Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-oppose-muslim-database-20161214-story.html <comment><USER3> I just went on Facebook and created an Ad [0] that targets only people "interested in Islam" and living the US, it took 30 seconds.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/NOrGA2N.png](http://i.imgur.com/NOrGA2N.png)

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Edit: Direct link

<comment><USER4> There is a big difference between advertising to users interested in Islam and shipping that dataset (or clicks, or people who use certain keywords in messages) to the government.

<comment><USER3> Tell that to a FISA court.

<comment><USER4> FISA courts asking for the same data are also bad. The data asked for by a FISA court must be gathered and shipped by employees and lawyers who have agency. Those employees and lawyers can choose to fight, or not. This is a public pledge that says "we will choose to fight."

Leaking FISA requests to the press, choosing to face jail time, or trying a public battle over a FISA request are other options available to people at these companies, instead of just rolling over.

I don't understand your argument.

<comment><USER5> If something is harmful, ineffective grandstanding (and then losing a FISA fight) are worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a lovely gesture, and an important sign of solidarity; however, it'a merely that, just a gesture.

I hope that SV and the tech industry leverages its wealth and technical legal capabilities to fight these sorts of actions in court, unlike their responses to privacy intrusions by the federal government, British intelligence, and other foreign groups.

<comment><USER4> Over 1000 people, some of them very prominent, have pledged to quit their jobs if they are asked to do unethical things. How is that "merely a gesture"?

<comment><USER7> Have they destroyed any of this data yet?

As much fun as it may be to pretend this is a Trump problem, it's a Silicon Valley problem. It's Silicon Valley waking up and realizing that it's all fun and games until someone you don't like gets the data that they have already painstakingly collected, polished, and devoted billions of dollars to processing and extracting features of interest. The existence of people you don't like and the fact that some of them will be someday be in positions of power isn't news, it's a constant fact of life.

I find it a bit disgusting that _this_ is what finally crossed the line when the line should have been considered crossed a long time ago, but I'll take what I can.

Now, what has anyone _done_ about the excessive collection of data, beyond virtue signaling that they don't like Trump? We don't need virtue signaling. We need actions. One of the signs that action has actually been taken would be that some of these companies are going to _make less money_. If that doesn't happen, this is hot air, so much "it's OK when we do it, but not those guys over there, no way! Now don't you feel better that we said that? BTW, here's a popup that offers you the choice of either giving us everything you have on your phone or being unable to use cell phones. (It's _choice_.)"

<comment><USER8> You're complaining that "we need actions" in response to tech employees actually taking action. That's weird.

I realize you want to see grander, significant results, but what do you think that looks like at the outset? People starting to do something in an industry that has been historically very wary of being "political".

<comment><USER9> Signing a pledge is not "action". Actually quitting would be action. But there are lots of signatures from people who work at large companies that make even larger databases. Why didn't they quit already? Why didn't they quit years ago? Why are the only issues the pledge talks about things that liberals care about? Why not also pledge to never make a database of gun owners, to make the conservatives feel included?

The industry is wary of being "political" for good reasons - engaging in shallow political campaigns and especially being seen to both biased and powerful is a good way to trash the reputation of the field. Software engineering isn't as respected as medicine, but it's at least better respected than journalism and politics.

The worst case scenario is that this kind of crap becomes widespread and software ends up being like the social sciences: riddled with political extremism (there are basically no conservative social scientists) ... yet unable to see it because all people with opposing viewpoints were systematically shit on and excluded for decades until the point was reached where there were none left.

<comment><USER8> It's dishonest to put "gun owner registry" and "Muslim registry" on the same moral footing, or to assert that conservatives don't care about creating a tracking database based on a religious test.

People haven't quit already because there is diversity of opinion about what kind of data collection is inherently bad. There are people from Palantir who signed the pledge. I don't pretend to understand it myself.

However, it represents a public commitment, and comes at a personal risk. People are making a very visible public promise at a time when visible people get harassed, and their own management is trying to make nice with the incoming Administration.

Respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The book _IBM and the Holocaust_ [0] gives an interesting historical perspective on the misuse of databases and database technology. One fascinating point with modern echoes is how often sensitive information (such as having Jewish ancestry) was simply volunteered to officials such as census- takers.

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, with firearms registration and no-fly lists, Muslim registries are part of the slope we've set precedent for. A citizen should _never_ have to register with the government to exercise a freedom explicitly granted in the constitution.

<comment><USER12> It's an interesting argument. How could that work for things like driving, where you need to prove competency before you are legally allowed to do something?

<comment><USER13> Because driving on public roads has never been a right in the US. It has always been a _privilege_ that you are granted.

<comment><USER14> That's not really accurate. Freedom of assembly is interpreted pretty generously. It's fine to disqualify on not knowing how to drive safely, but any other unrelated qualifier would be struck down as unconstitutional.

<comment><USER15> Thats a good point. If the US did a "no drive" list, there's no way it would standup in the courts. Counter point would be a "no firearm" list which runs counter to the 2nd amendment and may standup in the courts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sadly, there will always be tech workers willing to do this for the right price. As I get older, I'm starting to wonder if not following my "tech morals" would've brought more success.

<comment><USER17> I'm playing the devil's advocate here but there are also a lot of tech workers who do not regard building such a database as unethical. A common fallacy on HN is to assume people who hold differing views necessarily do so egoistically, which is sometimes true but not always.

<comment><USER18> Yeah it's entirely possible that there are a small percentage of tech workers who would fully support this type of move. I too have noticed HN users seem to just assume everyone shares their views.

<comment><USER9> That's not "HN users", that's a trait that has cropped up repeatedly in 2016: surely that's the lesson of the year, a widespread groupthink that "surely most people are like us and are disgusted by $THING" and then meltdowns when it turns out not to be true.

What makes you think it'd be a small percentage? I didn't notice the NSA having trouble attracting very bright staff, apparently it's the opposite: they were able to get their pick of the best despite uncompetitive salaries. And the NSA has spent years taking part in targeted assassination programs of innocent people who weren't in US jurisdiction, had no charges levied against them and never had any sort of trial. They were just drone striked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course they won't. Any tech worker worth hiring would write a general people database, and define 'muslim' as a query parameter.

(With apologies to Nathaniel Borenstein. Also, it's true)

<comment><USER4> Are you arguing the 1000 people who've signed the petition are not worth hiring?

<comment><USER20> No he's making a tongue-in-cheek comment about implementation and how one might sign this and also functionally implement it, because it's a little vague.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm distressed at the amount of fatalism and hopelessness in this thread. Every professional has agency and the ability to act ethically. They can choose to stand up for people's rights or not; the best guess is that these ethics will be tested by the next administration. Large scale human rights violations require the complicity of a _lot_ of people who may be uncertain about how to act in the face of moral ambiguity, and a public pledge to not be complicit can help a lot.

People are making a public pledge. Other people who haven't signed the pledge might read it and get encouraged by it, or see a name on there of someone they look up to, and decide that everything isn't hopeless, or decide to act ethically in the face of questionable decisions.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm glad this is getting attention, but I urgently need to correct their headline.

What tech workers pledged to do:

1\. Not to participate in the creation of these kinds of databases.

2\. To use every lawful method available to them to stop the misuse of these databases where they exist.

3\. To sever their connections with their employers if efforts to prevent misuse at those employers fails.

Lots of people are reacting to this by saying "the databases already exist". The people who wrote this pledge are aware of that.

This is not a "petition" to convince Google and Facebook to stop building databases. It's not a petition at all. It doesn't demand that companies _do_ anything. It's not up to the companies; it's up to the employees who sign. That's the point of a pledge.

</comment><comment><USER10> This database essentially already exists as part of Facebook and another companies producing social graph data, and in the nodes and interstices of networked communications.

<comment><USER21> The authors of the pledge understand that, which is why it's written the way it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Doctors adhere to the Hippocratic Oath.

Nevertheless doctors worked in concentration camps, were experimenting on humans, work as executioners currently in the US, work and worked in torture chambers, sell their patients to big pharma for Rolex watches and on and on and on.

This pledge may be a statement but is practically worth nothing.

<comment><USER4> People take cues and behave based on the norms and behavior of those around them. If I know and like person X, and they exhibit unethical behavior Y, I may conclude that Y can't be that bad because I know X and they are not bad.

On the flip side if leaders in my industry or community are declaring "it's unacceptable to participate in this behavior and I will resign rather than be complicit in it" it's more likely that I'll take an ethical stance. Here are 1000+ people taking a public pledge to quit their jobs if they're asked to do unethical things. That might inspire others who are waffling, or faced with an unethical decision, to find a similar backbone.

<comment><USER22> The problem is that you only need say 10 people or less out of one million to make it happen.

I respect people giving that pledge, would give it myself, but the practical impact is 0.

Each day I walk by a large Bayer building who bought Monsanto who do ethical questionable things. Still each day hundreds of people enter that building. There is never a shortage of people who will do whatever they are questioned to do if only they can feed their family. There will always be someone who builds that Muslim database. There is always someone who can rationalize their doings.

