is capable of, e.g. the CIE XYZ/RGB colorspace.

Seems like the ideal display can:

1) match the dynamic range of the real world in luma and chroma 2) resolution that makes seeing pixels very hard 3) enough precision/gradation within the dynamic range to avoid banding 4) support high framerates

<comment><USER16> There are several errors in this comment.

1\. The CIE XYZ color space is different from the CIE RGB color space.

2\. "Dynamic range" is not about gamut but the ratio between white and black. A monochrome display can have high dynamic range.

3\. Neither the CIE XYZ nor the CIE RGB color space correspond to human vision. CIE RGB color space uses three monochromatic primaries (700 nm, 546.1 nm, and 435.8 nm) and so there are visible colors that it can't represent without using negative numbers (such as the blue color of an Argon laser). The CIE XYZ space is a linear transformation of the CIE RGB space designed to represent all visible colors without using negative numbers, the trade-off is that most of the colors in XYZ are imaginary -- they cannot be perceived by humans, recorded by cameras, or displayed by monitors. The color space closest to human perception is CIE LMS, which still contains many imaginary colors.

If you want better colors look no farther than Rec 2020, which is probably going to come around soon. It still won't represent Argon-laser-blue but the cost of representing all colors on a real, physical display is prohibitive (to the point that no prototypes even exist). Agreed that sRGB is a rather small color space but improvements on color representation have to take into account the engineering needed to make it happen. The question, "Which primaries should I use?" was thoroughly explored during the development of Rec. 2020 and I suggest you read their rationale.

<comment><USER15> Well, if you want to be pedantic, "dynamic range" (DNR) is not about white and black, it means the ratio of the largest/smallest values of a changeable quantity. This can be sound, it can be light, it can be a neuron response. The bits of a color component give you how many finite pieces you can slice up the range into. An encoding (linear/exponential/etc) give you a projection from that bit representation into the range of reconstructed values. My general point is, it's not purely about the # of bits, it's also about the range and projection function used.

But yes, you are right about the other stuff. But I'm not concerned about what can be achieved with real physical display panels today. I was talking about idealism, not incrementalism, I want to look at a display and almost not notice it's there, like looking through window on my wall. is Rec 2020 going to get us there?

<comment><USER16> You're asking for something that _nobody_ is prepared to deliver, and nobody has plans for delivering it, and nobody knows what kind of technology would even be used to create such an experience.

1\. Natural contrast ratios are so far beyond the limits of current display technology that it would take a complete revolution in material science just to figure out what to make the actual screen out of.

2\. Natural colors are have a gamut that cannot be reproduced using the fixed primary model. You would have to do something like put a dynamically tunable laser inside each pixel.

It's like asking for a USB port on your computer in 1949.

However, if you're prepared to make some small compromises:

1\. Okay, contrast ratios are limited by glare from ambient light.

2\. Okay, we'll use three primaries: red, green, and blue.

THEN, Rec. 2020 is what you want.

> "dynamic range" (DNR) is not about white and black, it means the ratio of > the largest/smallest values of a changeable quantity.

In the context of displays, the changeable quantity is the amount of light. White is the name of the largest value, black is the name of the smallest value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> People can not see 4k resolution at normal couch viewing distances unless they have really huge displays. [http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html](http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html) [http://carltonbale.com/does-4k-resolution- matter/](http://carltonbale.com/does-4k-resolution-matter/)

<comment><USER18> I see this all the time, that people cannot perceive pixels smaller than _x_ degrees (using angular units to cancel out pixel size vs. view distance). And it's true--the eye cannot resolve smaller that that value.

But just as we cannot perceive individual frames at 24 Hz, but instead see motion, there's still an emergent effect that is perceived when we juice that frame rate up to 60, or 120, etc. There exists a frame rate where the perception changes from "really fast slideshow" to "motion" and that value is pretty low (something like 12 Hz?). Yet, higher frame rates still deliver a noticeable change in the quality of the video.

