How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It's Buying U.S. Oil - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/world/americas/venezuela-oil-economy.html <comment><USER2> Currency controls and price controls and government nationalization have destroyed Venezuela.

Currency controls: there's a 1:10 exchange rate, dollars to bolivars, for essential imports, like food, medicine, etc. The black market exchange rate is about 1:1010.

To get the good rate, you need connections. But hey, it's a pain in the ass to actually contact suppliers and get goods through customs, and you're capped at what price you can sell goods at, so what you do is actually exchange 10 bolivars for a dollar, and turn around and exchange that dollar for 1000 bolivars on the black market. You keep doing that until either you have way too much money or you lose the preferred exchange rate.

Price controls: No country is an island these days. No matter what good it is, you need external imports. For instance, if you're making beer, you might need to import hops or barley (true story, look up Polar in Venezuela).

With the currency controls, you can't get hard foreign currency to pay your suppliers. And they sure as heck aren't going to accept your debased currency as payment. So your factories sit idle, because you just can't get supplies for production, and then the government nationalizes your factory because you're "sabotaging production".

Government nationalization: The goal of the government is ideological purity. If you're not producing goods for sale at artifically low prices (sometimes the sale price is below the cost of production), the government swoops in, calls you an enemy of the revolution, and replaces all the skilled people who are ideologically impure, such as managers, with party hacks who have no idea what they're doing. That's why Venezuela oil production is in the toilet.

The Nordic version of "socialism" simply involves taxing the rich and giving subsidies to the poor. They don't try to dictate prices or control means of production or fiddle with the exchange rate. The authoritarian socialism Venezuela is using right now has failed in every instance it has been tried.

<comment><USER2> Funny thing is that socialism tends to reject religion, but price controls originated in Christian thought.

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

What a lot of people don't realize is that prices aren't inherently good or bad in and of themselves, they just _are_. If somebody else is willing to pay 20k for a diamond, that's the price of a diamond.

No amount of legislation or argument will drive down the price of a diamond to what it "should" be.

See [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023034600045791921...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303460004579192100178248012). The prices of electronics dropped in price after a governmental mandate. Guess what? After the store inventories were depleted, they never got any more TVs to sell.

<comment><USER3> > What a lot of people don't realize is that prices aren't inherently good or > bad in and of themselves, they just are. If somebody else is willing to pay > 20k for a diamond, that's the price of a diamond.

Arguably, even the early Christian thinkers like Acquinas agree with you on this. [http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/08/15435/](http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/08/15435/)

<comment><USER2> In theory, yes. But look at this following quote from the article:

> but was simply the current market price, with this important reservation: in > cases of collusion or emergency, the public authorities retained the right > to interfere and to impose a fair price.

In socialist governments, they see the free market as always "colluding" to cheat the working man. That's why they set unrealistically low prices for basic goods, like bread, and rail against producers for "colluding" because hey, most price costs about the same amount, so it has to be a coordinated effort while people are going hungry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Curious American asking any Venezuelans out there: how does this situation get any better? What do you look to for hope? I'm not familiar with the Venezuelan media perspective (any non-state-affiliated stations left?), but from here, it seems like there is no serious effort to change course; on the contrary Maduro seems to be driving ahead with the notion that, somehow, more of the poison will cure the patient.

When does the change in direction come? What brings it on? Will Maduro step down? Will his successor do any better? Or will his successor be even more dictatorial? It's all very worrisome, my heart goes out to those who live under such incompetent rule.

<comment><USER5> First step is to reduce public spending and fight corruption, just very basic steps will bring significant improvement.

Then, welcome foreign and local investment: privatize most of the industries that were nationalized and are now idle, and fix labor laws a little, this also include liberalization of currency, enforce property laws so private companies feel safe investing in the long term.

When can this happen? As of today no sooner than 2019 when the next presidential elections will take place. Unless a coup is on the table but I don't see that happening.

<comment><USER2> I doubt it will happen in 2019, and this is why.

Maduro has painted himself into a corner. He has very nakedly announced that he will do everything in his power to remain in power, even if it means crapping all over the constitution, and stripping the legislative branch of all its power.

He'll figure something out in 2019. He has all the guns, and he know that if he falls out of power, he'll be strung up on the nearest lamppost like Mussolini. He's doubling down because he really has nowhere else to go. Once you realize that, that he has to do everything he's doing to cement the military to his side, it all makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Venezuela is a failed state at this point. I'm more than happy to personally take them as an example of why spending big on social programs doesn't produce long-lasting social benefits. I understand many people will find a point of disagreement here.

This is especially true when corruption is rife. In countries with high corruption, it seems the very best thing to do is to limit as much as possible how much money flows from the top, which is another way of saying limit federal government spending.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but what about the other states that spend on social programs and ended up successful?

This is like throwing out a carton of eggs because one of them broke.

<comment><AUTHOR> How many nations fall into that category?

There are only roughly 28 nations on earth with a GDP per capita over $20,000 for example.

I happen to find what the six or so best managed welfare states in Europe have accomplished, to be impressive. However, for every Sweden in Europe, there are two Bulgarias. Or there's France, which has seen economic stagnation for nearly a generation. Most of the well-managed welfare states have seen zero or near-zero economic growth for nearly a decade at this point, while their debt has exploded vastly higher as they try to fake-maintain their present standard of living by stealing from the future.

<comment><USER8> Look this is pointless argument. Same way we could argue that small government, sovereign citizen, libertarian meritocracy leads to Somalia.

There is a continuum of social systems that can work, and whether it works mainly depends on confounding factors. History, culture fit, geography, neighbours. E.g. Sweden's been an empire most of its history; Bulgaria has been a colony. Check their performance in historical cohort perhaps? Sweden vs Turkey and Bulgaria vs Tajikistan?

Chavez' Venezuela system is well beyond the "habitable range" of governance. To present it as some condemnation of West European welfare states is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Early this year, the United States began shipping more than 50,000 barrels > a day of the light crude that Venezuela needs to prepare its own oil for > export_

What does this mean? How does this work? Why do you need oil to make oil?

<comment><USER10> This is addressed in the article: the oil industry in Venezuela is in disarray, so the country can't rely on its own supply. They have enormous reserves, but they can't reliably draw from it or refine it.

<comment><USER11> They should just lease out licenses to allow foreign companies to draw the oil themselves and use the proceeds to fix their own oil infrastructure.

They have so many options to chose from to fix their economy. It seems like they don't have the will to fix anything. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some sort of corruption going on.

The leaders of the country seem to be intentionally draining the money out of the country (and personally profiting from this).

<comment><USER12> Somehow I don't imagine Royal Dutch Shell will be _that_ eager to dive in again, unless they've got some very strong assurances that the next government isn't going to just pull the rug out from under them again...

<comment><USER11> It seems like a change of leadership would be necessary to restore trust. When you consider this, the corruption actually makes sense.

The country's leaders probably know that it's just a matter of time before they are removed from power and are trying to make use that time they have left to enrich themselves personally.

<comment><USER13> This seems like it could explain all corruption everywhere? After all, "it's just a matter of time" for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I don't understand is, how the hell are the leaders still in power? Why aren't people taking drastic action against this failed government?

If people are literally not eating food, that's typically when there's a revolution. If I couldn't eat everyday and feed my family, I'd be out in the streets. Why not? You have nothing to lose at that point.

<comment><USER15> >Why aren't people taking drastic action against this failed government?

They don't have the 2nd Amendment.

<comment><USER5> Venezuela doesn't have a 2nd amendment, but the lack of guns is certainly not the reason, if anything is the excess of guns in the street, what people in America don't understand is that the government will always be better armed than the population, Syria is a good example.

What keeps totalitarian governments is will to power, how much os the government willing to risk against the population. Owning a gun is not the same as being willing to die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You wonder how long Maduro will hang in there. With him gone they could return to somewhat sane economic policies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I keep wondering if Venezuela won't end up somewhat copying Argentina and politically moving away from the numerous failed policies of the Chavez era.

<comment><USER17> As Venezuelan I hope no.

I think everything that can happen with the opposition can't be worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich USA? It's Buying oil from all over the world!

in 2015, the USA imported 9,400,000 barrels every day from 82 countries (Mostly from Canada, Saudi Arabia and ... surprise, surprise from Venezuela).

Now the NYT thinks that Venezuela importing 50,000 barrels of light crude (to dilute their heavy crude) is news? They forgot to mention that last year the US imported 830,000 barrels from Venezuela (the third largest supplier to the US). If you read the actual import/export numbers [0], you will understand that it's just a political submarine article. The reason Venezuelan oil production is declining is a pretty complex phenomenon (driven mostly by Geology and exacerbated by mismanagement, brain drain, corruption, etc).

[0] [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6)

<comment><USER19> The US is hot on the plan to burn all of the world's fossil fuels and natural gasses before anyone else does. Some old strategy from ww2.

Edit: my android autocorrect is altering my posts

<comment><USER18> I'm afraid there is no such plan. US production has been declining since the 70s in spite of all attempts to keep it going. Only with the >$100/barrel prices from the last few years did fracking become viable and production recover (Tight oil's growth in the US is not expected to last very long though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Oil accounts for half of the Venezuelan government's revenues

...Who thought that was a good idea?

