Chrome 0-day exploit used in Operation WizardOpium - <AUTHOR> https://securelist.com/chrome-0-day-exploit-cve-2019-13720-used-in-operation-wizardopium/94866/ <comment><USER2> I know this is a bit a pet peeve of mine, (and not a very popular opinion) but I think the browsers are doing too much, and WebAudio is a very good example of that.

Instead of standardizing something low-level to input/output audio and query the hardware, like an OS; it standardizes soooo many things and filters, including downmixers, panners, quadfilters and Convolution (for reverbs); which is where the issue is in this exploit.

The resulting complexity is huge, almost impossible to implement correctly in a cross-browser way, and a lot more code in C/C++ is written.

I do advocate simpler APIs for audio, low-level, and let JS or Wasm do the filtering, using the JS sandboxing model.

And, of course, this does not apply only to WebAudio, but I think WebAudio is a good symptom.

<comment><USER3> wasm is only a new phenomenon and those APIs were designed without wasm in mind. Note that wasm is also slower and thus more resource (battery) consuming than a native C++ implementation. Also, Chrome is already adding audioworklets to WebAudio so it will become customizeable. Last but not least, browsers are at least a central place that can be patched. Compare this to a possible future where vulnerable wasm libraries are being used in web apps, allowing third parties to run cross site wasm based exploits. Websites can't even switch off sms based 2fA, would you expect them to keep their wasm libraries up to date?

<comment><USER4> Long story short, WASM must be removed from browsers before it reaches wider adoption. And along with other completely unneeded APIs.

Parties opposing that must be expelled from standard bodies.

P.S. Just look at completely outrageous effort to push payment APIs into the browser and stuff they want to bundle along [https://www.w3.org/2019/09/15-wpwg- minutes.html](https://www.w3.org/2019/09/15-wpwg-minutes.html)

<comment><USER5> Those are two genuinely useful things, without the hardware API issues of the others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "The exploit used a race condition bug between two threads due to missing > proper synchronization between them. It gives an attacker a Use-After-Free > (UaF) condition that is very dangerous because it can lead to code execution > scenarios"

This is why C++ needs to be retired; and why we need to use safer languages. Not even Google can write safe C++. Thankfully Mozilla have already realised this.

<comment><USER7> > This is why C++ needs to be retired; and why we need to use safer languages.

These problems can easily happen in a language like Go, unfortunately. Go is memory safe for sequential code, but that guarantee does not extend to in- process concurrency - Goroutines can access shared state without synchronization, and create memory unsafety.

<comment><USER8> But not in Rust. Go isn't exactly a bastion of safety. It's memory safe due to the GC, but it has a weak type system, so logic bugs are not well guarded against.

<comment><USER7> > It's memory safe due to the GC

That gets debatable as soon as you start using concurrency, like I said. There are _idiomatic_ patterns in concurrent Go that are very much _not_ safe.

<comment><USER9> What do you mean?

It has a GC, right? So use-after-free is impossible, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funnily enough, looks like the vulnerability was introduced by a (korean?) samsung engineer.

fix: [https://chromium- review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/18...](https://chromium- review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1888103)

git blame: [https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/e1fa6d4...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/e1fa6d40966b5eb966feeed6fbe18675e819ff6d%5E%21/#F1)

<comment><USER11> What a coincidence! =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Operation WizardOpium, Lazarus attacks, DarkHotel, ... The executive summary reads like something out of a Charles Stross novel.

<comment><USER13> okay, I busted out loud at this one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is why I started disabling js by default using ublock origin. I whitelist the websites that I'm interested in but at least I avoid a lots of exploits that requires js. This is in case if I'm unlucky and I land in one of those websites with malicious js. I discovered duckduckgo doesn't block websites as eagerly as Google and landed in a few tricky places.

<comment><USER15> If you want Google Search without Google, there's Startpage. It acts as a proxy between you and Google, protecting your privacy. I've been using it exclusively for maybe two years now. I am a bit upset at not supporting the more involved privacy-friendly projects, like DuckDuckGo or others (there are a quite a few); but, Startpage gives me the right mix of privacy, efficiency and social awareness at the moment.

<comment><USER16> Startpage was recently acquired by an ad company.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/di5rn3/startpage_is_now_owned_by_an_advertising_company/)

<comment><USER15> Wow. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if this exploit would be possible if Chrome was packaged using the UWP Desktop Bridge on Windows 10. I doubt the sandbox prevents UAF, but surely it would have prevented executing an EXE file.

<comment><USER18> I wonder the same thing with Linux contained executables, such as snap.

(not sure if chrome is available as an official snap)

<comment><USER17> It's my understanding that this particular exploit only targeted Windows, but the underlying UAF vulnerability affected all Chrome variants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The attack code wasn't in an advert, suggesting the Korean news organisation had either previously been attacked, or had an insider plant this code.

<comment><USER20> This attack was done by North Koreans. The site is a North Korean propaganda advertising site, which is visited a lot by South Korean researchers.

<comment><USER21> That would explain the strange/weak infrastructure and the economic targets in APAC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there anyway to test this on other chrome based browsers?

For example current version of Iridium is 2019.04.73.0(based on Chromium 73.0.3683.103), it doesn't get updated that often but a useful and stable browser.

Anyway to mitigate this exploit via any setting or extension?

<comment><USER23> I'll also ask is Chromium affected? And does that mean Chrome-based browsers on Android are affected too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Attacking a Korean news website hey? I wonder who might want to do that...

<comment><USER24> Just some guy named Kenneth Osborne probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How can I know if I was infected and what can I do about it?

<comment><USER26> You should follow the same procedure as you do for any other, disclosed or undisclosed, infections and vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER25> Please let us know what your procedure is?

<comment><USER27> It's checking for chrome versions below the current, 78, so update to that. You also have to be on Windows. On windows, make sure you have your antivirus setup to block random executables from download and execution. I'd also block those hosts at the firewall and dns. It gets more complicated from there if you're infected. But you probably aren't.

Edit-just realized you actually asked for how to tell if you were infected. Check the windows task scheduler for unknown tasks. It installs items there for persistence. Edit-search your history and hard drive for "behindcorona" domains. That's where it loads things from. There are more specifics in the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That analysis must have taken quite a while. Wasn't there any way to notify people earlier

<comment><USER29> The analysis was posted when the fix was deployed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> 7th habit of Highly Effective People being to continuously Be Proactive

[http://franklincoveysouthasia.com/TrainingConsulting/Trainin...](http://franklincoveysouthasia.com/TrainingConsulting/TrainingCurriculums/the7habitssolutions/)

</comment><comment><USER20> CVE no. was created in July. I wonder whether the fix took that long.

<comment><USER31> CVEs are typically reserved in blocks by big organizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tragedy of our generation is that people who are so smart and determined to find and exploit these vulnerabilities, can't find better uses for their talents.

<comment><USER33> Or maybe society isn't providing them an accessible application for their talents.

<comment><USER34> Don't improve the product, just find dumber customers!

Don't lose weight, just buy bigger trousers!

Don't take personal responsibility, just blame society!

<comment><USER35> Of course it's both.

Personal responsibility is important. And even if you're bored, there are things to do other than hacking.

But working mind-numbing jobs , way below one's skills and talents happens to such a large share of people.

Maybe it's a sign to a problem with society ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As I understand these RCEs (in general; perhaps not this particular one), a frequent root cause seems to be saving instruction pointer on the stack adjacent to untrustworthy data which may have propagated down the call chain. Are there no initiatives being attempted to change this convention? Like not save the IP on the stack? Perhaps at the CPU architecture level or at the compiler level?

<comment><USER37> There are already many modern mitigations present to defeat the kind of stack overflow control of the instruction pointer that you're imagining -- stack canaries, DEP, ASLR, NX, and others.

Simply gaining control of the instruction pointer through a stack overflow as you describe stopped working a decade or so ago due to these mitigations.

<comment><USER38> DEP and NX are essentially the same thing, FYI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> this only affects windows users, right?

</comment><comment><USER40> Well, Chrome is indeed the new Internet Explorer. A new favorite target for threat actors.

<comment><USER18> After one 0-day?

<comment><USER41> This wasn't literally the first one I think?

<comment><USER42> Far from it. Here's an older one this year: [https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2019/03/stable- channel...](https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2019/03/stable-channel- update-for-desktop.html?m=1)

<comment><USER43> "Far from it", as you link to literally the only other case.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interview with Dennis Ritchie (2002) - <AUTHOR> https://anders.unix.se/2015/10/26/interview-with-dennis-ritchie-2003/ <comment><USER2> Very cool!</comment>


Ask HN: AngularJS frontend – Rails API backend service. Is this approach sane? - <AUTHOR>

I've started reading up on frontend javascript frameworks, and I've settled on AngularJS because of it's large adoption rate and amount of work available for each. AngularJS is clearly ahead of the pack in that area.
I've been reworking my website entire using plain .html files with Angular requesting data from my Rails API. Essentially, my webapps will actually be two completely decoupled application. 1 being the Rails API hosted on some server, and the other plain old html files being served from a varnish endpoint.
Is this approach proven? Am I ignoring potential pitfalls as a newbie to clientside javascript frameworks? I see the huge benefit of being able to quickly make an Android or iOS app using my same API. <comment><USER2> Yes, this is a proven architecture. It is called client/server, or 3-tiers, and it's been around for decades.

