Air Traffic Control Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://zlsa.github.io/atc/ <comment><USER2> This is a lot of fun. I've always been a huge fan of flight sims, but I never realized that ATC was just as much fun. Just a few notes:

* All the planes enter at 90 degree angles. I assume this is intentional, but it would be nice to have semi-random entry angles.

* There are a fixed number of planes in the simulation. It would be more challenging and fun if more planes would arrive while I'm taking care of the others.

* The words are small and hard to read.

All in all I think this is a really cool simulation. I can see myself wasting many more hours on it. Thanks!

<comment><USER3> If this is something you find interesting and like flight sims, you should check out some of the live ATC groups.

[http://www.bostonvirtualatc.com/](http://www.bostonvirtualatc.com/) and others allow you to work as a controller for a virtual airspace populated by human "pilots."

<comment><USER2> It's funny you mention BVA. I joined them many years ago (before FSX closed gamespy) and I flew with them quite a bit. I think I was just a little intimidated by how professional they were. I did a few of their lessons, and then I went back to free flight in the offline sim where I could take off the from the taxi ways :).

<comment><USER4> I flew virtually with real life general aviation pilots, some of them assuming the role of the ATC in the sim; or else players would proceed like with uncontrolled airstrips in real life: announcing take-offs, landings, etc. on the "frequency" (a channel on a teamspeak server, one for each airport).

For someone like me who is has never flown a plane, it added kind of an RPG aspect to the simulation.

<comment><USER5> I used to work on quite a large Flight Sim website a few years back and a lot of our users would do this. It gets interesting when you have 20+ people in an area because people do not fly as perfectly as shown in any ATC simulator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've found a new way to make airports handle twice as many departures per hour: send a plane to each end and tell them to take off at the same time! So far: 0 crashes!

It's the counter-intuitive out-of-the-box thinking that I come to HN for!

<comment><USER7> Disrupting the ATC space. Like Uber for air traffic!

<comment><USER6> I'll even add a $1 "Safe Departures Fee".

<comment><USER8> __* During holiday surge pricing the Safe Departure Fee may be as much as $25.00.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fun, but not as good as the ATC game I know from the bsdgames package in many Linux distributions. This is a lot more graphical but there are a few disadvantages, mostly regarding input:

\- Callsigns are long. In, let's call it bsdgames ATC, you have to type only one letter to indicate an aircraft. When Z is reached, you've long cleared A so the letter can be reused. This is more realistic though, I guess.

\- It is not clear to me what an aircraft wants. Do all the flying ones want to land and all the landed ones to fly? Because in bsdgames ATC they each have a destination.

\- The locations on the map (where you can fix an aircraft on, the triangles) are small and you have to properly look to make sure you typed it correctly. There is no highlighting like for planes.

\- Runways are even harder to read. Here too there is no highlighting like for planes.

\- You cannot send, as bsdgames ATC calls it, delayed commands (e.g. "N926JW fix QUITE then turn 0").

\- You can not set an aircraft in "ignore mode", or otherwise mark it as "I have finished giving it directions".

\- There is no command autocompletion. In bsdgames ATC you type "atdab0" to indicate "plane A, Turn to direction D (90 degrees) At Beacon 0." Or as the game displays it while you type the letters: "a: turn to 90 at beacon #0". After typing every letter, the game will display the next word to indicate it understood. (E.g. typing "at" it will display "a: turn to" and "atda" displays "a: turn to 90 at".)

There are a few things I really like though:

\- The score system makes it not immediately 'game over' when you make a single simple mistake.

\- It not only looks more modern, but because it's graphical and not ASCII there is a lot more space on the map to maneuver (at least it looks like that, maybe there are simply more planes). It also gives way more space for fix locations (triangles).

\- Either this is common for ATC systems, or it looks like the good old bsdgames ATC. I like that it is a modern version which, with rather minor improvements, is better than the original.

<comment><USER10> Author here.

\- I wanted to be a realistic as possible, hence the long callsigns. However, all you have to type is the shortest unique callsign and that aircraft will be selected.

\- If the aircraft has a red strip, it wants to land; if it's blue, it wants to takeoff and depart the area.

\- The fix names are now bigger.

\- The runway names are bigger. I'll make them more obvious, too.

\- You cannot send delayed commands, just like real life.

\- You can type "baw1234 tu 90 d 3 sp 2"; like callsigns, you only have to type the unique first few characters of the commands.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the reply. Perhaps my comment sounded a bit too much like negative criticism, it wasn't meant that way. Re:re:

\- "cannot send delayed commands, just like real life". It's not standard to tell pilots to fly a certain path, e.g. to a point and then head south? (I'm not sure, that's why I ask.)

\- "shortest unique callsign" Yeah well, it might help to always make the first two or three characters unique, then you can be certain it always works without having to check the list. Realism is kept that way.

\- "you only have to type the unique first few characters of the commands" Yes, but it doesn't autocomplete while typing. Though I guess learning those abbreviations might be part of the game.

In any case, thanks for making this. I've already mentioned some good points so I won't repeat myself :)

<comment><USER11> > Yeah well, it might help to always make the first two or three characters > unique, then you can be certain it always works without having to check the > list. Realism is kept that way.

Unfortunately these two are fundamentally at odds. In real life the call signs are based on carrier (or tail number if no call sign is assigned). In the current iteration, there are two airlines, United (all of the UAL flights) and British Airways (all of the BWA flights), plus the Cessna "airline" that mimics general aviation craft by prefixing the call sign with "N".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its fun, The two speeds are at the extremes though, Maybe a third halfway between them. Runway names are impossible to see while landing a plane and it's not obvious that takeoff always happen on *R runways.

If it was expanded it use actual flight data (if its legal) it would be something I could see myself losing a lot of time to it.

<comment><USER13> I seemed to be able to takeoff fine off both. Also the runway names are just their heading.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FYI, it's open source: [https://github.com/zlsa/atc](https://github.com/zlsa/atc)

</comment><comment><USER14> OK I know it's a simulation, but as a pilot, this really helps understand what ATC is going through. If I was a flight instructor, I'd recommend my students spend some time with this.

<comment> bulte-rs One of my flight instructors actually put me through a few hours of tracon ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Command entry seems broken in Safari. But no JS errors.

<comment><USER16> Same here. Safari 8.0.2 on Yosemite 10.10.2. It worked in Firefox though, but unfortunately didn't make me any good at the game. I couldn't get ILS. Maybe I didn't understand the landing part.

<comment><USER17> It looks like it works best when you point the plane in the right direction at 5000 feet, then have them fix on the named point in front of the runway in question, and tell them to land. Waiting until they're on the runway-skewers is too late.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love this.

It'd be great to have the option to turn on/off radio chatter, the sort you hear when listening to real ATC transmissions. Would definitely make the experience feel a bit more immersive.

<comment><USER11> You can always open up [http://www.liveatc.net/](http://www.liveatc.net/) in another tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone suggest a sim that handles real procedural / system design issues properly, like the difference between being a terminal ATC or a ARTCC ATC?

The real world is more of a team approach and most game sims have a pretty distorted view of reality. The guy who's doing ground taxi control at a tower doesn't usually moonlight at simultaneously running approach control while also simultaneously running departure control and enroute. A dude running approach 200 miles away usually doesn't get to play tower 200 miles away to tell a plane when they get to take off.

In my experience with aviation and ATC games, I haven't found one yet where the game designer was a pilot or ATC or listened on a scanner to pilots and ATC during the design phase.

I've also never seen a sim that handles dynamics for anything but planes. Real ATC is all about handling very local weather, and NOTAMS, and hot/cold MOAs (military training areas, if cold you just fly thru, if hot you get out of the way or get shot down). And of course it changes in real time not just once at game start. Also you trade / share space with other ATCs, so that dynamic would be interesting. And your shift doesn't end when all the planes land, you'll always both start and end a shift with planes in the air.

I don't expect much from the arcade games but there have been some sims out there that at least graphically have tried to look realistic and have at least sorta realistic procedures and limitations.

<comment><USER20> I think [http://www.londoncontrol.com/](http://www.londoncontrol.com/) is the closest one out there to what you're looking for

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is great. After a few minutes of being frantically overwhelmed I gradually figured things out. Cool to see what ATC has to deal with, I was always curious how that looked.

There are two things I'd like to see:

\- More than two speed options. A slider, if possible?

\- Some sort of simple scripting. I'd like to be able to dial in, "Navigate to WAYPOINT, then when you reach that, navigate to OTHER WAYPOINT, then descend to 5000 feet, then land on runway XX."

<comment><USER3> Waypoint scripting would be counter to how ATC works. The challenge is remembering your plan for each plane and mentally queuing up the instructions you need to give to pilots.