<comment><USER21> Nobody, but the Resource Curse seems to be one of those iron laws that happens inexorably even if people are aware of it (cf. principal-agent problems pushing prices upward), unless very determined action is taken to avoid it (like Norway), and that kind of action wasn't going to happen under Chavez.

<comment><USER22> > unless very determined action is taken to avoid it (like Norway)

Norway is not immune. It's the current popular thing to say, but Norway will fall victim to it just like everyone else does.

Look at some charts on their exports: 60%+ is energy. Look at their industry: Basically non-existent, except energy. Look at where young people are making their living: Energy.

If (when?) the oil runs out (or people stop buying it) their economy will implode - the fund they setup will not last long enough (they have enough for about 10-20 years). No one is developing skills in any other fields, it will take a generation or more to transition, and in the meantime everyone depends on charity (i.e. the fund) - and that's toxic to any economy because people become used to it.

So what you wrote about "Iron Law" is correct _without_ the qualifier you added for Norway.

<comment><USER23> Still, they're certainly doing better than many other oil-rich nations.

<comment><USER22> That's true, but it's not exactly a high bar.

They gets lots of credit for being aware of the problem, but less credit for thinking they are doing better than they actually are.

It's too bad oil will be worth less eventually - otherwise they could just force themself to leave it in the ground, but the way things are going they had best convert it to cash as soon as possible.

It makes me wonder if it's economically long-term better for them to pretend not to have oil and develop their economy, vs. selling the oil.

Long term, which will give them more total cash?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are some crucial points missing from and/or obscured in this story. Yes, Venezuelay has run some massive social benefit programmes, including subsidising many standard goods, mosts especially fuel and food (both of which, on reflection are fuels), for years. _So has virtually every other oil state._

The situation in Venezuela devolves in large part, though not entirely exclusively, from:

1\. The globally depressed petroleum market. After massive price spikes in the late 2000s, increased extraction, mostly from very highly-financed unconventional wells, and an ongoing global economic recession, have caused oil prices to fall.

2\. The highly-financed well operators, much as Venezuela, have the problem of high fixed costs, mostly debts, which must be serviced in order to avoid bankruptcy. This creates a perverse incentive to _increase_ supply as price _falls_. Since these operators have high _marginal_ costs, their profits are also lower to start with.

3\. Venezuela's oil reserves, among the largest in the world, have _always_ been less desireable than West Texas or Persian Gulf oil, both of which are "light sweet crude" \-- comprised largely of smaller hydrocarbons, and low in contaminants, especially sulfer. Saudi crude flows like syrup, Venezuelan more like molassas on a cold day. Venezuela previously had more light and medium crude oil, but production of these has fallen by 37% since 2004 (Reuters, below).

4\. Much of recent US domestic oil supply has been of NGL (natural gas liquids) and condensate -- _very_ light fractions of hydrocarbons, some of which are only very barely not gaseous at normal temperatures. (This is also, incidentally, why oil train wrecks and fires have been so volatile -- the lighter fractions of oil are exceptionally volatile and burn explosively.) _Much of this supply is not suitable for use in transport fuels._ You cannot produce petrol, kerosene/jet fuel, or diesel from them, and the US has been (quietly) looking for ways to export this _anyway_. See this _Wall Street Journal_ article from June, 2014:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate- intelligence/2014/06/25/what-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate- intelligence/2014/06/25/what-is-condensate-introducing-americas-new-oil- export/)

Oil industry critics have argued that counting condensate/NGL in US crude oil extraction statistics isn't defensible.

[http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Condensate- Con...](http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Condensate-Con-How-Real- Is-The-Oil-Glut.html)

Exports of condensate began only in 2014 following regulatory rule changes:

[http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/06/24/feds-open-door-to- condens...](http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/06/24/feds-open-door-to-condensate- exports/)

5\. Venezuela is using the US imports as dilutants for its heavy oil. I suggested this in an earlier reply, and confirmed the fact in a Reuters artice:

 _Each barrel extracted from the Orinoco belt needs some kind of diluent to be transported and exported. Naphtha is typically used to transport crude to the upgraders, but when these facilities are not fully working or are under maintenance lighter crudes are needed to formulate blends for exports._

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-venezuela-imports- fact...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-venezuela-imports-factbox- idUSKBN0IG17Q20141027)

Venezuela previously imported distillates from Nigeria in the 1990s.

6\. As the _NY Times_ article _does_ manage to mention, Venezuela faces large debt and financing obligations to multiple creditors, including China, and several US firms, including Halliburton.

As with several previous Venezuela stories on HN, there's been a swarm of comments attacking the Venezuelan government and political systems. At best, those criticisms tell only a part of the story, and quite possibly a minor part.

<comment><USER5> Some of your point are consequences not causes. For example: the reason Venezuela is using the US imports as dilutants for its heavy oil is because bad management of the industry, it wasn't always like that, you can say the same about the debt, Venezuela is not screwed because of the debt, it has debt because it's screwed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The wonders of socialism.

<comment><USER26> Sincere question: HOW? I mean, even if we assume a socialist economy is terribly inefficient, like operating at 50% of the efficiency a capitalist one, it still should be enough for sustaining a resource-rich country.

WTF they are doing _so_ wrong?! Are they under intense internal or external sabotage? Corruption is so bad?

I mean, this is not some mid-African country with >50% of the population illiterate, bunch of horrible tropical diseases, plus children running around with guns and AIDS...

A country like Venezuela should "kind of work" _even with corruption and inefficient socialism!_ What the heck is going on there?

<comment><USER27> > A country like Venezuela should "kind of work" even with corruption and > inefficient socialism! What the heck is going on there?

its not just a little corruption. it's absolutely stunning batshit off the charts rampant corruption.

<comment><USER28> "Well, let's say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of corruption in a socialist country. Based on this latest report, it would be a Twinkie thirty- five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why can't they just ask other more friendly countries (Russia, Norway, maybe China) for the expertise in exchange for oil? Should be an easy solution, or am I missing something in my oversimplification?

(And, please, don't blame it on communism/socialism; people have interests and I believe so do people in Venezuela - including those working in the government.)

<comment><USER30> I'm gonna blame it on communism.

It's not that they don't know how to produce oil. It's that the oil company has been so heavily mismanaged and used for political purposes that it has become extremely inefficient.

[http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21607824-venezuelas-l...](http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21607824-venezuelas- loss-thousands-oil-workers-has-been-other-countries-gain-brain-haemorrhage)

 _> IN 2003 Venezuela's then president, Hugo Chávez, fired more than 18,000 employees, almost half the workforce, of the state-run oil corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Their offence was to have taken part in a strike (pictured) called in protest at the politicisation of the company. Their punishment was to be barred from jobs not only in PDVSA itself but also in any company doing business with the oil firm. The axe fell heavily on managers and technicians: around 80% of the staff at Intevep, PDVSA's research arm, are thought to have joined the strike. At the stroke of a pen, Venezuela lost its oil intelligentsia._

Obviously, this wouldn't have happened in a free market. But even other state- run oil companies haven't made this kind of blunder.

<comment><USER29> What you (plus the quote from The Economist) describe is like shooting yourself in the foot. Still, ideology aside, why would Chavez do such a thing? Was he an intellectual moron? No. He knew that without oil exports his people would be hungry, and hungry people mean bloody revolution.

Also, quoting from The Economist is one sided considering their position regarding Venezuela during and after Chavez.

You see, media is biased and I don't want to trust them, no matter how "respectable" they are. (eg. NYT in the eve of 2003 Iraq invasion)

I'd like to hear from people who live there (or from less biased reporters) about causes for this situation in which an oil rich country must import oil from its major adversary, in which the whole society dissolves.

EDIT: User nnq asks the same questions as I do.

<comment><USER31> You don't trust The Economist to be unbiased. Fine. But I know of no sources that assert either that the event in question (the firing of the oil workers) didn't happen, or that it didn't destroy Venezuela's oil production. So in the absence of _any_ contrary evidence, I think The Economist's account of that specific event is to be trusted.

Why would Chavez do such a thing? I suspect (OK, guess) that when you have a theory that you are so committed to that anything that doesn't conform is regarded as enemy propaganda, it becomes amazingly easy to do really stupid things. (Note that this does not depend on what the theory is; _any_ theory, disconnected from any counter-evidence, is prone to this.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hackers steal 3.4 million SSNs, 387k Credit Cards from SC Dept of Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.wltx.com/news/article/206768/2/Hacker-Takes-Millions-of-SC-Citizens-Personal-Info

<comment><AUTHOR> So i'm an independent contractor and as such make quarterly estimated payments to the SC Department of Revenue. Luckily they have this ancient payment platform that is constantly throwing classic ASP errors. I noticed one when I did a payment the other day that made me suspect that the whole system was vulnerable to SQL injection. I decided not to poke much further and to warn them about it.

I've sent them two messages over the last few months warning them that a system likely created over 10 years ago that is vital to process hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payments shouldn't be throwing visible SQL errors and ASP errors and that this stuff is a huge security risk... never heard anything back.</comment>


EU dropped pesticide laws due to US pressure over TTIP, documents reveal - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/22/eu-dropped-pesticide-laws-due-to-us-pressure-over-ttip-documents-reveal <comment> white-flame The US is theoretically based on a checks and balances system, in the hopes of preventing unchecked tyranny.