But you didn't write very much about your application's requirements, so it's not clear if this architecture is the best fit.

In general I would recommend that for a website (content-based), it's better to stick with generating HTML on the server. For applications (heavy user interaction) I would recommend going for client/server, and generating the UI dynamically on the client.

My reasoning is that for a website, generating the pages on the server leads to a simpler architecture, faster response times and easier SEO. And for applications, keeping state and UI client-side leads to increased responsiveness and easier scalability (since there is less state server-side and the requests are service-based).

</comment><comment><USER3> That makes sense. A couple of suggestions: 1\. Isolate the backend from the frontend as much as you can. i.e, besides using the rails controllers to actually render your page, exchange all info with JSON and an API like structure. This way, you can change frontend frameworks quickly without having to rewrite any of your backend.

2\. Make a decision about routes quickly - either use the angularJS routes or Rails, but I would shy away from both. Personally, I found AngularJS routes annoying, specifically when it comes to SEO optimization.

3\. If working with bootstrap, use [http://mgcrea.github.io/angular- strap/](http://mgcrea.github.io/angular-strap/) I highly recommend it

</comment><comment> workhere-io As long as you're aware of the SEO issues it shouldn't be a problem. Whether or not SEO matters in your case depends on what kind of app/website you're building.</comment>


Apply HN: HR Partner – human resource management for small businesses - <AUTHOR> Problem - A lot of smaller companies don't have a dedicated HR manager or team, and don't invest in the time or technology to record important employee information, nor keep track of important recurring events such as performance reviews and employee leave quotas.
Solution - HR Partner has been designed for smaller businesses, to get them on the right track with proper human resource practices.  We offer a free tier for very small companies to get started.
We also have an employee portal and leave tracking/application out of the box, and are busy integrating our system with various popular payroll systems.
Differentiators from our competition -
(a) we are region agnostic, and we don't supply pro forma policies and forms that are usually specific to a particular locality.
(b) we have designed the system so that external HR consultants can log into multiple companies and help them with their HR workload.  This is all part of our philosophy about 'sharing the load' and enabling many people to work on a single company.
Challenges - We basically have a working solution all built and being used by around 120 people (on the free tier) in the 3 months since going live.  We are looking for capital and partnerships with experienced marketing professionals who can assist us with obtaining revenue.
Trivia - HR Partner was built by ONE guy and the office cat in a remote city in Australia that is 3000km from the nearest Apple store!   This one man team has over 30 years experience as a self employed developer, and is responsible for every single one of the 22132 lines of Ruby code, the back end DevOps, front end interface design, social media marketing, support resolution, blog and documentation creation as well as making the tea.
HR Partner site - http://www.hrpartner.io <comment><USER2> Nice to see a fellow Australian bootstrapping. I just thought I should mention that your site is not laying out correctly on my iPad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback - I've still got to spend time working on issues with tablet and smartphone browsers, as well as Edge and a couple of other browsers that have been problematic... but then there is always tea to be made and cats to be fed etc. that keeps distracting me... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How does the platform qualify external HR consultants?

What level of error and omissions insurance is required by the consultants should their advice expose a client company to employment law liability? [even payroll and leave policies are often subject to regulation]

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't do any qualifying ourselves. We assume that the external consultants are already established, and are just looking for a platform to help their existing clientele. (We actually have a couple of consultants using HR Partner for exactly this purpose now - in fact, a couple of others have asked for a 'white box' edition that they can brand for their clients).

As far as insurance, we assume that their existing practice insurance will cover them (similarly to how an accountants malpractice insurance will cover them if they make a mistake entering data into their client's accounting software).

That's why we don't actually do things like calculate the leave etc., because of the local rules and regulations - we simply cannot take into consideration all the global differences.

Instead we are just a repository or all manually entered data, and we have to assume that the data entered is good and legal. If not, the liability will have to rest with the person entering it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you plan to take on a second co-founder soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Ideally I think what I need is a co-founder who specialises in Sales & Marketing so that I can be free to look after the technical side of things, and they can handle the legwork of talking to prospect and recruiting customers.

I don't have anyone in mind, and I am hoping that this process will help with that.</comment></comment>


macOS 10.16 is all about tools and maturity - <AUTHOR> https://eclecticlight.co/2020/06/07/last-week-on-my-mac-10-16-is-all-about-tools-and-maturity/ <comment><USER2> > _10.16 is all about tools and maturity_

> _I can't promise you any sneak preview of what it will announce there, but > here are my personal thoughts as to what it must get right this time._

Isn't that " _should be "_ then?

<comment><USER3> Yes, this is a terrible clickbait headline. I opened it expecting more than some guy's wish-list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it is. I feel like this is the narrative on every second cycle since 10.6 (Snow Leopard, to 10.5's Leopard), that "this" is the one where things get more reliable and nature.

<comment><USER5> They used to do this with even/odd releases - one doing features, one doing bugs, but I am uncertain if they do that any more.

Things SHOULD be getting more reliable if they just keep retiring older machines :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a problem on the brand new Mac (2 different ones, after getting a replacement) where USB A devices stop working every few hours and don't work until a reboot. I've tried 4 different USB hubs including Apple's own USB-C to USB-A connector. I've tried different computers, keyboards, mice. Nothing works. After about a month of back and forth with Apple, they finally admitted it was an operating system bug.

I can't debug it or even view USB requests because Apple has now locked everything down. The internal display sometimes doesn't work until I restart.

USB devices on the brand new MacBook Pro 13" do not work for more than a few hours. Apple does not care about macOS.

Here's a thread of other people with the same issue: [https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/gp5b1z/usb_20_issues_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/gp5b1z/usb_20_issues_on_new_macbook_pro_13_2020/)

</comment><comment><USER7> > ...my personal thoughts as to what it must get right this time

Let us hope Apple finally listens ;-)

<comment><USER8> Sometimes I do get the feeling that they are listening to my thoughts.</comment></comment>


Why Is America So Depressed? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/opinion/depression-america-trump.html <comment><USER2> Today, I'm CNC milling copper bow ties from recycled bus bar that supplied power to a Granite City steel mill arc furnace for decades. I'm hoping the homeless black lady I've been slowly easing into doing finishing and shipping shows up. People fetishize this Americana industrial stuff and pay good money for positive emotional coloring. You know, the exact opposite of what you get from the NYT.

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly!

The NYT is deeply in a funk, obviously. But some of us (who hold more conservative values) are pretty much the opposite. It's wrong of the NYT to try to speak for everyone.

<comment><USER2> It's as easy as prioritizing reporting on the world that exist as it is, rather than reporting a world that doesn't exist in order to create the world that they want. At the same time, we have a tradition of grandiloquent socialist exaggeration leading to long overdue reform of our largely conservative society.

So we're fucked and you have to be pretty aware and insightful in order to get any real sense of what the hell is going on, both good and bad. It's the joy and the horror of democracy, markets, and people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "from 2016 to 2017, the proportion of adults who described themselves as > more anxious than the previous year was 36 percent"

Note this is _not_ the same as the real increase in anxiety from 2016 to 2017, nor is there evidence to suggest this is a good proxy for it. In fact the only good evidence cited for an increase in something, is suicide from 1999 to 2017. But clicking through to the study shows a steady increase during that entire 18-year period, which makes the following seem ridiculous:

Right now the first 5 or so "recommended" comments are commenters blaming Trump for the rise in depression. That is simply implausible to me. Sure, he might plausibly be a symptom of such a rise in the past 2 decades, but I don't think average Americans go through their day-to-day worrying about how the actions of their president might negatively affect their lives. A bad manager at work, relationship troubles, financial stress, or any number of "smaller" issues would be much more likely to cause that.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, and the election of a character like Trump seems like a symptom rather than a cause of depression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The #1 culprit IMHO is isolation. Everything about our culture, urban planning, and economy seems optimized for maximum isolation. The reason is simple: people say they want it. This is an area of profound disconnect between what people say they want and what actually makes people happy.

Second up is economics. The US economy has been hollowed out. Unless you are in a few industries (tech, finance, upper management, high end sales and marketing, doctors, some lawyers) you are looking at dead end jobs with low pay and poor benefits. High earners are not immune either. Most high earning jobs are concentrated in a few large cities with consequentially outrageous real estate costs. A lot of your earnings are eaten by the "law of rent."

There are other causes too but I think those are the largest.

<comment><USER7> I think isolation is great if you have everything going great in your life: great job, great apartment both close to a city center where you can go out to have fun and meet other people, and have great health.

The problem is that when economy or your health gets worse, you start to depend on your family and friends more. In a culture where isolation is norm, I can imagine that it takes lot of time and effort to reverse the trend.

<comment><USER5> You wouldn't be isolated with the apartment you described.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Money can't buy you happiness, and marshmallows ain't the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Because people don't understand they should be saving up in their dead-end job so they can start their own business

<comment><USER10> So that they can start their own dead-end business?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The reason why America is so depressed can be summed up with one word: Capitalism

Capitalism and greed is baked into our culture. It's everyone for themselves, and everyone is trying to get their own slice of the pie.

You know what really sucks? You spend your whole life busting your butt in a 9-5 job, saving every penny you can for retirement. You finally retire at the age of 65, only to realize that you are no longer healthy enough to do all the things you wanted to do (travel the world, etc).