<comment><USER22> Except that real ATC can indeed give instructions of that sort. It's not so common for terminal environments to give really long clearances during approach because the pilots may not be ready to copy them down right away, but instructions like 'fly direct WAYPOINT, cross WAYPOINT at or above 5000 then descend at pilot's discretion to 2500' are common enough a bit further out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> After going through the tutorial and landing a few planes, my first impression is the interface is extremely user hostile... I hope real ATC is better.

<comment><USER15> Real ATC is done verbally over radio. You'd need pretty good voice recognition (and probably some non-trivial AI) to simulate it.

<comment><USER24> For the very limited vocabulary used in vectoring aircraft, the voice recognition part might not be horribly difficult (since it knows what it's expecting.)

<comment><USER25> The general speech recognition engines from Nuance, Google, etc. might have difficulty with the specialized language. There are corpora available of transcribed radio communications with ATC, e.g. [https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC94S14A](https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC94S14A) and [http://cvsp.cs.ntua.gr/projects/pub/HIWIRE/WebHome/HIWIRE_db...](http://cvsp.cs.ntua.gr/projects/pub/HIWIRE/WebHome/HIWIRE_db_description_paper.pdf) You could use the corpora to train an acoustic model and language model for the Sphinx or Pocketsphinx open source speech recognizers.

<comment><USER25> The reason I was looking into doing such a thing is that the NASA Airspace Operations Challenge[1] (now canceled) included as part of the competition the ability for drones to take verbal commands from ATC in case the communications links with their controllers were lost. The U.S. military has also been interested in giving drones this capability.

1\. [http://www.uasaoc.org/](http://www.uasaoc.org/)

<comment><USER23> Sounds like a nasty security problem.

<comment><USER26> Interestingly real ATC radio comms has a nasty security problem as well: no authentication. As a broadcast medium, anyone can hop on the frequency and pretend to be ATC or a plane. No way to know who is the real one. You can take out your handheld radio right now and pretend to be JFK Tower or SF Approach.

<comment><USER19> "pretend to be ATC"

Pilots are really good at pretending to be ATC because of training to handle CTAF MULTICOM UNICOM all of which is basically the same idea despite some paperwork differences. I guess CTAF is what it is, and the COMs are individual technical implementations. Its been a long time since student pilot days and I remember UNICOM had flight service stations and I don't think MULTICOM allows FSS chatter about fuel prices and car rentals or whatever on freq.

I live nearby and did student pilot training at an airport that doesn't have ATC staffing over 3rd shift. There was only perhaps one landing per hour overnight, so they don't staff the tower. Pilots just kinda broadcast off into space, listen to each other, and talk to each other.

I guess you'd describe it as a quiet party line rather than the formal meeting of staffed ATC communications.

Contrary to popular belief pilots listen constantly to each other and will get sorta-complaints from the tower if they haven't been paying attention to other pilots... Cessna 1234 do you have Cessna 6789 traffic in sight to your SW? And if you haven't been paying attention to the conversation between ATC and 6789 such that you don't know 6789 exists or is to your SW, then ATC is going to be kinda sorta pissed. This is why you can't replace ATC with a cellphone, at least not practically.

Another popular, weird, belief is ATC is like radio control and shutting down radio control makes all the planes fall out of the sky. Without the "meeting coordinator / committee chairperson" effect of the ATC, everything will happen in agonizing slow motion with massive distraction, but it'll all happen perfectly well. The reason ATC exists is it saves the pilots time, lets them focus on flying the plane a little more than focusing on commo with every other plane in the area. Its the cognitive difference between a hub-spoke topology and a full mesh. At 2am when there's only 0, 1, or 2 planes up in the airspace over the field, there's not much difference.

ATC does occasionally fail and there are procedures for load sharing.

One interesting EE problem is good luck talking over a 500 watt ATC tower at the field, from a couple miles away and 1 watt handheld. Just saying. Sure you can piss a lot of people off, but complete and utter long term takeover is going to be rather non-trivial. And there are a huge number of planes and sites with DF gear for tracking the old fashioned emergency beacons, so of all the things to jam, aircraft freqs are probably the one freq band likeliest to result in your demise ... You'll live a lot longer jamming the FM radio band or CB or the cops. Maybe not long, but longer.

<comment><USER27> > You'll live a lot longer jamming the FM radio band

Speaking out of experience, yes. 1kW sorta-portable system on a hill in a car, no problems even after half an hour of running a pirate station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is really good fun except it's incredibly difficult to read the navigation beacon names, even with zoom it is just very pixilated.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is this not just a clone of [http://www.atc-sim.com/](http://www.atc-sim.com/) ?

</comment><comment><USER30> Some indication of when aircraft are risking violation of separation would be handy, I assume that real ATC consoles have this? Its unclear what the scale is.

Voices would be great. Emergencies (minimal fuel, medical, etc) and weather would also be great!

</comment><comment><USER31> Woah this is super fun and nothing was wrong with it. It was kind of annoying but I feel like all sims are that way. I want to be able to run different airports!!!! And a mode that just goes on forever would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER32> Needs better error correction when it comes to landing I haven't been able to land one yet I get it close to the lines but no cigar. I've resorted to just trying to get them to collide.

<comment><USER33> You have to tell them where to land with the "land" command.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There was a ZX Spectrum ATC game which (considering 1983 hardware) was reasonably accurate: [http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0002270](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0002270) It was written by an actual air traffic controller and pilot (picture: [http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=BigK/Issue03/...](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=BigK/Issue03/Pages/BigK0300022.jpg))

</comment><comment><USER35> Thank you!

A printable list of commands would be nice.

<comment><USER36> I'm currently working on this at the wiki, although I've only completed three right now: [https://github.com/zlsa/atc/wiki](https://github.com/zlsa/atc/wiki) If you want to contribute, please do!

<comment><USER35> I'm pretty much a beginner. I think the last time I saw a similar game was on my C64 ;)

Thanks for the commands :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> [http://www.flightradar24.com/](http://www.flightradar24.com/) shows live flight tracker

<comment> vhost- Dammit, you opened up a can of worms. Now I've been at this for hours.

[http://www.northkoreatech.org/2014/08/01/whos-using-north- ko...](http://www.northkoreatech.org/2014/08/01/whos-using-north-korean- airspace/)

<comment><USER38> are we just highly technified ants?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish the planes continued to generate rather than having a fixed amount. I don't like when I run out of planes.

</comment><comment><USER40> Has anyone able to crash 2 planes yet ? I tried landing one on a runway while other was taxied, nothing happened.

</comment><comment><USER8> I didn't want to be reminded how terrible ATCs' consoles are. The game is super neat though.

</comment><comment><USER41> I used to play an old Windows game called Tracon that was very similar, that I would get totally lost playing way longer than I ever intended. Good job! I prefer my ATC simulators with a little more realism than the bsdgames one. I like actual callsigns instead of letters.

</comment><comment><USER42> Nice job! Pretty simple game, but you had me playing it for an hour!

</comment><comment><USER43> I like it! It's not for me at all, but it seems really well made. I am going to send it to a friend who is ATC and see what he thinks.

<comment><USER9> I'm interested, please let us know what he says :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> To get it to land is pretty difficult. How can I know the altitude, speed?

<comment><USER45> Altitude is the first number, speed is the second number. Try using "fix x" to set the plane on the waypoints along the runway, c 1, then land runway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is there an equivalent for ATC on the MAC?

</comment><comment><USER46> awesome job

<comment><USER46> Why did I get downvoted for complementing the OP on a game I ended up playing for over an hour.

<comment><USER47> It's because your comment didn't really add anything to the conversation. I didn't down vote you by the way, but HN frowns on such comments.

In this instance though, when someone is showing the community their work, I feel it's a bit unfair to expect everyone who comments to have detailed and constructive feedback. Some people just want to say "awesome!" and I suspect the people submitting their work also want to hear that. Alas, it's a shortcoming. Perhaps up votes are the way to say "awesome".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I like it

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice

</comment><comment><USER50> Awesome work, I like it.

</comment><comment><USER51> No one knows there is a hyperbolic PDE out there?</comment>


Heroku Postgres 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2013/11/11/heroku_postgres_20 <comment><USER2> Wow, talk about hiding the ball. Heroku Postgres 2.0 is changing the cost structure in a dramatic way. Gone is the 1TB of storage on all production plans (now the "standard" tier). Instead, you are limited to 64GB of storage on Heroku's cheapest $50/mo plan. As hoddez mentions above, you'll now need to spend $2000/mo to get the 1TB of storage space that you were able to achieve on yesterday's $50 plan.

What's additionally frustrating is they have made pricing much less granular. Instead of 8 pricing levels based on your ram requirements, you now only have 5. Old price points of $100/$400/$800/$1600 have all been eliminated and now you are stuck choosing between $50/$200/$750/$2000. These are steep price jumps between each level.