On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted.

The complaints are about how restriction will impact "global trade" of particular pesticides. The EU's entire point is that these items should not be traded. That statement holds regardless of the economic impact.

<comment><USER3> "On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted"

I am very skeptical that any of the founding fathers would have wanted European countries restricting US trade. With that said, I agree that the Europeans should make a stand and not accept what they consider dangerous pesticides to be imported into the EU

<comment><USER4> They were pretty clear that they didn't want European countries saying saying either 'yes' or saying 'no'.

Up until very early 1900 it was the US's lifeblood to not involve itself politically with Europe (or the rest of the world) at all.

It's probably the case that the founding fathers would have different opinions were they born today. Today you can travel around the world several times than you could travel across the (extremely small) country then. Things are different.

<comment><USER5> > Up until very early 1900 it was the US's lifeblood to not involve itself > politically with Europe (or the rest of the world) at all.

Erm... Monroe Doctrine anyone? How about War of 1812? US Leaders visiting France for support in the Revolution?

Seriously, what's with everyone not understanding basic history around here... I do recognize this is a tech forum, but its exceedingly easy to come up with counter-examples to so many historical statements...

<comment><USER4> Hey now. I said political involvement (other countries saying 'yes' or 'no'). Certainly the US has always engaged in trade and self defense. You've argued a straw man.

Basic history of the United States is that it was, broadly, a non- interventionist nation that refused to get involved in other nations wars. You are the one who has mischaracterized basic history.

"She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example."

<comment><USER5> > Basic history of the United States is that it was, broadly, a non- > interventionist nation that refused to get involved in other nations wars.

I do think the Native Americans would beg to differ. (Indian Removal Act of 1830). Furthermore, the American explicit foreign policy was "Stay out of America so that we can colonize it better". That included South America and the Central America island countries as well.

In 1878 for example, we sailed our Navy to Samosa and threatened war with Germany.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_Convention](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_Convention)

The current topic is about a trade dispute regarding the purchase of American Pesticides in Europe. America always had foreign policy and trade disputes.

Now, I agree that during the 1850s, US Foreign Relations more or less stood still. There was something called the Civil War, and we kind of didn't focus on foreign affairs.

Pretending that we were always an isolationist nation is an error! Our rise as a world power (and global politics) began almost immediately after we rebuilt during the Civil War.

Before the Civil War, America wasn't exactly powerful enough to push other nations around in global politics. But we definitely pushed the Native Americans around and expanded with Manifest Destiny, and utilized the Monroe Doctrine to keep other European Countries from settling the region. To claim the Monroe doctrine as a "isolationist" strategy misses the point of Manifest Destiny... American Ambitions to conquer _all the land_ from east coast to west coast is evident even as early as the 1830s.

US-Mexico War, as well as other "threatened wars" (54/40 or fight), various boarder disputes with Canada.... all show the ambitions of the fledgling United States.

The concept of "Manifest Destiny" drove our foreign politics at the time. And that was _anything_ but isolationist.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Here's another major counterexample: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo_Act_of_1807](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo_Act_of_1807)

And all of the other (most certainly NOT isolationist) events that pissed of Britain enough that it led to the war of 1812.

<comment><USER4> I agree that the US was a colonialist nation leading up the 1900s. The tribal peoples of Mexico, South America and North America were not recognized as nations of their own. I know that isn't a very satisfying distinction, but you can see the point.

The article on the Embargo Act itself reads: "The Embargo Act of 1807 was a general Embargo that made illegal any and all exports from the United States. It was sponsored by President Thomas Jefferson and enacted by Congress. The goal was to force Britain and France to respect American rights during the Napoleonic Wars. They were engaged in a major war; the U.S. wanted to remain neutral and trade with both sides, but neither side wanted the other to have the American supplies." That's exactly in line with the thesis.

Regarding Samoa and Germany/Phillipines and Spain - this is when these policies began to change. They bubbled from the late 1800s and broke in the early 1900s.

I think there's a narrative difference here: the US broadly did not align themselves with other nations into treaties of peace and of war. The "founding fathers" specifically discussed the danger of political entanglement with other nations - the danger of allowing them to say "yes" and to say "no".

I feel like your interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, of the Embargo Act and of Manifest Destiny are not charitable for these reasons. Of course the US was not 'isolationist'. I termed it 'non-interventionist'. Even that is not a good term, but what was meant I think is clear.

Yes the US engaged in colonialism and in trade. But it did not involve itself in the spirit of the top post: allowing other nations to have a "yes" or "no" say. It made declarations like the Monroe Doctrine. It did not make treaties like NATO or like TTIP. Categorically these are different in kind than what happened before the 1900s.

Part of that is due to a changing world (I say this in my top post). But the US was also under a different international political disposition.

<comment><USER5> I disagree with your characterization of the TTIP.

TTIP is a trade agreement. It is the conditions under which American legislatures will declare various trades legal or illegal.

The Embargo Act of 1807 was specifically designed to tell Great Britain: "STOP DRAFTING OUR SAILORS!". (It failed spectacularly at doing that... but that was clearly the intent). We saw what Great Britain was doing, we didn't like what they were doing, and we created a trade policy (ie: stop all trade... everywhere) in an attempt to punish Great Britain.

The difference is that TTIP is more nuanced and better reasoned. It is also more intricate in defining what is and isn't a trade violation.

You're right, we care more about American Exports today because we have an understanding of how American jobs will be affected by TTIP. By pushing American Chemicals on the TTIP, we are favoring American trade.

Now European health groups will push back. But in the end, the trade dispute will probably benefit all countries involved.

<comment><USER4> I would say the difference is one of declaration rather than deliberation.

The Embargo Act was a declaration. TTIP is a negotiation.

But let's collapse this conversation back to the top, shall we? My response (and the arguments contained in the conversation that ensued) was to the claim that the "founding fathers" would have liked for other nations to check-and- balance the US; that they would have liked there to be political interdependence, even veto power from other nations.

That commenter said "On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted"

This is not the case. It is only past century of America has been okay with this. Before the turn, and as argued by the "founding fathers" themselves, America was against political entanglement.

<comment><USER5> In the context of the original post and your original response, I can agree with that statement. I'm thinking of situations where I don't agree in general... but I don't think it'd be useful to bring them up.

+1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When people say "trade agreements NEED to be negotiated in secret" this is why. It's hard to pack them with horrors like this, otherwise.

You'll be told "blah blah regulatory protectionism blah."

When was the last time a regulatory protectionism story was in the news, compared with weakening environmental protections or ratcheting up bad IP laws?

It's not about nationalists clinging to sovereignty. It's not about luddite workers. It's about stuffing treaties with crap like this.

<comment><USER7> What's exactly wrong with nationalists clinging to sovereignty? What's wrong with economic protectionism? I see sensible reasons for both.

<comment><USER8> There is nothing wrong with either if they are transacted out in the open so they can be weighted accordingly. When done in secret you can end up with something that you would not have chosen without protest or input but are nevertheless bound by.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not democratic.

In a democracy, the people are the sovereign. The people cannot be the sovereign if important decisions are kept in secret.

This is a serious problem.

<comment><USER10> The problem today is, that our democratic systems are eroding world-wide. Since the EU has more and more influence in Germany, German politicians are regularly using the EU to circumvent democratic decisions in our country.

When a law is not popular in Germany, they just pass it to the EU, where it is much easier to bring them into effect. Then they pressure our own parliament: "We have to comply to EU standards" and they just pass it on. There even was at least one case, where such a law was passed without thinking about it and our constitutional court had to cancel it as not constitutional.

These cases, where democratic decisions are circumvented are not single ones any more -- they are the rule, not the exception.

<comment><USER11> Yep. This is how the Data Retention Directive came about, for example. National politicians couldn't get it passed at home, so they did it at the EU level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People say, that TTIP will reduce standards in the EU (and potentially also in the US) regarding environmental and people protection.

When I see that: TTIP starts to reduce standards even _before_ it is signed.

</comment><comment><USER12> >> The TTIP is a trade deal being agreed by the EU and US to remove barriers to commerce and promote free trade.

Free trade is only good when we respect each other's standards and don't try to _constantly_ undermine consumer and worker protections.

<comment><USER13> >> The TTIP is a trade deal being agreed by the EU and US to remove barriers to commerce and promote free trade.

> Free trade is only good when we respect each other's standards and don't try > to constantly undermine consumer and worker protections.

"Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - <USER2> refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations." ~ Noam Chomsky, 1999, [http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm](http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm)

<comment><USER14> I live in Europe, and I give way over 50% of my income to the State. How is that liberalism?

It is not. This is a socialist State. And it is broke by the way.

The European or Federal Reserve printing money is not liberalism, it is Central planning.

That people in power try to maximize their personal profit is not liberalism, it is the rule of power on any ideology, institution or religion in the History of Humanity.

Look at any social animal out there and you will see them fighting for becoming alpha males or females. The difference with humans is that they rationalize it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would like to hear some discussion on the different proposals discussed in the article on the merits of the criteria for identifying endocrine disruptors. I know there are some knowledgeable folks on HN, so setting aside the main point of US interference in EU regulations, (a disturbing matter in its own right) what about the scientific analysis of the arguments?