I'm so so so tired of working all the time just to get by. I honestly feel like America has just replaced slavery with indentured servitude, and corporations are the new masters.

<comment><USER12> Having a 9-5 job and retiring at 65 are dreams come true for most of the world. Even under an alternative to capitalism you will probably have to get up and go to work. Socialism isn't another word for trust fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> See your begging the question, NYT; raise you Betteridge's Law => [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER14> "No" is not a proper response to a "why" headline.

<comment><USER13> As in: rejecting the premise utterly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stupid comment with a hint of truth: because we're constantly exposed to shit that makes us feel bad. News, social media, and the like all keeps us focused to how awful things are. Sensationalized news that won't stfu about one off, incredibly rare events and works to make us think that IT COULD HAPPEN TO US AT ANY MINUTE.

We are constantly told what our friends and neighbors think about subjects that we care deeply about, that results is us hating them for thinking differently than us.

I personally am also exposed to the uninformed's opinions on subjects in which I have 30 years of study. Their opinions are completely bogus, and they won't even attempt to listen and learn something. Continually pisses me off.</comment>


IE10 review: still disappointing for HTML5 games - <AUTHOR> https://www.scirra.com/blog/103/ie10-review-still-disappointing-for-html5-games <comment><USER2> This benchmark is a bit misleading, as it is not comparing like with like.

On the only benchmark where WebGL doesn't help, IE 10 does respectably. I have found in my limited testing of 2d canvas that IE 10 performs quite well.

While it would be nice to see WebGL in IE10, 2d canvas-based apps perform very well.

<comment><USER3> Until recently I recall seeing some canvas apps performing much smoother in IE9/IE10 than in Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with respect to games Chrome and Firefox are pulling ahead, but with respect to publishing IE10 is ahead. Things like grid layout, positioned floats, and regions are awesome to more easily make good looking websites. While I do enjoy games, I would rather Chrome and Firefox work on adopting these new css primitives more than working on OpenGL and audio APIs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is anyone really _THAT_ surprised, though? I feel like indie game developers who are using HTML5 techniques still mainly target modern browsers ( _Chrome, Safari, and Firefox_ ). There might have been a hope of say "it will be awesome if everything starts to work on IE", but I highly doubt those developers were dying for IE. Plus, if you look at the majority target market for HTML5 gamers, those users will most likely be using modern browsers anyways.

<comment><USER6> I thought IE10 was a "modern browser"?

<comment><USER7> Not according to this: <http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html>. BUT, IE will start to auto update their browsers here sometime soon, and in my books that's what makes a browser modern right now.

<comment><USER8> The score for IE10 is 320. It's close to Safari 5.1, the previous version of Safari, which scores 319.

Of course, it's not as high as the current leader (Maxthon 3.4.5 at 457), but IE10's got a decent score, and is definitely a big improvement compared to IE9.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Disappointing, perhaps, but somehow it still manages to be better than Opera and Safari (Windows Safari, at least) for HTML5 games based on my testing [1]. Going from last place to third place in such a short time period is an achievement in my book, even if I'd still never use IE as my primary browser.

Admittedly IE10 is still missing some features I would mark as important for game development, but when I contacted some IE devs over at Microsoft (just send an email!) they got back to me with simple workarounds that made it possible to get my games running with a few lines of additional code. (Not IE- specific code either, just clever feature-detection fallback for _any_ browser.)

Here's how I suggest looking at it instead: Holy shit, the browser that comes _stock_ on Windows 8 can _actually run a large majority of HTML5 games and applications!_ You don't have to nag people to install Chrome or Firefox just to use your app! Sure, you want them to upgrade anyway - and they probably will - but that's something!

Now if IE11 comes out and doesn't advance the state of things here I'll certainly be disappointed, but at present I'd say I'm actually quite pleased: in the jump from 9 to 10 MS has brought IE forward enough that you can run HTML5 games in it without having to write a ton of browser-specific hacks or feature implementations.

WebGL support would be nice, but you still can't rely on WebGL in HTML5 games anyway since it doesn't work on a large percentage of desktop machines and is basically unusable on mobile. I think this is another area where the pressure should be on MS to get a rock solid implementation of WebGL into IE11, not to complain about IE10 not having an API that is arguably still not ready for prime time (Though increasingly close).

Complaints about not having the Web Audio API are similarly missing the point since _you can't use it anyway_ unless you're writing a Chrome Experiment - your real complaints should be reserved for the fact that IE still has an undocumented limit on the number of live <audio> instances you can put in a single page, or for IE's latency when playing new sound effects.

Finally, allow me to repeat others' comments that it's incredibly stupid to benchmark a canvas-based game against a webgl one and present the numbers side-by-side with a straight face. Canvas performance is _miserable_ in _every single browser_ and IE has nothing to do with this. IE actually has one of the better Canvas implementations out there. The fault lies with Canvas being a poorly-specified, poorly implemented API, not with IE.

[1] I regularly test all my HTML5 game ports across the major browsers and regularly hit crash bugs in Safari and Opera. Also, Windows Safari still can't play back audio which is... inexplicably stupid.

<comment><USER10> Is Windows Safari still actually developed at all?

<comment><USER3> Nope, it was silently killed.

<comment><USER11> Hmm, seems pretty irresponsible of Apple to do that, given that it's thus going to go unpatched and its users will become progressively more vulnerable, no?

<comment><USER3> Apple doesn't really seem to care much about responsibility or security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Though the comparison HAS to be between 2d canvas and WebGL due to IE not implementing the latter, it does feel a tad unfair. Maybe someone with more knowledge could chime in about what optimizations are possible 3D that aren't possible on a 2D canvas.

It would also be interesting to see how FF and Chrome performed on the same 2D canvas test.

<comment><USER9> It's possible to achieve a factor of 10 (perhaps even 100) better performance for typical 2D workloads by using WebGL instead of Canvas. This is a mix of the Canvas API specifying that things have to be rendered in a relatively expensive fashion, and the actual Canvas implementations not being particularly performant (despite some really impressive efforts in that area by the browser vendors).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> WebGL is not supported in IE because of some important reasons, it's just not secure enough.. yet.

Most succesful games are not using it anyways.

</comment><comment><USER14>
      Recently Chrome and Firefox also added an experimental
      feature currently being standardised to also allow point
      sampling in their Canvas 2D renderer

Anybody have a source or reference for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was referring to the new Canvas 2D context 'imageSmoothingEnabled' property: [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/the-canvas-element.html#image-smoothing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As with Vorbis, the lack of WebGL is political as its based on OpenGL which is a threat to DirectX.

Theres some hope for Opus as Microsoft's Skype division is pushing it (its partly based on Skype tech)

</comment><comment><USER16> Can developers use IEWebGL as a fallback for IE users?

</comment><comment><USER17> how can be a markup language disappointing? The Interpreter in this case IE10 can only be disappointing...</comment>


Ask HN: Your Real Life Notebook Tricks/Tips - <AUTHOR>

Lot of people have paper notebooks. No matter how technically advanced tools are at my finger tips, there is nothing faster or easier to jot down quick ideas like old school pencil and paper. All my preliminary designs happen there. All the brainstorming. A real scratch pad.
I am sure I am not the only one.
So what are you trips, tricks and personal conventions used on your notebook. Do you index them? Organizational methods? <comment><USER2> I've been keeping an active design book for the last 3 years. I buy the largest spiral bound artists sketch pad from the local art store that fits in my backpack (usually $16-$19). I go through one a year. The notebook is for ideas, concepts and stories. Day to day notes are done elsewhere.

Opening the notebook immediately puts me in the right mindset. Each page get's it's own idea or subconcept, though some pages are just a mix of smaller ones. I'm not afraid to be messy, to write in different size text, sometimes bold, for important items. I write 'idea!' in large text for new worthy ideas.

I also use good felt tip pens also from the local artist store. I get a set of 5 from 0.1 to 0.5, and usually write with 0.3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something about sketch pads, what I use as well, doesn't the thick coarse pages just make a world of difference.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'll start.

Type: I always use sketch pads meant for pencil drawings with thick paper, no rules or lines. I can sketch and do what ever without distraction. Great for brainstorming/design/flowcharts/etc.

Organization: Many books {Personal, Project1, Project2, ...} Then in each book, any bizarre unfit ideas I write from the back-to-front. So using the book both ways.

Indexing/Tagging: I usually bend the top right corner to signify (Useful idea use in Future). And Bottom right corner to signify temporary marker.

Other: At the end of day, I write down what I should accomplish the next day, this has boosted my productivity like nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just have an empty notebook shell filled with loose leaf paper. I never have to tear out pages, and, somehow, I never lose anything either.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always have a tiny scribbling pad about the size of my palm and a pencil in one of my pockets at all times. So wherever I am, I can immediately jot down any ideas that come to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Keeping one near the bed and unloading before I go to sleep.

Eg: things to do the next day, last minute ideas, thoughts, poems</comment>


Why Google bought Songza: The music industry's third revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2449657/opensource-subnet/why-google-bought-songza-the-music-industrys-revolution-spotify-streaming.html#more

<comment><AUTHOR> Thomas Edison revolutionized music when he invented recording. Steve Jobs re- revolutionized music with the iPod and iTunes. Now music streaming has launched a third revolution.</comment>


How do you regulate Wu? - <AUTHOR> http://www.badscience.net/2010/02/how-do-you-regulate-wu/

<comment><USER2> Out of curiosity: how many of you guys here consider the traditional Chinese medicine valid? (by valid I mean "possibly having positive healing outcomes beyond the placebo effect")

<comment><USER3> What make you think that the placebo effect is not "valid"?