I understand that Heroku wants to highlight the new features here, but when they bury the pricing at the bottom of the post, and even include language like this:

"For those already familiar with our pricing our new standard tier is very similar to our now legacy production tier. For some of you this means migrating could actually provide over 45% in cost savings on your production database."

It strikes me as a bit disingenuous. For reference, here is the old pricing structure from the archive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20131003031924/https://www.herok...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131003031924/https://www.heroku.com/pricing)

And here is Heroku's legacy pricing page: [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres- legacy...](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-legacy-plans)

<comment><USER3> All of the old prices still fully exist, in no way are customers required to choose the new plans. The new plans where there are equal specs are indeed lower in price in many places. We've documented all of the legacy plans within devcenter [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres- legacy...](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-legacy- plans). If theres ways we can make this more clear then would love to hear about it at postgres at heroku.com.

In regards to the storage limits, this was put in place actually to prevent users from shooting themselves in the foot. We examined all current users in this process as well as connection limits and looked to what limits were used today, as well as when people were over certain thresholds for the other problems it created. As it exists today you would now hit these limits and have a clear understanding of why, versus other problems that previously arose as a result of having them so high.

<comment><USER2> Thanks Craig! I missed the legacy pricing page and edited my post to reflect this. To make this more clear and transparent, I would include a link to this directly on your blog post. It certainly would've helped me.

If you wouldn't mind me asking, why the removal of the Kappa/Fugu/Zilla price points in the new tiers?

<comment><USER3> Will absolutely make update the blog post to include the link, was simply an oversight in not having it there in the first place.

Would be happy to detail more on the reason for removing some of the other price points feel free to email me, craig at heroku.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Silently dropped the storage drastically in the lower plans. Knew the 1TB at $50 a month was too good to last forever. Now for that much storage you need to pay $2000

<comment><USER5> yeah these changes price adjustments are getting too be too much. And now when I enter the New Relic console I get "login failed"... When I try to look at history in Adept I get a Rails error. It feels like their priority is NEW and MORE instead of SOLID, RELIABLE. Going to try AWS for next app.

Luckily, my Heroku apps are all RDS anyway so no paranoid scrambling here...

<comment><USER6> Could you raise a ticket for this stuff? Login problems with Add-ons isn't a common thing and we'd like to investigate.

<comment><USER5> I'll try to get around to it, sure. Adept isn't a log-on issue it's after I'm authenticated, just any time you hit "History" it Rails errors, sometimes works after a few refreshes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really want a better explanation of how 'rollback' works. You have to create a fork before you run your migration script so you can roll back to that fork?

<comment><USER8> Rollback is essentially like a fork to the past. It creates a new database, but only replays transactions up to a specific instant. It's based on the Postgres Point-in-Time Recovery feature: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/continuous- arc...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/continuous- archiving.html)</comment></comment>


Facebook unique visits on compete closing in on Google - <AUTHOR> http://siteanalytics.compete.com/yahoo.com+facebook.com+google.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> For non-unique visits it's overtaken Google</comment>


Risk-First Software Development: The Menagerie - <AUTHOR> https://www.i-programmer.info/bookreviews/4-methodology/12569-risk-first-software-development-the-menagerie.html <comment><USER2> Hi,

Author here. I just saw this review was posted of my work.

As the i-programmer review points out, Risk-First is takes the view that all the tasks we take on a software project are managing risk in some way, be it dealing with feature risk, operational risk, or coordination risk in our teams (for example).

All of the content in the book is on a github pages site at riskfirst.org, so feel free to take a look at that before diving in.

Hope this is of use to people here, feel free to ask me anything.

thanks</comment>


Show HN: Get Ethereum-based Sudokoin by claiming solved sudokus - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sudokoin/sudokoin <comment><USER2> That's great, but I imagine that any computer can solve thousands of sudoku boards in a few seconds, so anyone can claim all the sudokoins easily using that.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. But that will only make sense when the rewarded Sudokoin are worth more than the transaction fee.</comment></comment>


People Hate Email That Names Them - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/06/15/hey-startups-dont-start-your-emails-with-dear-name-95-of-people-hate-it/ <comment><USER2> Using your name is expected. However it's absolutely wrong for a marketing email that is from a company that doesn't have a well established relationship with you IMO. Mind you those companies shouldn't be emailing me anyway ...

If the email is personal to me then use my name, if it's generic then genericise it; if it's for someone else and copied to me then use their name so I can tell that.

Are these things really so hard?

Oh, hang on. All of the comment replies contradict the content of the article .. I'm going with 'raising peoples hackles by declaring something false to be true in order to garner links and stimulate comment'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always assumed that this was a tactic to get around spam filters.</comment>


What is failure for you? - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/40255236566/what-is-failure-for-you <comment><USER2> To me, failure is the the result of an action which causes stress.

That sounds wrong I guess, because you assume that you can have stressful situations where you succeed. But more correctly I mean that when you make that internalized evaluation of whether you should do something or not, you look back on your experience doing that thing, and remember whether it caused you stress or if it made you motivated. Even if the process is stressful, if the end result is more enjoyable than stressful, it's a success. Otherwise a failure.

Failure is a pretty key part of learning and building habits. Things that you have attempted and failed are going to drum of feelings of stress and anxiety when you contemplate attempting them again. Things that you have attempted and succeeded at are going to bring feelings of motivation when you think about doing them.

I don't know that changing what failure means to you affects a lot, but I definitely think that for me, understanding how stress plays into my willingness to continue trying to do something makes a big difference. For instance, when you allow yourself to be really hard on yourself for an interstitial failure, (like making a schedule to work out 3 times a week and missing a day) it makes you feel a bit more stressed the next time you consider attempting it... it gets harder. Eventually you decide it's too hard to keep trying if you're just going to fail, and you give up (often you attribute this to personal failings). But if you want to get in the habit of going to the gym 3 times per week, the best way to do it is to go to the gym 3 times per week. Missing a day shouldn't cause stress, nor should missing a month. You shouldn't feel "failure", because the "success" condition should be the results of going to the gym regularly, not some artificial construction of maintaining a schedule. And in that respect, you're not failing, you're just not achieving that success condition as quickly as possible.

When you base your internalized feelings of success or failure around external constructs like that, you kind of undermine your actual learning and habit forming systems. Is your goal really to be fit? Because the goal you are really working towards is forcing a routine. The achievement of some abstract goal (checking off all the attendance boxes for an undefined length of time) instead of a more organic goal (actually feeling healthier).

I used the workout schedule as an example because it's an example where the end result makes you feel good on it's own. But I think this idea can be used in business too. Failure should be something you feel in situations that you want to avoid in the future, but you need to be careful not to feel too much failure for situations you want to improve. If you associate the whole action as a failure, you'll just have more difficulty attempting it in the future, improving.

I have pretty good control over how I deal with stress, but I struggle with how to organize my priorities. The goal is to do my best and only let myself feel stress when it's absolutely necessary, or when I'm in a situation that if I fail, I should avoid trying it again.

Some people use stress to force themselves into action, because it's a strong motivator. These people tend to dislike many things. Failure comes frequently to them, and just the idea of failure causes stress and anxiety, which fuels them further. It's one way to handle things, and I used to deal with things this way, but I think it's less healthy, and less controllable.

In conclusion, Failure is an abstract up condition made up to cause stress for not meeting an abstract goal. They are methods we use to affect our internal decision and habit forming processes. Success is an abstract reward for meeting a goal that may not have it's own intrinsically rewarding qualities. Failure is an abstract stressor for not meeting that goal that may not have it's own intrinsically painful qualities. If we understand how we are, individually, affected by stress and reward, we can structure how and when we let ourselves feel failure to help stop demotivating us from our real objectives.

For me, rarely letting myself feel like I've failed has reduced my day to day stress, which makes it a lot easier to control myself emotionally. That was a hard thing to let go of though. However, if I need to try to motivate myself, setting goals with a success condition and no failure condition seems to work better. I started doing Judo a few months ago, the instructor had to leave town and I didn't jive with the new instructor as much, and I hurt myself and decided to stop going to the class. Some people would feel like they failed by not following through with that. If another class with a different instructor were to start up they might feel less inclined to sign up because they already tried to do that and failed. But I only remember how I enjoyed the class, and would look forward to doing it again if I could enjoy it the same way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very well-written. I've had this idea for a long time, but I couldn't really put it into words [1] like Joel has.

I've always been known to set unreasonably high goals. If I fail these goals, I find that I still make substantial progress - essentially tricking myself. I usually joke with my friends "Aim for a 120 on this test. If you end up with a 100 that'll be okay." But in reality, I aim too high when it comes to personal projects. Make this, make that, make these things over the weekend. I never _fully_ succeed, but I come out with something cool regardless, and usually a lesson.