</comment><comment><USER16> In case anyone is confused TTIP (along with NAFTA) is not a "free trade" agreement. A free trade agreement could be written on a post-it note and would be worded something like:

"We agree to not get in the way of our citizens engaging in commerce with one another."

<comment><USER17> That's not so much a free trade agreement but a statement of intent around which a free trade agreement can be made.

OTOH, any "free trade agreement" that's substantially more text than the US Constitution (which itself _is_ a free trade agreement with lots of other things tacked on) should be looked at suspiciously -- because, whereas the US Constitution is free trade with common rules delegated to accountable common bodies, most bigger free trade agreements _do_ have an element of free trade, but instead of having common rules set by a body accountable to the public of the whole trade area, they _set all the common rules in stone at the start to favor particular parties_ , and either leave adjustments to a body whose members are un- (or only distantly, through multiple layers of indirection) accountable to the public, or to the process of revising the whole agreement typically requiring assent of all parties.

So its "free" trade -- plus baked in advantage for certain powerful actors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When the US invaded Iraq under the pretext of WMD there were some early reports of WMDs being found. They turned out to be agricultural pesticides. Many pesticides are nerve agents, as are chemical weapons like Sarin.

Growing a field of crops without growing competing weeds or having insect infestation is a difficult problem. A lot of manual labor is one solution, and chemicals are another.

I have hope that robotics can solve the problem of competing weeds. I envision solar powered robots scouring the fields, using computer vision to identify weeds, and cutting/uprooting them. This would let us avoid manual labor while maintaining the great advantage of chemical herbicides.

I think that robots could also be designed to kill insects, but I think that is a much harder problem.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sopa, pipa, acta, tpp is this ambigious acronyns there to confuse the public? How about a new codes acronym f.t. which does not relate to a financial paper.

</comment><comment><USER20> i voted for eickhout in last elections because he seemed like a wise person. i did not like his party's skeptisism regarding ttip. but seems like he had good reason for this and is in fact doing a good job. some things ain't worth it.</comment>


The Secret Lives of Amazon's Elves - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5433487/the-secret-lives-of-amazons-elves

<comment><USER2> I am always fascinated by footage of assembly lines, factory floors and the process that brings us our products, from raw materials to shop floor or letterbox and all the tiny details in between. It's a shame most places have to operate under a 'no video' policy. I hope someone archives some recordings for future viewing at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> That video of the Amazon facility would be extra special if this were true (from the article): "When we told people were going to do this, someone said 'Whenever I click the order button on Amazon, I always imagine a chorus of happy, singing Oompa-Loompas riding around on Segways and shipping my stuff.'

More seriously, the idea of using traveling RV nomads as workers definitely qualifies as a hack. Who would have known that they'd make reliable employees given that based on the article you'd think they're effectively being paid an amount that would make them volunteers compared to their previous jobs? As an aside have you seen the systems made by <http://www.kivasystems.com/>? They have a number of videos on youtube.

<comment><USER3> I believe that $10 an hour is decent pay for relatively unskilled itinerant labor. My wife says she made about that much working in an actual bookstore. And it's apparently more than the average full-time position at Wal-Mart will pay unless you're a department manager:

[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Wal- Mart_Stores...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Wal- Mart_Stores,_Inc/Hourly_Rate)

It's not easy work -- you're on your feet all day -- but no harder than the rest of retail. Plus you don't have to actually deal with the general public during the holiday season, which is worth a lot right there.</comment></comment></comment>


Fitbit hacked? - <AUTHOR> My wife just received numerous spam emails from FitBit. Advise to change password asap. Will try to post image asap. <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like emails are coming from Fitbit - maybe a system issue.. [http://imgur.com/a/K6F2t](http://imgur.com/a/K6F2t)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://imgur.com/GXd2sRK](http://imgur.com/GXd2sRK)

</comment><comment><USER2> How do you know they were from FitBit, rather than from a spammer with their From address set to FitBit?

<comment><AUTHOR> good question - i believe the email address was Fitbit but will confirm

<comment><USER2> Ah, sounds like you don't know about from addresses: they are specified by the sender, and not authenticated. A spammer can send email that appears to be from anyone else, until you look at the validated headers (like "Return- path:").</comment></comment></comment>


Evaluate the New KATO Demo - <AUTHOR> http://kato-agency.blogspot.com/2010/02/demo-upgrade.html

<comment><AUTHOR> KATO is a software agent platform surfaced as your online personal assistant. Save time online by delegating your routine and mundane tasks to KATO. We are rewriting KATO as a GWT app. The link takes you to a blog post about a recent upgrade to the prototype. Please evaluate the prototype and provide feedback here. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the new version better. When I entered my ASK, I was not met with a response from Kato. And I would like for a response from my personal assistant. Kato needs to be inquisitive and willing to answer to me. So I suggest a cartoon and a balloon for creativity and interactivity.</comment>


Vernissage – Tool to share and present your app designs in PDF - <AUTHOR> http://www.vernissageapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice</comment>


Show HN: pygls – a Pythonic generic language server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/openlawlibrary/pygls/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the software developers with Open Law Library ([http://www.openlawlib.org/](http://www.openlawlib.org/)). We needed our VS Code extension, _Codify_ , to communicate with our codification engine (basically a compiler for laws) which is written in Python. So we needed a native Python language server. We found Palantir's excellent _python-language- server_ , but instead of targeting Python directly, we needed one targeting legal XML. Basically, we needed a pythonic generic language server. Thus was born, _pygls_ (pronounced like "pie glass").

Our goal with _pygls_ is to make it incredibly easy for anybody to write a language server for anything in Python. We have created a thin pythonic layer over the Language Server Protocol - giving the developer the core of what they need without getting in the way. Currently, it targets Python 3.5+ and has support for sync, async and threaded (using an _@thread_ decorator) features and commands.

Python is one of our favorite languages, and VS Code one of our favorite editors. We hope _pygls_ will make it possible for people to build many new and exciting language servers that leverage the power, ecosystem, and flexibility of Python.

This wouldn't be possible without Daniel Elero's hard work. Thank you, Daniel!

<comment><USER2> Thank you for kind words, it is my pleasure to work with OLL team on great tools.</comment></comment>


A detailed look at Ubuntu's new experimental ZFS installer - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/a-detailed-look-at-ubuntus-new-experimental-zfs-installer/ <comment><USER2> Somewhat related, I recently watched:

"By the numbers: ZFS Performance Results from Six Operating Systems and Their Derivatives" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUvjocWopI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUvjocWopI)

Slides: [https://callfortesting.org/log/vBSDcon-2019-Dexter- BytheNumb...](https://callfortesting.org/log/vBSDcon-2019-Dexter- BytheNumbers.pdf)

And was surprised that zfs for windows (and hyper-v core) appear to be alive and comming along.

Anyone using zfs on windows? Are they also going off of zfsonlinux - and if so how's support for encryption comming?

Finally having shared, read write, encrypted home that works on both Linux and windows safely would be great!

<comment><USER3> I used zfs on Linux with encrypted / for a while on Debian. It works really well, but unfortunately when I upgraded from Jessie to Buster, it did not recognize how I set it up and broke the system. I ended up having to reinstall.

<comment><USER4> Did you take a snapshot before performing the upgrade, and did you try to restore the previous snapshot before the reinstall?

Curious if snapshots can protect you even as far as OS upgrades gone wrong. I'd assume they can, if all filesystems are ZFS + snapshotted.

<comment><USER3> To be honest I didn't feel like tinkering with it, I just reinstalled. Right now it is on ext4.

My issue was that for some reason Linux no longer could find the encrypted partition to decrypt, so I couldn't get it up to a point where I could even work with it.

<comment><USER4> Ah that's a shame. If you'd had a bootable USB stick or some pre-boot environment to use, you probably could have rolled back from a snapshot. At least, that's my understanding of the theory.

Your experience has definitely not discouraged me from wanting to ZFS my root partitions though. If only to provide the potential / theoretical ability to roll back a snapshot if necessary!

<comment><USER3> To be honest, it was laziness on my part, I could have probably figured it out and fixed it. The snapshot ability was incredibly nice, don't get me wrong. I really liked it on my system. I may switch back in the near future.

I can post my "script" when I get home if you want to try it. I use script very liberally, it was my notes of the commands I used in order in order to get ZFS/dmcrypt working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have a good idea if ZFS is something I might want on a (workstation or home) laptop, including power usage? Or more for a desktop/server?

<comment><USER6> Why would you put ZFS on a laptop? How many drives can you fit into a laptop?

I'm running FreeNas at home with 6x4TB WD Red drives. All my computers back up to FreeNas. My Plex server reads/writes all its media from it as well.

I'm going to switch FreeNas to a Linux server with ZFS at some point.

<comment><USER7> > Why would you put ZFS on a laptop? How many drives can you fit into a > laptop?

Checksums, compression, snapshots (so easy and fast incremental backups using send/receive).

ZFS is much more then RAID. Also, even with only one drive we can increase our chances a bit using copies=2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's neat that having the possibility of a ZFS root on Ubuntu exists, but I just don't see myself using it. Will anyone, and if so for what purpose?