<comment><USER4> The placebo effect exists, but it exists independently of whatever expensive alt-medicine crap is being pushed at the moment. Therefore, if we're discussing the efficacy of the "medicine," you can't include placebo effects. This is also why medical trials nearly always include a placebo group.

<comment><USER5> OK, this is a dumb question, what makes 'western' medicine not a placebo?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A reasonable compromise would be to require providers of alternative medicine to show that it's _not harmful_. Maybe it doesn't do anything, but that's for others to decide.

<comment><USER7> No.

Water can poison and kill you at a large enough dosage. Oxygen too. Treating cancer with homeopathy is harmless until the cancer kills you. All medicine (supported by science or not) carries some risk, the poison is in the dosage.

Woo practitioners are more than happy to bankrupt their victims, what's the harm?

A Milwaukee girl died of diabetes recently, her parents were trying to cure her with prayer.

<comment><USER8> There's a difference between things that are generally harmless in their prescribed doses--water, aspirin, homeopathy BS--and the example given in the article, where the patient took the pills as specified and soon lost her kidneys, got cancer, and had a heart attack.

If the Wu practitioners are giving out lethal doses of their medicine, they should be crushed by the FDA.

<comment><USER9> The FDA doesn't have any jurisdiction in Britain.

<comment><USER8> Forgot that this took place in Britain. I guess Her Majesty's Royal Tasters, or whatever their equivalent of the FDA is, would have to handle it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From what I've seen in the US, a lot of Chinese medicine is actually FDA- approved as "beverages" -- supposedly they are safe to drink, but it's up to the user to believe whether or not there's any medicinal effect.

Placebo or not, I can say that 板蓝根 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isatis_tinctoria>) has pretty consistently made me feel better when I had the flu or sore throat.

</comment><comment> a-priori I think the best solution would be to say that 'alternative medicine' is still medicine and must follow existing regulations. So, treatments must be prescribed by a doctor, they must be approved for use in humans (and so must demonstrate utility and safety), and so on.

<comment><USER11> But the practitioners will fight this. Many of them are canny enough to know that if you measure them by the same yardstick as real medicine they're going to fall short. That's why they dance around the FDA regulations with their disclaimers so often.

And what for the more established practices, like chiropractic? They already have "doctors". How do you bootstrap this procedure when hundreds of "trained" professional practitioners already flood the market? Do you say, "Okay guys, put your careers on hold while we do 5-year trials!" And we've already _done_ those trials for the most part, and they've come up negative. So do we just say, "Find a new business?"

And you've got to do this all without giving your opponents an opportunity to rile up the public against your actions. Voters can be an irrational lot, but a lot of irrational people can outvote a few rational people. Unless you spin it just so, a narrative of big government crushing small business can be devastating.

I think what you're proposing is what we'd like to have happen, but it's incredibly difficult to have it turn out that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am disappointed that this article does not discuss chambers.

<comment><USER13> This blog assumes its readers are already at the 36th.</comment></comment>


Show HN: an animation tool for kids - <AUTHOR> https://drawa.live <comment><USER2> I tried to use the tool but couldn't get stop to work after drawing a sprite, moving it around in record.

Getting this in console:

      main.js:598 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'stop' of null
          at stop (main.js:598)
          at HTMLDivElement.onclick ((index):38)

Chrome Version 83.0.4103.61 (Official Build) (64-bit)</comment>


Ask HN: Is sharing your idea really that bad? - <AUTHOR>

One of the most common things I hear from people is to be careful who you tell your idea to when starting a company.  The perceived risk is that the other person who you share it with will take your idea, run with it, and you'll get no credit, no compensation, and you'll end up looking like the Winklevoss twins (who Mark Zuckerberg supposedly took the Facebook idea from) ... who I should add clearly weren't capable of executing.
As such, whenever I come up with an idea or someone else gives me an idea that sounds clever, my default has always been to go an tell a bunch of people and get their feedback.  By the time the idea is ready to be executed on it's a hell of a lot different than it started out and all I really ended up sharing was the seedling of an idea.
What I want to know is this: are there any historical examples of cases which illustrate the point not to tell your idea to someone else?  Also, what are your thoughts on sharing startup ideas with others?  Clearly there are instances where telling Mark Zuckerberg, or another capable individual (who has plenty of resources as their disposal) your idea doesn't make much sense, however where are the examples of stolen ideas that the originator failed at execution?  What policy do you have for sharing your ideas? <comment><USER2> I think it helps to have a core group of people with whom you can freely discuss new ideas. Open discussion often helps highlight any inherent flaws with your plan or potential difficulties you may encounter in execution.

It probably doesn't make sense to share an easily-executed idea with an untrustworthy individual who has sufficient resources, but that's common sense. More often than not, discussion will only help improve your idea. Start with your core group and branch out from there.

Social networking existed before Facebook, group buying before Groupon, and gaming before Zynga, but proper execution allowed these companies succeed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think sharing your idea with others is a great way to start. You get:

* Practice selling your idea

* Feedback about the validity of your idea

* Encouragement (hopefully) from others

* Suggestions that you may not have considered

That's worth a lot more to me than the possibility of someone running off with my idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are the obvious people the only ones you should avoid telling (the CEO of a large internet startup)? Or are they even worth sharing with?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worrying about whether someone else will copy your idea or not is immaterial. 99.999% of the time they will not be able to copy and execute on your idea. I believe the greater issue at hand is whether your psyche can take the abuse of critique at a really early stage. Oftentimes, I'm really pumped about an idea but haven't formed the entire concept. If I share my baby too early and someone criticizes it, it can be deflating and I often move on the the next idea when in fact the idea I shared may have real merit - I just haven't worked all the kinks out. For some people I suggest waiting to share a killer idea until they have time to work it out. Then when they get good critique, they can use it to refine it instead of deflate it. If you have super thick skin, then I say share away.

</comment><comment><USER5> I can see reasons why you wouldn't want to share an idea, but I think they are border cases. I've been spending most of my free time for the last couple months building a site specifically for discussing and getting feedback on ideas. I believe there is a lot of value in getting other people's insight. Ideas have a great built in defense- as soon as they leave their owner, they are poisoned by another point of view. No matter if it is repeated, a person's vision for what it could be doesn't transfer, it is intimately personal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sharing your idea with potential customers is part of the Customer Discovery Process (Steve Blank) and it leads you to refining your original concept.

Sharing your idea with potential competitors, especially those who can execute quicker than you is dumb. You could be told that your idea sux and they'll go off and implement it.

<comment><USER7> It's refreshing to hear someone make a distinction between the people with whom you're sharing the idea.

The practice of keeping the idea a secret is absurd, but so is telling anyone within earshot. You just don't know who's listening.

This may come across a little (read: very) cynical, but it's in the best interest of angels and VCs to advise us to tell everyone our startup ideas.

"No one cares about your idea" is only true for those who have something of their own to work on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like to share the idea into the public domain to prevent it from being patented.

</comment><comment><USER9> As others have said if your idea is straightforward to implement and easy to grok then likely it would be independently "discovered" and implemented regardless of whether you told anyone else. Nobody had to tell the world to make mp3 players or automobiles, they were obvious ideas that many people had and implemented at about the same time.

If you have a truly novel idea then you'll often have trouble getting people to accept it, and even if they do if they were to implement it they would get the details so wrong that they wouldn't steal your thunder.

Imagine one of the google founders telling everyone else how google was going to work. Even if other sites had simplified their search landing and results pages, even if they had used page rank, etc. they still wouldn't have reproduced google search. It required the coordination of several disparate disciplines from computer science (map reduce / parallel computing / pagerank) to system administration (sharding / commodity hardware / unique data center operations) to user interface design (response time / uncluttered interface) to business sense (contextual, unobtrusive advertising) to get that right, and it's the careful balance and details of every single element that led to the success of google search.

Or you can look at mp3 players again. An obvious idea that everybody had. By the time apple entered the market it was saturated, but they executed better than everyone else and dominated the market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point ... sounds like the main conclusion is that easy to replicate businesses would have already been developed. However I would also argue that there are plenty of instances where you think to yourself "Why didn't I think of that?" Then again, even in those instances execution is key.

So is there really ever an instance which justifies not sharing your idea?</comment></comment>


Scaling at Instacart: Distributing Data Across Multiple Postgres Databases - <AUTHOR> https://tech.instacart.com/scaling-at-instacart-distributing-data-across-multiple-postgres-databases-with-rails-13b1e4eba202 <comment><USER2> This is a really nice write up/story of an approach to solve the top much data on Postgres problem.