[1]: <http://jscal.es/2012/10/12/you-oughta-be-ashamed/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Failure, to me, is doing something that is not enjoyable that I neither learned from nor gained from.

Everything else is a success.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." - Henry Ford

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a parachutist (BASE, CRW). Failure is death, or hurting someone else.

<comment><USER7> I'm an average human being, but sometimes failure is just the act of looking in the mirror. And then I feel that if I can go over that (overcome that deep level of failure) than maybe I can genuinely do great things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Failure is synonymous with "Quitting" for me.

<comment><USER9> "Quitting while you're ahead is not the same as quitting." -American Gangster

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not so sure anymore. My industry is being saturated by Helvetica-designers and people with absolutely no background in traditional design, and who have absolutely no design sensitivity for accessibility; and who fear risk because it has been so tightly coupled with their next paycheck. Anything that seems risky gets lumped into one category, because it is economical to play it safe, come what may. Two-tone, single-column, this or that. My industry is becoming hyperfashionable, and morally so. It's beyond me how so many designers I see today whore out the same pallid, lifeless sans-serif fonts, and they don't even set their font-stacks properly. So it's monocultural design, with a tyrannical twist that depends on things like CSS's !important. It's like most of you are force feeding your 11pt fonts and insipid Microsoft fonts down the world's throat. -- And you want to ask what failure is as if you don't know? It's whoever will not follow the trend, in a certain material, financial sense.

Failure may be individual, but the conditions are defined by the industry in which it occurs. And honestly, all those designers/developers who are cookie- cutting their careers make failure habitual for those who actually decide to take risks and be thorough-going. We have so many designers/developers who need to make a quick buck, that their "streamlined" notion of things make it difficult for people who actually have talent to genuinely nurture that talent, because they have to compete with Frameworkers and (CSS) Foundationers.

Talk about that. Failure is defined by the suffocation of talent in a capitalistic mindset.

<comment><USER10> This doesn't even make sense anymore.

Is it not permissible to be critical? Can one even be critical without getting downvoted? Perhaps that is now the new barometer of success. Heck, most of us are talking about "document your failure" or "fail fast."

Then that's it. Getting downvoted is the new success. Like Adrian Tan says, "Be hated."

Downvote the b'jesus out of me. I need validation. Maybe I'll get an algorithm for creativity, through trial and error on the new norm.

<comment><USER11> you are way too worried about being downvoted.

<comment><USER10> It's a downvote with no commentary. If you cannot understand why that might be frustrating or seemingly inappropriate, when I demonstrate no light taking on the topic, or when I espouse critical beliefs, then let's just move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle</comment>


Teaching Machines to Draw - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2017/04/teaching-machines-to-draw.html?hn <comment><USER2> the author made an attempt to create an animation from vector drawings created using this method:

[https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/852312400481079296](https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/852312400481079296)</comment>


The mathematics of spirograph art - <AUTHOR> http://alvesjnr.github.com/blog/pages/permalinks/how-does-a-spirograph-works2012-Mar-29.html

<comment><USER2> Good article!

I think "Complete Turbo Pascal" by Jeff Duntemann had a treatment of the spirograph (might have been another book on Turbo Pascal though).

Good times, good times. :)</comment>


The US reportedly considering blacklisting Chinese surveillance firm Hikvision - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/22/us-reportedly-considering-blacklisting-chinas-hikvision.html <comment><USER2> Hikvision makes _very cheap_ good quality network cameras ... that you have to deploy behind a firewall to avoid [https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2017/Sep/23](https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2017/Sep/23)

</comment><comment><USER3> Like the US really cares about surveillance or dictators...if they care they could stop selling weapons to SA or stop US companies selling surveillance products & services. I mean the very US companies that helped build The Great Firewall. What US is really concerned about is that China has a big market share in this industry and will only get better. Maybe the next time SA will buy from China instead of US...it's really just about old good $$$

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a mixed feeling about this new technology war. On one side I think China being a quite poor country has a good chance to improve life of millions of its people if it continues to innovate in AI and Robotics. On the other side, these technologies can be used easily to control all the people, restricting freedom of speech and debate, thus inevitably leading to economical deadlocks and wrong decisions, at least while real people do decide yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> This I actually agree with. Tried one, and while the hardware is surprisingly decent, the software has holes like an Emmental.

</comment><comment><USER6> If we're going after surveillance firms, how about the Israeli firm exploiting human rights activists or the Saudi firm making wife-surveillance apps? Or is it a radical concept that we should do this based on a system of rules rather than arbitrary executive decisions?

</comment><comment><USER7> As long as you keep them on their own air gapped network, they should be okay. Arecont are just too expensive.

<comment><USER8> The Ubiquiti cameras are of a much higher build quality and don't have these issues albeit are a tad more expensive. I have Foscam, Hikvision, and Ubiquiti cameras. I've stopped buying anything but the Ubiquiti cameras due to the quality being that much better.

<comment><USER9> We looked at them all and went with Hikvision. Ubiquitous does not at the moment make a comparable camera. I can get 4-10MPixel HKV cameras and the unifi G3 tops out at 1080p.

<comment><USER8> The Unifi G4 Pro tops out at 4K, but is not a cheap camera. Like the G3 Pro however, the build quality is extraordinary. I mounted it to my masonry garage on the outside and love run it via PoE to a Unifi 8 port PoE switch inside my garage (which in turn goes through conduit into my basement and into a 48 port switch :D

[https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-protect-g4-pro- camera](https://store.ui.com/products/unifi-protect-g4-pro-camera)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went with a full Ubiquiti UniFi setup and the UniFi Cameras. One of the reason was the reported backdoors and phoning home stuff the cheaper cameras were doing. If I were to get them I'd put them on VLANs with no access to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER11> fucking buggy ass vulnerable cameras are constantly exploited for IoT botnets....good riddance.

</comment><comment><USER12> Remember everyone - if you're looking to buy any cheap surveillance/camera gear and you're smart enough to block it from phoning home to the dirty communistic reds, you better buy it very soon and quickly as most cheaper surveillance equipment is basically re-branded Hikvision technology anyways!

<comment><USER9> The grey markets cameras are worse. Not only are they rebranded Hikvisions, they also don't update the software at all. I bought a cheap camera from Monoprice that is really a Hikvision. And even shows up in their discovery tools. Except the firmware is 4 years old. I can't get security updates and since it's not Hikvision I can't flash it with their patched firmwares.

<comment><USER13> I've had to unbrick gray-market hikvision cameras that were flashed with hikvision firmware for a friend. Best to keep them on their own subnet along with a small zfs cluster and drop all new outgoing packets.

<comment><USER9> By design our camera network is unroutable. If you want To watch a feed you get it from the NVR. I trust these cameras as much as I trust any cheap IoT device.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Soylent on the latest Vice piece - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soylent.me/post/66807143901/this-morning-vices-brian-merchant-published-a <comment><USER2> Wow. Exactly the right response. I would never have paid any attention to Soylent's agreement with a large HACCP-certified manufacturer before, but Vice's story actually made that relevant to me. They might actually _pick up_ customers from this shitstorm.

Argh! But, well played.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to imagine the type of person that would be on the fence about Soylent that would be ok with it after reading this article. Hopefully the "it was beta" excuse for producing Soylent in an unhealthy environment won't fly outside of SV culture. If anything, it should bring up serious doubts about the integrity of a team that, when faced with overwhelming demand and flush with investor cash, stoop to a level of cognitive dissonance necessary to claim lofty goals of fighting hunger worldwide while sidestepping around the rats and filth in their "beta" production environment. If the Soylent team wants respect they should focus less on dreaming up scientific sounding rebranding campaigns and slow down the "deployment" of their product in order to subject it to rigorous scientific tests and trials before mailing it to strangers.

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

Meta: wow, I really get worked up over this Soylent stuff. There's something deeply disturbing about this to me, like we're witnessing the birth of a monster. Maybe it's the first sign of the worst of the "move fast, break things" cutting corners culture smelling money to be made iterating on peoples' health...

<comment><USER4> That was the beta/promo batch. I fail to see how that's relevant now.

They're already subjecting the production version to rigorous testing.

As for trials, those cost hundreds of millions of dollars and are done for no other food. Are you suggesting that they simply not make Soylent because it hasn't gone through a phase 3?

I bet you're real fun at bake sales.

<comment><USER5> That's the point. You don't get to "beta" foodstuffs.

Try running a public beta on some cancer drugs and see how far you get.

<comment><USER6> > Try running a public beta on some cancer drugs and see how far you get.

1) This isn't a public beta.

2) If cancer drugs WEREN'T tested before being sold, I would be far more worried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Many startups put the word "utilize" in their press releases to sound fancier and more official: "This...prompted us to utilize more robust packaging."