I'm not in the home NAS building sphere, but wouldn't you rather have your root be a SquashFS image on an SD card or similar, with the storage section being ZFS?

As for my laptop, I guess the snapshots are nice. I've never had a situation with my laptop where I wished I had snapshots, and even if something did break I only care about the files I have, which I back up. Then the snapshots are an extra safety net I suppose.

<comment><USER9> > but wouldn't you rather have your root be a SquashFS image on an SD card or > similar, with the storage section being ZFS?

Read-only root filesystems are one of those things that everybody ought to do, yet are usually impractical. Unfortunately, most software doesn't really support the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, so you have software that modifies itself under /usr (supposed to be read-only), ever-growing logs and caches not stored under /var/log and /var/cache so they can't be managed automatically, etc.

You generally find squashfs roots where the distro is specialized and not general-purpose - for a recent example, see Talos.

<comment><USER10> The OSs that insisted upon scattering application files all over the hierarchy only have themselves to blame for this situation. At some point in the past 30 years thought could have been given to the idea that applications are separate from the platform they run on, but UNIX just doesn't think that way. Everything must be part of the same gigantic Goldberg-esq state so everything can catch fire and burn down at once as soon as there's a conflict of any kind.

Anyway, the fix is pretty obvious: put each application in its own namespace, thus its view of "/usr" isn't the same as the immutable OS "/usr" and it is free to write whatever it wants without causing any trouble.

<comment><USER9> > Everything must be part of the same gigantic Goldberg-esque state so that > everything can catch fire and burn down at once as soon as there's a > conflict of any kind.

Well, that's exactly the job of competent package managers, to make sure that packages fully stated their dependencies (so that the package manager would forbid you from getting into an illegal state wherein a required dependency was not installed or the wrong version of the dependency was installed), and installed correctly according to the LFHS so that there would be no conflicts.

/opt isn't new. Plenty of people decided that they could throw everything into a folder under /opt, including copies of all dependencies, with no references outside of that folder, and that would be enough. And it might have been enough if it wasn't for sysadmins in charge of uptime tearing their beards out over /opt constantly filling up and causing multi-product outages when it did.

The whole point of the LFHS is that it represented a contract along the boundary between developers (who needed to bundle libraries, save state, have access to a cache, etc.) and operators (who worried about disks and associated costs - why would you ever spend a dime backing up /var/cache? Why would you ever use a fast disk for /etc?). When this contract was followed, systems worked splendidly. When the contract was broken, the people who broke the contract shot themselves in the foot just about the same as anybody writing C code knows how many footguns are in the C language.

Of course, today, with the price of resources having crashed through the floor, and containerization having more or less reached maturity, this is all more or less an academic, historical, moot point. But dynamically linked libraries weren't stupid, they were an artifact of an age where statically linking libraries was horrendously uneconomical and the idea of namespacing anything was enough to get laughed out of the room by people wondering how you would expect to pay for any of it.

<comment><USER10> > Well, that's exactly the job of competent package managers, to make sure > that packages fully stated their dependencies (so that the package manager > would forbid you from getting into an illegal state wherein a required > dependency was not installed or the wrong version of the dependency was > installed), and installed correctly according to the LFHS so that there > would be no conflicts.

Package managers are an over-engineered solution to a problem that only really exists if you rely on package managers. Ever had your apt database break on you? It's a joy, let me tell you. Nothing ever gets installed or removed again. Blowing up your system and requiring your OS to be reinstalled is ridiculous. Especially since that was a problem that didn't even used to exist. OSs were once stored on _roms_.

> /opt isn't new. Plenty of people decided that they could throw everything > into a folder under /opt, including copies of all dependencies, with no > references outside of that folder, and that would be enough.

Sure, as long as you never move it from opt. UNIX devs' addiction to hard- coding fixed paths is difficult to break.

> And it might have been enough if it wasn't for sysadmins in charge of uptime > tearing their beards out over /opt constantly filling up and causing multi- > product outages when it did.

Is that really a problem outside of Linux, which famously defined its base- system as "the kernel" and therefore necessitated that any such install would need to bring along all its own dependencies because it couldn't rely on _anything_ existing except the kernel?

> Of course, today, with the price of resources having crashed through the > floor, and containerization having more or less reached maturity, this is > all more or less an academic, historical, moot point. But dynamically linked > libraries weren't stupid, they were an artifact of an age where statically > linking libraries was horrendously uneconomical and the idea of namespacing > anything was enough to get laughed out of the room by people wondering how > you would expect to pay for any of it.

Yet we still live with this bullshit today anyway and the Linux community especially eschews any attempt to move on. This despite some of the same people who created UNIX creating Plan 9, which rejected dynamically linking and embraced namespacing over _twenty years ago_!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My biggest complaint with ZFS is the lack of flexibility. If you setup two disks in a mirrored configuration, that's the end of it - those disks will be mirrored forever. If you get another drive and want to expand storage while still having redundancy, i.e. RAID5 type setup, you can't. You can increase storage with a pair of drives, by mirroring them first and then adding them to the zpool, but this is not an option configuration from a safety standpoint.

I loved the flexibility of BTRFS in this regard - you could change the duplication level at any point. BTRFS seemed to abstract the storage away beautifully - just give us your drives, any combination of sizes, tell us how many copies of your data you want to keep and we'll handle the rest. It wasn't perfect, but I loved this approach, and I feel like it could go even further, eg. calculate risk of failure probabilities and then just tell it how low you want your risk. If it can't do it with your current drive capacities it could tell you what it needs to accomplish it, and then rebalance the data once you add the drives. Got an SSD? Throw it in the pool and let it optimize for cacheing. I know bcachefs has that particular aspect covered, but there's a lot of other basic features that still need to be implemented.

<comment><USER12> They finally added this to Oracle Solaris ('closed source' zfs) in 11.4 ([http://blog.moellenkamp.org/archives/50-How-to-remove-a- top-...](http://blog.moellenkamp.org/archives/50-How-to-remove-a-top-level- vdev-from-a-ZFS-pool.html))

And there is work on it for OpenZFS: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njt82e_3qVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njt82e_3qVo)

for zfsonlinux As far as I understand you can currently add and remove striped/mirror devices, but you cannot remove raid-z vdevs (ref: [https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/9129](https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/9129)) - so there is definitely work left to be done in this area.

as an aside mdadm has surprisingly fantastic features in this area and can reshape pretty much any array type to any other. i was impressed by that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Strangely, rather old ZFS keeps popping up in the news, while I never hear of Btrfs these days. It had some hype five or so years ago―what became of it?

<comment><USER14> Synology, which is linux based, is really high on btrfs, otherwise I have not seen a lot of use cases.

<comment><USER15> Doesn't use many of the advanced features though e.g. RAID is done using standard Linux mdraid with a btrfs partition on top of it.

<comment><USER16> btrfs pools can use different sized disks, which can be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be great to know if I could boot with mirrored and encrypted disks. What happens if one of the disks fails? Is there an easy way to boot from the other disk (I.e. do they replicate the MSDOS/UEFI) boot partition?)</comment>


Show HN: weekend project, an attempt at a simple bed time calculator - <AUTHOR> http://www.waketimes.com/

<comment><USER2> What if I don't fall asleep exactly when I should?

For instance, let's say I had to get up at 8AM. The recommended times are:

11PM 12:30AM 2AM 3:30AM

What if I go to bed at 10:40 but don't fall asleep until 11:30? I'd be in between sleep cycles, right? And am I correct in assuming that the closer I fall asleep to when it recommends, the less groggy I would be in the morning?

I tried out the Wakemate a while back but it wasn't syncing with my Evo and I had to get a refund. It was a shame because I really want to get better sleep somehow and the Wakemate seemed to best product out there. I'll try the Lark when they have an Android app.

<comment><USER3> Most people don't take 50 minutes to fall asleep unless they've just slept. It's been a while, but I believe the well-rested person carrying no sleep debt (according to Maas) takes about 20 minutes to fall asleep. If you're over- exerted (as most of us are), it should take less time than that. You just need to time this stuff properly, and get a sense for about how long it takes you to fall asleep.

Also, the 1.5 hours between sleep cycles isn't completely accurate - but it makes more practical sense to time it this way. Add to this, that not everyone has the same internal functionality, and you have a really complicated problem. Everyone needs a different amount of sleep each night, and I believe the cycles are different as well.

However, if you wake up around the times it suggests, you have a higher chance of feeling better. It doesn't ensure anything, but if you were going to wake up around that time anyway, might as well adjust 10-20 minutes for a better chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the typography and design are easier to read than <http://sleeptyi.me>, but it is uncomfortably similar wording and navigation if they're not made by the same person.

<comment><USER5> <http://sleepyti.me/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, I'm currently working myself on a mobile friendly clone of <http://sleepyti.me/>

Because using either of the two sites is not easy on a small screen. And who has his laptop with him when lying in bed and checking the wake up time.

<comment><USER7> > And who has his laptop with him when lying in bed and checking the wake up > time.

Me! ^

I'm a poor college student with a dumb phone and a single room. My laptop sits on my desk, which is in the same room as my bed. Unless your mobile version works on an 07 Motorola Razr, and doesn't require a data plan, I can't use it. I assume this is not the case, so if you want to cater to my demographic, please make sure the site is usable through a normal browser without a touchscreen.