<comment><USER4> I think you are underestimating the number of people who need to comply to enable human rights abuses on a large scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For everyone dismissing this as "too late" and "this data already exists" should consider that this appears to be addressed in the pledge.

> to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and > national origin data.

> Responsibly destroy high-risk data sets and backups

<comment><USER24> Good luck getting Facebook or the US Census to do that. This is a useless gesture that means very little. I guess some people get to feel better about themselves.

The first step would be some reforms in consumer protection laws dealing with privacy and information sharing. Just watch how much certain SV firms spend to opposed those changes.

<comment><USER8> The US census has robust protections against storing or disseminating personally identifying information. They do it right.

Facebook has hundreds of employees mortified by what their management is walking into (the Trump tower, among other things). They have a lot of influence if they choose to use it.

<comment><USER24> > The US census has robust protections against storing or disseminating > personally identifying information. They do it right.

Can you point to the place where they say they don't store your personal information because that is part of their job. They try very hard not to release that data in an individually identifiable manner, but they have the individual data.

If Facebook's employees are NOW mortified, then they haven't been paying attention for a lot of years. They will just be outsourced or have people who need the job take over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> That is an interesting headline, when I read it I immediately thought the coda would be, "... but advertising networks offer to share theirs."

There is absolutely technology already out there that, without your voluntary participation, puts you into arbitrarily precise boxes. One need only look at the targeting options on a Facebook ad to realize just how deep that data goes.

Adtech companies have invested billions in ways, legal, sketchy, and sometimes downright illegal to put together databases on everyone who ever connects with the Internet in any way on any platform. They do that because being able to target ads accurately makes them more money.

<comment><USER8> That's not really true. Look at the ads that are targeted at you, and you'll see that adtech data is really quite inaccurate.

Ad companies collect the data so they can make impressive promises to investors and clients, or just tick a box in a spreadsheet somewhere. Anyone in the industry will tell you that they are bad at using it, and bad at vetting it. Ad company data is nothing like what you could get from Google or Facebook.

<comment><USER25> Ok. Try this experiment at home. Create a fictitious business and sign up for a Facebook advertising account. Now call your assigned sales rep and say "Hi, our business sells Halal meats for the Muslim community, what parameters should I be using to target my ads to people who would be looking for that?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's a ridiculous and naive view of the world.

Of course it already exists. For example on facebook. For example in the mosques.

Everybody was warned, everybody could have seen this coming. But most people didn't give a fuck. Welcome is post privacy. I didn't need have to be that way. We can still turn this into post-post-privacy. But only if we face what we have already done.

<comment><USER27> > _Everybody was warned, everybody could have seen this coming._

There has been nothing coming. Trumps pre-election stuff was BS, nothing will be done. Check back in 4 years.

Besides government agencies obviously already have detailed profiles of such things, going far beyond the religion of a subject.

<comment><USER26> I'm talking about what is happening right now. If you find yourself in a situation where you regret data having this deeply, you shouldn't have collected them in first place.

The second statement is true, but unrelated. It's like saying you are fine because others are worse.

<comment><USER27> > _The second statement is true, but unrelated. It 's like saying you are fine > because others are worse._

No, it's like saying "Whether I catch a flu or not is not really worth it to fret about, given that I have a couple terminal illnesses going on anyway".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How many are willing to get arrested over this? How many CEOs are willing to get their company shut down over this?

I suspect that this is largely posturing, and when push comes to shove people will comply.

<comment><USER8> 1200 people are willing to quit over this. Let's start there.

<comment><USER9> No. 1200 people said they _might_ (it isn't binding) but only _if_ the conditions of the pledge are violated. The pledge is written in such a way that almost anything could be deemed as not violating it, if the signer wanted that.

This is the direct equivalent of "I'll move to Canada if Foo gets elected". Move-to-Canada declarations are actually much tighter than this pledge as they tend to be triggered by simple, undeniable conditions. But how many people who publicly proclaimed they'd do it actually do?

The solution to "the administration wants to build a database of Muslims" is not to sign worthless pledges. It's to enter politics and put the argument to conservative voters that they're wrong and should change their mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It might be more fun (and possibly more effective) to just build a highly dysfunctional one.

(I inevitably invite anyone with a beef against certain database technologies to suggest some possibilities)

<comment><USER30> We could collectively all change our religion on FB to Muslim

<comment><USER31> Then you'd have a registry of Muslims (religion set before event) _and_ dissenters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's definitely going to be a database of visa overstayers. The plan to match entries and exits from the US is coming back. It's not like that should be hard.

<comment><USER33> There has been a database of visa overstayers for a very long time. Today it is based on flight records, it used to be done via paper forms (I-94(W)) [1]

What is being talked about (and has been for years) is biometric identity confirmation of the visitor leaving the country. I remember seeing the kiosks at the airport at one point years ago.

[1] [https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international- visitors/i-94-instr...](https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international- visitors/i-94-instructions/i94-rollout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A database of Muslims is not a special kind of database...You can use any old off the shelf DB software for this. I'm not sure what the point of this pledge is.

</comment><comment><USER35> It is one thing to say that publicly but real test with be when NSA will come with all their weapons. May be NSA can say give me all your data and we will do something like s/mohammad/target/g.

The bigotry and utter disrespect for the privacy and freedom of own citizens is the larger problem that is not just Tech industry's issue here.

</comment><comment><USER36> Haven't they already been doing it for > decade? Oh they just want to shield from competition. nice one

</comment><comment><USER37> Do we not have enough databases built already with enough data points to effect this?

<comment><USER38> You don't even need a "database", the naming patterns are very distinctive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> All it takes is one developer to dissent and to crowd source the entire data collection effort. The contributors get a promise that they will be compensated at a future date when the government agrees to buy the database. This would be an easy App to write and with good ML you can scrub out bad data and identify malicious contributors.

It took me 30 seconds to come up with that idea and until this very moment, I always thought of crowd-sourcing as a beautiful part of modern society. By mid-2017 I'll likely be a full-blown nihilist.

edit: ++sadness

</comment><comment><USER40> Too late. There are only 7 billion people. If you don't think every major intelligence service (and a few large companies) has built a database of every person's vital statistics you are naive.

If I was the US government I would be in the process of building a full world family tree using DNA collected from battlefields and attacks. I would want to know when an attacker's cousin is entering a certain country.

</comment><comment> atom-morgan Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims yet people willingly add their names to a public Github repo as a LGBTQIA or POC in tech.

<comment><USER41> Do you not see how these two things are different?

<comment><USER42> I think you can be reasonably certain that they are able to see the difference in intention.

However, can such a database be misused? Yes. And, that's probably their point.

(I agree that it's an edge-lordy comment that seems like it's intended to annoy. But the reason it can annoy people is that there is an element of truth to it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I signed, I'm a fan. If in spite of all this, it or something like it does get created, I think a complimentary strategy would be to overwhelm the database and make it useless. For example, if there was a public registry, everyone should register, making swamping the intended signal with noise. Make it impossible to use the thing.

I hope we never get to that stage.

</comment><comment><USER44> Oh, now suddenly they have a conscience? Where was this when they were building the machines of surveillance capital?

</comment><comment><USER45> What a joke. As if Google, FB, and Palatir don't have us all in a NSA or CIA database. I'm sure the government has no data on any of us and all of Eric Schmidt's trips to Obama's white house were just for tea.

<comment><USER4> > As if Google, FB, and Palantir don't have us all in a NSA or CIA database.

They don't.

<comment><USER26> Cambridge Analytica claims to have profiles of 230 million americans. If you substract babies and people over 70 that's about everybody. And Cambridge Analytica is a shack compared to all the others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If any of them work for Facebook (et al.) I'm sure it will be quite a laugh.

</comment><comment><USER47> That's exactly the reason why databases of people including their religious opinions are forbidden under EU Law. And it has been that way in France and in Germany since 1978.

<comment><USER48> I lived in Germany. They asked my religion and made me pay religion tax (Kirchensteuer). So they already have such a database.

<comment><USER49> They don't ask for your religion. They ask if you are member in one of a few religious communities. You may say that this is nitpicking but it's really not. They don't care about beliefs but just perform a service for those communities that asked them to do it. That tax is best to be thought of a membership fee that happens to be collected by the state.

If a religious community does not want to participate in that scheme they can. Plenty don't use that service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Can we pledge never to allow backdoor access for the NSA, et al?

</comment><comment><USER51> Hundreds of tech worker said they would not do it, but I'm sure that they could find just as many that would do it. A database is pretty simple to build anyways...

<comment><USER21> It's over 1200 now. But could you find 1200 tech workers to take the other side? Yes, I think you could. 1200 is a tiny number relative to the number of engineers who agree with the pledge, and just haven't seen it yet.

I think you're crazy if you think the profession as a whole is anything close to 50/50 on these issues. _The American people_ aren't close to 50/50 on them: they oppose both mass deportation and Muslim registries by wide margins. The numbers get even starker when you restrict them to people with the educational backgrounds of Silicon Valley engineers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Facebook are happy to provide a database of black people [0] to advertisers. People don't choose their race, but they can choose their religion. Arguably, allowing one over the other is supremely unfair.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/22/facebooks...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/22/facebooks- ethnic-affinity-advertising-concerns-racial-profiling)

<comment><USER4> That may be distasteful but there is a wide, wide gap between letting advertisers target ads to groups based on ethnicity, and sending datasets of people with a certain ethnicity/religion to advertisers or to the government. The pledge is mostly focused on the latter.