You can always say "use" instead of "utilize" to avoid buzzwords and sound more conversational. In fact, there are only a few specific cases (mostly in science writing) where "utilize" is necessary:

[http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/use- versu...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/use-versus- utilize)

<comment><USER8> This is also incredibly common among company/field grade military officers trying to appear "educated".

I use "use" when something is put to its intended or designed use; I use a shirt by wearing it. I utilize a shirt by wrapping it around my arm, as a pressure dressing, to stop bleeding.

<comment><USER9> I was in enlisted Air Force and the term is annoyingly over utilized there as well.

<comment><USER8> Otoh there are some awesome contributions to the English language like "waivered" and in general a lot of nouning and verbing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Soylent team continues to impress.

I think this is probably one of the best handled rollouts of a product with so high a potential for controversy. Each issue seems to get addressed rapidly, the company is pursuing a quest for quality, and the product itself is coming together rapidly.

I'm glad to have contributed.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Me too. I eagerly await my order to come in January.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't really understand why Soylent needs a factory anyway. Just white label some generic meal replacement shake like Ensure and they are done. The only thing interesting about the company is they managed to market a product that already exists as something new to a new audience.

<comment><USER12> Please see this discussion, in particular the response from "rob": [http://discourse.soylent.me/t/comparing-soylent-to- existing-...](http://discourse.soylent.me/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing- nutritional-products/431)

Summary: Soylent aims for something more ideal than a suboptimal solution. It's a day to day meal replacement for otherwise healthy, active people. Given the ingredients of Ensure, I wouldn't want to try to live on it for 30 days. It's like Google vs. Altavista, if you'll pardon the strained analogy.

<comment><USER13> From the link: "I considered Ensure but found it much too expensive, low calorie, unpalatable, and an ingredient make up that was far from complete or optimal"

I have family ties into this industry, and quite frankly this comment is rather ignorant. Ensure is a brand range, with a lot of variation, some of which are, for example, extremely high in calories.

It is also worth noting that one of the uses of products like Ensure is to actually mix in with regular cooking, increasing the calorific and nutritional value of normal food.

Comparing existing products in the market with "Altavista", and Soylent with "Google" is also very disingenuous, as it serves to discredit all the work put into existing products, and ignores their business model. Funnily enough, Ensure isn't marketed as hipster-food, and everything about it is tailored for their target market of the medical industry.

As hackers, surely we should be supporting good business, rather than blindly going with the latest fad?

<comment><USER4> Why doesn't Ensure have a good webpage showing us these options and educating us on how to choose?

There's more to "product" than what's in the bag.

<comment><USER13> Because pharmaceutical/clinical nutritional sales have very little at all to do with websites!

In our tech focused, Business to consumer / mass business market, it is easy to forget about hands-on sales.

These products, remember, have lots of legislation around them, very strict instructions on when they are appropriate to be used, training is required in order to really use many of them properly, and so on. That tends to be the first indicator of the need for sales reps.

Equally, and perhaps more importantly, remember that direct to consumers is a market for these products only because of clinical teams recommending them. Their typical sales targets are huge, and are acquired in big bulk contracts with entire hospitals, if not healthcare regional bodies. Contracts on that scale are, again, typically done via sales teams who work closely with a client, build a relationship, and help the client get the most out of their sales. This model also exists in the tech industry, and indeed is how most Big Enterprise IT works.

I'm sure they could get more direct to consumer sales if they improved their website, yes. But even ignoring any legislative issues with directly aiding that market, why focus on growing the 5% of your market (being generous!), when that 95% of hands-on sales is really what you should be investing in?

<comment><USER4> Because a million bucks in nerdy preorders without any marketing to speak of suggests that there's a large underserved market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is some evidence that working with one's hands relieves depression and promotes happiness. I would like to see a clinical trial which attempts to measure the opposite effect from Soylent: that removing the food preparation ritual can contribute to depression, or at least ennui. Sometimes removing a piece of the natural environment is not good for an organism. Few suggest replacing all human walking with motorized transport, for example; I wonder if the same will hold for meals.

On the other hand, some people use food as a drug, and removing it may be helpful in a Buddhist desire-suppression kind of way.

</comment><comment><USER15> What happened to the original HN submission of the vice article?

<comment><USER2> It's right here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720193)

<comment><USER16> It has practically disappeared and the submitted link was substituted[1]. I think this is a first.

I doubt that PG is aware of this type of orchestrated manipulation going on. It is quite dangerous for the credibility of HN.

Soylent seems interesting and potentially disruptive. However, it is FOOD and deserves to be put under the microscope. Anyone conniving to make them dodge scrutiny (especially via underhand moves) is not doing them any favours.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720515)

<comment><USER17> Soylent is a food, like the McDonald's McRib sandwich, the Baconator from Wendy's, the Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast, and the delicious beef tacos from my local Mexican restaurant. Why does Soylent need more scrutiny than any of these or the hundreds of thousands of other food products on the market today?

<comment><USER18> > Soylent is a food

The company is claiming that it is a dietary supplement and NOT food in order to avoid FDA scrutiny. At least that is what the PandoDaily article that was originally linked to claims.

<comment><USER19> This is from the actual parent article: _Soylent is designed and regulated as a food, not a supplement._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The fact a rat was spotted in a dusty old warehouse isn't really worth addressing.

From what I've learned so far, the only factor letting this product down for me is the price. I'd guess $65/w is around what I'm spending on food now. Do we have any idea of their margin? Is the price expected to decrease once they get a decent production line up?

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I spend even less than that. The price would have to be somewhere around half of that to make it attractive for me.

<comment><USER22> That's incredible to me...even at $65 it's less than $10 a day. Half the price would be like $1.25 a meal.

I spend almost that simply for lunch each day (sushi, sandwiches...food on- the-go), so for me spending $65 a week would pretty easily save money. Makes me curious how many people (in the U.S.) spend less than $65 a week on food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I was younger and had my wisdom teeth out, they had to break my lower jaw to get the deeply impacted lower ones out. I spent six weeks eating nothing but Ensure. To this day I can't stand the taste of it.

Going back to solid food took a few days of introducing progressively more and more solid food back into my system and was not terribly fun.

I think the appeal of this, in terms of time savings during busy work periods, is intriguing. But there's already tons of these kinds of things in a very crowded market, and I don't even have to mix it myself. But as an extended, multi-week replacement? No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER24> A well-written response. Soylent have handled this extremely well and the fact they've partnered up with a HACCP certified manufacturer with over 20 years experience will prevent any mishaps with future production of Soylent. Really looking forward to giving this a shot, none of the issues highlighted in the beta have deterred me from trying as they won't be present in the main manufacturing process.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am actually excited by their move to an established manufacturer. A good manufacturing partner will be well placed to help them deal with FDA approval, which will be required.

However, they big challenge they will eventually face is the existing nutritional product manufacturers. At the moment, Soylent is not viewed as a serious competitor, but it is worth remembering that if they prove that a market exists, Abbott, Nestlé and the like both have the marketing clout and some rather clever tricks to muscle in on the market.

But the saddest thing of all? Despite companies like Soylent, Abbott, Nutriset, Nestlé, etc, clinical malnutrition is still a serious issue. Proper nutrition is essential to successful treatment to many issues (cancer being one), yet it is still commonly neglected by clinical staff and administrators :( And most people don't even know about the risks and that different options exist for different needs!

(Disclaimer: family work in the industry)

</comment><comment><USER25> No mention of rats. /snicker/

</comment><comment><USER26> I would be very, very interested to see the long-term consequences of an exclusively Soylent diet. I suspect the lack of phytochemicals would lead to increased incidences of cancer. That said, I would also guess that millions (billions?) of people have far worse diets.

</comment><comment><USER27> Looking forward to a low-carb version, anything in the works?

<comment><USER28> For the same price (easily under $10/day), frozen vegetables and chopped meat. Just add spices and a bit of oil. Dump it all in a rice cooker if you're really pressed for time.

Not as trivially portable as a bottle of soylent, but otherwise superior in every respect.

<comment><USER27> Yep, I already do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Makes much sense for disaster relief.

</comment><comment><USER30> Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry.

It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the _ritual_ and _benefits_ of eating together.

Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Studies show that families that dine together stay together [1]. Their children are healthier and get better grades. It also lowers the risk of weight problems and alcohol and substance abuse.[2]

Eating real food persisted throughout human history because _it 's more than about eating_.

[1] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/24/family-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/24/family- dinner-adolescent-benefits/2010731/) [2] [http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z- guides/features/family-dinners-a...](http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z- guides/features/family-dinners-are-important)

EDIT: I'm glad to see so many people disagree with me. It means I'm on the right track.

<comment><USER31> > I'm glad to see so many people disagree with me. It means I'm on the right > track.

