Best way to learn racket? - <AUTHOR>

Been spinning my wheels the last couple days, trying to find a foothold to start from. Partly because I don't have a firm understanding of where racket fits in with the larger lisp world (and seeing arguments all over about whether that is or is not a relevant distinction).
I think I'd like a walkthrough/tutorial of the basic language itself to start with, something like the python.org tutorial.
Ultimately I'd like to be using racket (lisp? scheme?) similar to how I use python, for simple scripting with room to go large when needed.
Where would you, the experienced racketeer (schemer? lisper?) tell a newb to start? <comment><AUTHOR> Ah: The Racket Guide. <http://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/>

Call a plumber and the faucet starts working.

But the question still stands, where would you point and experienced C-side programmer to start off in racket?

<comment><USER2> There are a few tutorials in the docs too, such as the More[1] tutorial. I agree that it could be nice to have "Racket for X programmers" guides.

If you get stuck, the community on IRC at #racket on Freenode is friendly & active and so is the mailing list.

[1]: <http://docs.racket-lang.org/more/index.html></comment></comment>


Waymo self-driving cars face harassment, road rage in Phoenix area - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/12/13/waymo-self-driving-vehicles-face-harassment-road-rage-phoenix-area/2288833002/ <comment><USER2> Their methods are absolutely wrong. But with that said, I don't necessarily disagree with all the sentiments expressed by these people. I don't want a company pervading every minute of my daily life. I can at least put down and turn off a phone, these things will be omnipresent. I've gone out of my way to avoid or disable every "always listening" or "always watching" thing I can, but this one can't be controlled.

Tech companies used to be about, "this is the future; buy it from us." Now, it's "this is the future; we will ram it down your throat until you accept it." This includes scooters dumped on the sidewalks, pushing into healthcare, facial recognition, amazon echos, and more.

This has got to stop. I hope nobody buys any more of this garbage. I understand existing doctrine of "expectations of privacy", but nobody expected constant monitoring by a private entity. Past that, nobody expected constant monitoring by a public entity, which is what is coming next and is most worrisome of all. If y'all thought the patriot act was bad, just wait: it's going to get a whole lot worse. Wait 100 years (maybe less), and we'll end up like Xinjiang or 1984.

There's a joke I've seen on the internet. It talks about how people in the sixties used to say things like, "I'd better not say that or the government will wiretap my house." Today, people say things like, "Hey wiretap, do you have a recipe for pancakes?"

</comment><comment><USER3> > The incident is one of at least 21 interactions documented by local police > during the past two years where people have harassed the autonomous vehicles > and their human test drivers.

How many drivers do they have? That doesn't sound like a particularly high rate for a few dozen drivers over two years. Taxi drivers tend to encounter a lot of crap.

</comment><comment><USER4> From another perspective, they created valuable data points for training the model. Great stress testing.

</comment><comment><USER5> _The self-driving vans use radar, lidar and cameras to navigate, so they capture footage of all interactions that usually is clear enough to identify people and read license plates._

Oops! They also have GPS, so they have a timestamped location as well as pictures.

<comment><USER6> next up: crashing speed cameras</comment></comment>


Ask HN: am I too old to learn the guitar/music?  - <AUTHOR> Sorry if this isn't very hacker-related. I know there are a good amount of musicians here, so I thought I'd ask.
I'm 34. Quit 5th grade music (teacher was a jerk) and haven't really touched an instrument since. But I've always wanted to learn some guitar.
Is it too late?
My wife is a decent musician so we have a few guitars and keyboards in the house. Always been good with math and languages–not sure if that helps or determines how I should try and learn.
Anyway, any suggestions from musicians is much appreciated. Should I take some lessons? Watch some videos? <comment><USER2> No limits. Before I switched to software development I paid my bills as a Jazz guitar -player and -teacher. Observation: the "too old" only applies indirectly when you're "grown up" schedule is already very full with everyday activities. Even then I watched people with no time to spare but with lots of enthusiasm and determination making progress. Some physical learning gets slower with age, but the speed of learning is not important at all IMO/E.

I line up with others here in recommending private lessons, at least for the beginning. Getting quick feedback in what you are doing is essential, especially for the motoric part.

I picked up viola da gamba with 39 and might have lacked some physical abilities to do the bowing well from the beginning but thanks to my teachers I got smoothly over these problems.

Another thing: start playing with others early. It's like chatting away in a new language. You learn best/have the most fun when you _have_ to make sentences and express yourself.

Get yourself an axe and enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER3> hell no you're not! And if you are a programmer/math inclined you will probably actually do really well once you get a few fundamentals down and start to see the patterns/logic in the tuning. (learn to play a power chord and then realize that the same finger pattern applies all the way down the fret board for the first two top strings and you're on your way to writing some ramones-esque songs!)

For the record I am a drummer but I understand guitar well enough to write songs that other people can then play better haha.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, thanks. So how would you recommend I learn the fundamentals?

<comment><USER3> Well one very HN approach would be to upload one of your favorite (ideally relatively simple/slower) songs to <http://chords.fm/online/web/> and start from there!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You aren't too old to learn.

It is hard (though probably not impossible, given sufficient motivation and practice) to get good enough to play professionally with a late start), but if you plan to learn for the joy of music and playing songs at parties and so on it is _very_ doable. If you practice (guitar) for 20 -30 minutes _daily_ for a year, you should be good enough to play some popular songs at parties and so on, ideally with people playing other instruments.

The key is to regularity (don't miss practice) and focus (be aware of what you are doing when you practice) and not so much short bursts of intense practice.

As mentioned above if you can get _good_ private lessons , go for it. You _can_ teach yourself with books and an electronic tuner and so on, but it is way harder than getting a good teacher. Since your wife is a musician she (or her friends) should be able to find you a good teacher.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Never too old! If your wife is a decent muso, then why won't she give you shove in the right direction. I play many instruments, and with your background, I'd suggest learning to read music and playing a keyboard would be an easier start. Guitar is harder than it looks. Assuming that you type reasonably well, then you already have the finger dexterity to play a keyboard reasonably well.

Once you can play some bass lines, the two of you should be able to jam. That in turn speeds up your learning and increases the motivation.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> There is no age limit to learning. In fact, I bought a guitar at the age of 19 and began teaching myself chords, strumming, and scales with no previous experience. I am 23 now, wrote and recorded a full length music album 2 years ago, have played numerous live shows as a solo artist, and continue to learn guitar everyday. My suggestions for learning guitar: Find a tab for a song you enjoy on <http://ultimate-guitar.com>, and practice it daily.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds just like our situation.

I've been playing guitar for 15 years now. My 30 year-old wife just picked up the guitar. She's doing quite well. I spend about 15 minutes per day helping her with her technique and giving her a new exercise to try.

When we picked out her guitar, they offered us a month of free group lessons. Maybe you can swing the same deal? Guitar is not a difficult instrument, relative to piano, trombone, or violin. A little spousal assistance is probably good enough if you can't wrangle a professional.

</comment><comment><USER8> My grandfather started learning how to play the violin in his 70s.

I don't think you have much of an excuse.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is no such thing as "too old for music." Rather, picking up something new helps keep your brain nimble. You have no reason at all NOT to do it - and, hey, you even have a free tutor!

</comment><comment><USER10> There's no replacement for good private lessons.

</comment><comment><USER11> No.

That's the template response for questions of the form:

/^Am I too old to learn .*\?$/i

</comment><comment><USER12> My 62 year old father just took up Piano and is loving it.</comment>


Eliminate the Gender Pay Gap by Banning Salary Negotiations - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/21/the-best-way-to-way-to-eliminate-the-gender-pay-gap-ban-salary-negotiations/ <comment><USER2> When I read stuff like this

>EU pushes 40% quota for women on boards [1]

My jaw just like ... drops. Just image the OUTRAGE that would be caused if the headline was this

>EU pushes 50% quota for women in coal mines

I am all for equality, but just handing everything to women on a silver platter, and making rash decisions because they are a different gender is just stupid policy making imo.

>"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." (Goodhart's Law) [2]

[1] [http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/65f494e6-f5e7-11e1-a6c2-00144...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/65f494e6-f5e7-11e1-a6c2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3ay6fJsEv)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

<comment><USER3> We're way, way, way past that. I used to think like you, until I started realizing just how institutionally misogynistic corporations and business is. At how low the numbers are. Corporations have had decades to reform and yet the number of women on boards or CEOs or leadership positions is still ridiculously low. The glass ceilings still exists. Generations have passed and the problem hasn't corrected itself.

There is no reason the number shouldn't be near 50%. Women are as capable as men. It's nowhere near 50%.

So, the only solution is positive discrimination.

Your jaw may drop, but the companies of the world had their chance and all they've demonstrated is that the present system is quite obviously, without argument and without anything at all you can say to counter it, complete and utter misogynistic. What other conclusion can you draw? Occam's razor suggests the system is to blame. It it weren't, the numbers would reflect the male/female employment percentages, but they don't, they're still heavily skewed towards men.

So either you choose the "qualified" candidates, who are "qualified" by an obviously misogynistic system. Or you positively discriminate.

Does your jaw still drop? Or do you understand why it is necessary now?