<comment><USER26> As if governments would take no as a answer. If the data is there it's accessible.

<comment><USER4> In fact, they do. The USG was unsuccessful in compelling Apple to provide a "golden key" to decrypt the San Bernardino iPhone, and the USG went along with that.

People can refuse and the government can choose to try to send executives to jail, or issue fines, but that comes with bad PR and companies can and do fight those as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Guys, i know article is about not building a muslim database and all, but what about the outlook chats bypassed by nsa?

</comment><comment><USER54> Given FISA Courts & NSA wiretapping, I'm not sure the government would necessarily need their cooperation.

</comment><comment><USER55> They already have. It's called Google.

<comment><USER21> Rayiner, do you think the people who wrote this aren't aware of that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> So, [http://neveragain.tech/](http://neveragain.tech/) will become a database of tech workers who pledged to never build a database of Muslims.

<comment><USER57> It's a pledge. People put their name on that list by choice. They want it to be on there, and they want it to be publicly visible. The point you are trying to make is not very well thought out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Well you don't need that many of them to do it.

</comment><comment><USER58> The comments on this thread make me super sad

</comment><comment><USER59> What about a database of people from countries with high propensity for radicalization, for example Tunisia, or Somalia?

Paradox: Tunisia is perhaps the most progressive of all the M/E Muslim countries, and yet they are the #1 M/E country in terms of Jihadis. They are overwhelmingly the greatest per/capita Jihadi producers in the world. By far. Tunisia is very small. Networks are very small. 95% chance that a young male Tunisian knows someone off to fight Jihad. This is very significant.

Somalia - is a stateless war-zone, people coming from their are massively over-represented in other kinds of crimes. Wherever there is a 'new' Somalian community, the crime (drugs and related) offenses are off the charts with over-representation. In Toronto - a big slice of the 'violent murder' pie is committed by Somalis - and they are near 0% of the actual population. Some social workers have observed that they simply have absolutely no respect for authority - it's meaningless to many of them. There is an overrepresentation among Somalis in terms of 'domestic' (i.e. host nation) violence, that's possibly 'terror' related.

Those are both good examples because it shows you how young men from completely different places, are radicalized for completely different reasons, and are associated with completely different kinds of violent people - <USER2> their nationality (read: culture) is definitely a correlating (or even predictive factor).

It's a moot point anyhow. The FBI has a database. You're probably in it. There's a tag on your file that might indicate the likelihood you'll be radicalized.

We have to be really quite careful of this kind of stuff, frankly, I'm more concerned about the 'populist anti-muslim sentiment' that might arise, as opposed to any kind of actual 'database' of muslims.

Anyhow - it's all moot. There will be no DB of Muslims.

<comment><USER3> As a Tunisian I would like to add a comment:

1- Yes, there is a number of Tunisians that went to Syria. As you have said per/capita it is a large number. There are around 10 Million Tunisians and from 3000 to 8000 fighting in Syria (depending on the source).

2- This is due to several factors: Post-revolution politics, poverty, mistrust in the state institutions and the police, and -most importantly- a previous government that is (allegedly) complicit.

3- There are no official numbers, the Tunisian government said that they have no idea on the exact number. Some Syrian/Turkish parties gave estimates (the numbers you read in the press) but they are not to be trusted to be objective or impartial.

4- If this "database" checks for first and second degree connections, then the entire country would be flagged.

<comment><USER59> Thanks for your comment.

And to be clear - I'm not 'blaming' anyone, I spent some time in Tunisia a couple of years ago. I'm just indicating that 'cultures' and 'centers of activity' and 'relationships' are important.

So 'I hear you' on that.

Still though - Tunisians tend to be great people, much more open minded and educated than, for example Algerians or Moroccans ... and the Tunisian government is not nearly as bad as others ... so it's still a paradox :)

Though it could actually be literacy, access to information, and basic financing which enables them to head out to war ... ironically. Certainly, Al Queda members were actually quite well educated, way more so than the average street Arab.

<comment><USER3> I was just adding some details to the valid points you have mentioned.

And indeed, I personally don't understand that paradox as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The ignorance here is stunning.

 _Every_ background check system is a database.

If it includes religion, it's a query without being a "database of Muslims." It works much the same (not as accurate) if you have country of origin instead.

</comment><comment><USER61> See "religion": [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph- api/reference/use...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph- api/reference/user/)</comment>


Making Nested Parens with My Homeboy, Donald Knuth - <AUTHOR> http://ioerror.livejournal.com/496715.html

<comment><USER2> As someone wrote under the flickr image, "Perhaps the best comp sci picture of all time."

For some hard to explain reason, the photo is just awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many people who wear Knuth t-shirts have actually read any of his books.

<comment><USER4> And out of those that have read his books, how many would be wearing a t-shirt of him. And out of those, how many would ask him to take a picture like that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On one hand... digg.

On the other... Knuth.

Talk about being torn.

<comment><USER6> I have to go with Knuth here, if you know who the old guy in the picture is, you're OK with me.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I upvoted it, but I honestly think it was the most difficult decision I've had to make this week.

<comment><USER7> You could have not voted.

<comment><USER8> That, my friend, is also a decision.

<comment><USER7> True. But I doubt people vote on everything posted here so it seems to me that the non voting is the default behavior (to me at least).

It seems the decision is to first decide whether to vote or not, and then if you decided to vote to choose whether to vote up or down. This probably happens instantaneously so they feel like one decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is a classic cs picture!

On a somewhat related tangent - There was a recent series of interviews of Knuth in the CACM. They were an interesting and entertaining read. Actually ever since the ACM redid the CACM it's been relatively interesting and relevant.

<comment><USER9> The CACM interview was actually a transcription of a small selection of the autobiographical videos Knuth recorded for the "People's Archive" at <http://www.peoplesarchive.com/browse/movies/6895/>

If you liked the selections, you should really hear the rest-- some fascinating material.

Also: I completely agree about the revamped CACM-- it's quickly become my favorite tree-based magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the Knuth image on his tshirt is also making parens with his hands, then you have an infinite recursion and will eventually run out of mammary.

<comment><USER11> Don't worry, the end of his jacket is coattail-recursive; it'll just be an infinite loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice, though I prefer the Objective-C (and J) bracket gang sign:

[http://log.scifihifi.com/post/37683353/me-throwing-the- objec...](http://log.scifihifi.com/post/37683353/me-throwing-the-objective-c- square-bracket-gang) (that's not me)

<comment><USER12> In my search for better pictures, I came across this... <http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/05/29/geek-gang-signs/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hacker Culture: Taking itself only seriously enough to look ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER9> Best. Picture. Ever.

I just got my "certificate of deposit" from the Bank of San Seriffe today, and was going to post it, but it feels like it would be an anti-climax in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER14> the other side of knuth. so knuthsome.</comment>


What is 'superadobe'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190228-what-is-superadobe <comment><USER2> of COURSE the Beeb isn't taking comments upon this article. I built a "super- adobe" or "earthbag" house, here in Portugal. It was utterly destroyed by the bush fires of 2017, and I do not recommend this technique for multiple reasons:

1)no structural integrity to the actual fill of the bags, unless you add cement, in which case why are you building with earth bags?

2) poly bags are very un-eco, as I'm still cleaning up the remains of my house. It degrades under UV light and many bags burst before being rendered even, and had to be replaced.

<comment><USER3> Aren't you supposed to cover the bags with more clay or stucco or something? Much like doing a cobb house. Cobb is fireproof, and earthquake resistant. Cobb also resists UV degradation. If you're leaving the bags exposed, that's wrong.

<comment><USER4> Yes. You're also supposed to used barbed wire and rebar to reinforce the structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you'd prefer a (much) higher information-to-fluff ratio, the wikipedia page delivers:

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Along similar lines are Earthship homes[1], which use old car tires filled with rammed earth (a plus, since people often can't get rid of tires).

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

</comment><comment><USER7> This is also referred to as "earthbag" building - the examples in the article all look kind of out there so I thought there might be interest in this video of a family building something that's closer to a traditional building out of earthbags.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Xl8f2J3sY&list=PLqweMXveAR...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Xl8f2J3sY&list=PLqweMXveARYCGCS3McZG7b7-6CgCKmdJz&index=4)</comment>


Meebo introduces developer platform, third party voice and video apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/29/meebo-platform-launches-with-big-san-francisco-party/

<comment><USER2> I stopped reading after I learned that Meebo will decide if the app is worthy.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I don't think they "get it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well...isn't that a surprise? Who would have thought?</comment>


Ask HN: Web-scraping resources (book, tutorial, course) - <AUTHOR> Can you recommend good resource(book, tutorial, course) about web-scraping?<p>Thanks you indeed <comment><USER2> Check out the following map to begin with,

[https://learn-anything.xyz/web-development/web-scraping](https://learn- anything.xyz/web-development/web-scraping)

Hope that helps,</comment>


Show HN: Java bindings for LLVM, now binding to LLVM 3.1 - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/jllvm/downloads/detail?name=jllvm-3.1.tar.bz2&can=2&q=

<comment><USER2> This is awesome! Is there documentation anywhere on how to get this set up?