Does anyone else find this "first they ignore you" style of belief- reinforcement to be vaguely troubling? Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't just believe your critics without further inquiry, but the presence of critics shouldn't be used as supporting evidence _in and of itself_. You risk creating a kind of insular belief system where any threat can be transformed into reinforcement.

<comment><USER32> Very true. You can't use the fact that someone has something bad to say about you to actually improve your perceived value. It's strictly[1] more probable that you're worse if there is criticism than if there isn't.

[1] EDIT: as pasquinelli noted, I didn't actually mean "strictly" here, I meant >=. Also, pasquinelli, you've been hellbanned.

<comment><USER30> Many HN readers like to rationalize-away inconvenient truths as if it were a game. When I see that kind of weaksauce response, I'm on the right track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> They definitely need two kinds of soylent. One, soylent red, with a different formula and more nutrients for the first few days while our bodies adapt, and then regular soylent green.

I say this because everybody complains the first days are really hard on their bodies and nerves. So a smooth transition would make it easier to stick to the plan and reduce drop rates.

<comment><USER34> I'm pretty sure calling it _anything other than Soylent Red and Green_ would be a really, really good idea. Call it a hunch.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I was pretty disheartened in the Motherboard video that the founder _liked_ the name Soylent.

<comment><USER34> Nothing I've seen about the Soylent project makes me imagine that its founder lives on quite the same planet inhabited by most other humans. He has an interesting idea and he certainly seems able to execute, at least so far, but I can't help but be a little more skeptical than I would be otherwise; the first time I saw mention of it, it took me a good fifteen minutes to convince myself that it was what it appeared to be, and not a prop for some sort of "alternate reality game". Even now, I still find myself waiting for another shoe to drop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scotch tape found to emit x-rays by behaving like a particle accelerator - <AUTHOR> http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64111/title/Tale_of_the_tape_

<comment><USER2> Between this and isolating graphene sheets, I think Scotch tape deserves the next nobel prize in physics.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love blog comments. The first one:

 _Doesnt this mean that Scotch tape users are frequently subject to radiation exposure?_

From the article:

 _No need to worry about radiation exposure at the office — at atmospheric pressure, where air molecules bustle, the electrons quickly run into other particles before they can radiate X-rays._

Do people really just read the title and then post a comment? Why?

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember hearing a lecture many years ago given by Seth Putterman, the researcher in this study. Unless I'm confusing him with another researcher, he claimed in the lecture that the underlying mechanisms behind static electricity were not understood. I've asked other scientist now and then but have never found anyone else who would confirm that claim.

The idea is that by rubbing a balloon on your head, you add energy of a fraction of an electron volt to each electron on average, yet you can generate potential difference of 1000s of volts, so how does the diffuse energy input get concentrated to the small fraction of electrons at the high potential. Someday I'd like to hear an expert explanation.

</comment><comment><USER5> This news is really old. The use of scotch tape to create a particle accelerator out of a pencil is not: [http://www.deccanherald.com/content/104044/promise- graphene....](http://www.deccanherald.com/content/104044/promise- graphene.html)

<comment><USER6> When reporting science, it's often not useful to start off with the newest thing. Doing so presumes the reader knew about the old thing, which of often not the case. Hence, the new thing is a few paragraphs in:

 _To track where the X-rays travel, Australian scientists rigged up Scotch tape on a spool driven by a motor (the lab's first prototype spun on an electric drill). The X-rays mostly sprayed at a right angle to the direction the tape was pulled, the researchers report in the Sept. 29 Applied Physics Letters. That's a convenient property, because herding light into a straight line normally absorbs the light's energy, but the tape naturally emits X-rays in a straight line to within 5 degrees.

"Tape is an even better use as an X-ray source than we thought," says Putterman, who first observed the phenomenon and reported in May that bremsstrahlung radiation is the X-ray source in a May paper in Applied Physics B: Lasers and Optics._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this has any bearing on the force field that 3M accidentally created in one of their factories.

<http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> The page seems to be down. Here is a text-only cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TpSleMI...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TpSleMIxqdwJ:www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64111/title/Tale_of_the_tape_+http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64111/title/Tale_of_the_tape_&hl=en&strip=1)</comment>


Check the current stock of hard-to-find Lego sets - <AUTHOR> http://www.ooslego.com/

<comment><USER2> Off topic but for anyone that might have some of it, is the Minecraft lego worth what appears to be an exhorbitant price, even compared to the other themed sets? Youngest daughter is desperate for some but when Lego is about a close a real-world representation of Minecraft as possible, I don't want to shell out just to get the theme...

<comment><USER3> The retail prices on the new Minecraft sets (The Cave $20 / Crafting Box $50 / The Mine $110 / etc) are pretty closely in line with other branded sets. If you're looking at a marketplace price on an OOS item (e.g. crafting box at $85 right now on Amazon) it's easy to get a bad impression though.

Looking briefly at $50 list Star Wars sets, the piece counts are actually generally lower. Compare the 518 piece minecraft set to the z-95 headhunter @ 373, Umbaran MHC @ 493, & Droid Gunship @ 439.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The set I've been pining for is the Motorized Bulldozer[1]. My hope is that Lego will reissue it one day. That said, as a Lego fan, I've started getting pretty annoyed at the company for their "special parts" and limited edition print runs. Talk about creating artificial scarcity! I look forward to the day we can get a quality 3D printed construction system - with opensourced designs of course!

[1] [http://www.toysperiod.com/lego-set- reference/technic/model/c...](http://www.toysperiod.com/lego-set- reference/technic/model/construction/lego-8275-motorized-bulldozer/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I love this site as simply an index of interesting Lego sets. But on a few of the items I spot-checked marked OOS, they are in-stock at Amazon. Impressive amount of work for a nice parent-friendly niche problem though.

<comment><AUTHOR> So for Amazon it shows whether they are in stock by Amazon directly. Not necessarily other sellers selling through Amazon. A reason for this is a lot of sellers that are not Amazon directly jack up the prices for Lego sets. So they are considered by the system as "OOS". I'm planning on implementing a status and a price soon. But for instance take a look at the Super Star Destoryer on Amazon. Retail price by Amazon is $399 when they have it in stock. Currently the price is $799 by an outside seller listing it on Amazon.

<comment><USER6> I like that implementation as I try and avoid Amazon Sellers when I can (and hate how Amazon intentionally confuses Amazon direct with Amazon sellers).

I'd definitely prefer, if you want to add Amazon Sellers, a completely separate column rather than conflating it with Amazon direct. The current site works for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good site, but now I'm annoyed at how much more Lego costs in the UK than the US. The Back to the Future Delorean - actually not on this list but I found it clicking around Amazon recommended links from something else - has a list price of $34.95 in the US or £53.95 (that's $85!) in the UK.

The Lego set I'd most like to buy if it hadn't been ridiculously limited edition is the Mars Rover set, 21104.

</comment><comment><USER8> An acquaintance of mine once made a living by selling legos online by the piece. He'd buy sets and tear them down, sort them, etc. Apparently this can be profitable especially if you can get a lot of hard to find pieces.

This was back in like 2008, so I have no idea if the site exists or if he's still doing it.

<comment><USER9> It's very profitable. [http://www.bricklink.com/](http://www.bricklink.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel like you should invert the color scheme. If something is out of stock I don't really need to be drawn to that. If something is in stock, though, I can buy it.

This site reminded me again of how expensive Legos are though... really makes me feel like a spoiled rich kid for having had so many way back.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice site. One advice is to remove the lego keyword from your domain ASAP. It's a trademark and they really enforce in a bad way. Change it to "bricks" as almost everybody know bricks refers to lego.

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be nice if instead of just "In Stock" they would actually display the price at each store.</comment>


Yo Raises $1.5M In Funding At A $10M Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/18/yo-raises-1-5m-in-funding-at-a-10m-valuation-investors-include-betaworks-and-pete-cashmore <comment><USER2> I've been using Yo since I first heard about it on Hacker News and it's actually really useful.

Get to someone's house and want them to let you in? Send a yo.

Getting to be lunchtime? Yo your coworkers (Yo widgets on Android mean you can just go across a row and yo each one super easily) and meet up at the usual spot.

Want to meet up with a mentor? Yo them when you get in; if they yo you back they're probably free, head over and talk to them.

Thinking about your girlfriend? Send her a yo to let her know you care.

I really like using Yo; the interface is really clean and it's really fast to get to my yoscreen on Android.

The people hating on Yo just don't understand the way that technology is moving towards ephemerality. There's an art to Yo. It's elegant and simple and beautiful and it's probably worth much more than $10M. Yo has the capacity to change the way humans interact with each other.

<comment><USER3> No one is hating on YO, the interface or the desire to send a YO versus a text. They are hating on VC investment in a non-scalable business. Tell me how a 10MM valuation gets to a billion dollar business? Same old SV bullshit.