<comment><USER4> _There is no reason the number shouldn 't be near 50%...What other conclusion can you draw?_

No reason? No other possible conclusion? You should argue the opposite position and try to pass an ideological turing test [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test)

Here are some sources to get you started on your research: [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on- gend...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/114055529676/my-verdict-on-gender-bias- in-the-workplace) [http://www.amazon.com/Why-Sex-Matters-Darwinian-Behavior- ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-Sex-Matters-Darwinian-Behavior- ebook/dp/B00NDDDI4G/)

<comment><USER3> Nope, no other reason.

As I said, there's been decades, the process and culture so is obviously skewed in favour of men.

Pretend otherwise all you like. One day you'll realise that deep down you honestly thought men were better than women at business. Which is utter bollocks, it's simply corporate culture is heavily biased and needs a good kick up the ass.

That Scott Adams post is stupid by the way, he even starts talking about the gender bias at the end but frames it as 'societal'. If a woman takes a break from her career to have a kid and then cccomes back 2 years later, why has her career stalled? Societal norms, says Scott Adams, not gender bias at all!

Do you get it yet? The whole of business is set up to favour men. Until the 'societal norms' _change_ to be fairer to women so they can actually have a chance to become leaders and senior management while still being allowed to have a family, it won't be a fair society.

We're seeing it happen in the UK parliament now women only short lists have vastly I creased the women MPs, the working life of an MP is changing to become women friendly because it's been forced on them.

The same thing _has_ to happen in business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But doesn't the gender pay gap come from choosing lower-paying jobs rather than explicit discrimination? The first one makes more sense to me, not just because there's a US government case study on it, but because if it were an act of discrimination, every boss would have to be in on it a la Nash Equilibrium. Otherwise women would be the only hires, economically, because they'd be the cheapest source of labor.

<comment><USER6> > But doesn't the gender pay gap come from choosing lower-paying jobs

Not entirely: [http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm)

> rather than explicit discrimination?

Why does it need to be explicit? Most discrimination is due to unconscious biases, both in our responsive to negotiation tactics from men v. women, and in our initial "gut feeling" about how valuable an employee someone will be. Humans aren't rational logic machines, as much as we like to pretend we are.

> if it were an act of discrimination, every boss would have to be in on it a > la Nash Equilibrium.

Prima facie, this seems like it should be true, but there's also a positive correlation between height and income. The Nash Equilibrium hasn't solved this. Why? Even if you have no answer, denying the fact because you can't explain it isn't a great option.

The usual explanation, which seems bared out by the data, is that subtle, unconscious bias (not explicit, conscious bias) is pervasive enough that in an imperfect market with transaction costs. If someone could choose to be immune to this bias, and thus be 100% non-discriminatory, that would be an advantage, but it's not as simple as just choosing not to be biased, nor is it simple to then demonstrate that fact to the entire labor market.

<comment><USER7> Does the height bias extend to entry level jobs and not just managerial positions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maddox on how every company can instantly save 23% on wages: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDj_bN0L8XM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDj_bN0L8XM)

<comment><USER9> I would have gone with "Real Wage Gap = 5-7%", but it's a good video nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The traits that both men and women associate with good negotiators are tied up with ideas of masculinity — such as rationality, assertiveness and self- assurance"

Maybe those qualities are also helpful in a job itself, if not in general? Particularly in a senior position of leadership?

I don't think you can have both a standard that's different for what skills a woman should need learn to succeed, and at the same time have equality. This seems self-evident.

<comment><USER11> The gender pay gap exists between males and females performing exactly the same job.

That senior positions earn more than junior ones, management more than others is obvious.

<comment><USER10> How are they performing exactly the same job if males are systematically more assertive, self-assured, and rational?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand why the media focuses on her as a promoter of equality. She has proven herself biased and overly militant which gives credence to those who say the loudest feminists don't really care about women.

</comment><comment><USER13> Appointing her as a CEO was such a great idea. Reddit thrives on censorship and social justice.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a terrible idea and only persists the "lowest common denominator" policies of people who want to hold back better people through laws.

Instead why not have "job agents" that negotiate on your behalf?

</comment><comment><USER15> Because plans like this have worked out so well in the past. [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States#The_rise_of_employer- sponsored_coverage)

</comment><comment><USER16> There are things you can do to help harmonise pay between men and women. Giving men equal paternity leave to women for example.

I'm not a big believer in quotas as I think it can cause companies to choose people of a lesser skill set just because of their sex. That's not to say there aren't competent female engineers, managers etc. there are, it's just that, there's not enough of them and we need to be taking steps to encourage women into these industries.

<comment><USER17> In Germany, men can take equal paternity leave as women. And it is used sometimes, actually.

And these quotas just say that "30% of each gender should be in corporate boards" or that "negotiating a custom pay should be illegal" – the negotiation part also discriminates against people who aren't good at negotiations, therefore provides a different pay for people based on a totally unimportant metric.

<comment><USER18>
         men can take equal paternity leave as women. And it is used sometimes, actually.

But that is missing the point. Paternity leave should be split in half, so commercial risk of pregnacy falls on both sexes in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the right goal but the wrong way of doing it.

Key section of this article:

"A ban on negotiations leaves a lot of power in the hands of employers, who may not be making equal salary offers to men and women in the first place. The solution is transparency."

<comment><USER20> I hope transparency gains traction. Salaries for University of California workers are all public and searchable in a database, and the sky hasn't fallen. Same for many state workers.

In general, I'd say before anything else, try transparency. Make sure that nobody has an informational advantage over anyone else.

One problem with this is that it can put a company at a disadvantage to competitors if they're the only ones making salaries public. For instance, a private university can figure out exactly what Berkeley is paying a promising researcher, but Berkeley can't get equivalent info from a private university (in spite of massive federal subsidies and tax break for private universities).

I liked the bit about the startup posting salaries, but if you're the _only_ one doing this, it might put you at a disadvantage. Some kind of legislation might be good here.

<comment><USER19> Transparency has disadvantages, but it creates company loyalty because employees know that the company is treating them fairly (and the poaching company implicitly isn't).

Early results (see article) suggest that transparency is better, even with the disadvantages you describe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seems almost comically narrow minded. Like it or not, negotiation is unavoidable. It's how two actors come to an agreement.

Even if negotiation is banned for determining salaries, there are other negotiations to be done: how much vacation you get and when you can take, when you can work remotely (if at all), who gets which projects and which roles in them, who gets the better desk, who gets to go to the conference. Plus you have to negotiate with other companies about contracts, joint ventures, prices, schedules, and so forth. And the rest of life is a negotiation too, for the price of a car, rent, the price for the house, the cost of house repairs, where to go on vacation, and on and on right down to where are we going to lunch and who's picking up the tab.

This is well-intentioned but the solution is not in the realm of possibility, like trying to solve broken bones by banning gravity. Everyone _will_ have to negotiate about many things, no matter what the law says. You can either learn to do it to the best of your ability, or pretend it doesn't exist and thus just suck as it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find this policy incredibly sexist and am very surprised it came from a woman. If the cause of this was women's supposed inferiority at negotiating, does Reddit prevent women from having sales roles where good negotiation on behalf of the company is important? How about as attorneys expected to negotiate for the company, are women excluded from those jobs?

<comment><USER23> I don't think negotiating ability is the issue, I think that the idea is that women are empirically less inclined to salary negotiation, for whatever reason. Since salary negotiation inclination (or ability, though I don't think that's the underlying reason here) isn't the job, isolating it from pay is a way to pay fairly (not just pay women fairly either, while on average there may be a gender difference here, there are also individual difference within the same gender on this axis).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, it's a great plan.. If you're a CEO. This would not lead to women being paid more, but everyone being paid less and having less negotiation-power when looking for another job or promotion.

<comment><USER25> It depends on the company. Many have a budget that says to pay their employees X dollars in aggregate. Assuming that everyone has the same position, then with negotiations certain people would get a little more and others a little less, but the company still spends about X dollars. With no negotiating, everyone gets the same piece of the pie, but the company is still dishing what they were before. The company might actually be able to spend more (I'm being crazy optimistic here) because it's much more predictable what any individual would cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe if you are Google you have enough inertia that you can afford to bypass talent than wants more than you are willing to offer. Others will just lose in competition for skilled workers.

People will go where they can negotiate a better deal. The market will make this strategy self-limiting.

</comment><comment><USER27> The idea that you can institute a policy that will account for all of the variables that underly someone's performance is absurd. I recently left a company that started monkeying with policies like this (they they would make exceptions for, for favored employees.)

Develop an environment where your team can thrive. Provide opportunities for growth. Train those that show an aptitude. Listen to people. Pay attention to the values that you espouse and the resulting culture, and make adjustments where they're at odds with your goals.

Putting a policy in place where everyone is at a lowest common denominator is one of the quickest ways I can think of to destroy initiative in a company.

<comment><USER28> No Child Left Behind: The after-"education" edition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Am I reading this correctly? It says that we need to ban salary bargaining because women are unalterably worse at negotiation.

This means that companies are justified in not hiring women to do negotiation - sales, purchasing and acquisitions.

Social justice is eating itself.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems like it would leave a company with two options:

1\. Losing employees who are better than others (i.e. deserve and want a larger salary) at the same job

2\. Create a new role for every minute difference in skill level to allow better employees to earn more than their peers.