Also, does this mean you're resuming work on decac?

<comment><USER3> Thank you for asking this question. I had not heard of this work.

<http://decac.googlecode.com/files/Deca%20Thesis.pdf>

(and thank you, Eli, for the caveat below)

<comment><AUTHOR> That file is a year out of date. It's only in the past few months that the language stabilized back down to a state where I can document it without the documentation going out of date.</comment></comment></comment>


What happened to Google wallet, and why aren't merchants/users using it? - <AUTHOR>

Ok.. Yes, square and paypal are doing pretty well.. buy why aren't people and smb's using google wallet? I'm in Vancouver, and have yet to see one vendor using square or google wallet. What gives <comment><USER2> Usability is problematic from a user's perspective. It does nothing new, but it increases the complication of completing the transaction.

Also, since Google has customer service approaching nonexistent, who are you going to call if something goes wrong with the transaction or if there's fraud?

<comment><AUTHOR> But what could go wrong, its only peoples hard earned money

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> you forgot amazon....I think out of all those companies amazon.com offers some of the most advanced payment integration options especially for startups trying to charge marketplace fees.

our startup <http://stuFFLiX.com> is using amazon.com we have found google solutions unacceptably poor, even paypal did not offer what amazon did. I am not surprised why the wallet hit the wall.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used it at jamba juice about 3 months ago. I was the first at that location, and the whole staff came out to try and figure out how to get it to work. It took about 1.25 man hours (15 minutes * (4 staff + me)) to use the free $10 for joining!</comment>


Human cycles: History as science - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/human-cycles-history-as-science-1.11078 <comment><USER2> I'm very sceptical. I listened recently to economic experts talking in the 90s, they were all saying we were in the ascending phase of some macro cycle, and that we had thirty years of growth ahead. None did forecast the crisis we had since. They also did not say a word about the economic equilibrium bending east.

Please take these cycle theory with a grain of salt. It is too easy to find patterns and to invent explanations for them, but there is no more reason to have recurring patterns in history than to have patterns when playing with a dice.

</comment><comment><USER3> A comparison with the Lotka-Volterra equation

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation#Physical_meanings_of_the_equations)

which are the mathematical explanation of predator prey cycles, shows what's missing in the article and possibly in the research - the explanation for the cycles.

Predator-prey cycles can be tied back to biological constants - how quickly prey and predator reproduce, how the availability of prey affects predator reproduction, etc. Thus, if you want to model wolves and sheep rather than foxes and rabbits, you can do so, if you know the various biological constants.

I don't get the sense that Turchin has identified the underlying dynamics.

<comment><USER4> > I don't get the sense that Turchin has identified the underlying dynamics.

Then you should read his work. He describes what he thinks are the driving dynamics of the rise-and-fall process.

<comment><USER3> Ok, so I looked at the article again, and got that they focus on population, social structure, state strength, and political instability. It's even more interesting that they identify two cycles with at least some dynamics:

1\. the "secular" cycle: in the beginning of the cycle, _supply and demand for labour roughly balance out. In time, the population grows, labour supply outstrips demand, elites form and the living standards of the poorest fall. At a certain point, the society becomes top-heavy with elites, who start fighting for power. Political instability ensues and leads to collapse, and the cycle begins again._

2\. the "fathers and sons" cycle: _the father responds violently to a perceived social injustice; the son lives with the miserable legacy of the resulting conflict and abstains; the third generation begins again._

Thanks for the nudge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Peter Turchin published a highly readable pop-science account of his work in a book called _War and Peace and War_. I read it a few months ago and gave a review.

[http://chester.id.au/2012/05/14/review-war-and-peace-and- war...](http://chester.id.au/2012/05/14/review-war-and-peace-and-war/)

What's left out of this link is that Turchin still hedges his findings heavily. He's not performing precise predictions; he can't. He's pointing out dynamics that acquire massive social inertia and eventually force the phase change of whole societies.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope, in this case, given the really close parallels, it wont be facetious to say: Hari Seldon! Fact following from fiction?

<comment><USER4> He talks a bit about Hari Seldon in his work.

<comment><USER6> To give HN skimmers some context: Hari Seldon is a key character in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. He develops a new science called "psychohistory", which enables accurate prediction of the behavior of extremely large (galactic scale) groups of people.

When I read the first book of the series, an idea that resonated with me was the marginalization of scientists. I kept seeing aspects of current society reflected in his work. What I wonder is if scientists felt the same way at the time Asimov wrote the series?

P.S. It is a fantastic series of books. I encountered them my chance in the last few years. Highly recommended!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it interesting that WWII and the Korean War do not show as spikes in his graph.

<comment><USER8> It's a US-centric graph, if I'm not mistaken. But it is interesting that WW2 doesn't trail effects. Although, there is a long-standing theory that WW1 and WW2 were just the same war.

<comment><USER9> Methinks Alkamie disguised a call of 'bullshit!' behind a sort of empty platitude such as "I find it interesting".

>It's a US-centric graph

The title is "Human cycles: History as science"

A US-centric graph that represents the cycles of humanity?

>cliodynamics

Do we need a fancy name for the phenomenon that aspects of history tend to repeat?

Yes, aspects of history tend to repeat, but there's no way to use that knowledge to determine periodicy, severity, when it will happen, if it will happen etc.

I'll say what Alkamie didn't. This is bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what he thinks of Steven Pinker's paradigm[1] that world violence has been declining for centuries and is the lowest it's ever been.

Besides, there will be too many old people in the US to have mass riots in the 2020's.

[1]One example: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190410670457658...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like a good long bet (<http://longbets.org/>). I'd be willing to bet that "Worldwide, the 2020s will be less violent than any preceding decade in the 20th or 21st century".

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm going to have to track this guy's book down. Subject looks interesting, and the nature article leaves some information lacking, sadly.

For instance, Turchin mentions seeing this pattern in Ancient Rome and Egpyt (past and present) but he doesn't explain how he accounts for the Middle Ages and European colonial expansion. Arguably the number of "violent" events during those periods would be concentrated to the point of potentially breaking the father-son-grandson model he advocates. The chart in Nature leaves out things like the Reconquista of Spain, Ghengis Khan and heirs marching into Europe, the Crusades, the 50 years war, the French Revolution, and numerous other major upheaval events that occurred in smaller windows than those 50 year cycles he claims.

I guess I want to know what happens when you add in those time frames missing from his graph. Does it show the amount of "conflict" in the world decreasing with time as civilization (our understanding of it) expands around the world?

<comment><USER13> Here they are!

<http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Turchin/e/B001IU2M2K>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Humans see patterns where there are none.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strang...](http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think that applying statistical methodology to the study of history might provide some insights into cause-and-effect and the situations surrounding historical events. But, I seriously doubt that there are any "cycles" to be found.

For one thing, major events in human history absolutely are (or have been) pivotal on just one or a few individuals. A fun book on this is, "What If?", by Robert Cowley. Also, "How the Scots Invented the Modern World". Being the right person, in the right place, at the right time has been a recurring theme throughout history. For example, the final vote for the unification of Scotland and England was led by one passionate, older man -- who died of a stroke later that night. Had he died the night before, it's likely that his opposition, an almost equally skilled and passionate orator, would have won the vote instead.

The fathers-and-sons cycle described in the article is a relatively recent phenomenon, where society is settling down into a more peaceful state overall, and even then, the two greatest wars in human history violate the cycle: World Wars 1 and 2. Popular sentiment in the U.S. was against being involved in World War 2, after the horrors scene by the previous generation in World War 1, so the cycle isn't completely without merit. But, as usual in human history, there are too many other factors involved in the outcome.

I also think that history changes a lot depending on how you look at it. There are so many human societies on the planet at any given time, each one doing so many different things, that it's easy to step too far back in perspective by ignoring many of the events of history, and then start to think that you an discern some kind of a pattern or cycle. One of my favorite books for this is "Chronicle of the 20th Century", a collection of short-form news articles and pictures from the U.S. from 1900 through 1987. Flipping through that, it's always stunning just how much is so easily forgotten, how rich and complex each day was for the people living through those years.

</comment><comment><USER16> How does he account for the fact that generations do not proceed in lock-step across families? Some parents have children earlier than others - siblings can be spread across ~15 year periods, etc.

I'd hope he'd pretty easily be able to generate graphs like this for every society where the data is available - should be at least a dozen or so over the last 150-200 years. Though I'd imagine if his theory is correct, the time spans would vary slightly from society to society based on average age of parents at the time of childbirth.

</comment><comment><USER17> 3 violent "events" happening equidistant from each other does not mean a 4th is inevitable in the same timeframe. If I see proof back hundreds of years, then I would listen. Either way, pretty safe prediction that humans will act violently in the next 10 years.