<comment><USER4> Once YO gets to a critical mass, there are a lot of valid and relevant business models.

<comment><USER5> From what I've seen and experienced as an end-user, it's just advertising. So no, I don't think there are a lot of business models. I'd love to be proven wrong someday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I said "Yo" the other day, shortly after signing up for the service. I was walking along the street (on the sidewalk) and a guy was backing out of his driveway in his car, and he wasn't paying attention to me, such that he might have backed into me. I said loudly "Yo" and the situation was resolved. Nothing else needed to be said.

<comment><USER7> That has nothing to do with this app, except the superficial name.

<comment><USER6> It does actually. the app influenced my offline behavior and it helped me realize that in many situations a "yo" will suffice

<comment><USER8> Isn't it pretty normal to say "yo!" in those situations anyway? I've never even heard about this app but I've done this for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This must be some sort of fiendishly clever scheme for laundering VC money. Unless they are planning to pivot it into the next WhatsApp.

<comment><USER10> >This must be some sort of fiendishly clever scheme for laundering VC money.

Aren't most startups?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has to be some kind of joke. Unbelievable.

<comment><USER12> Not a joke. It has a fair bit of utility and 2 million installs.

<comment><USER13> Utility doesn't make money. I'm all for cool apps, what I'm not for is overvaluing and expecting returns on companies with no revenue streams and realistically no way to create revenue streams. Even advertising would be difficult with Yo. The best your band can use it for is to literally annoy users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yo feels like a sharp stick in the eye to every entrepreneur struggling to raise money who feels like they are working on a real product that solves real problems and has a real market for its services.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone else think this is the perfect example of why Texting apps just need like 3 macros when you have a blank message so you can just tap them?

Hi / Yes / No

That is really all the functionality this provides.

<comment><USER16> hi, yes and no convey very specific things though. "yo" means hundreds of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem is that for the small percentage of texts that you only need to write "yo", there is a incomparably larger percentage that may need more than that. The Yo app removes functionality that native texting (or any number of WhatsApps and Facebook Messengers) already provide. Realistically it's like any other contact application: if you know people who use it you might use it, but I don't know anyone who uses it and I don't use it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I should make a LOL app. LOL is much better valued than YO.

</comment><comment><USER19> I actually really enjoy using Yo. I think it's a great idea. But I don't know how the future of Yo might look like. I mean, implementing features would ruin the whole point of the app. I'm wondering how they are planning to spend the $1.5M. I don't think they need a big infrastructure, lots of engineering resources etc. Since running Yo is cheap and there might be actually useful use cases for it, I don't think investing in it is such a bad idea. I don't understand the people trolling here. Someone invested some time in an app that became successful. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER20> unclear, what does this company do exactly?

<comment><USER21> It's Facebook's 'poke' feature, as nearly as I can tell, without the rest of Facebook.

<comment><USER16> "poke" had a more flirty vibe to it. this is more neutral, which is important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yo</comment>


The superior use of OOP - <AUTHOR> http://sites.google.com/site/yacoset/Home/the-superior-use-of-oop

<comment><USER2> The best OOP advice I ever read was "model the solution, not the problem". It sounds obvious in retrospect, but only in retrospect.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite tools for front-end JavaScript development? - <AUTHOR>

I'm new to this side of things, and I find myself juggling a lot between text editor and browser, which I don't find very pleasant or efficient.<p>I'm wondering what tricks seasoned JavaScript programmers use to make their environment more productive? <comment><USER2> I normally setup a 'watch' task including livereload (grunt[0] / gulp[1]), coffee > js compile, jshint. For prototypes, I use yeoman [2] to bootstrap my application and for generators.

[0] [https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-contrib- livereload](https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-contrib-livereload) [1] [https://github.com/vohof/gulp-livereload](https://github.com/vohof/gulp- livereload) [2] [http://yeoman.io](http://yeoman.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, I will check these out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two monitors -- So you can keep your editor and browser in view at the same time :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Become very familiar with your browser of choice's Developer Tools. In most of them you can set breakpoints in your JS, add watches to your code, among many other useful debugging techniques.

Also, two monitors will make your life 1000x easier.</comment>


Nerd vs. bro: Geek privilege, idiosyncrasy, and triumphalism - <AUTHOR> http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7879/6629 <comment><AUTHOR> A complement to my piece on meritocracy:

Abstract: Increasingly, geek culture is criticized as one that is biased; in particular, geek claims of meritocracy are thought to be naive because they do not recognize the privilege (i.e., unseen advantages) of extant members. But some geeks are resistant to this critique. Why? Beyond the natural tendency to be defensive and the unproductive comparison of personal suffering, there is a geek-specific reason. Geek identity is informed by the trope of _geek triumphalism_ : early _insecurity_ is superseded by a sense of _superiority_. Geeks' intelligence, unconventional enthusiasms (e.g., technology and fantasy), and idiosyncratic dress contributed to their marginalization, leading them to believe they would never do the same to others. And these same characteristics, later in life, become sources of success and pride, leading them to think they are more open-minded, objective, and beyond bias.</comment>


Websites have been quietly hacking iPhones for years, says Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614243/websites-have-been-quietly-hacking-iphones-for-years-says-google/ <comment><USER2> I use Apple products and will continue to, but...

> Apple patched the bugs quickly in February 2019 so everyone who has updated > their iPhone since then is protected. Rebooting the iPhone wiped the malware > but the data had already been taken.

Why in the world did they silently fix the issue and remove the malware? I'm fine with all of this, but shouldn't they disclose to the user "hey, some very sensitive data from your device has been taken. It is passwords, messages, etc." so that users could at least try to mitigate the impact somewhat (contact their contacts, change passwords, maybe change numbers, etc.)?

<comment><USER3> The websites delivered non-persistent jailbreaks. Rebooting the device removes the jailbreak.

Please read the original source at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20835223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20835223)

<comment><USER4> People almost never reboot their phones. I rarely reboot.

So if you don't tell me I need to reboot my iPhone, I won't.

<comment><USER5> I'd say many people actually reboot their phones frequently - every time they cannot or forget to charge in time and the phone goes black. :)

<comment><USER6> That's horrifying to me - I've had many phones, and never let that happen. It's bad for the battery, it's bad for the phone, it's just a bad option all around. You can't let your phone do that on a regular basis and then complain that it's slow and the battery doesn't last.

<comment><USER7> Actually it's not bad at all much less "horrifying", that's all old wives tales...

It's not bad for the phone, and whether it's bad for the battery depends on the battery technology. In fact previous battery technologies were recommending the occasional full drain!

For lithium-ion batteries the kind used in the iPhone draining to 0% can indeed strain them (though less than you think, as shown by research), but the iPhone doesn't let them go to 0% anyway. It switches off way before that (even if it shows it as 0%). Mind you that regular use cycles (defined by Apple as using 100% of a full charge, even if it's broken down as going from 100% to 80% for five days and recharging) also strains the battery. You cannot not strain it, all current technology batteries degrade over time.

Also note that getting lithium-ion batteries to 100% and keeping them charging can also harm them (although modern devices have mechanisms to prevent that). In general it's advisable to keep going from 80%-20% and back, than to go all the way to charged (or down to 0). Same, one should not store long term fully charged.

But most of this is irrelevant micromanagement unless you plan to keep your phone for years and don't ever consider replacing the battery. Even so, the battery lifespan vendors like Apple give is around 3 years of cycles.

All in all, you can fully drain your lithium-ion iPhone battery as often as the average person does (e.g. just avoid doing it all the time), and you'll see no special degradation. It will run its cycles and will degrade by regular use after a few years even if you never let it drain (and you can trivially replace it with a new one).

<comment><USER8> > _Similar to a mechanical device that wears out faster with heavy use, the > depth of discharge (DoD) determines the cycle count of the battery. The > smaller the discharge (low DoD), the longer the battery will last. If at all > possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between > uses. Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine. There is no memory and the > battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life. The > exception may be a periodic calibration of the fuel gauge on a smart battery > or intelligent device._ [1]

Why should we trust your statements over ones like these which seemingly are backed by more data and and explanations of the underlying physics?

[1] [https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_l...](https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries)

<comment><USER9> When Apple displays the battery stats to the user it's not actually even close to 0%. That would mean you are avoiding full discharges so you're both right.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I mention that. It works on the other side too: iPhones also won't keep batteries charging when they're at 100% so they're protected from such "trickle charging" as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain to a C/C++ newbie why the iPhone is so vulnerable to overflows? My understanding is that tools exist to check your code and identify overflow-able areas or general unsafe pointer areas. Am I incorrect here?

Also, from a broader point of view - is there any way to perform static code analysis and enumerate all code paths that access sensitive resources? For example, create a graph of functions and search for edges to and from the keychain. If one path ends up in a WebGL content renderer, that's a vulnerability. I feel like this especially would help you enumerate most exploits and zero-days.