Note that my demographic isn't likely to drop a lot of money on an app that does this, but I'm not sure it's worth much at all.

^ OK, so I actually use a normal alarm clock and I get up and go to bed at the same time every day (calculated with this in mind).

<comment><USER6> Same here, I'm also a poor student with a really dumb phone :-)

I just think the majority would use such a site on their mobile. That's why I go mobile first. And I won't charge money, it's more like a little side project to try out new stuff!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What if this was taken one step further and integrated with an alarm app for your phone? That would be a more useful implementation of this idea to me than a web page would be.

You could provide a time range of 60 to 90 minutes of when you need to get up, then press a button on the app to "set" it when you go to bed. The alarm could then figure out when the best time would be for you to get up in your provided time range.

Granted this assumes your audiences bed time varies from day to day, which probably isn't the best for someone trying to get the best sleep in the first place.

You could also do the reverse, set a wake-up time and have an alarm go off as a reminder for upcoming bedtimes...

<comment><USER7> The YC 09 startup WakeMate (<http://wakemate.com/>) took this much further: (Edit - Took down my run-on sentence describing them, here's their pitch)

 _The WakeMate is a comfortable wristband that you wear when you sleep. It measures subtle body movements—a scientifically proven method (Actigraphy) to map dips and peaks in your sleep cycle. The wristband communicates directly with your mobile phone to calculate the ideal wake time closest to your alarm setting. When you wake up, your night's sleep data is automatically uploaded to Wakelytics™, our online analytics platform._

Their blog (<http://blog.wakemate.com/>) and live support seem to be down at the moment. Anyone know how they're doing?

<comment><USER9> I do not know if wakemate made any improvements lately but after giving it a try several times after I got it, I gave up. It sits in a box alongside old power adapters and other cables.

The main problem for me was when I toss and turn at night, it loses contact with the phone (sitting on the end table) and starts screaming 'Lost contact, lost contact'.

If I continued to use it, my wife would have thrown me out onto the patio to sleep.

There were several other occasions where wakemate never woke me up.

I would have loved to see wakemate work, I wanted to root for a startup, see them succeed. You only get so many chances with a single customer. In my books, they failed badly on their promise. continuously. starting with their delivery of the product and then later with the product itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have you seen <http://sleepyti.me> ?

<comment><USER11> Wow, no locale detection.. telling me what time to go to sleep in US times when I live in Europe is pretty crappy for a web app.

<comment><USER10> Never thought of that, good point. I usually just do the "find out when to wake up if I go to bed right now" mode. I'm assuming that works for you, since they use javascript to determine your time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think finding your individual recipe for a good night sleep is really important. From what I have read people seem to have their own patterns etc. If the app also had some kind of feedback/tuning system so you could use it as a tool to find your perfect routine, this might be great...

TYPO: "try to get into bed around 15 before one of these times" - change to "15 mins"

</comment><comment><USER13> Bug: If I do not select a value for the 'minutes' field, the suggested bed times are 12 hours off.

<comment><USER7> Suggested quick fix: Set the default 'minutes' value to '00'.

<comment><AUTHOR> done

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not likely I'll go to sleep now. It'll be in half an hour for me personally, it varies between people. You might want to add a box called something like typical time from computer to sleep.

</comment><comment><USER15> An interesting idea, but I think the other way made more sense. I'm going to go to sleep when I'm tired. Waking up should be done according to the rhythm.

</comment><comment><USER16> The form is partly obscured in a narrow window. I'd remove the negative margin-left from #bedtime_calc in the CSS.

And 24h clock would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER17> Not meant to be a petty criticism, but the shade of purple used hurts my eyes after looking at it for 3 minutes. Just something to think about.

</comment><comment><USER18> Constructive criticism: change "goto" -> "go to". Unless you're targeting programmers. :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is really nice. Simple. Could you make one for parents of infants and toddlers? :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://www.waketimes.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> Needs scientific proof to users at the page. Otherwise looks too meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER21> dumbest thing i've ever seen. do people really need an app to tell them when to go to bed??

<comment><USER22> Potentially. A full sleep cycle is approximately ninety minutes in length. If you wake in the middle of the cycle, you take a cognitive performance hit for the rest of the day. So, in some cases, sleeping for thirty fewer minutes can lead to higher subsequent alertness. This is a crucial consideration when you're only allowed to get a few hours of sleep at a time.

Case in point: I've known a number of individuals with highly variable sleep schedules imposed by their work who performed this calculation manually. I imagine that they would find an application or a cycle-aware alarm clock on their phones to be quite handy.

Aside from that, calling someone's work the "dumbest thing you've ever seen" is both unnecessary and probably untrue. Please don't be uncivil.

<comment><USER21> I say call a spade a spade. This is dumb and perhaps only useful to obsessive compulsive individuals who feel some need to micromanage every aspect of their life.</comment></comment></comment>


Anonymous Financial Donors Bring Relief to Colleges - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/education/25donor.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> _The common denominator that seems to have generated the most fascination is that every institution is led by a woman. "Obviously, the giver of these gifts is a person of great wisdom," said Dr. Cole of Montclair State. "I'm only partly facetious. We've had to work very hard to get where we are, and I believe that women presidents are great caretakers of their institutions and their students."_

What a sexist pig.

If the genders were reversed, the media would be calling for the university president's resignation. Why do people accept sexism in one direction but not the other?

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone sold their startup, please consider Emory. :P

<comment><USER2> In the first CS course I took as an undergraduate, the professor spent about 5 minutes in the first lecture talking about the sizes of endowments various universities had -- I did my undergraduate degree at a fairly young institution which consequently doesn't have much money -- and asking us to remember the university when we became rich.

I don't know if I'm going to become rich, but if I do, I certainly plan on fulfilling his request.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tldroid – TLDR man pages for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.hidroh.tldroid <comment><USER2> Project is open sourced at Github: [https://github.com/hidroh/tldroid](https://github.com/hidroh/tldroid)</comment>


Android's messaging mess is about to get even worse? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20931699/ <comment><USER2> Why do so many people think it's reasonable to use a messaging system like SMS that's tied to your cell phone?

I type at least 5-10 times faster on a real keyboard than on a phone... I can't be the only one who gets annoyed after two messages and prefers to move the conversation to a real computer where I can type faster, open lots of reference material, copy and paste content easily, etc. Most messaging apps let you do this, iMessage lets you do this, but without jumping through hoops, SMS on Android is stuck on your phone.

Yet tons of people seem to use plain old Android and use the plain old SMS app, and... are just fine with this?

Does this just not occur to people? Do kids these days not learn how to touch type anymore? Every time someone sends me an SMS I feel like I'm going insane.

<comment><USER3> Because the Next Billion Users (basically all of India and Asia) does not own a computer or a full keyboard.

The only computing device they will ever own in their life is a smart phone.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't mean the rest of the planet has to downgrade their experience to the lowest denominator.

<comment><USER3> That _is_ the rest of the planet. The number of computers are a sheer minority compared to the number of phones used as primary internet access devices for the rest of the planet.

We have more users coming online in a YEAR in India than the whole of the United States desktop population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I agree with ohazi's comment. I hate it when messaging systems are linked to mobile phones. This is true for most of them: WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.

I _much_ prefer a system that works independently from my phone. Throughout high school, this used to be Hangouts. Now it's been replaced by matrix+riot.im for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a fairly ignorant article by the verge and some comments here just ran with it and made it worse.

Let me explain:

1\. US carriers control a very small part of the global Android market. Google can still push for a better RCS and they will eventually have to follow.

2\. Android suppprts many third party messaging apps (WhatsApp, signal, etc), some significantly better than on iOS. For example some apps have reduced functionality on iOS or lack an iPad version.

3\. You can access your messages on your computer. Google supports this natively, Microsoft has great Android integration on Windows 10 and Linux has kde & g-connect. But more importantly, things like push bullet have been around for years, probably before iMessage even existed.

But I give you that Google has done a horrible job in the app department.

<comment><USER6> Good points. Also, nothing prevents you from sms-ing from your pc assuming you have a sim in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although RCS (Rich Communication Services) [0] is/was supposed to be a good idea, I don't see it being widely adopted like SMS. Many similar standards (MMS, video calls) failed to get traction due to lack of coordination, adoption and common sense between telcos, manufacturers and operators.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems the story is mixing up two different issues:

1\. (Some) cell network operators want to standardize & popularize a protocol for messaging over cell networks but not over IP, i.e. a richer SMS. 2\. Today, there are typically different apps for SMS and for IP-based messaging (and among the latter - different apps for different protocols/service providers - WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc.)

Obviously, Google can be involved at the most with (2.), and even there it's not clear there's much to be done. I mean, WhatsApp is closed-source and commercially controlled. You can't make a "SMS+WhatsApp+Telegram" unified app. Ok, well, unless you get Facebook to cooperate, which the story does not indicate is happening.

<comment><USER9> Right. But you can with Signal. Not only does the app already work that way, but it's also open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title should read "Somehow, the messaging mess is about to get even worse." The mess isn't about Android.

It's always mystified me why an open, cross platform messaging protocol hasn't become as widespread as SMS or email.