Neither of those seems to be too terribly good. I think making all salaries public-by-default and using that as a basis for negotiation would be far better for equal pay as everyone would know what they were capable of earning by looking at what their peers are payed.

IMO banning salary negotiations is just a move to save money; we can't pay you more because we don't discriminate against women.

<comment><USER25> I'm not too sure. In my experience, salary negotiations will earn you a few percentage points at most. It does make it easier for a potential employee to decide between two companies (this is what the other company offered, can you match it?), but it's a relatively small number compared to difference in promotion level and team. If we're talking about software engineering, these positions tend to have 5 or so levels plus different teams. Salary is tied to team and level. I don't think what Ellen is doing will directly make a huge impact on the gender gap because the problem in software engineering is more about underrepresentation of women. Perhaps what it will do is prevent a problem where all or most of the men in the same position were being just a wee bit more than the women at Reddit, which seems like a believable situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think we should all be alarmed that people are developing policies that purposely handicap one class of people in order to create better outcomes for others.

</comment><comment><USER30> "Many people in the equal-pay debate argue that inferior negotiating skills are at the root of the gender pay gap."

Has not been my experience in pay matters and how is this different than the idea that women are not well suited to programming or math? Women are poor negotiators?

<comment><USER31> _how is this different than the idea that women are not well suited to programming or math?_

In this case, the sexism is benevolent. (On the surface at least. Do you think such a salary policy will serve to increase or decrease their overall labor costs?)

<comment><USER32> Increase in the long run, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why is this topic being surfaced now by the Washington Post? Ellen made this decision over a month ago.

<comment><USER12> Gender equality is classic good clickbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "At the bargaining table, women are in a no-win situation."

Word. Instead of teaching them techniques to help them win, let's just do the easiest thing possible and make blanket rules so that _everybody_ is in a no- win situation.

Equality.

<comment><USER34> Re-read your sentence. If everyone has the same rules it _is_ equal. There is no "no-win" if it is a level playing field. The company still must compete based on salary in the broader marketplace.

<comment><USER35> The lack of the ability to negotiate is a lose-lose situation for everyone, where an initial salary bid can cause an employee who would join your company for the right price to join another company because you initially underbid another company.

I offer someone $125k. She gets an offer for $135k from another place. She comes back and tells me that she likes our company better, but she likes that salary more and will be joining them unless we match the offer.

If negotiation is forbidden, the company loses out on the person they want and the person loses out on the company they want, just because the initial bid was off. That's a lose-lose-win (so technically not a no-win), since the company that made an initial higher offer gets the candidate, but the candidate is less happy than she could have been.

The company may not have been aware of the momentary price of that skill set in the market, or the particular demand that individual has created for her unique set of talents. You have to realize that just saying "no" to an offer is a form of negotiation when considered as part of the larger game.

<comment><USER36> I suspect this would lead to people finding work arounds. "I'm sorry. We really want to hire you, but we pay $125K for application programmers, and cannot negotiate that. We cannot match your $135k offer. I do see, though, from your resume that you also have git experience. I think you meet our requirements for application engineer, which has a non-negotiable salary of $140k. Would you like to apply for that?"

<comment><USER37> Well then you'd have to mandate equality of who gets offered application engineer vs application programmer, or you'd be back in the same position as you started from..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Such policies do come with some risk. A ban on negotiations leaves a lot of > power in the hands of employers, who may not be making equal salary offers > to men and women in the first place.

But the article doesn't mention how Reddit is planning to tackle that problem. So I remain vary about whether this is just a way to empower the employers, while getting some nice PR to boot.

> In an effort to encourage equity and trust, a growing number of companies > reveal the salaries of all their employees, sometimes even posting them > online.

Somehow, it seems like this way to "empower the employees" also makes them more exposed, which is not a form of empowerment. Sure it makes them more informed, but not being able to choose to disclose their salaries or not is not a form of empowerment.</comment>


Supreme Court Takes Up Scholars' Rights - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professors-Fight-Over/127700/

<comment><USER2> Excellent article. The Mickey Mouse Protection Act always made me uneasy. What's to say they don't extend protection yet again? Perpetual copyrights are no less than tyranny in a media society.

This article talks about an instance where works that had previously gone into public domain were brought out of it. Granted, this was done to bring US law in line with International Treaties. It still feels wrong though.

<comment><USER3> At this point, I wish (as a compromise) that they changed trademark law and stopped (or rolled back) the extension of copyrights. It would seem that Disney and Co. could live with no else being allowed to make "Mickey Mouse" (substitute character here) media but allowing the older works to pass into the public domain. It is not a great compromise, but it would probably allow older works to actually be available and preserved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, I didn't realize that they actually took some stuff that _was_ in the public domain and put it back under copyright. Very very interesting.

<comment><USER5> Note that the retroactive copyright only applies to foreign works. The Berne Convention requires a country to apply the same copyright protections to foreign works as the country of origin. It began as an effort to standardize copyright terms throughout Europe in the late 19th century. The US didn't become a participant until 1989 which is why the retroactive law was passed.

<comment><USER6> US Constitution Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 3

"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

Will a legal scholar or similarly minded person please explain why this isn't an ex post facto (after the fact) law?

<comment><USER5> You're looking for Calder v Bull where the Supreme Court decided that ex post facto only applies to criminal law and not civil law. It makes a distinction between a law that changes punishment and law for criminal proceedings or a law that is merely retroactive.

<comment><USER6> If I'm reading correctly from Wikipedia, that decision was somewhat ambiguous. It either indicated that the State legislature had the right to order a re- review of a will, overturning a previous judgement.

SCOTUS seemed to me more concerned about rights of a state legislature.

Also, the Constitution does make the distinction between civil and criminal. It says "Make no law", which is in the similar wording that the Bill of Rights, Amendment 1 states.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A fascinating little beastie that loves prime numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/03/fascinating-little-beastie.html

<comment><USER2> _A prime numbered cycle means that the cicada rarely meets a predator (since any predator would have to be synchronized to 17 years, for example) and mass emergence would overwhelm any predator around._

I think that's half accurate. They meet many, many predators - hence the great numbers overwhelming predators, as you point out. Their numbers are so great that all existing predators can gorge themselves, and there's still plenty left to mate.

Rather, their prime-number periodicity reduces the likelihood that a _specialized_ predator will evolve. Many predators eat them, but none of those predators have evolved to specifically eat those cicadas.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but you are wrong.

Generalized predators tend to have boom/bust cycles that are a small integer number of years. When the boom aligns with the cicadas, it sucks for the cicadas. When the bust aligns with the cicadas, it is great for them. Having a non-prime period would synchronize that boom/bust cycle with the cicada's cycle, and would make every generation a bad one for the cicada's strategy. Eventually this would make the cicadas go extinct.

There is no possibility of a specialized predator evolving because said predator would spend most of the time starving.

<comment><USER2> _There is no possibility of a specialized predator evolving because said predator would spend most of the time starving._

A specialized predator could evolve to have the same cycle as the cicadas. Which is the point of the theory for why the cicadas have a prime-number cycle: it decreases the chance that a predator species will happen-upon a cycle that only sometimes aligns with the cicadas.

The cicadas themselves are so numerous that no general predator species will have anything close to a chance to hunt all of them.

<comment><USER4> Also significant is that cicadas, while numerous, aren't very large. Predator body size tends to be roughly proportional to their prey's body size, and larger animals tend to live longer.

The net result is that the cicada cycle is a bit longer than the expected lifespan of a hypothetical predator, making it even harder for such to evolve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was half-expecting the prime-number-shitting bear: <http://alpha61.com/primenumbershittingbear/>

<comment><USER6> Not what I was expecting. But upon reflection, that page is exactly as advertised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was living in Princeton when these little bastards made their appearance in 2004. Just one bug can produce an impressively loud sound - so you can imagine what millions sound like. And there's nothing like walking to work through heaps of bug carcasses.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I hate experiencing nature for one week every 17 years. We should agent- orange the trees they are feeding on, and stop the cycle forever.

Let's also pump a bunch of toxic gas into the atmosphere to block out the sun and stop global warming. What could go wrong!

<comment><USER8> Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what he meant.

Chill out man. People are allowed to think things are fascinating and kind of annoying at the same time.

<comment><USER9> Human behavior, for instance.

<comment><USER6> Yes, the human behavior where humans pretend they aren't one to elevate themselves above others _is_ amusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is interesting, but I'm curious how a paper got written on this in 2001 and accepted. It is the same explanation that Stephen J. Gould wrote a popular essay on many years earlier.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's nothing like cycling every day through a cloud of cicadas for a couple of weeks, as I did in Virginia in 2004. Not only are they noisy before mating, but they make a very loud _thwack_ when hitting a bicycle helmet.

</comment><comment><USER11> And this is comment number 17!

(It would be funny if the discussion stopped here. :-D)

</comment><comment><USER12> _A prime numbered cycle means that the cicada rarely meets a predator (since any predator would have to be synchronized to 17 years, for example) and mass emergence would overwhelm any predator around._

I don't understand. That sentence doesn't explain why it can't be a non-prime number like every 16 years, or every 18 years. It looks like part of the argument is missing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well suppose it's not a prime number then if you have some predator whose cycle is a factor of the cicada cycle then it's going to meet up with the cicada every time.