I just came across an architect in a very similar space and workload as instacart busy spending countless hours trying to move off Postgres because they're at 700GB and it's not "scaling".</comment>


Companies Are Using Employee Survey Data to Predict–and Squash–Union Organizing - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/companies-are-using-employee-survey-data-to-predict-and-squash-union-organizing-a7e28a8c2158 <comment><USER2> oh hey those perceptyx questions are verbatim the Target "best team survey" questions... how'da thunk.</comment>


Apple should be forced to conform to a standard charger, say EU politicians - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/2049680/apple-should-be-forced-to-conform-to-a-standard-charger-say-eu-politicians.html

<comment><USER2> They already support a standard charger via USB just like the rest of the EU phones. The problem is that into the phone itself is a proprietary connector, which many people think is against the spirit of the regulation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "We urge member states and manufacturers finally to introduce a universal charger, to put an end to cable chaos for mobile phones and tablet computers"

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/de/news- room/content/2013...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/de/news- room/content/20130923IPR20617/html/Bring-in-a-universal-mobile-phone-charger- for-all-makes-say-MEPs)</comment>


Most software already has a "golden key" backdoor–it's called auto update - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/02/most-software-already-has-a-golden-key-backdoor-its-called-auto-update/ <comment><USER2> Terrible article - essentially arguing that system updates are backdoors. This is only going to scare people into being wary of applying valid OS updates, which means missing out on critical security updates.</comment>


The wrong question: "I want to learn to code, what should I do?" - <AUTHOR> http://495west.com/post/9885249988/the-wrong-question-i-want-to-learn-to-code-what?73331330 <comment><USER2> I think the assumption here is that if someone asks you, "I want to learn to code, what should I do?" they know you already, since if they were asking the anonymous internet hordes, they're already basically doing what this post suggests.

If you ask someone you know for advice, you aren't going to get the same thing you get if you ask Google, and you aren't even necessarily looking for the same thing. I was in exactly this situation earlier in the summer, when my brother asked me, after taking MIT's intro to programming class using Python, "What language should I learn next?". When he asked me that, he wasn't looking for the best possible answer from the best engineers who are posting to Stack Overflow, he was asking his brother, who might be able to help him when he stumbles, since I would likely recommend languages I know. I also know that he's not a CS student, he's studying urban planning, so I could reply with that understanding, and say that he might not need to learn another language at all, but instead could branch out with Python to hack on stuff he didn't get to work on in his CS and GIS classes, like web programming or games.

So no, don't just point them at Google. Tell them YOUR story about how you learned to program, and tell them what YOU would do differently. Tell them to learn a language that you know, so you can help them. Or a language you want to learn, so you can learn with them. I know that teaching yourself via Google can be extremely gratifying, and I think it works great for some people, myself included. However it doesn't work for everyone, and sometimes it's nice to have a personal connection like this: "I learned to program when X helped me to do Y."

edit

as I was writing this I was itching to reach for something I'd read before, and I remembered now that it was probably Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years". There he suggests a way to choose a language: "Use your friends."

<comment><USER3> Exactly. This is the worst advice I have seen on entering coding, maybe ever:

 _The answer to every question is out there. Engineers know that better than anyone. Even the best engineers ask Google questions all the time. The biggest difference between you and an engineer is the mindset.

After you have the right mindset, here is how the execution will go:

You start asking Google questions, which leads you to all sorts of resources on StackExchange and Quora and a million blogs and other websites. You find twelve tutorials on HTML and nine on CSS, and you bounce around between them to find the best ones_

Unless you're a pretty amazing auto-didact this is terrible advice. The author posits his advice as learning how to learn on your own (which is good to a certain degree), but what this advice requires is to first become an expert in querying Google and not only sorting results but going through all the different recommendations? How would someone without programming experience effectively evaluate which are 'the best ones' from the spam and the outright wrong articles?

Over the last few years < 10 people have asked me "how would i become a programmer" or "what's the best way to learn SQL", or something similar. The first questions I ask are 'what do you want to do' and 'why do you want to be a programmer'.

I'd never really considered "go google some keywords, read everything on the first page, and let me know how that works out for you"

<comment><USER4> well, but i can see the point of the author. and this is the way i learned everything i know. perhaps is not suitable for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No. It is exactly the right question.

Suppose the person hasn't already asked this question to google:

Take the opportunity to provide them some good resources. Teach them some basics. Teach them how to use google well to find their own resources. Here's the kicker - when people ask questions like this, maybe they aren't autodidacts, maybe they just need some support getting over the fear of the unknown, maybe they just want feedback from someone who actually knows (something JFGI doesn't provide too well...)

Now suppose they have:

The course of action is surprisingly similar, but ask them what they've already learned and what the confusion is before showing them stuff. Perhaps the person asking has done this but doesn't know where to start -- there is a lot of conflicting and bad advice on the web. Perhaps they don't have the framework to filter things that are and aren't related. Maybe they don't even know what they actually want to do -- there have been plenty of times I've asked someone how to $X only to discover that I really wanted to do $Y that I didn't even know about (even though Google will happily provide 100000 how to $X guides).

Half of understanding anything is understanding the vocabulary surrounding it. If a person doesn't know the vocabulary, they can't just google it. (Also, those of us who spend all day programming and basically live in front of the computer at places like HN have a surprisingly deep understanding of who to trust and who not to trust and apply these filters without even realizing it when scouring google results, as well as a good social network of chatrooms and twitter etc to ask for pointers at, which a noob may well be trying to establish when asking the question).

<comment><AUTHOR> That is the point of this post, to get them over the fear, to give them the confidence to do it.

Having a personal tutor can accelerate the learning process dramatically. Even if you can teach yourself, you can learn faster if someone just tells you the answer. But, you can also just do it. And, the process will teach you the benefits of being precise with your searches and that if you know to use the work "toggle" rather than "switch back and forth", you'll get to the answer faster next time (though, you'll get to it both ways and you'll learn a lot while you're reading).

I was fortunate enough to have great engineers accelerate my learning but I also did a lot on my own and that process gave me a deeper understanding and taught me the right mindset to now continue improving on my own forever.

<comment><USER5> I propose that we are running into a very studied phenomenon in teaching: expert knowledge vs novice knowledge. The expert sees stuff as simple and straight-forward that causes confusion in the novice -- because the novice doesn't fully have the framework with which to understand in place yet.

To get to a point where googling and reading can be really effective (for most people... there are some who can just naturally pick something up) it helps to have someone work one-on-one with the confusion that may otherwise be insurmountable. Not just accelerate learning, but in fact, enable it at all.

There is a very real problem in teaching at all levels where research will show that using new methods and alternate course progressions help students get it faster, but the experts in the subject matter will veto it because it is not the way they learned or presents things in a way that seems too round- about from the expert point of view -- ignoring the difference between those who have the framework and those who need to get the framework.

<comment><USER6> Spot on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> wh-uws Agree with most of it except its not that thats the wrong question its just that the answer _is to try_.

Get started and build something. Stumbling and not knowing already but figuring it out are part of the process and are valuable skills.

Also the whole buy a mac thing. It never ceases to amaze me how many people completely fail to realize how much privilege it takes to have the money to purchase a mac. Or the time it can take to save the money. When someone can get started on things that are a fraction of the cost.

You can get a cheap office depot or walmart laptop and an entire year of linode or whatever vps you like for the cost of a _used_ mac

<comment><USER7> It doesn't take _that_ much privilege to save $350 within a reasonable amount of time. It's probably unreasonable if you're in poverty, but even much of the lower class in America has things like TVs that cost in excess of the price of a Mac.

<comment> wh-uws _Not attacking you asking you a serious question._

Please tell me where I can get a $350 mac. I want one, seriously. And not a mini.

You're going to want a laptop/notebook so you can go to hackdays / meetups to get to know like minded people and learn.

<comment><USER7> I just looked on Craigslist and found a few Mac laptops for under $400. Most were lousy in some way, but a few were legitimately just older models that people didn't want anymore (e.g. white MacBooks). But I wouldn't recommend a laptop if you're just this side of destitute. They're generally not as good a value on the low end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The only difference between the advice given and the strawman argued against is giving the urls of search engines to find tutorials and answer questions rather than giving specific resources.

The idea of cultivating a self starter, motivated to research mindset is good, for people halfway through the beginner stage. The idea that a complete beginner even knows how to "bounce around between [different search results] to find the best ones" is silly, even starting with generally high quality content like quora and stack overflow. It leads people to learn the easiest things rather than walking the line between motivation through fast results and pushing themselves to learn good techniques and challenging subjects. There is a reason that good educators, who design curricula walking this line, are respected.

This type of "ignore the so called 'experts' and absorb the lowest common denominator crap soup of online programming advice" learning plan is doomed. The best case is that it wastes the persons time and saps their motivation. The probable case is that they end up learning a large number of bad habits, do things like reimplement a bubble sort based on advice from the comments on the php documentation site and forever end up as hack intermediate coders.

People asking for this kind of advice _want_ some guidelines from people who've done this before and have perspective on good paths to learning and how to avoid mistakes that no one needs to repeat.

I am a proponent of branching out early in your programming career to learn different languages, toolsets and problem domains because it makes you a better programmer. But only once you've got a base level of knowledge as to how coding works and even then they will need advice on what other paths to take to help the most.

<comment><AUTHOR> That process of drinking the soup and learning what to swallow and what to spit out is an incredible learning experience. That is a skill and comes from trial and error, reading everything, and trying things. And you are training yourself in that process and mindset of learning on your own.

Agree though that learning best practices is difficult without some guidance and working with others.

<comment><USER8> I agree, I think it's an absolutely necessary learning experience.