<comment><USER4> His model proposes that the timing of the mesocycles of violence is set by the father-grandson dynamic and that the timing of the macrocycles of decline is 3 or 4 mesocycles once the empire has reached its zenith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone who finds this interesting might also find the Strauss-Howe generational theory (1) of interest. It talks about the generational cycle in America.

(1) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss- Howe_generational_theor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss- Howe_generational_theory)

</comment><comment><USER19> So the question is, if there comes a period of upheaval in the next decade ... what could a well-meaning entrepreneur work on now that will either help socially (secure communications, ad-hoc networking to avoid government lockdowns). Or maybe even position themselves for profit (3d printing tech to manufacture weapons, for example)?

<comment><USER13> It would mean political entrepreneurship would be more valuable than the fundamental kind - witness who tends to do well in post-Soviet states or even post-revolutionary America. Or, if one rejects political involvement, relocating to an expected stable state.

<comment><USER19> curiously, I have a friend who's family hails from georgia. Their old(ish) money came from after the civil war, when his great(N) grandfather started shipping grain and other desperately sought after food items to heavily affected civil war states/cities. A relatively small investment ended up multiplying and benefiting many generations :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The police have never been more militarized, even simple protesting against something is more and more likely to at a minimum get you arrested if not shot or "less lethal" weapon used against you like pepper spray in the face despite you being unarmed and non-violent (while the police will receive a paid vacation for doing so).

In 1st world countries I think protests are doomed. Wait till they start rolling out the sonic canons and drones at the RNC and DNC conventions this year and see if you agree. Oh and as a bonus, the millions spent on "security" at the conventions is taxpayer funded - congress votes on it for themselves every time.

<comment><USER21> Tell that to the student protesters at Kent State in 1970. 4 killed, 9 wounded (one of whom was permanently paralyzed), in a peaceful protest. It was a time when the national guard was regularly called in to break up peaceful protests.

There isn't an increase in violence, there's an increase in information now. There weren't cellphone videos of police violence on youtube in the 1970s (neither existed). There weren't 24 hour news stations who needed any content they could get (violence sells). We're over-saturated with ways to see current violence, and it can make it seem like it's happening more now (there's more reports of it, so it seems like it must be happening more). That's not at all the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> John C Dvorak has a theory, I am not sure if it is just his about cycles and a predicted pattern of events going back to the 1600's that indicates a dip in things starting in 2017.

Personally I am an optimist and think that as a whole we will continue to persevere and generally get it right more often, with more free information, we learn faster and eventually we evolve our outlook and efforts for the better.

Not because we want to, it's something about our species and tenacity to survive happy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Psychohistory? Where is Hari Seldon when you need him?

<comment><USER24> In the fiction aisle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bankers are creatures of habit <http://www.prolognet.qc.ca/clyde/pres.htm></comment>


Ask HN: Where to create a limited company for Europe online? - <AUTHOR> Hi, i live in EU i dont wish to create a new company in my country. I have seen some sites/solutions that offer to create a company online. Did you make use of any which is the best ? Best means easy, low taxes and everything can be done online.<p>I would like to use it for an eshop idea i have. Thx. <comment><USER2> Malta (or Cyprus) - its a giant (russian) laundromat in Europe.

<comment><AUTHOR> ... Thx but i am searching for an online service.</comment></comment>


Fake profiles – Facebook not even trying - <AUTHOR> I now have had a half-dozen fake profiles of people I know set up with the same name, basic information, and profile pictures.<p>Facebook is, allegedly, an amazing company with some of the best developers ... that don't have a basic check if a new profile has the same name and profile picture of an existing one that is clearly fraudulent. <comment><USER3> There isn't enough info to automatically close accounts just because they use the same name and profile photo as other users (keep in mind that profile pictures can be of anything such as a flag found through Google Images).

They probably only investigate and close imposters if they receive complaints from other users.

</comment><comment><USER4> I understand what you're getting at, but as someone else commented the new profile could be the real user, and the pre-existing profile a fake.

Perhaps machine learning would be able to identify fake accounts with a higher degree of certainty than the 'matching name/picture' check, and only fakes with a high certainty rate are deleted.

From a different angle though, if no one has reported a fake account - <USER2> Facebook care about the existence of a fake account? Some friends a while ago created a fake account of a meme amongst our group. Funny, and not harming anyone. If Facebook blocked this account it would seem a little domineering/controlling. I'm not sure that's the impression Facebook wants to leave on people who make these sorts of accounts for a laugh.

</comment><comment><USER5> They prob prefer to have fake accounts than to block a real user that wants to sign up (or lost his email account and signs up again, etc etc)

<comment><USER6> When Facebook was young I had my account suspended because I used a fake name. I reached out to support and had a conversation with a real person about my supposed name, "Joe Blow." I guess at some point they stopped doing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a couple of things that make this more difficult: The fact that strangers and family members alike can look strikingly similar and the fact that a lot of folks have the same or similar names. Heck, it could even be that a son has the same name as the father: Father has a younger profile picture, and the son uses that picture after the father dies.

Until the systems can sort this stuff out, these things are simply going to be an issue.

It isn't even that the profiles are necessarily fraudulent. I know there are plenty of young (and older) occultists that keep two seperate accounts, in part to be able to keep that part of their life private and away from extended family and work. This happens in other circles as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Facebook is testing a feature that alerts you if someone is impersonating your account: [http://mashable.com/2016/03/22/facebook-impersonation- alert/](http://mashable.com/2016/03/22/facebook-impersonation-alert/)

</comment><comment><USER9> What's your question?

</comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes the most recently created profile is the real profile. For example I could use your picture in Twitter to create an account in facebook. You will probably use the same picture in the future whe you setup a facebook account.

</comment><comment><USER11> Counter-anecdote: I've reported quite a number of accounts that have tried to add me and Facebook will now tell you when they remove a fake account. It gives some small incentive to report the profiles.</comment>


The Millennial Commune - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/realestate/the-millennial-commune.html <comment><USER3> I've lived in a shared house for 7 years. To me, one of the advantage of a shared house is to be with people that are different than you, because you all have different experiences and can share and learn from that.

Of course, it's essential to have a good feeling with the others, but I feel like this is going way too far, with just you ending up with others alike, and no diversity. Granted, that's what they sell : "highly curated community of like-minded individuals."

<comment><USER4> The idea of curating people is nauseating to me.

It speaks to one of the largest failures of technology, which is that the techno utopians from Gen X believed the Internet would herald a new age of informed democracy and rational debate. Instead what we got is a balkanization of ideas where no one has to ever hear anything vaguely uncomfortable and we can all stay ensconced in our little tribes.

<comment><USER5> So, curating people--or whatever other term you want to use for "picking your roommates carefully"\--is damned important, and always has been.

If you have a roommate that loves throwing parties, and everyone else is maybe super tired from working, you're gonna have a bad time.

If you have roommates that don't believe in cleaning, ever, then you're gonna have a bad time.

If you have roommates that spend a lot of time torrenting and your internet gets shut off, you're gonna have a bad time.

If you have roommates that are really into drug culture, you could well end up having a bad time (seen this happen once or twice).

You can all be totally different in, say, politics or sexuality or income or whatever (provided rent is still being made), but it gets super shitty super fast if the basic "Hey, this is our home, don't cause problems" stuff isn't nailed down.

<comment><USER4> Well wait a second, _is_ picking your roommates carefully the same as the curation they are talking about here? Because it doesn't feel that way to me. It feels like they are trying to capitalize on the age-old concept of having roommates, and slathering on a thick coat of shiny lacquer in the form of a business model based on the painfully trendy idea of curation. I can't put my finger on it exactly, maybe it's just the article that's to blame, but there's something here that feels more akin to high school cliquishness than screening potential roommates, and that's what I'm objecting to.

<comment><USER5> Well, let's be clear here: their main curation requirement seems to be "Can you spend up to 48K a year in rent?".

<comment><USER4> Hm, I'm not going to go back to read the article but I distinctly remember the word "like-mindedness". But let's give you the benefit of the doubt for argument's sake, then the only crime is the douchiness of calling that "curation".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Calling these spaces communes is ironic considering how incredibly capitalist they are.

1\. Regulatory failure leads to a lack of reasonable real estate options in growing cities.

2\. Striving young people want to move to the major cities for career reasons anyways.

3\. Aspiring capitalists deploy capital to convert existing housing stock into microunits while charging a premium.

Nothing in this is communist at all.

<comment><USER7> It's almost as if they've rebranded feudalism as "sharing."

Proper sharing would be a fully connected graph topology. Modern "sharing" is hub-and-spoke where the hub extracts rent on all transactions because they either made a website (lol, "tech company") or have absconded capital and sell it back to you (time limited) at a profit.

<comment><USER8> This seems like a comment for a post about Uber. I don't see how it's relevant here.

<comment><USER7> Oh, the article itself is about people buying a single resource the sub- renting it out. So that's the feudalism part.

The connected network part was also similar because you have to go through these co-living space capitalist-hippy administrators to actually live in the co-living space. So some of the co-living spaces are co-living as defined by "you passed our landlord's test" but others are "everybody must like you to live here."