Suppose you have an 18 year cicada, it has factor of 2, 3, 6, 9 so any predator that peaks every 2, 3, 6 or 9 years can synchronize with the cicada and be around to eat it.

But if the cicada has a prime numbered cycle then it greatly reduces the chance of synchronizing with a predator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The prime numbers have nothing to do with predators. Predators require regular feeding from live prey. A prey species that hides for even one year causes significant starvation in predators that could otherwise come to depend on it. This effect is maximized after only a handful of years of hiding. No lizard or bird could survive on stored fat for more than one or two years.

The prime numbers come from competition between strains of cicadas. First consider that genetic timers are not perfect: most cicadas may emerge after N years, but a fraction will emerge in N-1, N+1, or even farther years due to randomness in genetics and the environment. By blind chance, occasionally an early group will become plentiful, causing a predator population boom that smashes the population of the "correct" year. It's like a badly-made gear that occasionally jumps one tooth forward.

Second consider what such jumping does to strains that are not relatively prime, such as 6 and 12 year cicadas. Eventually the random chance effect will synchronize them so that they emerge in the same year. Because these year skipping cicadas all evolved from the same parent species, they will be closely related. This creates a cross-mating problem if they emerge at the same time, causing matings to either produce no offspring, or to produce hybrids that are synchronized with neither period. There may also be problems with excess damage to the host plants. Therefore evolution favors strains that synchronize as infrequently as possible. That means prime numbers.

IIRC a few years back some scientists created a simulation with plausible numbers for fertility and hybrids, and the result was spontaneous emergence of the prime number periods for the observed strains of cicadas.

Edited for clarity.</comment>


Apache Arrow – Powering Columnar In-Memory Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://arrow.apache.org/ <comment><USER2> Oops... The first sentence in the "Fast" section says "SIMD (Single input multiple data)".

</comment><comment><USER3> Asking the stupid question here, but why create a new Apache project for this?

Apache Arrow seems to be targeting the use of SIMD which is a very JVM/Runtime dependent feature. If the runtime can't detect this out-of-the-box then create recognized method or some sort of intrinsic to coax the runtime to SIMD-ize the operation.

I understand the performance gains of this but why not add this functionality to existing projects like Parquet or HTable etc...

This just comes to mind: [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER4> I don't know the answer, but in this case does columnar store imply that it is a collection of arrays, perhaps for a scientific database, and a bit different than HBase?

Here's someone else's blog post from 2010 on different categories of columnar store DBs:

[http://dbmsmusings.blogspot.com/2010/03/distinguishing- two-m...](http://dbmsmusings.blogspot.com/2010/03/distinguishing-two-major- types-of_29.html)

<comment><USER5> That "someone else" is Daniel Abadi, one of the researchers who re-popularized the idea of column stores during his graduate work at MIT (in addition to researchers at CWI).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this similar to how QlikView's in-memory engine works?

<comment><USER7> Yes, almost all BI cache database engines are typically designed this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It really is a confusing title for the project. It's more of a high speed interchange format e.g. send data to Cassandra from Spark or Storm.

Nothing that end users will ever really have to know anything about.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused, is this just Structure of Arrays as a service for columnar data? It's not clear to me what this actually does.

<comment><USER10> It's not really a service at all, it is a in-memory data format intended to be shareable between processes. The project also includes libraries for C++, Java and Python.

This post explains the intention better than the project webpage:

[http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2016/02/introducing-apache- arr...](http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2016/02/introducing-apache-arrow-a-fast- interoperable-in-memory-columnar-data-structure-standard/)</comment></comment>


College Dropout Factories - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_dropout_factories.php?page=all&print=true

<comment><USER2> Interesting article. At Chicago State, the article certainly spins it such that it appears they deserve to be singled out.

However, a University's dropout rate is not a determining factor of its quality. Some schools are just purely harder than others. In fact, I would argue that schools should be failing students if they are not qualified to perform the jobs which the degrees say they do. If schools end up passing more students just to avoid being on the "dropout" list, we'll be seeing a lot more bridges being "engineered" that collapse during use.

For insight from a professor at CMU on why he wants to fail more students, see: <http://vonahn.blogspot.com/2009/03/failing-students.html>

Yes I took his class. Yes it kicked my ass. Yes it was hella fun.</comment>


Ask HN: Which Is the Best Laptop? - <AUTHOR> Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
Lenovo Legion 5
Acer Swift 3
Dell G5 15
Please help me choose one.
Edit: I will be using the laptop for coding, video editing, casual gaming and streaming. My budget is under $1000. <comment><USER2> Use case and what you value is what really matters here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be using it for coding, video editing, casual gaming and streaming. My budget is under $1000.

<comment><USER3> And an external video card in an enclosure isn't an option? Even a cheap PC video card will out-perform these laptops discrete ones.

But it matters before purchase because the laptops needs the correct IO to hook up to an external enclosure (Thunderbolt 3).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You probably don't want my opinion. I'm cheap.

I have a 13 year old Inspiron (swapped HDD for SSD) and it works for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like you're already considering Ryzen 4000 series laptops already. Stick with one of those and add a GPU to it, especially for the video editing part. I don't know exactly which one that is, but check out r/AMDLaptops for suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER6> If it were for me I would go for the G14. The Ryzen 4900H is very powerful and the laptop is pretty light weight (compared to other gaming laptops).</comment>


Segment Security Incident - <AUTHOR> https://segment.com/security/bulletins/incident090519/ <comment><USER2> > For a small subset of customers (13), the unauthorized party was able to > gain read-only access to their workspaces and click around in their accounts > for up to a few minutes. These customers have been notified.

That implies that Segment employees, or a subset, have unfettered access to view their customers' accounts? That it didn't require positive customer assent to gain access?

I like Box's model for this: [https://community.box.com/t5/Working-with-Box- Support/Box-Pr...](https://community.box.com/t5/Working-with-Box-Support/Box- Product-Support/ta-p/20124#grantaccess)

<comment><USER3> Only 13 customers affected? I guess I won the haveIbeenpwnd lottery today.

Here is the email I got:

" We are writing to notify you of a security incident that happened between August 26 and August 31, 2019. We became aware of it on August 31, resolved it immediately, and have been assessing the scope of impact since then. Based on that ongoing assessment, we have concluded that the incident involved your workspace. We are very sorry for any issues this may cause.

What happened? Between August 26 and August 31, 2019, an unauthorized party compromised a Segment employee's account and used it to gain unauthorized access to Segment product usage data. Upon detection, we took immediate action, disabling and deleting the account and removing unauthorized access. We also reported the incident to law enforcement.

What information was involved? The unauthorized party accessed information about how Segment users interact with the Segment product, as well as first name, last name, email address, and IP address for your Segment users, and the Segment write keys for your workspace. No Segment customer passwords were compromised.

No personally identifiable information relating to your own customers was accessed. As a result, no action is required from you at this time.

More information For more information, please visit oursecurity bulletin page. This page contains a detailed timeline about what happened and information about what actions Segment has taken in response. It will be updated with any new developments.

If you have any further questions, please reach out to firstname.lastname@example.com. We again apologize for any inconveniences this incident may cause.

Sincerely, Coleen Coolidge Chief Information Security Officer"

<comment><USER4> That message doesn't say the attacker got access to your workspace or clicked around in it.

<comment><USER3> From above:

"Based on that ongoing assessment, we have concluded that the incident involved your workspace."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In all the SaaS type applications I've ever developed, the privileged "Admin Panel" functionality is always on a private network accessible only via VPN access, which is authenticated via a password + private key. Then the Admin Panel itself has its own separate login, which is username + password.

Ideally the private key for the VPN is a hardware token, but I will admit in most cases it's simply a file on the drive.

The Admin Panel has zero third party JavaScript nor client-side analytics.

I'm not sure this buys quite as much security as it might appear, because there's probably any number of ways to piggyback on a valid session.

For example, there was a bug bounty Tesla paid out when a researcher was able to establish XSS by mangling their car name, which was read via the API and showed up in an internal dashboard as unescaped HTML.

So I think the biggest attack surface for Admin Panels remains a hostile client seeding XSS into unescaped fields, and CSP helps a great deal with this, but at the very least I don't see any reason why these panels should be on a public URL.

You can say, well, they should have MFA on the panel, but I can't shake the feeling that these simple measures avoid a huge number of attackers looking for low-hanging fruit.

It's like putting SSH on a non-standard port. It's theoretically meaningless but practically it's a huge improvement, if only because it helps attack signals stand out against the script kiddie noise.

<comment><USER6> Could you elaborate about the architecture? I'm really interested in learning this.

At which level the interface between admin panel and apps is? Is it a dedicated app for the admin panel and just a front end to an AD or database? Like there is no real admin panel on the app itself.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the user/client facing app is a separate website from the admin panel site.

They share much of the same underlying data access and business logic code, but the screens that let you see all the clients, change SKUs, monitor billing, impersonate a user, generate reports, etc. just would not exist on the public-facing site.

Underneath both sites/apps are talking to the same database(s).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Between this and CircleCI, this sounds like a targeted credential-stuffing attack against accounts on Segment. If this is the case, it sounds like the only two cases that have been detected are Segment (detected on August 31st through unknown means), and CircleCI (detected on August 31st through an automated email).

Has the risk of of other Segment accounts having been compromised through the same channel (but have yet to be detected) been investigated?