It seems messaging use is always driven as a side effect of other use; people use a messaging system because they use something else that happens to have a messaging system, and their friends all use it too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whatsapp is the choice even for Apple users where I live. Nobody I know bothers with SMS except for two factor authentication for online banking.</comment>


Never Use White Text on Black: Astygmatism and Conference Slides (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://jessicaotis.com/academia/never-use-white-text-on-a-black-background-astygmatism-and-conference-slides/ <comment><USER2> I work in accessibility and see lots of posts like this one — cautioning the reader from every doing X because it creates accessibility problems for me.

It may be possible to follow most/all such advice when building an app or website, but surely it is not possible for presentations (which have to be consumed in the same format by everyone present). Some may hate dark text on a light background; others may find that the only suitable format.[1] So when I read posts like these, I don't view them as imperatives ("never do X") but rather as data points to be factored into decision-making processes.

This is easiest when the post explains the problem and gives various alternatives and explains why they provide a better experience. When they just leave it at "never do X", I'm left wondering whether Y is better than Z or vice-versa. I wish the author had given more context about why this is bad for astigmatism, or what sorts of things are better than others (in terms of ranking alternatives).

1: I hear from people who say that the only decent color scheme for BeeLine Reader (my text accessibility startup) is bright red and bright blue. But other people tell me that color scheme is terrible and shouldn't be the default on my website because it is so bad. You literally cannot please all of the people all of the time! [edited]

<comment><USER3> Like other commentors, I have astigmatism. Something not mentioned by other commentors; I have highly asymetrical astigmatism. Reading #FFF against #000 (dark on light or light on dark, either way) with both eyes open causes vividly strobing blue and red visual artifacts.

Stark black text on stark white background can do this, even though stark white background washes out the color artifacts to some extent. Fortunately, it's extremely unusual for anyone to lay out a page as #000 text on a #FFF background.

White text on a black background is a strobing hell. A dead black background is the perfect place to notice visual artifacts. Blazing white text sets visual artifacts effectively. Regardless, I use light-on-dark for much of my work. The problem I run into is that websites often end up being white-on- black, not light-on-dark. Light (not-white) text on a dark (not-black) background is pleasant, and my normal configuration for work.

Web design tutorials typically point out that #000 text on #FFF background is bad, and avoiding such extreme contrasts can be easier on the eyes. For whatever reason, that bit of know-how seems to vanish as soon as it's flipped to "dark mode".

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the detailed description! It's interesting to think about how one would meet these needs while simultaneously meeting the needs of people with scotopic sensitivity (prefer light text on dark background) and vision loss (require high contrast).

Honestly it seems like this three-way comparison is excellent evidence for the need for user-configurable reading options. It is unfortunate that on mobile, there are no browser plugins (except Firefox on Android, which is little- known, and action extensions on Safari, which is both little-known and does not support persistently-running plugins). As the world has gone mobile, we've ended up working/reading in app silos that cannot be made more accessible/configurable by plugins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Speaking from my own disability I'd say I'd much prefer if people used white on dark text over any use of light background. But this is because my own issue is with photosensitivity which affects a large number of low vision users.

In fact I often create white on black content because it is easy for me to author and read. I also have significant color blindness and am totally unsure which color combinations are hard for others to read, may not show up on a projector, may be a faux pas or may be gaurish.

And this is the profound difficulty of creating accessible content. What is accessible for one is often not accessible for others with a different disability. Simply saying don't do this or don't do that has long ceased to be considered a good method of creating accessible content. This has been abandoned in favor of using a broad suite of tools to validate content meets a wide array of accessibility needs.

Edit: I have never looked into whether such a tool exists for common slide presentation apps.

<comment><USER5> Maybe you find this browser extension useful: [https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. On desktop I use Windows High Contrast Black which is excellent. Firefox does a pretty good job of modifying web content to follow that theme. The main issue I haven't solved is mobile browsing. Most mobile browsers don't allow extensions and the OSes don't have anything like Windows High Contrast Mode except invent but that's never been a great solution for me.

<comment><USER5> This extension works on mobile firefox

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really don't get it... I have severe astygmatism (which caused amblyopia in infancy) among other visual defects. My glasses do the best they can but my corrected vision still has a lot of visual defects. My poor vision causes me trouble with a lot of day-to-day things, but white text on black background is not one of them. I experimented without my glasses and I still don't have a preference for black-on-white over white-on-black - they are equal.

Not really a fan of the ranty style without a solution.

On top of that, like another commentor mentioned, people with astygmatism typically wear glasses or contacts?

<comment><USER7> I have irregular astigmatism. In my experience, glasses and normal soft contacts do very little to correct it. Scleral contacts do a decent job with the astigmatism, but they have a few other issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't think this was a problem as I assumed most people with astigmatism (myself included) wear corrective lenses or glasses.

<comment><USER9> Cylindrical correction in contact lenses tends to be both more expensive and not as good as glasses, so contact lens wearers with astigmatism may have this issue.

<comment><USER10> From my own experience, unless you are really, REALLY into sports, glasses are infinitely much more better in almost every aspect. Sure, if you are young, you might be afraid you look like a nerd, but trust this old fart, after 25 or so it does not matter at all; if anything, you are perceived as smarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the alternative? Hopefully not black text on white slides. That's terrible for me and others.

<comment><USER12> For me, I find that a very dark gray background with a light gray text color is best. I like dark themes, but I get "ghosting" if the contrast is too great.

<comment><USER13> This is hard for virtually everyone to read. I don't think making the reading experience terrible for 99.999% to make it work for 0.001% makes much sense.

<comment><USER12> I think what I described is what a lot of dark themes use. For example the NY Times Android app. Their light text color is not pure white, and the background is not pure black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps building an app that synchronizes conference slides to a phone and allows users to customize the contrast/appearance of the slides would help in this case?

<comment><USER15> I love that idea. It would let people requiring different contrasts etc see the content too.

It won't help with pictures as easily, though a few apps these days do full PDF renders in different colours without much hassle.

I am definitely in the no black background white text camp and on the web I have a javascript bookmarklet to zap the colour CSS and make everything rather plain looking. It's not all text for me, but particularly dense text is unreadable, even with my glasses on.

<comment><USER14> Let me see if I can rally some folks on the Office team to build a PowerPoint companion app that does this. I think they have a hackathon coming up ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised the author didn't show examples of what would be preferred for comparison.

</comment><comment><USER17> This describes my own personal experience with dark themes, difficult to read.

<comment><USER18> My experience is the opposite. Having switched entirely to light on dark (as well as adjusting the blue component of my screens to zero), switching the display of information back to dark on light feels like a nuclear blast of a million Suns into my eyes.

How can anyone stand staring directly into a bright lamp all day long? Well, having gotten used to it, you don't notice how unhealthy it truly is.

<comment><USER17> Working in a properly lit environment, with a blue filter enabled, it sometimes feels like the papers on my desk are about the same brightness as my monitor.

At home during the night I have to turn the blue filter up until the monitor is practically glowing orange-red.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have astigmatism. White on black or black on white both halo. I think both are equally clear.

It would be somewhat surprising otherwise-- the relevant part of vision for this is linear and should work the same in both directions. Though if the room is so dark that my puples will be dilated then that is obviously going to cause a loss of acuity ... but if that is what the author is going for then the advice should be to not present in a pitch black room.

In a dimmer room I have a small preference for white (or green/amber) on black so that the overall brightness isn't blowing out my vision.

Blue focuses noticeably worse, so I have serious trouble reading things like blue on black or black on blue... esp if the blue is some fancy LED sign or something that uses a shorter wavelength.

I think articles like this that don't support their advice with some kind of study of many people ... is pretty low value because it's too likely to just be repeating the author's own personal preferences and disguising them as research supported Truths.

Safer advice would be: Some people have poor vision, make your text extra big and clear even if you could read something less legible.

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe this is victim-blaming, but my suggestion to the post's author is to update her prescription. I have astigmatism. This solution worked for me.

<comment><USER21> Not all astigmatism is easily corrected with glasses/contacts. I suggest reading up on irregular astigmatism: [https://www.warreneyecarecenter.com/better-vision- correction...](https://www.warreneyecarecenter.com/better-vision- correction/irregular-astigmatism.html)

<comment><USER20> That's interesting. I had not heard of this condition.

I am sympathetic to those with disabilities different from my own. As a presenter, I would be happy to provide reasonable accommodations. Given the vast array of visual disabilities, I wonder if there is not some kind of common denominator solution, like providing a plain text, screen-reader- compatible version in advance.

I'm actually thinking, I wonder if I should build a service where one: 1\. Uploads slides. 2\. Gets a QR code. 3\. Puts the QR code on the title slide. 4\. Attendees point their smart phones at the presentation to get a: a. downloadable copy of the slides b. alternate versions c. other materials like the presenter's LinkedIn d. a field for posting questions

If someone reads this and wants to build it, please go ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> White text on black is my second favorite. Only thing better is green text on black.

The reason is very simple: There's less light coming from the screen into my eye.

Every monitor I've ever owned I reduce the brightness to the lowest setting possible, and they are still too bright.

Green is best because the high resolution parts of your eye only see green. So the blue and red components of white are just unnecessary extra light.