If this was relating to Uber, we'd also mention they are doing the entire "break local laws and hope city hall doesn't care" trick by introducing oversubscribed short term housing which is against city policy.

<comment><USER9> The houselord is merely being compensated for the value created through its curation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The living spaces described aren't communes in any way, shape or form. This is just paying to have roommates you don't know with some perks. _actual_ cooperatives/communes are occupied by their member-owners, who have full control over their space. It's laughable that this being marketed as edgy socialist living when it's just a big apartment with some nice branding.

An actual co-op shares food purchases, requires labor like cooking and cleaning, and the members share democratic control over the house's finances. There is no actual reason why you need microleases - the co-op I live in has 6 month leases at a minimum, and on average most members live here for two years. People stay for so long because actual cooperatives foster a culture of cooperation and a community full of real friendships, giving its members a deep, lasting connection with the space and their fellow housemates. Microleases seem like they create a transitory and shallow culture with people coming and leaving all the time and not actually making any connection with the space, partially because you can't leave your mark on the space since you don't own it.

There are very large and active communities of both residential and commercial cooperatives in Berkeley, Michigan, and Austin (where the co-op I live in is), and I think this is because there is cheaper land and individual houses. It's close to impossible for starting true residential cooperatives in downtown NYC because the landlord often owns the entire building, which would require an enormous amount of money to acquire, and would lead to enormous cooperatives which would be difficult to run. There _are_ very large, apartment-style cooperatives - there are at least 5 co-ops in Austin with over 100 people each - but there are many more that are house style with 15-30 people. I think the ones in Berkeley and Michigan tend to be closer to 30-40 people, but they're still just big houses.

The cooperative movement is alive and well and has been for decades. Capitalists trying to jump onto the sharing economy bandwagon just dilute the message and create the wrong impression of what actual shared living is - <USER2> democratic control over your space. Cooperatives have amazing potential in the internet age, but seem to have been largely forgotten by modern day technologists. A non-profit Uber, cooperatively controlled by both drivers and developers, is an obvious example of a great system that would work very well and be immensely popular with drivers. There are a lot of knotty problems to work out, but nothing insurmountable. If 100+ drug-addled college kids can democratically run an entire apartment complex successfully for 3 decades (and even make money, too!), surely today's technologists can build software that allow many more people to democratically run much larger systems.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a renters coop.

In a coop, the owners approve/reject apartment sales. This is the same, except the residents are renters, while the owners still pick who is allowed in.

I am surprised this doesn't run afoul of Equal Housing (anti-discrimination) laws, since the people rejecting applicants aren't the residents.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, I'd still rather be able to walk around naked in my kitchen and sleep with my significant other without people listening. I don't need to live in an adult hostel to have friends and meet interesting people.

<comment><USER11> Sure, many prefer to live in a big well built private home, but we can't afford it. Even individual apartments doing provide that much audio privacy, in USA construction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The NYT seems to be the perfect machine for exposing the uttermost eyerollingist of douchebags.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations entitled young Americans, you've invented flatting.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a result of the ridiculous rent in places like sf. Why not figure out a way to lower the rent?

<comment><USER16> The only solutions are:

1\. Build more housing (won't happen) 2\. Rent control (doesn't work, mostly. Distorts the market) 3\. The bubble pops (most likely)

<comment><USER6> > Build more housing (won't happen)

Why not? Eventually non-owners will form a majority of voters and will vote to remove ridiculous restrictions.

Generational rent-seeking can only persist for so long.

<comment><USER17> In SF, the majority of voters are already renters. Something like %70. But the people who live there are oddly irrational and think building will somehow raise the rent because it would be all 'luxury' apartments, and thus 'raise' the price. And these are the "perma renters" who have been forced out or closed to forced out due to their lower incomes.

The renter political majority are the people who got laws such as rent control in. And the other very landlord unfriendly laws that make ~ %30 of residential rental stock unoccupied in SF due to fears of bad renters costing far more than their income. Also their are other laws that let petty NIMBYs prevent neighbors building stuff in their empty lots, so they can extract concessions out of them, or just avoid the personal inconvenience of construction during working hours. A good chunk of people in SF are unemployed / not in the labor force. Something around %30. 'Tech workers' are a very small minority of the population, but are the new immigrants aggravating the supply problems.

Then you have old money in SF organizing political groups to block building on the water front so their waterfront condo views will not be block and so on.

The multiple competing interests in SF lead to the general regulatory failure there of not building nearly enough. SF has always been a city with it's head far up it's ass, it was very bad in other ways in the 70s too, with similar 'renter friendly' laws causing more problems than solutions.

<comment><USER18> > But the people who live there are oddly irrational and think building will > somehow raise the rent because it would be all 'luxury' apartments, and thus > 'raise' the price.

Is this for real? So clearly false. (Increasing supply will somehow increase demand by even more?) I have to assume these ideas have been spread by the vested interests that you've noted.

<comment><USER19> I'm no expert, but isn't that what typically happens with gentrification? Make the neighborhood more desirable by whatever means, more middle/upper-class people want to live there, local landlords raise the rent on existing units despite no actual change in their quality?

I've read about folks who worked for years to clean up their low-end neighborhoods, organize a neighborhood watch, drive out the dealers, etc, and as things improve the landlord jacks the rent up until they have to move to a slum area again. That's not about "luxury apartments" specifically, just about how manifestly screwed you are if you're not at least middle-class.

<comment><USER6> Gentrification often comes down to increasing demand without increasing supply. If supply weren't artificially restricted, it would be profitable to expand the housing stock instead of completely displacing existing residents.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft, UW demonstrate first fully automated DNA data storage - <AUTHOR> https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/hello-data-dna-storage/ <comment><USER2> I am super excited about this. It may be early, and there may be some hurdles that make it 'not as perfect' as described here, but even we only get, say 60% of the proposed memory encoding schemes, it will be a huge efficiency gain.

Not to mention truly 'permanent' digital data storage. If you stick a piece of paper, a USB flash drive, a BD-R disc all holding the same file (hello world) in a box and stick it in a bank safety deposit box for 100 years, how many of those three will still be readable? We still have the technology to read it, etc. etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> DNA allows both very dense storage of data, and it doesn't deteriorate as quickly as other digital methods. Really looking forward for it to become mainstream and available.

The only disadvantage probably is that going forward, your genes will probably become more or less public. Every thing you touch also gets a copy of your genes, and if soon sequencing becomes really cheap and accessible to everyone, everyone could sequence the DNA of someone they are interested in and find out lots of very private info about them. Right now it's all locked up in labs and you can enforce consent policies, but the technology might be spread so far that this won't be possible.</comment>


Show HN: Cards for Humanity, a web-based CAH tribute raising money for charity - <AUTHOR> http://cfh.io

<comment><USER2> Super fun and looks amazing!</comment>


Launch of the cofounder network - matching cofounders around the world - <AUTHOR> http://cofoundernetwork.posterous.com/

<comment><USER2> I like the idea - not so sure about the execution.

 _We are a global community of hand-selected entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers. The network acts as a breeding ground for creating disruptive ventures by connecting selected cofounders. To join the network we prefer you get recommended by one of our partners or members. We also consider direct applications with strong references._

It just seems slightly elitist. I'm not saying that's what they are going for, but that's the feeling I get looking over the site. Even by applying you have to wait 1-2 weeks for approval. I imagine that most people that really need a cofounder are not that well connected to begin with.

I would have liked to have seen this be a bit more open and inclusive in order to provide more value to people. It just feels like there should be better ways of sifting through potential cofounders rather than preselection.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. The site seems geared to linking existing cofounders rather than matching new ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What if you made it a bit more open?

Share some success stories on the site to give it some legitimacy too.

And why not create some MeetUp Groups in several cities with the people to network at local events with potential entrepreneurs? The co-founders would have to register on your site to attend the events.

I know you want to be selective, but if the net is wide enough, this could be huge.

(Disclosure: I'm seeking a technical co-founder myself)

</comment><comment><USER5> hmmm, it seems like one predictor of start-up success (at least according to pg and yc mantra) is that the cofounders have to be good friends or work well together. seems tough to achieve when matching up cofounders on a 'dating service' like this one.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thx for the feedback :)

Following the yc mantra - this is a prototype focusing on high potential cofounders. We work with a referral system based on our partner network. The goal is not to be elitest but to match cofounders well.

<comment><USER6> Then shouldn't you learn from dating sites and go for the biggest network possible?

<comment><AUTHOR> hm no - the goal is to match high impact founders ...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: E-Mail without a cellphone? - <AUTHOR> I was recently locked out of my gmail account despite getting my password correct at a semi crucial time. This was despite not having set up 2FA. I am trying to use my cell phone less but if I can't use my email without it that might become an issue. Are there any alternative email services that don't require you to have an cell phone number? <comment><USER2> SDF.org doesn't need a phone number.

</comment><comment><USER3> fastmail.com</comment>


Show HN: Bored last night. 3 hour project: Your Most Followed Followers - <AUTHOR> http://www.fruji.com

<comment><USER3> Apparently a few large followed accounts follow me that I wasn't aware of, neat application...