<comment><USER8> Was it Segment that CircleCI was referring to? [https://support.circleci.com/hc/en- us/articles/360034852194-...](https://support.circleci.com/hc/en- us/articles/360034852194-Security-Incident-on-8-31-2019-Details-and-FAQs-)

I hope not, since there's a 5 day gap between CircleCI being notified and the rest of their customers.

<comment><USER7> Based on the wording, it's my belief that CircleCI was referring to Segment, but I have 0 inside information to confirm this.

Even if it was though, Circle discovered this issue on their own through an automated notification of an action taken; they do not seem to have been notified directly by Segment. It doesn't seem fair to assume that _if_ Circle is referring to Segment, that either company did anything wrong in their response here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Removed privileged access controls internally, adding accounts on an as- > needed basis

I believe this is critical. Access controls really should be set as needed, per user, and fine grain. While it can be time consuming and may not even make sense at the beginning of a project, doing everything this way from the start should help to keep an organization better secured in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Enforced mandatory Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all employees when accessing Segment-owned workspaces and performing administrative actions in the Segment app."

This should always be step #1, don't wait for an incident.

<comment><USER11> Really, what step #1 should be is getting all these applications behind an SSO/IDP, and then using the policy controls in the IDP to enforce MFA for users.

We've surveyed startup dir/security's (and the like) and this is almost universally in everyone's top 3, and the leading contender for #1.

<comment><USER10> Definitely better, I 100% agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is a bit strange, they mention that write keys have been accessed, but they don't seem to have invalidated them, or even recommend to update them?

      Information about how Segment customers interact with different aspects of our product,
      *including customer write keys for Segment*, integration names, workspace names,
      and how customers interact with our user interface.

<comment><USER13> They address this in the post: write keys are considered public (after all, they appear in JS code on customers' sites).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm just awaiting the conspiracy theories including both CircleCI and Segment

<comment><USER15> CircleCI claims their leak happened through a "third-party analytics vendor". Perhaps that third party was Segment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > we took immediate action, disabling and deleting the account that was > compromised

Since this was a privileged account, how can they be sure the attacker didn't use said account to setup more ways to get back in? That's the first thing Kevin Mitnick always did when he pwned a box: setup alternative routes to get in, in case his original door got closed.

<comment><USER17> There is a saying from pentesters about shells: "Two is one and one is none"

<comment><USER18> Always hack with a safety shell!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > This data is used by our product, marketing, and customer success teams

It always seems to be the marketing analytics data that's wide open for 'hackers'.

You could spend all day building a secure DB and application architecture then have the marketing team upload analytics for everything onto some random insecure service.

Maybe the marketing/data teams need to get some security lessons as part of their training the way programmers learn?

<comment><USER20> Segment actually does a pretty fantastic job onboarding new personnel and funneling them through security training. Recently gave a great talk here at the Bay Area OWASP meetup about how they've gamified security awareness training with an internal leaderboard and random CTF challenges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why I'm against third-party analytics in any app/service. Someone compromising the analytics provider can get a lot of data from app end-users even across different apps that use the same analytics service.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is why you NEVER expose elevated access to the open internet.

Why all the down votes... this is a legitimate security issue.

<comment><USER23> It's not rooted in reality and a gross oversimplification of the problem. GSuite is exposed to the open internet. Dropbox is exposed to the open internet. All of these services have permission models with "elevated access".

1) Your idea has been shown not to work (it's called perimeter security) 2) With the huge shift to cloud services you need a new solution anyways

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks like the whole site is down. Anyone save a copy?

<comment><USER25> Night it be that you employ some ad blocking on network level?

At least my adblocker (browser) did not like what it saw and blocked the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seeing way too many "incidents" these days ....

I would like at least one company to post an "incident" reveal in a more honest way:

" Due to our carelessness and relatively insecure practices, we had improperly disclosed user accounts to a moderately savvy hacker. We realize this is our fault.

If you'd like to help and given that we have your attention now, it would be valuable if you can help pentest our servers: the attacker used a simple SQL attack based on an unpatched server via CVE-3245. Are we missing anything else? Please let us know.

Thank you."

<comment><USER16> Yeah except in this case an employee account was likely compromised by spearphishing/social engineering/(or worst case keylogger). That can be _very_ hard to defend against.

Good security is _not_ easy, and _not always_ due to "carelessness".

It's an expensive, onerous, never ending, and _ever evolving_ process to get right. Most, if not all, companies do the bare minimum security they believe is necessary; anything beyond that is a waste of money and computing resources (if you believe otherwise, I have some retina scanners to sell you...)

<comment><USER27> > Most, if not all, companies do the bare minimum security they believe is > necessary; anything beyond that is a waste of money and computing resources

This why we continue to have incidents and vulnerabilities which could have been prevented, or better mitigated. Most often these companies do not even know how to make a correct assessment of their risk. They move forward with this idea that it's a waste of money and resources, yet waste everyone's time with clean-up, or just go out of business as a result. Even with minimal security training and limited curiosity, this incident could have been avoided.

<comment><USER28> Customers don't want to pay for it. You can easily run yourself out of business building a more secure system. We need to get people and customers to care first to make the economics work.

<comment><USER27> Plenty of these measures are just basic professionalism. Some are relatively inexpensive (enabling MFA everywhere by default given the number of MFA options.)

Other changes are mildly annoying to developers, ops, and support (e.g. re- requesting production access.) Since developers hold sway in most organizations, convenience often trumps security. None of these measures put anyone out of business.

If I had to attack something I'd go for the limited resources to help smaller organizations scale security appropriately. There are tons of resources for large dev teams, infosec specialists, etc., but there is very little that targets small organizations effectively.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rework sales: Paper ain't dead yet - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2981-rework-sales-paper-aint-dead-yet?56#comments <comment><USER2> I suspect that "Rework" suffers from the same fate that many hot business books suffer from: a lot of people buy it more to display it on their shelves than to actually read it. They imagine they gain some degree of intellectual credibility every time someone walks into their offices and sees it on the desk, or above the computer in a stack of brightly colored and catchily titled books by Kawasaki, Godin, Gladwell, et al.

I've actually read "Rework," and I quite enjoyed it. So I am not speaking ill of its content or its value whatsoever. But we should be honest -- and, sadly, uncharitable -- about what percentage of books sold we believe are actually being read. Especially in this genre. Remember: an eBook can't sit on a shelf in an office somewhere, impressing someone's boss.

On the flip-side, there are some actionable and interesting marketing implications presented by this case and others like it. That is to say: your eBook buyers are (probably) more likely to be your actual readers. Perhaps it's time publishers started segmenting their audiences accordingly, and focusing efforts accordingly.

<comment><AUTHOR> or Remember: it's easier to share a Hardcover book when an ebook has restriction.

<comment><USER3> This. Business books like Rework are about sharing ideas from the authors. People who read it want to share it with other people they know, too, which is why a paper version is great - it's continuously share-able.

<comment><USER2> I agree that ebooks should be sharable, and that sharability lends a nice advantage to paper. At the same time, I'm not necessarily convinced that sharability is a decisive factor in most people's decisions to buy paper over ebooks. Who knows; it might well be. Just seems like a bit of a stretch to suggest that most people are still choosing paper because they want to share it. (Whereas I have seen countless hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people who buy paper books to hoard or display, presumably unread).

My inner optimist would like to agree with you, but my inner cynic has a less charitable view of most buyers in this genre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Buying and owning a physical book or kind-of-renting a DRM-laden, platform- bound ebook that can disappear from my possession of become unusable at any moment and I can't lend, give away or resell after I've read it.

Paper ain't dead because there's no serious alternative.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its high paper sales are probably due to the fact the paper version of the book is so well put together. Quality</comment>


Dame Fortune - <AUTHOR> http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/luck/dame-fortune <comment><USER2> Larry Niven tossed out the idea of "selected lucky" humans, because somewhen in the future you'd have to win a state lottery to reproduce (because of indefinite life extension and whatnot.)

<comment><USER3> Probably AI will simulate the mind of every possible living creature so that every possible form of life will exist simultaneously.

It will probably start simulating organisms that have the simplest DNA first (since there are fewer possible permutations to simulate) and it will work its way up to long and complex DNA strands (including all possible permutations of human DNA), then will will simulate DNA of more advanced creatures which we can't even imagine... That essentially sounds like evolution.

Maybe our universe is already a simulation (maybe which is itself inside another simulation)... Like in the movie "The Matrix" except with infinite recursion.

<comment><USER4> Try the film the 13th floor.

<comment><USER5> Or try World on a Wire (Welt am Draht) ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Domize: Visualize your domains - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/domize-visualize-your-domains <comment><USER2> We use the original: <http://instantdomainsearch.com></comment>


Why Microsoft? Microsoft vs. Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.whymicrosoft.com/Pages/linux.aspx

<comment><USER2> They ask a lot of questions they don't answer, and from my experience with both Windows and Linux, Linux can answer most of those questions far better than Windows. This is a joke.

edit: example: "Will patching and security lead to downtime?" There's ksplice and kgraft and more - patch the kernel with no downtime. And even without using either, I can't remember the last time I had to reboot immediately because a patch was that critical, or the last time I had to sit there waiting for my laptop to reboot 3 times trying to install the weekly updates. Windows Update blows.

edit: another example: "Proven security development lifecycle". Ha ha ha ha ha!