<comment><USER23> Oh boy, are you going to love this state-of-the-art new display technology: [https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4142/4765726924_0c81d46a5b_b.j...](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4142/4765726924_0c81d46a5b_b.jpg)

(Seriously, though, there may be an underlying physiological reason why the glow of a green phosphor CRT was so pleasing...)

<comment><USER22> I always set my IDE to emulate those green CRT's when I can.

But there is an underlying physiological reason, see: [https://gamesx.com/misctech/visual.htm](https://gamesx.com/misctech/visual.htm) (the website is very old and has aged badly, but makes the point).

Your eye has no ability to see blue in high resolution.

<comment><USER23> For me it's Emacs in a terminal, set to a nice chunky bitmap (or bitmap-alike) font and #7fff7f foreground on black background. :) (For amber, try the X11 color "goldenrod", or #daa520!)

I'm aware of cool-retro-term. It is cool, but not useful for more than five minutes or so at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Being unable to stand both white text on black and black text on white, I have found setting the foreground to black and the background to gray60 (in emacs and the terminal) is what allows me to look at a screen for hours without pain.

(Interestingly enough, I too have an astigmatism in one eye, but I don't know if that's the sole cause of my discomfort.)

</comment><comment><USER25> that's a bit disappointing, seeing as this format is by far my favourite because of it being very simple and aesthetically pleasing.

any suggestions? my intuitive response to this would be black on brightly hued navy blue, but i worry that is also low-contrast, which also causes issues.

can't please everyone!

<comment><USER13> This option sounds like it would be a poor reading for all. You can't please everyone but it seems like you can figure out how to displease most.

<comment><USER25> [https://imgur.com/a/I1jFrG8](https://imgur.com/a/I1jFrG8) this doesn't seem that bad, but maybe my phrasing of the colors was inaccurate.

<comment><USER13> I pictured black text on darker blue background. That is readable enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a person with astigmatism and very familiar with halation, I always felt like white on black was almost equivalent to black on white. It seemed to just come down to personal preference or mood...

</comment><comment><USER27> I see the white on black ok for a few moments, but soon my eyes can't see anything (or rather, can't discern shapes and text and such).

The worst are websites with white text on black backgrounds. Arstechnica used to do this, and I was unable to read more than a paragraph or two. Then when I would leave and go back to normal sites, I would have all kinds of weird ghost blocks in my vision (character sized).

</comment><comment><USER28> Ouch. Don't read the NZ Herald's front page today then!

[https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-union/mourning-has- broken...](https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-union/mourning-has-broken-kiwis- cycling-through-seven-stages-of-grief-20191027-p534n1.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> I have significant astigmatism and I prefer light text on a dark background. When I used a Mac, I found the best solution to get everything dark enough was to use a light theme and used Mac's Accessibility Menu to invert the screen colors. I spend 7-8 hours a day on a dark terminal with light letters.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's even worse for people with multifocal intraocular lenses implanted after cataract surgery: they see strong glares and halos around light objects on dark background (including text), and unlike astigmatism this cannot be corrected with glasses or contacts

</comment><comment><USER31> With DLP projectors, white on black also causes way worse rainbow effect for people that are sensitive to that.

</comment><comment><USER32> On mobile, this site has a "toggle high contrast" widget on the left side that seems to directly contravene the points made in the article.

<comment><USER2> Not just mobile — it's on desktop too. I also saw this toggle and thought it a little ironic. OTOH, this is an opt-in feature that a reader can activate, as opposed to a presentation that must be absorbed by everyone in the audience as-is.

<comment><USER32> Agreed, I just found the juxtaposition of the two confusing at first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have astigmatism and I have no idea what the author's talking about. I stare at white on black terminal text all day without issue (maybe it's different for presentations?). I've also made presentations with white on black text before and had no problem reading the slides.

<comment><USER19> If the overall environment is really dim, your pupils will dilate. Like opening the aperture of a camera this will make the area of correct focus smaller.

... but if the room is so dark that the presentation background alone is all that is keeping my eyes from dialating, then I'm going to find the presentation uncomfortably bright.</comment></comment>


'Spooks' trying to turn cultural metaphors into "intent"  data - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/why-are-spy-researchers-building-a-metaphor-program/239402/

<comment><USER2> i wonder if, when this hits problems, they will try legal fixes? i could imagine, for example, irony being made illegal...</comment>


The Habitition of the Stone Giant Lord & Other Adventures - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timh/the-habitition-of-the-stone-giant-lord-and-other-a <comment><AUTHOR> This just makes me smile.

As an 8th grader in 1979-80, it never occurred to me to save any of this sort of stuff. Too bad... I would have liked to contribute material to this project.</comment>


RSA Keys Generated by Infineon TPMs Are Insecure - <AUTHOR> https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/len-15552 <comment><AUTHOR> Summary:

> _Lenovo Security Advisory: LEN-15552_

> _Potential Impact: RSA keys generated by the Infineon TPM using certain > firmware levels are insecure_

> _Severity: Varies: None to High_

> _Scope of Impact: Industry-Wide_

\---

FYI, when submitting this I linked to Lenovo's informational page about this issue instead of the original vendor's page [0] since it doesn't really contain much useful information. _(mods: feel free to change the URL)_

I also found some technical information (although mostly ChromeOS-specific) about this issue in a Google document [1].

Links to information from other vendors: Fujitsu [2], HP [3], Microsoft Windows [4].

[0]: [https://www.infineon.com/TPM-update](https://www.infineon.com/TPM- update)

[1]: [https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium- os/tpm_...](https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium- os/tpm_firmware_update)

[2]: [http://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/products/software/secu...](http://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/products/software/security/products-f/ifsa-201701e.html)

[3]: [https://support.hp.com/us- en/document/c05792935](https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05792935)

[4]: [https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/security- guidance/ad...](https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/security- guidance/advisory/ADV170012)

</comment><comment><USER2> Will upgrading the firmware fix already generated keys?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, any keys generated on the TPM need to be re-generated (cf. Microsoft's advisory).

<comment><USER2> That's interesting. The Windows firmware update works by entirely bypassing the hardware. I wonder if other fabricators could have licensed the same core ip.?

> Microsoft is releasing Windows security updates to help work around the > vulnerability by logging events and by allowing the generation of software > based keys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't Infineon bought by Intel?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just part of it, AFAICT:

> _On 31 January 2011, the sale of the business segment of wireless solutions > to Intel was completed._ [0]

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infineon_Technologies#Acquisit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infineon_Technologies#Acquisitions_and_divestitures)</comment></comment>


ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct - <AUTHOR> https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics <comment><USER2> Very comprehensive and well-written. I'm positively surprised. A lot of it is applicable to other professions as well. Definitely worth checking out. In particular the sections about FOSS and user privacy (1.5 and 1.6 respectively) are commendable.</comment>


How do I deal with difficult but talented employees? - <AUTHOR> http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/1963/979

<comment><USER2> Having been a difficult employee myself (don't know about the talented part), I've wondered if the way my old boss dealt with this problem was the right one. After some initial conflicts he decided to ignore my antics as long as my output was high. But I guess if he'd had the opportunity to replace me he would have fired my ass in a heartbeat.

Which brings me to my point: Most of the advice is sound ("if they're not playing by the rules, let them go", "the team is more important than an individual contributor") and I'm sure they work in a corporate setting. But do they work for startups? If you have a bunch of average people, you'll end up with a mediocre product. You need talented people who can do more than what their job description asks of them. And unfortunately talented people are also notoriously difficult to manage, because they have better alternatives than others, because they don't think rules apply to everyone the same, because the lack social skills or because they're just jackasses. Stay away from the jackasses, but for the rest of the talented misfits there must be a way to manage them and make it work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am a little hesitant to accept the posters description of the person.

"Refusing to cover for other teams" sounds a bit like "we expect to drop him in multiple areas of responsibility and work as well in both" as well as "I am the boss do what I say" instead of "I am the guy with the responsibility to get X Y and Z done help me get there"

He sounds a bit like expecting to be a military officer with Yes sirs and the whole bit. Sure, the guy he's talking about also seems to go off on tangents, but the poster seems like someone who has a outdated management model and just wants to fire this guy rather than learning to lead people. But our industry has lots of people with interesting social skills, but can still function extremely well with leadership instead of C&C type orders from on high type relationships.

I think 1:1s, giving the difficult guy actual responsibility, and providing more non-technical team building time for that guy and the guys on the other team will make him a useful contributor, if he isn't already. It really sounds like we're getting half the story here or the poster is just trying to get permission for firing the dude from the technical community.</comment>


Sam Boyer's side of dep vs go modules story - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sdboyer/status/1034893100450291713 <comment><AUTHOR> Russ Cox's side of the story: [https://twitter.com/_rsc/status/1022588240501661696](https://twitter.com/_rsc/status/1022588240501661696)

Interesting to see that both sides seemed to have been fighting for what they believed to be a better idea but neither recognized the points where they inadvertently escalated the divisions between them.

</comment><comment><USER2> I hope at one point we can just move on and forward.

<comment><USER3> Only if something changes regarding how major external contributions to Go's syntax, API, and tools (e.g. not just someone adding support for a new architecture, anything that requires real decisions and tradeoffs) are received and handled.</comment></comment>


March 2018 Node.js Security Releases - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs-sec/jGPlKJyLIxI <comment><USER2> This is old news from March.</comment>