I think the same effect will apply to very high pixel densities. Moire effects that occur when the news anchor is wearing a striped jacket, for example. There's gotta be other emergent qualities that come out of having such a tight pixel density, even if no single pixel can be discerned at a 3 meter distance.

(Disclaimer: the above is pure conjecture, I have not compared a 4K display to an HD one from normal viewing distance)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Video formats can be weird.

I think there is (at least) one factual error in the blog post; 16-235 range was not chosen because of CRTs: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._709#Digital_representation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._709#Digital_representation)

In that light I'd also claim that the expansion to full-range of values is probably one of the smallest advantages of xvYCC. The wider gamut is significantly more important.

Also if when watching video files you notice that blacks do not look very black, then you should change your video player. As the aforementioned wikipedia article says, value 16 is intended to represent pure black in Rec709 colorspace.

<comment><USER5> 4K Uses Rec 2020[1] which has a slightly larger gamut than 709.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020)

<comment><USER19> But Rec2020 also only specs 10bit and 12bit color depths, so I'd assume that 8bit 4k is not Rec2020.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's kind of interesting, but damn this guy cannot communicate effectively. Was the point that > 8 bits of colour in HDMI is a good idea? That modern displays can't show them (I don't think this is true). Is his example image really suffering from being 8-bit colour, because it looks like it was exaggerated by setting the quantizer steps really big. There's also no real discussion or example of what chroma subsampling looks like.

</comment><comment><USER21> Very nice detailed write-up, thanks!

Chrome subsampling goes a long way to explain the issues I was seeing with the Seiki 4k TV at [http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1040546819#post1040546...](http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1040546819#post1040546819).

</comment><comment><USER22> "That's why we GameDevs prefer formats like PNG that don't subsample."

Can anyone explain why we have this disconnect between video/monitor standards and bitmap/png standards? What would be the problem with doing 8/10/12 bit RGB front to back, or YCbCr front to back?

<comment><USER8> 3840 * 2160 * 36 bits * 60 Hz = 18 GBits/second, which is more than an HDMI 2.0 cable can handle, especially once you add audio and framing.

<comment><USER23> 18Gb/sec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >All this video signal butchering does beg the question: Which is the better trade off? More color range per pixel, or more pixels with color channels?

I would tend to say higher resolution is more worthwhile. I obviously don't have a way to test this directly, but my guess is that 8k at 180 fps and 2-bit, using spatial and temporal dithering, will look better than 4k at 60 fps and 12-bit, even though those two signals would contain the same amount of information.

The reason is that the dithering allows the same color depth to be presented, but the discreteness is kept well beyond the boundaries of what your eye can pick up.

Obviously there are plenty of _technical_ reasons that this isn't exactly practical.

</comment><comment><USER25> Good thing to point out. Though I think this is, as zokier points out, a less important point than accuracy and breadth of color gamut. And also in regards to "the blacks don't look very black," a lack of dynamic range is also somewhat to blame for that. Luckily, OLED displays are here to address both issues!

4K at this point has little point, but the increased resolution will be nice once the quality catches up.

<comment><USER19> > 4K at this point has little point, but the increased resolution will be nice > once the quality catches up.

Added resolution has the nice property that it can be traded for color depth by the use of dithering.

<comment><USER26> Does anyone do time based dithering to increase color depth? If a monitor can only control color to 8-bits, but has 10 or more bits of color data coming in, it could shift the pixel rapidly between the desired colors. I'm not sure if our eyes would be able to see a rapid 1 color step change in any single pixel, and it should break up the color banding that we can see.

Is this technique used anywhere?

<comment><USER27> Yes, all non-IPS laptop displays for instance. They're actually 6 bits and use temporal dithering to display 8-bit color. And indeed, most "10-bit" panels are 8-bit with FRC.

<comment><USER14> Ah don't get me started on how I hate being lied to by monitor manufacturers. I have to start looking for 14-bit LUTs before I begin to trust that the panel might actually be 10-bit. Then again, I've a 8-bit with FRC and can't tell the difference. They both oversaturate as much as I'd like them to. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>