An idea I've wanted to do for a long time (but isn't technically possible) is to analyse the _reach_ a user has. For example, when I tweet normally it is sent out to my ~520 followers, but what about when my tweet is retweeted? What about how many are active and the chances that they saw the tweet? It would be really interesting to see stuff like that.

Side note, can you explain "VIP Factor?" I assume it's where you position in their follows (longer that they've followed the higher the score)?

<comment><AUTHOR> VIP factor currently is just: how many followers does a user have : how many does he follow?

but this needs tweaking, since, if a person follows 10000 and has 10000000 followers, you are still a nobody, being followed by them. i guess i need to figure out a curve for that.

anyways, thanks for the kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, but one quibble: You need to make it obvious right up front that cookies must be enabled on your domain for this to work (not sure why this is needed, but...).

I block all cookies by default and got all the way to the end of the process only to discover nothing. Nothing! (Kudos for handling failure gracefully, at least the app didn't blow up, everything looked fine - but anti-kudos for not detecting that the process wasn't working.)

When I enabled cookies on fruji, ta-da, it worked fine. Turns out I'm not very important, sigh. :->

<comment><USER5> I imagine MOST webapps out there are basically broken for you, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great work, one problem:

How influential someone is should be a function of #followers and #following - not just #followers. A high #followers/#following is what really indicates influence.

Most of my top 10 were people (or biz accts) that had followed 60k people and hence have a lot of followers.

Edit: Just noticed the VIP factor, which does exactly what I'm suggesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, exactly, that's the vip factor. although, even that number is not perfect, since a lot of high-follower accounts also follow a high number of people (in the hundred thousands), which does not make you VIP for being followed. so i'll have to figure out a curve on this one I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's pretty cool. How did you get around the issue that you have to issue that you have to do an API call for every follower to get their details (quickly outstripping the number of API requests the average person has)? Or at least, that's how you had to do it prior.

Unfortunately, the information it gave me wasn't helpful: @BarackObama, @TwitPic, @Schwarzenegger, @WholeFoods, @Starbucks, @zappos, @threadless, @imogenheap, @charitywater, @ijustine

Basically, I have a handful of big companies and politicians following me. The only one I've met a handful of times personally and had any interaction with is iJustine.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know iJustine? Congrats :)

Regarding your point: Yes, as discussed in other parts of the comment section, I believe that tonight I'll take some time and implement a feature that allows you to hide people who have a ton of followers, and also, follow a huge amount of people ... which basically, doesn't mean anything to you then. so this should address the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, I'm part way through building a very similar project with a few extra paid for features!

Congrats on getting your site launched in such a short time!

It's an interesting aspect to analyse your own network.

<comment><AUTHOR> go for it, just make sure you let those pay who do this professionally, and those who are curious should have access to full functionality albeit a limited set of result rows maybe or something like it. i really hated all these twitter services who make me sign up do a bunch of things and then tell me to pay or not see any results. let us know when you go live :)

<comment><USER8> Will do! Mine is more from the angle of looking at most followed people in your secondary network (friends of friends) finding 'popular' and relevant new people to follow as I think the Twitter site is terrible at helping you to find & follow quickly.

I agree that for the most part these services should be free and simple and the paid features are to help the pros.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very nice! You could improve it by filtering out accounts that follow a large number of others. Many of the real VIPs have many followers, but don't follow that many themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly, responded to that point twice within the comments here somehow - <USER2> needs a drop-off curve or something, where, if a person who has >100.000 followers, but follows less than say 500, it means you're seriously VIPed right there :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> QUICK UPDATE: I have added your feedback to the site now! You can filter out the auto-follows and get your REAL, HONEST followers only now as well in a separate chart.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks guys for checking this out. i wanted to post this before going to lunch (european time), and now this. there's hundreds of people on the site right now, and i can't go to lunch, uugghg, internet!! :)

p.s. feedback is heavily welcome, i am happy to add a few things and maybe post the whole thing on github or something if anyone needs a quickndirty starter for twitter integration apps.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great work! Always wanted something like this and wondered why Twitter didn't have an option to show you this kind of info. Nice idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> right?? i couldn't find this anywhere, despite a trillion twitter service out there. i built it for myself, to see some more details, but bootstrap is a great thing to make a little script look awesome in an instant, so i figured why not post it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It looks like I managed to follow several huge celebrities back when they auto-followed you back :)

<comment><AUTHOR> :) yeah exactly! i was wondering if I should add an option, to not include (or maybe hide) accounts who obviously show high auto-follow-back rates, i.e. a low score follower/following

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> also, if anyone is curious, all UI is done by bootstrap (<https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap>), added some simple php for the twitter crunching (using twitteroauth) and that's it.

<comment><USER7> Can you put it on Github? There's one thing I'd like to see how you're doing it logic-wise.

<comment><AUTHOR> ask, what part?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> i've decided to live-stream my analytics account, so you can see yourself making an impact :) <http://livestream.com/mittermayr>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> would you say people would pay a dollar to see their top 50 followers? just curious...</comment>


BA shutdown caused by contractor who switched off power, reports claim - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/02/ba-shutdown-caused-by-contractor-who-switched-off-power-reports-claim <comment><USER2> If this is true, who approved removing enough redundancy from the system to allow this to happen?</comment>


Why Starting Justin.tv Was A Really Bad Idea, But I'm Glad We Did It Anyway - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/12/starting-justin-tv/ <comment><USER2> That was the first guest post I've ever read on Techcrunch that was genuinely interesting and didn't read like droning self promotion. Thanks, Justin!

<comment><USER3> I'd go one further .... it was the first post on TC in a very long time that was genuinely interesting full stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The trolls on TC said one reason for the new brand is because VCs own almost all of Justin.tv. Is Socialcam owned by Justin.tv Inc?

<comment><USER5> The trolls are rampant and ill-informed. Socialcam is a Justin.tv project under a new brand and all of the founders are still with the company.

Only someone without a functional understanding of basic math could look at our funding history and believe that the founders own less than 10% of the company.

<comment><USER4> To be fair to the trolls it's fairly common for companies to do funding rounds that are not publicly announced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Justin captures the main thing I remember from seeing these guys early on. It wasn't entirely clear what they were doing, but they were just having so much fun, you knew they would figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really liked that. All the uncertainty / lack of specific and detailed plans is something I can definitely relate to, it's nice to see someone as successful as you guys never knew exactly where you were going till you got there.

<comment><USER5> We still might not know what we are doing... you never know.

<comment><USER7> There's no provable answer anyhow, because it's an inherently subjective matter.

Since circumstance can make a fool or a hero of any of us anyway, as you say, you never know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember the sale of Kiko being a frontpage story in Reddit's early days. I'm still a huge Reddit fan but it's amazing how much the community has changed since then.

</comment><comment><USER9> A really good read. More proof that a great team is worth more than a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER10> isn't the whole lets make a platform kinda obvious...is that really what you were thinking(or not thinking) at the time or is it just a PR spun story to get coverage.

it's like the Goog guys designing Google just so they could better find their own stuff, only to realize that other people might like to use it too

I mean, even in the story you are talking about mass producing the hardware, when you were supposedly just doing the show

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I think it was pretty obvious, which is why in retrospect it seems stupid that we weren't pursuing it in the beginning. But I distinctly remember that after launch we debated which direction we should go (options included becoming a live (or not live) video cdn, the live platform, or trying to spin off multiple shows that we produced ourselves).

We were talking about mass hardware production to support shows that we directly produced or contracted.

To be honest, I wish that I was able to go back and tweak our execution: if the Justin.tv show was just a stunt, I would have had a platform ready to go when we launched it instead of waiting six months to build it!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It didn't look like there was no vision from an external perspective. It looked just as described, like Justin.tv was launched to build out a huge live video platform.

<comment><USER5> We tried hard to make it seem like we knew what we were doing :)

It was a challenge.

<comment><USER11> You guys did a great job. I remember watching the GoDaddy advertisement banner going up in the "startup apartment headquarters", and at one point you following a reporter who was covering you out to her news van, then talking shop about video broadcasting. I remember thinking wow these guys totally raised the bar on what it means to create technology for a web startup. And it looked like everyone was having so much fun too. Fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's another reason why justin.tv was a bad idea and that is, far from being a new form of entertainment, lifecasting had already been done to death by the time it came on the scene. There were even two major Hollywood movies built around the idea. And predictably, justin.tv in its original form did fail, but in the process opened up a new opportunity based more on a 'long tail' strategy.

This is a great example of how funding and connections are more important than a good idea. It gives you the luxury of changing direction if something doesn't work. And ultimately, the proximate cause of every business failure is running out of money. The lesson here is to gain the trust of wealthy patrons who are willing to give you a $50K check just to see how you fail.

<comment><USER5> I disagree that our idea was bad because lifecasting had been done before. First of all, you are calling it "lifecasting" because we thought of and popularized that term, and the fact that we were similar to two movies didn't prevent the idea from getting a massive amount of attention because it captured the interest of people and the media. Almost every idea has been "done before", but winners often emerge by innovating in an existing space (Google, Dropbox, Facebook, the list continues to infinity).