Just not at the beginning.

Maybe that's because I'm a CS major and have dealt with so many smart people who's learning paths were derailed by the self taught plan advocated here. They found a local maxima (in my experience it's often procedural php or eclipse driven java) and won't move off of it because it seems impossible and the benefit is intangible and by definition difficult for them to understand. Pretty perfectly described by PG's Blub Paradox essay.

There's a reason the "standing on the shoulders of giants" metaphor is so prevalent in the programming world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't get it. Is your point _Don't ask a person, ask google_?

This article promotes introversion more than its own point of "don't ask, do", asking Mr. Computer isn't much different than asking a person. If I ask someone how to get started doing X; I'm not fucking asking permission. I'm looking for some resources, a knowledgeable person is a much better at steering a beginner than a search engine.

For some reason, you're equating drive with choice of resource. You're answering "RTFM" when the question is "Wheres the manual?" I get that your point centers on leaning on others vs figuring it out on your own, but you thoroughly overshot.

</comment><comment><USER10> The problem with using google to answer an open-ended question like this is that it's very hard to sort the results. And it's not just the first question, that question will lead to more questions and you will waste an enormous amount of time asking lots of wrong questions and getting lots of bad answers.

Bad answers can be ad-ridden, no-content crap, bikeshedding pundits, obsolete documentation, overkill solutions, corporate labyrinth websites selling overkill solutions, incomplete fragmented mailing list archives, or material way too dense and advanced to be consumed without guidance. But they lead to frustration and often to more bad questions.

Sometimes the answers aren't bad, they're just decidedly suboptimal. If your friend wanted to make a website, and you left it up to them to go google the answer, there's a good chance they'll end up using GoDaddy.

Chances are if you see this question, it means someone thinks you, either individually or as part of some community, will give them better answers than a machine will.

</comment><comment><USER11> Something I've found in getting people started in this direction is that they don't know what words to use when googling for their problem.

You can give them a huge leg up by giving them a programming vocabulary to help them on their way.

There's that famous saying about once you have a name for something the problem is pretty much solved...

You can also help them heaps by telling them what's important and what is not important. Most books on programming languages etc start with a whole bunch of stuff they should probably put into the basket of "computer trivia I don't need to know yet"...

</comment><comment><USER12> If someone asks that question, they're in 1 of 2 categories:

1) Dreamers. They have something that nobody will do for them, so they're going to see how easy it is to do for themselves. They won't make it.

2) Doers. They don't have a single project. They have multiple projects. The projects are swimming in their head and they need to get them out. They just need a nudge in the right direction, but more help is almost always better.

Notice that neither of them are asking the wrong question. It's just a matter of follow-through. Given even a tiny bit of direction, the doers will make it there... But you can't start walking until you have some idea where the destination is. That's all they want.

</comment><comment><USER13> I always answer this question by asking back what it is that they want to make, and also if they're willing to dig for most of the answers themselves because programming is, essentially, solving for an unknown alone.

The aptitude of a programmer is also the same that allows him to self-learn much of the art of programming by himself.

If they have an answer to the first question, I can work backwards with them to narrow it down to tools and languages that possibly make sense. Going with Python is a generic and common choice because there aren't many things you can't do in Python.

If they don't have an answer, it might not be a case lost. Some people truly need _just about anything_ to work on, in order to impose a reason to start tinkering with programming. However, usually it's about overcoming fear for programming but in that case they probably won't make it, either.

For the rest 99% of people I just mumble something and point vaguely to teaching yourself to program in ten years.

</comment><comment><USER14> While I get the gist of this post, it seems to exit the gate by contradicting itself. Asking Google is no different than asking "someone". After all, Google results are just a bunch of "someones" competing for your attention.

As a person who has just recently undertaken the skill of programming, I (personally) feel that Google isn't much help in the beginning. As someone mentioned below, you can't ask what you don't know. Nor can you trust every bit of advice dished out in Google search results. If you rely on Google, you'll likely get 100 competing views on everything under the sun, which often leads to analysis paralysis or just sheer overwhelm.

As much as some people might tire of hearing "I want to learn to code, what should I do?", it's a question that I'd hope people aren't ashamed to ask, because It's an honest question. Pointing them to Google and advising them to figure it out just doesn't help them in any concrete way. I'm new to programming, but I'll never get sick of helping people learn the things that I already know- in fact I LOVE doing just that.

As a beginner, it's comforting to know that a real person is helping you along and not just an anonymous page picked out of the SERPs.

</comment><comment><USER15> I found this advice to be useful and inspiring. It reminds me of when i first started out in my present business. We originally started as an IT support company. My IT skills were just average while my business partner was very highly skilled in IT.

Often, we would have issues with client servers, and i would spend hours trying to find the root cause of the problem, with not too much luck. When i would pass the job onto him, he'd figure out the cause of the problem in a much shorter amount of time, and therefore come to conclusion for a possible solution very quickly and with some conviction.

I always thought he was a complete genius, and wish that i was as clever and intelligent as him, and felt a little cheated by the universe that i hadnt been blessed with such great IT skills, especially since i had great passion for IT.

Its only after much frustration, that i learned that the only thing that differed between he and i was his approach. Whereas i would check the virus state, and processor usage and look for anything suspect on the desktop, he would check the event logs and then look up the error codes at the microsoft knowledgebase.

One i started taking the same approach as he, i found myself fixing problems even faster than him and coming up with even better solutions to the problem (all the while experiencing much lesser stress).

When i decided to learn programming , i observed the same thing. His approach to attacking programming problems was different to mine, and now i am learning to assess the problems in the same way as him.

I've also seen this in my cousin. He starts a project, and takes one step at a time, and breaks the larger problem done, all the while telling himself that there is an answer for each component problem he faces.

I am trying to foster the same mindset now, and this blog post is an inspiration for that. Bottom line is, the approach is more important than existing skill set.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love this post and really identify with it, especially, "That mindset separates people who do from people who don't." I've always been a person to do, but find it's more common to come across people who allow fear to prevent them from doing. They see the obstacles, the worst case scenarios, never the potential, the opportunities or if they see them, they seem too difficult to reach. I agree that it's mindset that distinguishes the leaders from the followers. Keep on leadin'!

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who has always wanted to learn to code, but never set the time aside to teach myself I resonated with this kick in the pants. At some point you have to stop making excuses and do it. I might not agree that google will teach everyone, but there are enough resources out there (friends, family, iTunes U, tutorials etc) that the real deciding factor is whether you dive in or spend your time asking everyone in the pool if the water is cold.

</comment><comment><USER18> I learned to program when a misconfigured web server spit out the source code to the web application I was trying to use. At first it all looked like gobbledygook (it was written in Perl), but I was ultimately intrigued. The more I observed it, the more it started to make sense. I started by making modifications and testing their results and eventually had enough knowledge to build my own, albeit simple, application. It all snowballed from there.

What I took away from the experience is to jump right in to the most advanced stage possible and work your way back to understanding. Baby steps only serve to hide the big picture and ultimately hinder your ability to understand. This is something I have applied to all of my learning since that day and I feel it has served me well. I always struggled in a formal education setting and I found out why: They teach backwards.

When you are learning to cook you don't mix flour and water together and look at the scientific properties that cause them to interact the way they do. No, you find a delicious recipe and prepare the entire dish. Each time you subsequently make it you add a twist to see how it affects the overall taste. Eventually you start to increase your understanding how the pieces fit together and can begin to come up with new combinations of your own. You will probably want to know why flour and water behave the way they do, but that comes later.

In my opinion, the way to learn how to program is to start with a recipe (i.e. source code). The rise of open source makes that easy. Make some small changes of your own. Break it down to understand why the original author did what he did. Once you are armed with the basics, you can start to apply that knowledge to meaningful Google searches.

</comment><comment><USER19> > If you want to learn to code and build stuff and you're starting by asking > someone else what you should do, you're already thinking about it the wrong > way.

If someone asks for help and this is the first thing you say, you're already thinking about it the wrong way.

What is their background? Their aptitude? Why do they want to learn? How do they learn best? Are their expectations reasonable? In short, what would be the smartest way to help this individual? One suboptimal way is to post essentially a multi-paragraph lmgtfy and assume that everybody will hound down the knowledge they need with the same geeky obsessiveness you would.

Edit: I meant to mention that remark about getting a Mac. "Embarrassed" to have considered anything else? I'm a big Mac fan (Cocoa developer) but that is ridiculous enough that I'm tempted to see the whole post as a joke.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want to learn something deeply and you're starting at Google, you've already mostly lost, at least for the software engineering discipline.

I wrote about this last month, in fact:

<http://blog.codelesson.com/why-learn-by-google-is-a-mistake/>

</comment><comment><USER21> While this advice makes sense in most cases it is just as important to learn where, how, whom and when to ask.

Also as a beginner it is often very difficult to separate good from bad advice, so it can make a lot of sense to ask even simple questions in e.g. an IRC channel even if you could find an answer with Google.

</comment><comment><USER22> The number one skill necessary to become a good coder/hacker/developer/maker is the ability to learn independently.

If you can't teach yourself and 'self start' - you're not going to be able to get very far.