<comment><USER3> Updating application software on Windows can be a pain as well since replacing the running binary must be done by the binary itself (otherwise it seems the file is locked). Which means that unless an application is specifically written to support it, upgrading in-place isn't an option (AFAIK).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh, look, FUD.

>Microsoft: Proven security development lifecycle

>Linux: Security threats?

You owe me a new keyboard. This one is full of coffee.

Also got to love the whole "Linux doesn't do AD" BS. If you still live in 2005, perhaps not, but that's about it. You could also argue that AD is a misfeature, given the almost hilarious insecurity of NTLM password hashes, etc.

<comment><USER5> Technically they are right. Linux is only a kernel. You need other software to run AD, so they are covered legally! ;-)

<comment><USER4> Ah, the FSF argument. I guess saying GNU/Linux was too wordy for Microsoft anyway, with their whole Metro concept being "having information density and options is bad".

<comment><USER6> OK, where do you have your GNU X11 server? Or GNU SMB implementation? No, Samba _does not_ come from under GNU umbrella.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In 2014, 97% of top supercomputers are Linux based.

[http://readwrite.com/2014/07/01/linux-world-domination- compl...](http://readwrite.com/2014/07/01/linux-world-domination-complete-why- its-foolish-to-bet-against-open-source- communities?utm_source=fast_coexist&utm_medium=pubexchange)

<comment><USER8> How many super computers are running in your IT infrastructure ?

<comment><USER9> I can't speak for most, but there's 3 in my infrastructure.

And many private businesses have large clusters with job scheduling very similar to HPC. HFT Finance firms come to mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _However, sometimes your solution is focused solely on server-side operating systems, and that 's where Linux falls short._

I laughed hard. Also what is with all the question marks on the right side of the table? It's almost like they are not confident with their statements about Linux.

<comment><USER11> They seem to only have one real point, that microsoft products work best with microsoft products. The rest of it is just building up a sense of vague uncertainty. I would have thought Microsoft could make better arguments than that.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft is a shadow of its former self now it's focused on selling locked down phones and web services instead of any actual software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's getting embarrassing. Are the marketing folks at MS completely clueless or maybe I'm the clueless one?

First it was the "Don't get scroogled" campaign, now this.

Oh, and the iPhone funeral fiasco too.

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates- wind...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-windows- phone-7-rtm-with-funeral-parade-for/)

They desperately need a Chief StayClassy Officer.

<comment><USER4> I thought the funeral one was interesting, as the iphone had lost the top spot around then IIRC - just to Android and not windows mobile, so the whole stunt was really just saying congratulations to google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the essential argument I'm geting here is this

You should use Microsoft server solutions because 1\. Microsoft servers work well managing linux solutions 2\. Linux systems can't handle microsoft solutions themselves 3\. We are uncertain what Linux is capable of/how secure it is 4\. Therefore, you should go Microsoft (QED)

Ignoring how blatantly misleading these points might be given that linux is quite mature and we now live in a work of system virtualization (Wine anyone?), the argument here only serves to convince me that I should be using linux solutions instead of Microsoft solutions in my company. If a given solution works for linux (which, despite calling out Active Directory, they don't seem to have ruled out as a possibility) and can also be managed through Azure, then Why on earth would I create an inflexible system that can only be managed through Microsoft branded tech? Am I supposed to be convinced by their skepticism on linux? I'm perfectly capable of researching linux server solutions myself. Am I supposed to be amazed at the flexibiliy of Microsoft servers while simultaneously scared away from the flexibility of using linux solutions? Outside of server use, this doesn't seem like a good argument to use Microsoft solutions at all.

</comment><comment><USER14> "However, sometimes your solution is focused solely on server-side operating systems, and that's where Linux falls short."

wha?

</comment><comment><USER15> Same old same old FUD campaigns. Perhaps Microsoft will never get a clue, but it doesn't matter to me because I'm not using any of their software.

Also, you can't claim that your systems are secure and then not have the code publicly auditable. That's preposterous.

<comment><USER2> You also can't claim your code is developed with a "proven secure" process when you have to convince a court to let you hijack someone else's infrastructure to hack around the horrible security mess of your own products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fair enough, if you need AD, .NET, SQL Server etc. then choose Windows server. For everything else, Linux wins.

<comment><USER8> Would you like to elaborate by answering the questions posed there ? Concisely or verbosely.

Linux Wins. Windows Sux is not the cookie-cutter answer I would expect on HN.

<comment><USER2> No I think I understand his point pretty well. The article's strongest arguments are interoperability with other Microsoft products. THAT's a weak argument. He's kind of parodying them. Even they tout Linux support as one of THEIR features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, like others here I don't trust javascript, so I run HTTP switchboard. I got the following message:

"you may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page."

"a secured browser on the server"

where "secured browser" == one that has JS disabled (?)

"on the server": what is "something you shouldn't do on a server"

<comment><USER4> It's microsoft. They probably think their customers shouldn't know what a server is lest they cut into MS' license to print mone-...I mean, 'cloud' business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Microsoft seems to be touting their support for various Linux distributions on their server products. I can't help but be reminded of the massive miscalculation IBM made in OS/2 development: they went to great lengths to make sure it supported Windows applications, which simply encouraged developers to write interoperable Windows code rather than OS/2-specific code, despite the technical advantages of OS/2.

</comment><comment><USER19> The answer should have been Active Directory.

Everything else in that page is a lie.

\- The cloud as we know it is built on Linux.

\- Web development has moved to Linux. Rails, Django, Laravel, Nodejs, all run better on Linux.

\- Git works better in Linux, both as a server and as a client.

\- The security issues are more severe in Windows.

And yes, MS AD is a killer feature.

</comment><comment><USER20> The page doesn't load for me. My recursive resolver (unbound) just gives SERVFAIL.

I did a bit of digging, and apparently you need to follow a ridiculously long CNAME chain just to resolve the domain:

        www.whymicrosoft.com.                                   CNAME   whymicrosoft.sharepoint.com.
        whymicrosoft.sharepoint.com.                            CNAME   prodnet17-37a0001.sharepointonline.com.akadns.net.
        prodnet17-37a0001.sharepointonline.com.akadns.net.      CNAME   prodnet17-37ipv4a0001.sharepointonline.com.akadns.net.
        prodnet17-37ipv4a0001.sharepointonline.com.akadns.net.  A       184.108.40.206

For me, that's a typical example of why I avoid Microsoft stuff. They promise the world, but never seem to get the details right.

</comment><comment><USER21> Despite the page, I will mention this: corporate vendor support is sufficient for teams that don't have the technical expertise to either roll out a new technology or troubleshoot problems on their own. This is partly why Red Hat Enterprise Linux is so popular, among other reasons. When there is a technical, competent, and strong administration team in house, most of those concerns go away. When there isn't, licenses for commercial support make sense.

</comment><comment><USER22> FUD rising to a new level:

Persistent threats and dedicated attackers can slow your projects and put your IT environment at risk with Linux projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ultimately, I wonder what development environment people prefer? For me, POSIX APIs and GNU/Linux extensions are far simpler to work with to do what I need and get the performance I want. Windows development just seems very heavy, and the APIs, while comprehensive, are incomprehensible.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Throwing around the "cloud" buzzword, in spite of recent development on cgroups, CoreOS/etcd, Project Atomic and yes, even systemd, was funny enough. The paragraph on "security threats" was by far the most hilarious though, because you could tell they really had nothing worthwhile to say, but had to include it for the FUD value.

</comment><comment><USER23> Then why doesn't the market leading companies use M$? Because it's not worth it.

<comment><USER24> Some do, some don't. Unless you have a very specific market in mind, then perhaps you're right.

In general, however, your statement is on the same level of correctness as Microsoft's advertisement linked here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Laugh of the day</comment>


Can Silicon Valley Really Do Anything to Stop Police Violence? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/magazine/can-silicon-valley-really-do-anything-to-stop-police-violence.html <comment><USER2> After reading the article..

It is naive to think a cop will polity call you during a traffic stop. For example, they won't even knock before throwing a grenade into your house: [https://news.vice.com/article/toddler-maimed-by-swat- flash-g...](https://news.vice.com/article/toddler-maimed-by-swat-flash- grenade-sparks-georgia-bills-on-no-knock-warrants)

</comment><comment><USER2> Without funding from government and the compliance of police unions.. nothing.

What we need is a centralized open-source database of police videos and the laws that force police to use them.

Police need outside oversight.</comment>


President to Outline His Vision for NASA - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/science/space/14nasa.html?ref=space <comment><USER2> Isn't carriage to low orbit about to be provided commercially? [http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/virgin-galactic- unve...](http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/virgin-galactic-unveils- spaceshiptwo-the-worlds-first-commercial-manned-spaceship/)

Seems like a better plan when the private sector is beginning to put men into space to develop the next generation of technologies.

<comment><USER3> Is SS2 orbital? I thought it was just "up and down" like SS1. Virgin Galactic's site seems to confirm that <http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/spaceships/></comment></comment>


Uber hauls GitHub into court to find who hacked database of 50,000 drivers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/28/uber_subpoenas_github_for_hacker_details/#1

<comment><USER2> Uber publishes secret key.