<comment><USER11> Not the iPhone itself but all C and C++ codebases. It's possible to write code in these languages without these bugs, but there's a strong positive correlation between lines of code written in these languages, and this class of bug. Other languages will either insert a check before access (which is overhead) or try to elide it as a compiler optimization.

Current static analyses are imprecise, while dynamic analyses require actual execution which can be difficult.

Modern research is looking to combine the two. Rather than brute force fuzzing (dynamic analysis), static analyze the source to better mutate the input to a few potentially interesting cases.

<comment><USER12> > _It 's possible to write code in these languages without these bugs_

I would go so far as to say in any non-trivial codebase it's virtually impossible to avoid introducing a bug of this nature. SQLite is probably the codebase that has the highest chance of being safe from this, due to its extremely thorough test suite and amount of fuzzing that's been done, but even that codebase was found to have a significant bug (I forget the details) in one of the optional first-party extensions, as that extension did not have the same rigorous test suite that the SQLite core did.

To be clear, when I say thorough test suite, IIRC SQLite's test suite has 3x as many lines of code as the code being tested. And I think there's some sort of instrumentation to ensure the test suite covers every single code path.

<comment><USER13> Covering the every single branch of code isn't enough. One needs to test that every single branch isn't vulnerable to an overflow attack.

It's kind of testing every possible valid, invalid and malicious input the program can take in.

Gets even crazier with race conditions and such.

Testing is really hard. And given how many companies skip on testing I am led to believe security is a myth. There's gonna be someone somewhere with an exploit getting your info.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, which is why fuzzing is important even with tests covering every code path. And even with that, this is why I simply said that SQLite is probably the codebase that comes the closest, rather than saying it actually is bug- free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always suspected this. Years ago, there was a public jailbreak technique that could be initiated merely by visiting a webpage. It always seemed to me that if this technique were found for a later release of iOS and not publicized, it could be used for the deeply nefarious purpose of stealing information.

<comment><USER16> It was JailbreakMe : [http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/02/easy-iphone- jailbreak/](http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/02/easy-iphone-jailbreak/)

And apparently this one works until iOS10 : [https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/TotallyNotSpyware](https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/TotallyNotSpyware)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This blog post is a duplicate of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20835223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20835223)

<comment><USER10> This title much more accurately reflects the severity of the incident.

People do "deep dives" of exploits all the time, the amazing thing about this particular one is that it gets to the keychain and is via a website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am not able to read this article on my iPhone SE. first the two pop ups (one about cookies and one about how I read 1/3 articles) covered the entire screen. I took a screenshot and sent it to someone. When I went back to safari I was greeted with a full page ad with no way to close it. So I cannot read the article. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER19> So right now, basically every single iOS user should be resetting every password stored in their keychain?

</comment><comment><USER20> How do you know if your iPhone has been hacked? I always thought they were pretty safe from the web.

<comment><USER21> Exploits can be anywhere. Just because you use only web doesn't mean that there are no usable exploits. WebKit / JSC are written in C/C++, so there are still plenty of holes to be found.

<comment><USER10> Given the frequency of exploits via WebKit/Safari (feels like a new one pops up every week, at least), is it feasible for Apple to perform a rewrite with a memory safe language?

Aren't there tools that can analyze existing code and enforce memory safety?

<comment><USER22> > Aren't there tools that can analyze existing code and enforce memory safety?

Not perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I once foolishly clicked a link in a text message. Out of curiousity: I knew it was spam.

Should have used a link previewer. It went to a porn site that looked....odd. Like one big static image mimicking a porn site, nothing clickable.

This was a couple years back. Always wondered about it. Does it seem remotely likely it was some kind of exploit that may still be running on my phone. Have upgraded since and am fully updated.

Note: THIS exploit is removed by the patch. Am wondering if this is a reasonable worry in general that would warrant wiping the device and restoring photos, messages etc via icloud sync rather than a backup.

<comment><USER24> As explained above, this particular exploit only remains in memory until you reboot the device. Unless you visit the site again after the reboot, no trace of it would be left on your phone.

If it was indeed this exploit, they had your data at that point already though. No action will undo that, but changing secrets might help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A list of the websites hosting this stuff would have been nice....

<comment><USER26> the issue with that would be that it's not an exhaustive list. people would feel wrongly safe because they don't visit those websites while in theory a lot more websites could be infected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Malware could steal passwords, encrypted messages and contacts

Does this include 1password passwords? As far as I understand 1password encrypts the passwords and they can only be accessed either by supplying the master password or the fingerprint.

<comment><USER28> The exploit gets full root and full access to the keychain store. And apparently the 1password master password is stored in the keychain when sync is enabled ([https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/10412/storage-o...](https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/10412/storage- of-master-password-on-ios-devices)). So they had the technical ability to steal at least a few 1password passwords.

But 1password is not in the default list of apps to steal ([https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/implant- teard...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/implant- teardown.html)), so you'd have to know what commands their server sent to get a definitive answer. Most likely they didn't bother, as it seems more like a surveillance / monitoring operation than for financial gain, but then again attackers are getting more sophisticated all the time.

<comment><USER29> What kind of sync is that? Only if you manage your vaults externally (e.g. Dropbox)?

<comment><USER28> I was thinking about the sync you get with a premium membership ([https://support.1password.com/sync- options/](https://support.1password.com/sync-options/)), but I guess the thread is about syncing with Dropbox. It's quite an old thread, this paper suggests they use the "secure remote password" protocol for memberships, so perhaps the master key isn't stored for that: [https://1password.com/files/1Password%20for%20Teams%20White%...](https://1password.com/files/1Password%20for%20Teams%20White%20Paper.pdf)

It's definitely stored for Touch ID/fingerprint 1password access though ([https://support.1password.com/touch-id-security- ios/](https://support.1password.com/touch-id-security-ios/)).

One of their employees wrote about it here: [https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/106629/ios- secu...](https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/106629/ios-security- breach). His response is basically that OS-level 0days aren't in their threat model, so they're continuing their usual bug-fixing routine. And it's true, nothing can really stop a rootkit from sniffing passwords as they're being used, besides winning the anti-rootkit race. Perhaps 1password could have a little more explanation of the insecurity of using Touch ID / Face ID though rather than simply saying it's as secure as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> what could be the reason for Google to avoid publishing the site list? There's something being hidden here..and how could they even discover this? Is not like they did basic cyber research and found the exploits

<comment><USER31> Maybe Chronicle [0] found it?

[https://chronicle.security](https://chronicle.security)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can Firefox users on macOS be affected or is it just Safari?

<comment><USER33> It's just iOS. But, considering that all browsers have to basically use Safari (or rather WebKit/WebViews) on the backend, I would assume it affects any browser on iOS. With that said, that's just a guess and I do not know for sure.

<comment><USER34> Interesting, never knew that!

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11259152/chrome-ios- is-i...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11259152/chrome-ios-is-it-just-a- uiwebview)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Did this exploit exist for all browsers on iOS? Or just Safari?

<comment><USER33> All browsers on iOS basically use Safari on the backend since Apple doesn't allow other browser engines on the App Store. My guess would be that it affects all, but I don't know for sure.

I haven't seen other browsers mentioned anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> How did this malware compromise the iPhone in the first place. Did Apple insert a backdoor for the spooks that was discovered by a third party. It wouldn't be the first time as Google is reported to have inserted a government backdoor that was subsequently used by the Chinese.

[https://support.google.com/mail/forum/AAAAK7un8RUqYupi59QYXM...](https://support.google.com/mail/forum/AAAAK7un8RUqYupi59QYXM/?hl=en&gpf=d/topic/gmail/qYupi59QYXM)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190322185231/http://edition.cn...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190322185231/http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Seriously, it is like every second month on average a news about how insecure are different Apple products. I personally decided to go away from Apple ecosystem just after their famous "empty root password" issue was discovered. It is sometimes sounds like a joke, but their level of incompetence in software engineering is simply above any reasonable amount. If you trust your data to them, think twice.

<comment><USER38> Okay? So you probably also don't trust Microsoft.

Well then if you use Linux, it's pretty secure. But most money goes into headless servers.

Do you trust the GNOME project, is it well funded? Or KDE or whatever.

Actually fundamentally. Do you trust the X Server?

<comment><USER28> The X server is known to be insecure, in the sense that keyloggers can steal credentials from anything else running. But in that sense no OS is particularly secure besides Qubes OS.

The discussion was on phones, there the issues are mostly core Android's lack of updates from manufacturers (but quite good record of Google releasing patches) vs iOS's closed-source buggy OS.

IDK, security is hard. The easiest solution is to get a nice clay brick and smash whatever phone you have to pieces.</comment></comment></comment>