I said this earlier today to a friend: the most important things are team and perseverance. While it is true that we had the luxury of great advisors and investors who believed in the team from the beginning, many of my friends (Airbnb comes to mind) have gone from a great idea that NO ONE believed in, stuck with it, and got the funding later.

Connections and funding cannot save a team that isn't strong, and often times just set up a larger failure.

<comment><USER12> It wasn't just the two movies, it was Jenny and everyone who came after her. You're right that it got attention, but there was frankly no reason to expect it to given it was a trend that had already played out once.

I agree with you that funding and connections are not sufficient. But it is the limiting factor in the sense that there are more strong perserverant teams out there than there is money to service them all. And a team's strength is not a constant: most teams are only as strong as the list of mistakes they've made. Having funding gives you the luxury of making the mistakes and getting strong.

Perseverance is important but what it means depends on the context. A trust fund baby who keeps trying new businesses doesn't have much to lose, while a guy with a family to support who uses all his free time to work on his startup is making a huge sacrifice. And while I believe that perseverance is generally rewarded in many ways, the likelihood of it being rewarded with massive wealth is greatly overestimated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess this was the answer to my question: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2149968>

</comment><comment><USER14> mixergy interview in the works?

</comment><comment><USER15> why does he say they failed?

<comment><USER16> The original idea (a form of entertainment by 'lifecasting' Justin) wasn't sustainable on several levels. Of course, the company Justin.tv is alive and well, but with a different game plan than when they started out.</comment></comment>


Manage like a spymaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21662540-counter-intelligence-techniques-may-help-firms-protect-themselves-against-cyber-attacks-manage

<comment><USER2> This sort of approach is a thought process and methodology we have been training NGOs, journalists and human rights organisations in for years at Security First ([http://www.secfirst.org](http://www.secfirst.org)). Though it is strange to think about it this way, the work of many NGOs and journalists is actually very similar to intelligence organisations (a cycle of planning requirements, collecting, processing, analysis/production, distribution to policy makers, collect, etc) and in many ways the threats/defence measures are similar (insider threats, digital penetration, disruption etc).

All too often organisations we work with focus on tools (encryption,etc) instead of beginning with processes (compartmentalisation, need to know, vetting etc), so usually we have to begin with them. For many reasons this can cause people and organisation'so discomfort ("We are a human rights org, we won't want to hide information from other staff.")

I could talk all day about the subject and have been meaning to write up or do a full public presentation about it somewhere about the methodology and how it applies to NGOs, media etc - I just need to find the right place to do that!

<comment><USER3> Just read a quote from "Secrets of Consulting" that's applicable, _no matter how it may look at first, it 's usually a people problem_. We do like using tools instead of focusing on education and training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Security is a mindset, not simply a process. This article goes a little into the mind of a Counterintelligence officer but when they talk of "paranoia" it has more of a negative connotation than I think is warranted.

I would offer that the way the CI officer approaches security along the spectrum (PERSEC, INFOSEC, OPSEC) is an extreme and fractal form of the "Front page rule." So the question is always: "How would this look on the [insert increasingly public channels]."

Compartmentalization and segmentation are really the underlying theories behind defense in depth and I think it is valuable for other people to look at how these principles should be applied.

The last thing I will say is that, it's probably best to ignore the "Well NSA does that but look at how that failed." In fact what you see with leaks and hacks etc...is a failure of the implementation - usually in the form of a person or persons who tried to make things easier or more user friendly. That should not indict the theory of compartmentalization, but rather prove that the human is the most important element in the security system.

<comment><USER2> I think there are also very different attitudes and thus implementations of Counter-Intelligence, at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.

-Tactical - "Doing this particular activity is a pain, I don't want to keep everything locked up, I don't want to report every little strange thing etc"

-Operational - "This organisation (and my job) is rewarded for running successful XYZ operations, Counter-Intelligence is just a money drain for little obvious results etc"

-Strategic or policy level - "Spying will always happen. If we do it, our enemies will do it. They will probably find out eventually. Ultimately if an enemy finds out our secret stealth space rocket is actually for new types of photos and not a sneaky nuclear strike, they are more likely to act in a rational and calm way."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is somewhat very lightweight on content, but it reminded me of a thing I'm looking for. Does anyone know of any resources that discuss in details how spymasters and intelligence agencies manage things in day-to-day pracitce?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash My uncle was in the CIA. Before that he used his Yale psychology Ph.D to sneak into the OSS (20/200 vision and medical disqualification couldn't stop him). He wrote an excellent account of his time training spies in Britain then leading resistance movements in Vichy France. His book is titled "The O.S.S. And I" and his name was William Morgan.

I consider it an essential read for understanding group dynamics in unfamiliar territories. People tend to act in archetypes when put in controlled situations. For example, one of the training/vetting challenges was to cross a pool of water without touching it using supplies scattered around the site. It took three planks to do it properly, although two would work if you were extremely slow and careful. One plank was easy to find, one was hard, the third was extremely well-hidden. You can see from that example who will examine all of the options and who will get frustrated with 2/3 of the supplies and try to wing it.

Another interesting facet he brought up was how different tests could show aptitude in different people. For example, Polish recruits tended to be poor at individual tests but they excelled as a team because they were far less prone to bickering over who gets to lead.

I consider "The O.S.S. And I" to be a better guide to management than most white collar crap we see these days. One of the candidates who got impatient and failed the water-crossing test, by the way, was an American executive from a multimillion-dollar company.

<comment><USER5> I'll look for the book. Thanks for the recommendation! I'm Polish btw. and my impression of my own society is that while we may not be bickering over who gets to lead, we like to complain about the decisions that the leader makes :).

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I have a close friend from Poland who has shown me much of your lovely country, and all I can say in response is: YUP! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a shame that the article doesn't mention all the incidents of government agencies being hacked. In Canada I remember there were student loan records that were accessed: [http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/01/11/federal-agency- loses...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/01/11/federal-agency-loses- data_n_2459088.html)</comment>


Dropbox Hack Week Documentary - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=1062

<comment><USER2> I was intrigued by the prevalence of the terminal in their work. I'm guessing vim+bash?</comment>


Court Orders Pirate Bay Domains to Be Forfeited to the State - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-pirate-bay-domains-forfeited-state-160512/ <comment><USER2> Well, now we have a black hole in the DNS that makes a name eternally gone from the name space. In contrast to normal confiscation, the property will neither be sold or destroyed, and when I last time asked, the state isn't going to pay any registry fees either. Rather, the general consensus seems to be that the name will just be held by the state for an indefinite time.

</comment><comment><USER3> are any of the original pirate Bay hackers still involved?

I'd like to see these domain seizures drive innovation in decentralized DNS and TPB's founders seem like they could be motivated and capable enough to make something happen!

<comment><USER4> No, one is in jail for hacking offenses in Denmark. One wants that to happen and TPB to evolve better but is not involved with building it. Third is floating around south east asia I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/](http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/)

<comment><USER6> Awesome. I shall be bookmarking this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good ol' domain whack-a-mole.

</comment><comment><USER8> Are there any reasons not to make an i2p-darkweb-site with dark-web torrents?

<comment><USER9> Speed, and convenience, or lack thereof.

<comment><USER8> It's true, but some people would undoubtedly agree to use it. And I personally expect a noticeable number of them (and I would be among them).</comment></comment></comment>


Agena: a easy-to-learn procedural programming language - <AUTHOR> http://agena.sourceforge.net/index.html <comment><USER2> I don't like the idea of creating a procedure like so:

procA = procedure()

because it makes it harder for me to parse code. It must make it easier to implement the language though.</comment>


Dying for Science: Historical Perspectives on Research Participants' Deaths - <AUTHOR> http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2015/12/mhst1-1512.html <comment><USER2> The actual article. The Discover Magazine synopsis doesn't meet Hacker News calibre:

[http://journalofethics.ama- assn.org/2015/12/mhst1-1512.html](http://journalofethics.ama- assn.org/2015/12/mhst1-1512.html)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. URL changed from [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/12/29/ma...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/12/29/martyrs- science-research-participants/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The other, largely ignored and much, much larger population of martyrs are those who died due to the growing excess of precaution and cost slowing down the development and use of new medicine. E.g. see:

[http://fdareview.org/](http://fdareview.org/)

The cost of regulatory burdens on medicine in the US has doubled in real terms in the past ten years.

[http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014...](http://csdd.tufts.edu/news/complete_story/pr_tufts_csdd_2014_cost_study)

Much of that these days is political, driven by bureaucrats in the FDA and elsewhere whose career advancement depends of creating no news. Their every incentive is to suppress progress, because they are rewarded with bigger budgets when there is no new medicine, and punished when anything ever goes wrong and the media happens to seize upon it. No medicine is without risk. Every medical technology is involved in deaths. But successful clinical application saves lives and increases health to a much greater degree.

So long as people have choice, they should have the choice to risk themselves in the development of better medicine.

<comment><USER5> This ridiculous, almost(?) cowardly aversion to any and all risk is a growing problem with all government agencies (at all levels), not just the FDA.</comment></comment>