Uber ignores security breach for half a year.

Uber sues third party while trying to repair damage caused by their own failings.

At this point the identity of the hacker is irrelevant. The data is in the wild, Uber is exposed as incompetent (again). But hey, anyone want to invest another billion at a 40 billion valuation? This company is going places.

<comment><USER3> _At this point the identity of the hacker is irrelevant_

No. Even if I leave my door unlocked, someone who comes in and steals my stereo should still be punished.

<comment><USER4> This is different than someone stealing a stereo. This is you tape the security code for your front door onto the door and then your mad at the manufacturer of the door's lock. You want the manufacturer to give any information about the person who broke into your house.

<comment><USER5> The manufacturer digitally stores the fingerprints of anyone who uses the lock. You want the manufacturer to give you a copy of the fingerprints to help you identify the person who broke into your house.

> ...and then your [sic] mad at the manufacturer of the door's lock.

There is no evidence that Uber is mad at Github.

<comment><USER2> No,Uber is fishing for data they don't need. They have an IP address of the intruder. Instead of demanding all the access logs for a months long period, why not compel Github to answer the question "Did this IP address access the Gist in question? If so, what are the timestamps?"

Instead Uber wants all github's access log data for the gist in question which sounds like more incompetence and desperation on Uber's part.

<comment><USER6> incompetence, desperation, and a great way to shift some blame onto GitHub, in the eyes of people who know absolutely nothing about how this stuff works.

which could be the audience they're most concerned about.

<comment><USER7> Are any of the people who know absolutely nothing about how this stuff works following the story on the register? Would anybody even know if the register hadn't decided to make a story out of it? Doesn't seem like a particularly effective blame shifting strategy to me.

<comment><USER6> it's also on VentureBeat, Slashdot, and a bunch of other places. google "GitHub Uber subpoena." it'll probably show up on TechCrunch and Valleywag by the end of the day.

<comment><USER6> also, and although I doubt you'll ever see this, I would bet almost anything that my statement was 100% accurate as long as you assume the audience this move was intended for is an _internal_ audience at Uber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Protip: It's not illegal to throw out IP address data, as there are no mandatory retention laws in the United States. Then if you get a John Doe subpoena, you have no useful information to supply.

[https://www.eff.org/issues/mandatory-data- retention/us](https://www.eff.org/issues/mandatory-data-retention/us)

Neocities currently scrambles stored IP addresses with scrypt, and (soon) after 30 days, we intend to delete those IP hashes. It's legal. Consider doing it.

Here's the code we used to do it: [https://github.com/neocities/neocities/commit/4983a9b24eac00...](https://github.com/neocities/neocities/commit/4983a9b24eac00b8d8bfd300a18cdcee0152a271)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nitpick: the title implies that Uber is suing Github, but that's not the case. Uber has a civil suit pending in N.D. Cal., and has issued Uber a third-party subpoena: [http://regmedia.co.uk/2015/02/28/ubergithubexhibit.pdf](http://regmedia.co.uk/2015/02/28/ubergithubexhibit.pdf). Such subpoenas are used when a third party might have information relevant to a pending lawsuit. They do not imply any allegations of wrongdoing against the third party.

<comment><USER10> As a general rule headlines from 'The Register' should probably not be copied directly regardless of the rules on this website.

Actual headline: "FORK ME! Uber hauls GitHub into court to find who hacked database of 50,000 drivers"

<comment><USER11> There's actually an exception in the site rules[0] for the sorts of titles which are common on the Reg:

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or > linkbait.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _In keeping with its image as a gas tank of ethics running on empty (...)_

This is the best one-sentence summary of Uber I've ever seen.

<comment><USER13> Peter Sagal on NPR's "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" had a good one liner something along the lines of Uber heard Google's "Don't be evil" motto and thought "They are leaving an open market niche for us!".

<comment><USER12> Haha, that's excellent as well! I think I'll just note both of them in my quotes file.

BTW. After watching all episodes of John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" I'm looking for interesting shows. Is that podcast worth listening to? Anything else you'd recommend?

<comment><USER14> Not the OP, but I pretty regularly listen to Wait Wait, it's always pretty humorous and sadly it keeps me up on current events. I also listen to Marc Maron's WTF podcast and Star Talk Radio with Neil Degrasse Tyson. Different strokes for different folks though.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for recommendations, I'll check them out! :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So let me get this straight - They're publishing a secret key on a Gist, and then getting whiny when it _somehow_ gets leaked.

Github _very_ clearly states that "secret" gists are NOT private: [https://help.github.com/articles/about- gists/](https://help.github.com/articles/about-gists/)

<comment><USER16> > getting whiny

Actually, they're subpoenaing. This is necessary to identify who may have accessed it; i don't think this is a suit over the privacy of gists.

<comment><USER17> > This is necessary to identify who may have accessed it

Actually, it's not. If Github's TOS (and their legal argument in response to the subpoena) is strong enough, Uber can go fly a kite.

<comment><USER16> Fair—but they won't have the opportunity without the subpoena. Point is, the subpoena means nothing bad about github itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Asking for every IP address that accessed a public gist seems like a bit of an overreach to me. Github should also have the responsibility to protect its lawful users' data.

It seems reasonable though to request some user data for a specific IP address that Uber suspects as being the invader (depending on how strong the evidence is).

</comment><comment><USER19> When these types of things happen, I notice a strong "blame the victim" mentality. When Sony was hacked, I saw similar comments about how it serves them right for having bad security. Some people even go as far as to praise the hacker and think they shouldn't be held accountable for their crime. After all, if Uber didn't want this, they wouldn't have made themselves so vulnerable to penetration.

While I agree companies like Uber and Sony need to invest more time and energy into security, real people are hurt when these types of things happen. It isn't the executive-level "fat cats" who are hurt the most. It is normal, everyday people. They did not ask for their personal information to be stolen. Their only crime was working for a company with poor information security.

Furthermore, the fact Uber issued a subpoena for information from Github does not make Uber the bad guy for requesting the information and Github the good guy for withholding the information. A crime was committed and this is part of the investigation. The information requested by Uber is not unreasonable. They are basically requesting log files for that specific Gist.

Channeling my inner Matthew McConaughey from A Time to Kill, imagine this happening to an organization that is more likeable than Uber or Sony (shouldn't be that hard). What if this happened to an organization responsible for helping rape victims and this person leaked the private information of rape victims to the Internet? Would people be so willing to support the criminal? Would people be so eager to praise Github for not cooperating?

Just because Uber is a horrible, unethical company does not mean it isn't protected under the law. We shouldn't condone crime just because we don't like the victims.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would there be any consequence for Github themselves if they no longer had this data (for example in the hypothetical case that they only store access logs for 30 days)?

<comment><USER21> No. You can't provide what you don't have, and you are not obliged to save more than you are obliged by law. I'm not aware that Github has to save anything in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Didn't some court rule that IP addresses are not people? So they get these IPs and sue them just like the MPAA/RIAA failed to do? I guess maybe some have usernames...?

Also super shady they don't bother to explain why it took them almost 5 months after they discovered it to notify anyone.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does Github have any obligation to share this data with Uber?

<comment><USER24> A judge will determine that. Generally you do have to cough up information for criminal activity, but a judge determines what and if.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You guys really need to learn to use [https://defuse.ca/b/](https://defuse.ca/b/)

Even better, use makepaste.sh

Using "secret" gists is just reckless, really.</comment>


How to Acquihire - With Template Legal Docs - <AUTHOR> http://refer.ly/how-to-acquihire-in-the-series-a-crunch/c/7c11a392806911e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

<comment><USER2> Say, what is refer.ly's position on the FTC's required disclosure of affiliate relationships? It looks like they want disclosure on every article.

[http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised- endorse...](http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus71-ftcs-revised-endorsement- guideswhat-people-are-asking)

</comment><comment><USER3> I <3 Danielle, this is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER4> So it was a sub-$100k acquihire?

<comment><USER5> Hey Ned - this is Andy Sparks. Yes, the deal was <$100k, but I can say with complete honestly that both sides of the table made out well and are both satisfied. Also, I checked out Tweaky, looks pretty cool.

<comment><USER4> Hey Andy,

I'm pumped for you to get the exit. Sounds like a great outcome for you personally and for the Refer.ly team.</comment></comment></comment>


'Game of Thrones' Season 5, Episode 8 Review: "Hardhome" - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/05/31/game-of-thrones-season-5-episode-8-review-hardhome/?tid=pm_pop_b

<comment><USER2> Probably one of the worst reviews of the episode i've read so far. Other than the first two paragraphs, it's not really even a review. Rather just a restating of the events in the show. The author may add in small, _obvious_ commentary, but she's mostly just reciting quotes and retelling the story.

Even when she does share her actual opinion it's really disengaging:

>> I appreciate the new information that [Spoiler Redacted], I suppose.

At this point I'm already detached as a reader, and really don't care for the author's opinion. Most book readers are chomping at the bit for new material, and shrugging your shoulders when it finally happens just tells me that the author isn't the type to ever be satisfied.

Maybe someone can clue me in, but why is this on HN?</comment>


Art project: Train rats to trade markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.artmarcovici.com/rat-traders <comment><USER2> The obvious next step is to try the same with voles, shrews, etc., and start a hedge fund that is actually located in a hedge.