</comment><comment><USER23> You can learn to code on your own, but it will probably take you a lot longer then going and hiring a tutor or even just taking a class. This "Teach yourself whatever the hell you want on Google" advice is about the worst advice I have ever read. I guess I could tell my cousin that he can teach himself how to be a doctor by watching Youtube videos and playing Operation, But I wouldn't let him be my doctor.

</comment><comment><USER24> Actually, I think that is the perfect question to ask. Knowing what you want to learn about is a huge step in the right direction.

The author presumes that everyone interested in coding should have a high level of confidence already. I disagree, and feel that if someone wants to learn about a subject, asking questions about that subject is exactly what they should be doing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Asking questions is good. Showing initiative is good. Getting perceptive is good. These are the qualities you want to see in people. Embrace them. Encourage it.

There are so many different paths you could take when you set out on this quest that without a little guidance, you could waste a lot of time. Save learning to be an independent hacker for lesson two.

</comment><comment><USER25> Google for answers, patch stuff together from tutorials and apply for "engineering" jobs? Are you fucking kidding me. Do the world a favor and stop calling yourself an engineer. And do yourself a favor and "google" what engineering is and why reading blogs and tutorials doesn't make you one.

</comment><comment><USER26> Am I alone thinking that person asking _this_ question may be not exactly the coder material?

I've learnt to program long before Google existed and I never had this question. I was just learning, whenever I had a chance: reading articles, buying books.

</comment><comment><USER27> People rightfully ask this question because it is not so obvious for almost every other field of study.

Programming is one of the few subjects where it is possible to learn so much of it simply by searching online and practicing by yourself.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice post :)

Anyone used <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/>? Seems like a good starting point for someone wanting to get going without creating your own CSS classes.

Nice, clean design and code. Think it will be perfect for mockups and user flow design. Going to give it bash, will report back if anyone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tons of helpful links here.

<comment><USER30> I think you completely missed the entire point of the article.

<comment><USER29> Let's agree to disagree.</comment></comment></comment>


Janus cosmology: what is negative mass? - <AUTHOR> http://www.januscosmologicalmodel.com/negativemass <comment><USER2> This is an interesting phenomenon.

On the first glance, this is a modestly interesting bimetric theory of gravity, one of the many. These theories are usually considered valid science, not without issues, but at least offering some new insights. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetric_gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimetric_gravity).

On the other hand, this particular theory comes from this person: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Pierre_Petit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Petit). Even if it would have been a blinding light of scientific truth (and it isn't), he would have a hard time convincing other scientists in its validity, because of his... other convictions.

<comment><USER3> He seems to be somewhere on the schizophrenia spectrum, or at least susceptible to conspiracy theories.

But he presents his theories in a logically consistant way, or lets say at least in a way that it can be checked whether it is logically consistant. He also has many peer-reviewed publications in cosmology. The Janus stuff is properly published [1].

I don't think one easily dismiss his theory because of his other stuff.

[1] Petit, J.-P. (April 1995). "Twin universes cosmology". Astrophysics and Space Science 227 (2): 273–307.

<comment><USER4> Certainly plenty of prominent scientists have had extremely odd views, and this does not much change the validity of their work. It appears his work has been peer reviewed, although how often and by whom would be an excellent question.

The most troubling assertion is that of plagiarism. If he has really plagiarized Sabine Hossfelder, he is both foolish (plagiarizing someone so prominent would be noticed) and dishonest (which might suggest a more pervasive intellectual dishonesty).

The difficulty of course is that valid equations might be independently derived. I am curious to read why the accusations were made. I assume if they are credible that independent derivation is considered unlikely for some reason.

Incidentally, the UMMO cult is an interesting one. They're one of the more believable of the New Age-esque UFO channeling cults that sprang up in the aftermath of various New Thought (think Christian Scientists or Unity Church) and Seventh Day Adventist movements.

It's highly likely that UMMO originated as a fraud perpetrated principally by a Spanish psychologist, although there is strong evidence for other help and some evidence for the involvement of intelligence agencies, although with what motives it is difficult to say. Intelligence agencies frequently infiltrate or utilize such groups (see Richard Doty), but as there are a number of possible motivations it is impossible to suss out why in most cases.

UMMO is one of two UFO religions I'm aware of-- the other being Urantia-- where reasonably technical and somewhat correct scientific information is given at length by a channeled source. Both religions of course claim prophetic success, such as Urantia's claims about the star system Wolf 424.

They are somewhat unique in this respect, as while many other UFO religions utilize scientific concepts or language, it is not usually anywhere close to correct (or even comprehensible, sometimes).

The relevance here is that both religions have, in part because of this, and in part because they were promulgated within professional communities, attracted a disproportionate number of technically minded converts: computer scientists, engineers, physicists, and such. (Although notably few that _directly_ study the field of the claims. A physicist, for example, is not necessarily more informed about Would 424 than other physical science professionals, and is _not_ equivalent to an astronomer or astrophysicist, despite some overlap.)

<comment><AUTHOR> He's also translating his youtube videos in english. Here's a playlist of videos about his model that have been dubbed by humans [1] if you ever want to dig deeper.

If you're more interested in what he has to say about Hossfelder (and I think he's the only source on this story) you can watch the last ten minutes of his latest video [2]. Funny comics included.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYIurRmmnsU&list=PLfdj8oy5ze...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYIurRmmnsU&list=PLfdj8oy5zeoHJohMx_VLaK0-2_A_TQrKB&index=1)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQRS0aF2G9M&t=29m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQRS0aF2G9M&t=29m55s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Crackpot website design sensibilities have come a long way since TimeCube!

</comment><comment><USER6> This very much feeds the part of my brain that loves worldbuilding!

</comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, nah. I'm not going to read something titled "Proof Donald Trump is Actually the Best President" if the link goes to "DonaldTrump.com"

First-party punditry of scientific claims is a red flag the size of Alaska. If it has the slightest whiff of merit there ought to be a neutral third-party expert willing to bang out an article about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out [http://constructortheory.org/](http://constructortheory.org/) by David Deutsch.

Unfortunately I cannot find the video/article where he states he's marketing this theory via a website because it's met with indifference, like any other theory: it takes times – years, sometimes decades – for a theory to be heard, let alone be opposed.

<comment><USER7> It takes years for an idea to gain momentum in the scientific community. It does not take years to get an article on a half-creditable site like Ars Technica or Space.com. Marketing an idea directly to the public, i.e., people who can't do math, is suspicious as hell.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author has published papers on his model in various peer-reviewed journals. Check out the bottom of the home page. As I said, he theorized, went through the peer-review ping pong session, published and then set up this website, which is why I compare him to Deutsch, who went through the same steps.

<comment><USER7> So why is the link going to his personal site instead of the paper or to a neutral article covering the paper?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not a presentation format that inspires confidence that this is not crackpottery

<comment><USER9> Speaking only for myself, I am vastly more interested in seeing commentary on the content, than on its formatting.

<comment><USER10> Why is this going to the public before being accepted by scientists? This format is appropriate for things that have been known to be true for twenty years, not random models. Taking your ideas straight to the public before obtaining wide expert agreement is actually one of the signs of physics-themed crackpottery.

<comment> a-nikolaev I'd say that a discussion and criticism by experts must be required, not really wide acceptance. In theoretical physics, there can be many competing models that could be hard to verify or proof wrong. "Science advances one funeral at a time", progress is made quite slowly to make everyone accept a new theory. Edit: So, I'd like to see a peer-reviewed article by the author, and some responses by people in the field. That could be enough for a new theory.

<comment><USER11> If you look at the bottom of every page, including the homepage, the author references his own relevant peer-reviewed articles.

I'm not saying his theory is right, or that the presentation doesn't smell a bit of crackpottery (it does), but at least he's referencing some real science he's done and that has apparently been accepted.

<comment> a-nikolaev Yeah, that's good, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A little OT, but there was a XKCD-comic about a 'space-layer' made of a 'polygone-structure' \- and I for for the abstract first thought, 'Randall better had written about a (for the 2D-shema) five-sided-(pentagon)-layer', cos if you think -just for a moment - about measuring and data-gathering- structures for mapping space maybe... - after you measured the size, temp, coordinates, and maybe 'relations' (for an example: possibility for water -in a survival-scenario... it was about astronomy) - I realized, the pentagon- figure 'shrinks' in a triangle, but 'You better have one more data-point open -for maybe future purposes'

Now I feel a bit _fuzzie_ cos just 5 Minutes ago there was a posting here on HN someone saying something like: 'Somebody made an UI and for years it became the main theme... ' (-;</comment>


We don't exactly know what US political parties are [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www2.law.columbia.edu/instructionalservices/political_parties/per_cain.pdf <comment><USER2> Uh, yes we do: ___factions of power._ __(with nuanced corruption)

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but I think what is most interesting is that we don't know whether we can restrict them or whether they have any rights which is a pretty scary thought.</comment></comment>


How Do You Do, FNU? Some in U.S. Handle Just One Name - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-do-you-do-fnu-some-in-u-s-handle-just-one-name-1458594616 <comment><USER2> Cue "falsehoods programmers believe..."</comment>


WikiLeaks Intercepted Private Communications via TOR  - <AUTHOR> http://vrritti.com/2010/12/10/wikileaks-intercepted-private-communications-via-tor-proxy-network-maintains-access/

<comment><USER2> So the network that was lauded as being anonymous and that people should use it if they want to have secure transmissions wasn't so secure.

Nice.