<comment><USER3> ^ this :)

<comment><USER4> By the way, there's a little "up" triangle next to each post which means "this" ;).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dude has had an interesting life. Bio from his webpage:

 _Michaels career, not only as an artist, is a rather unusual one: born in 1969 in Vienna, he got interested in technology, especially electronics and mathematics, already when 7 years old. At the age of 12 he worked as a programmer. He quit school at 17 and started his first own business in the financial field, publishing analysis on the financial markets and managing funds, until he sold his business at the age of 23. The following 3 years he spent climbing and hiking in Africa, USA, Asia, and all over Europe. From 1995 on he was the publisher of werk-zeug, a technology and art magazine, as well as streetfashion, a magazine featuring fashionable people on the streets all over the world. He was also active in the field of software development, is the originator of many inventions, and holds international patents ranging from climbing equipment and bicycle gears to trading systems and electronic payment systems. Already in 2001, Michael decided to sell his companies to start his career in arts and works as he calls it. In the very same year though, he started a side business on eBay that eventually became the world 's largest powerselling enterprise on eBay, a company with 80 employees and a turnover of 30 million euros a year. In early 2005, the company went bankrupt, and Michael lost all his money in the process. Never shying away from new challenges, he decided to write a book about the company and its end: English and German versions of "The end of EBay" are available through Amazon here. Qentis' bankruptcy also had its good sides: finally, Michael could concentrate on his art and private studies. Michael's works are the result of a rich live and a long history of ideas. The artist about his work: "there is no way to (mate)realize all the plans and projects I have on my mind in one lifetime- I can only pick the best and feasible". His work touches a broad variety of fields such as technology, politics, science, social topics, and style._

</comment><comment><USER6> Cute project, but since it isn't actually hooked up to live trading, I'm going to suspect that they're not actually dealing with the issues which would keep them from making a profit on those trades: trading fees, losses going into the bid-ask spread, the fact that large enough purchases actually move the market, and the fact that the crash which wipes you out can come along on years later just when the victories of the past few years made you think you had everything figured out.

Simulated trading is all well and good for the long-term buy-and-hold sort of trading where you can assume you're a medium-small-sized fish in a huge pond and these errors are inconsequential, but with ultra-short-term trading like this the texture of the market matters a lot more.

That said, if you're a day trader of some sort trying to compete with the task the rat has been assigned to do, there's a very much elevated chance that you're in the wrong business.

</comment><comment><USER7> I seem to recall that the most likely predictor of whether the next tick in a liquid market will be up or down, is whether the last tick was up or down.

In other words, if the last tick was upwards, there is a >50% chance that the next tick will be upwards too.

A quick'n'dirty Google search turned up some research: [http://www.researchgate.net/publication/234834258_Random_Wal...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/234834258_Random_Walk_or_a_Run_Market_Microstructure_Analysis_of_the_Foreign_Exchange_Rate_Movements_Based_on_Conditional_Probability)

Looking at the ticker tracks the artist has used, I wouldn't be surprised if the rats are effectively being trained to Buy when they hear high-pitched notes, and Sell when they hear low-pitched ones.

<comment><USER8> It's actually the other way around. For most stocks, if the last tick was upwards, the next tick is more likely to be downwards (where a "tick" is any time the best bid or ask moves, and "price movement" means the change in the mid price).

For example, taking a random stock over a random three month time period, I compute that after an uptick, the probabilities for the next tick are -

      P(uptick)    = 39.3%
      P(downtick)  = 56.3%
      P(no change) =  4.4%

where "no change" typically happens when the best bid and ask change by the same magnitude, but in opposite directions.

Of course, this is not very useful for trading, because it doesn't give you enough of an edge to overcome the bid-ask spread.

<comment><USER7> Okay, here's the breakdown of the five sample ticker tracks provided by the artist.

                                                        NR231   NR287   NR320   NR440   NR442   Totals
      Uptick followed by an uptick (UU)                    6       5       9      14       5      39
      Uptick folowed by a downtick (UD)                    2       4       3       3       4      16
      Uptick followed by no significant change (UN)        1       0       0       2       0       3
      No significant change followed by an uptick (NU)     1       1       0       2       1       5
      No significant change followed by a downtick (ND)    2       1       0       0       1       4
      Downtick followed by no significant change (DN)      2       2       0       1       2       7
      Downtick followed by an uptick (DU)                  1       4       3       0       4      12
      Downtick followed by a downtick (DD)                 8       6       8       1       6      29

There were 58 upticks in total, 39 (67.24%) of which were followed by another uptick.

There were 48 downticks in total, 29 (60.42%) of which were followed by another downtick.

<comment><USER8> There were around 480,000 ticks in my sample - who do you believe? ;)

The difference is probably in what is defined as a "tick" for the purposes of computing the stats. If you are using traded prices as opposed to quotes, for example, you will get very different results. If you sample at regular intervals (e.g. 1s) you will get different results again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of people didn't get the idea that this is an art project, not an in- earnest investment strategy.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, this isn't real, is it?

It's an art project, not a science experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Was the training and price input necessary at all?

Doesn't random generator outperform some hedgefunds?

<comment><USER12> One of the rats achieved a 53.5% success rate (the author did not specify whether this was over the entire 800 data points or only the last 100).

When tested on 800 data points, a purely random strategy would have a > 53.5% success rate about 2% of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Finally. We can replace the Wall Street folks at 1 / 1.000.000 the price of today. This will be a significant boost to the economy.

<comment><USER14> LOL, you under estimate the cost of the cheese... and the dropping removal service... but yes, for the most part, I think you are right!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Imagine the savings on cocaine alone!

<comment><USER9> Someone said hedge fund managers don't run on coke and models any more. But hey, now it's coke the beverage, and mathematical models...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am no AI expert, but couldn't a modern AI be trained more or less in the same way?

<comment><USER17> "AI" is not a single thing. There are some projects that you train to respond to signals, sure. Some of them are already in use in HFT. Modern trading tends to use a lot more inputs than just the historic price though - you also look at wire services, twitter, etc. So I wouldn't expect this to be competitive without having access to more data.

<comment><USER18> Wasn't the point that the rats only reacted the the live feed, and didn't have any ancillary data? That ticker tracks converted to sound were enough to perform strikingly well in terms of deciding holding moves?

 _...the training was almost finished; the performances of the top 4 rats had turned out to be comparable to those of the world ' s best fund managers. Their ability to recognize sound patterns generated from the market's ticker tape was incredible. And the rat traders also hold another advantage: unlike their human counterparts, they are not likely to be distracted from news or economy fundamentals, their own personal or their bank's financial status._

<comment><USER8> I should point out that it's not at all surprising that the "top 4" rats performed very well. If you got a couple of hundred people, animals, or random number generators to trade using any set of rules you like, and then looked at the top 4, you would almost always find that they outperform, because that's what being in the top 4 means!

The real question is whether the _same_ four rats would be the outperformers if you ran the experiment again.

<comment><USER19> I guess all we can do is hope that we can become Mr Kleinworth Morgan Jrs. =D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> the rat animal for the right job...

</comment><comment><USER21> next: hedgehog fund managers

</comment><comment><USER22> If rats can actually beat human traders, why shouldn't we put the traders in cages and let the rats have our money?

</comment><comment><USER23> this is fascinating. i love the mix of scientific experimentation with an art piece. i'm wondering at which point the improvements in the newer generations will taper off... maybe a rat could be the next warren buffet?

</comment><comment><USER24> Rats? Is there a pun intended?

<comment><USER7> Rats Awesome Trading System?

The fat cats aren't going to like this...

<comment><USER25> Rats Are The Solution

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps this explains the ebb and flow of the market?

Consider for a (rat) trader:

\- success

\- get treat

\- eat treat

\- loop

... passage of time...

\- get fat

\- judgement clouded by excess fat (perhaps inhibiting movement)

\- less successful

\- less treats

\- loses weight

\- become more successful again

...and so on...

</comment><comment><USER26> Silicon valley "rat trading" funding announcement in 3... 2... 1...

</comment><comment><USER27> this is so interesting, one more reason to have a rat as my pet.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this a joke or not?

<comment><USER28> [http://www.5markets.com/](http://www.5markets.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> +100 LNG RATS

</comment><comment><USER30> The sonorification bit has me interested. Perhaps a human trader could outperform the rats, or at least themselves, if they went just by sound data without trying to think too hard? I can see he's going to try training humans to trade this way, the results of this will be pretty interesting.

It may very well turn out that the difference between trading by looking at numbers and trading by sound and intuition is like looking at someone throw a ball and predicting where it will land versus being told the ball's mass and initial vector - in the former case you can very quickly predict with a good accuracy where it will land, while in the latter you need a good amount of time and a few sheets of paper and you achieve accuracy that's not that much better.

And yes, I realise that once you stretch the analogy too far it doesn't work, the ball will follow a completely deterministic trajectory, while the stocks move in a rather random fashion and the principles (if you can call them that) that govern their movement are not known to nearly the same precision as the principles of motion of a rigid body on Earth in normal atmospheric conditions.

But I'd say that if you look past that, the analogy is informative and serves to roughly illustrate the point.</comment>


Trouble at the Koolaid Point (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point <comment><USER2> Previous: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425501)</comment>