<comment><USER3> No, that's not the case at all. Tor does not claim (and never has claimed) to protect against attackers trying to do what's described in the article. Tor provides _anonymity_ only, not full end-to-end encryption.

If you don't want your messages to be sent as plaintext, you have to encrypt them. This is true whether or not you're sending your data through Tor. Tor _does_ do some encryption, but all traffic between the exit router and the final destination is unencrypted, because Tor can't magically encrypt traffic to a server that doesn't know how to deal with encrypted traffic. (Which, on the internet, is still most of them).

Tor is not the be-all end-all of anonymity online. As their website very clearly states, you need to do other things (like encrypt your sensitive traffic) if you don't want people reading it. Messages on their download page and in their FAQ very clearly address this.

The same explanation from the Tor people themselves: [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/plaintext-over-tor-still- pl...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/plaintext-over-tor-still-plaintext)

<comment><USER2> Many people are not this tech savvy and don't realize this. I think I'm going to do the same thing to see how much data, accounts, and other goodies I can get.</comment></comment></comment>


How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/

<comment><USER2> I've heard this theory a couple times, and I have to say it's kind of unsettling to think that my personality and termperment may be just as much a product of which infectious organisms my body contains as the behaviors I have picked up from the people around me.

I've had cats all my life (outdoor cats), and I match the description of most of the personality effects described. That said, the author also felt she matched alot of the symptoms of the infection, but ended up being clear. I guess in the end it's just one of those things where you have to push it out of your mind and just get on with living life.</comment>


Amazon Seller Account - Automated System? - <AUTHOR>

So it appears that I'm not the only one having issues selling on Amazon.  They close my account for no reason, claiming that I have multiple accounts, I don't!  I submitted an appeal, no response.  I followed up and I magically got another automated response. Do they really investigate? They are holding my funds for 90 days!  Next move: Contact the BBB and the CEO of Amazon. The convo goes as follows: I'm contacting you in regards to my recently suspended account. I previously contacted you on 8/16 and was supposed to have a response the following day, but I haven't heard anything yet. For some reason there is a bit of confusion going on here. Amazon seems to think that I have violated policy and have two accounts (or my mom has two accounts). This is untrue. I reside in California and my mother in Indiana. I recently flew home for a visit and told her about my success in selling on Amazon and suggested she do some spring cleaning and give it a shot herself. I helped her get everything set up so that she could continue selling on Amazon. She wasn't familiar with how to input the items, buy shipping, best way to package the products, or how to price the items, so I walked her through how to do all of that in order to ensure that she was successful as well. It was neither of our intention to violate any policies. I wasn't aware that showing someone how to operate the sellercentral site was in violation. By no means do either of us have multiple accounts. Neither of us are making money off of the other. In addition, we live across the country from each other, I'm sure you can see that. It would be very difficult to operate two accounts across the country from each other and operate from both sites. Aside from the fact that we are two entirely different people with totally different names, contact info, and bank account info. Please reconsider the actions you have taken against both of us and further look into the matter. <comment><AUTHOR> THE AUTOMATED RESPONSE THAT I RECEIVED:

Hello from Amazon.

Thank you for writing. After a review of your account by an account specialist, we have decided not to reinstate your selling privileges.

We regret we are unable to provide further information on this situation. Further correspondence regarding the closure of your selling account may not be answered.

The closure of this account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Regards,

Seller Performance Team Amazon.com <http://www.amazon.com></comment>


What Do Animals See in a Mirror? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/what-do-animals-see-in-a-mirror-rp <comment><USER2> Nice article!

I have cared a lot of cats, and I didnt knew about all that experiences, but I did a lot about this with my pets. I put a mirror in front of the cat, and watched the reactions. The pattern is 90% the same:

1) The cat looks surprised. Depending of the the natural character of the cat, he will watch the reflex or get "armed" to fight. Cleary he think its another stranger cat.

2) The cat then try "feel" the reflex, touching sometimes, smelling other times, and ever trying look behind the mirror

3) Finally, the cat probably detects the reflex is not a threat and lose the interest

I really dont know if has some part of "self awareness", but probably the cat lose the interest really far before any of this level of perception

Other point is, the cat trust more in the sense of smell and hearing than the sense of view. Only one image is not enough to "identify" a target.

<comment><USER3> You have _created_ cats?

My experience with cats is that they are definitely intelligent, in general, and are aware of a lot of things, but they generally just don't care.

One VERY _unique_ kitten that I had, whenever he approached a mirror, or a glass door or window, would stand up on his hind legs and rapidly rub or "massage" the glass with both his front paws, like a puppy, as if trying to climb it or roll it open.

Sadly I never captured the act on camera and he died an unfairly early death that I took a long time to recover from.

<comment><USER4> Maybe that guy's native language is portuguese?

In brazilian portuguese, the word "raise" (in the context of raising kids, pets, etc.) translates to "criar"; while "create" also translates to "criar".

<comment><USER5> Brazilian here, I thought the same thing. Matter of fact, I only noticed the word after the second guy mentioned it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are a lot of steps not related to self-awareness involved in investigating oneself in a mirror. For example, with the "spot" test, the animal has to:

1) Be interested enough in the reflection to watch it long enough to see the spot

2) Be observant enough to notice the spot

3) Be curious enough to care about the spot

4) Understand that the animal in the mirror is itself

5) Collapse the logical chain that: (a) if the animal in the mirror has a spot, and (b) the animal in the mirror is itself, then therefore (c) _it_ has a spot.

6) Think to use the mirror as a tool for investigation.

An animal could plausibly get (4) without getting enough of the other steps to actually start investigating. To me, (5) seems like the most difficult leap of intelligence of all of these, and it doesn't really have to do with self- awareness-- it's more about complex inference and logical reasoning. (6) also suggests that the capability for tool use might be a prerequisite.

Most cat owners understand (including other posters in this thread) that cats know the difference between their own reflection and another real cat seen through a window. Disinterest is one explanation (though that doesn't happen with _actual_ cats in a window), but I don't think cats' failure in the "spot" experiment is enough to exclude that they are indeed capable of (4).

On top of that, I don't think this experiment says _anything at all_ about the nature or presence of "consciousness".

<comment><USER7> This also seems very plausible to me. I've seen my cat to be frightened by sudden appearance in the mirror just to relax in about 0.5 s. Clearly not enough time to decide if the creature in the mirror is harmless, but apparently enough to recognize himself. The second time he faces mirror in this location he isn't scared anymore. This isn't at all similar to how he reacts to actual cats.

Also, it isn't the same with all cats I've known. Some seem to be more clueless than others.

<comment><USER8> >I've seen my cat to be frightened by sudden appearance in the mirror just to relax in about 0.5 s. Clearly not enough time to decide if the creature in the mirror is harmless..

Why isn't it enough time to decide whether the reflection is harmless? Not my area of expertise, but I'd expect humans to be able to parse a face or a even posture for signs of imminent aggression in that time easily. Many other animals should be able to do the same.

I'd say we are highly optimized for this, since the biggest threat to humans have been other humans for most of history, and quick judgement can literally decide who lives and who dies.

<comment><USER9> Well, the reaction of a frightened cat isnt, by design, one that appears friendly. They usually jump and get a puffy tail. If the cat observes his reflection jumping and getting a puffy tail, itd make sense for the cat to assume danger, for he just ran into another cat whom got freaked out seeing him.

That is, if the cat doesnt recognize itself rather quickly

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recall reading an interesting theory on the mirror test: some animals for whom sight is a more secondary sense might fail a mirror test, but could potentially self-identify using other senses.

Take dogs for example: their sense of smell is much much more primary than their sense of sight. So while they may fail a mirror test, they may be more adept at self-identification by scent.

Edit: found an article about it from NPR [http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/03/03/134167145/i-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/03/03/134167145/i-sniff- therefore-i-am-are-dogs-self-conscious)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how this applies to humans now that photographs are so common.

At a young age we might not recognize ourselves, but anymore, especially with social media, we're constantly surrounded by pictures of ourselves in different situations (or even something as simple as profile pictures on nearly any website). A young child probably isn't using these but I wonder if constantly seeing oneself in images all the time reduces the proof that this is a form a 'higher' thinking as suggested in the introduction of this article and more of a learned thing due to the immersion with this.

It's not a mirror per se so it's not a live look at you, but nonetheless it's still you that you're seeing.

</comment><comment><USER12> so according this test children under 1-1.5 don't have conscience about self awareness thus should not have same rights as other human beings, was this really confirmed at babies? isn't this test beyond their ability to express themselves?

</comment><comment><USER13> probably should have (2014) in title.</comment>


What I learned from sacking 100 employees and losing $1.5M - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2015/04/19/what-i-learned-from-sacking-100-employees-and-losing-1-5-million/ <comment><USER2> The internet is filled up by all sorts of people. What's the difference between a con artist and an unsuccessful serial entrepeneur? I think we may have found it.

<comment><USER3> It is filled with all sorts of people and I cannot agree with you on this. But I don't think that you have to find the difference between con artist and "unsuccessful" serial entrepreneur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The affiliate marketing echo chamber is strong, and seems to focus on memes of success and money. Funny how that ends up working out when you actually reach it. Nice to see some great conclusions at the end.

<comment><USER3> It is stronger than ever, but it changed a lot.</comment></comment>