The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion and the O-ring - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/the-space-shuttle-challenger-explosion-and-the-o/ <comment><USER2> I'm the author of this piece, happy to answer questions.

I grew up with stories of the Challenger after my father - a statistician - and 2 of his co-authors were selected by National Academy of Sciences to study if the danger could have been predicted beforehand. They showed that the likelihood of failure was 13% at the launch temperature, but would have been negligible if NASA had waited just a few hours. (His co-author, Ed Fowlkes, was dying of AIDS at the time - and considered this paper one of his life's great achievements)

Bad statistical inferences were a huge part of the launch story, and you can see more in Richard Feynman's critiques:

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

Secondly, the effect I highlight (a biased data sample) is a key issue with news/social media - and can lead us to heavily flawed inferences if we don't correct for it.

I'll dig deep into this in future posts with a substantial amount of data and visualizations.

<comment><USER3> Feynman's actually observations are well worth reading for anyone who builds anything that may be vaguely considered engineering.

[http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roger...](http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers- commission/Appendix-F.txt)

The key items for me were:

1) While they had no expectation of erosion, and the design did not call for the o-rings to erode, once they observed them eroding, they retroactively invented a "margin of error" based on what fraction the o-rings eroded. This was not based on an actual understood process, and is akin to saying "well, the bridge didn't break when we drove that truck over it, so it must be okay"

2) The engineers actually knew the risk (~1% chance of loss per launch, not specific to the o-rings, compared with two actual losses of the shuttle over ~130 missions). Management used entirely invented numbers for the risk which were not justified.

<comment><USER4> Your paraphrasing of Feynman's bridge quote is inaccurate. From Appendix F[1] of the report:

        [..]  In spite of these variations from case to case, officials behaved as
        if they understood it, giving apparently logical arguments to each
        other often depending on the "success" of previous flights. For
        example. in determining if flight 51-L was safe to fly in the face of
        ring erosion in flight 51-C, it was noted that the erosion depth was
        only one-third of the radius. It had been noted in an experiment
        cutting the ring that cutting it as deep as one radius was necessary
        before the ring failed. Instead of being very concerned that
        variations of poorly understood conditions might reasonably create a
        deeper erosion this time, it was asserted, there was "a safety factor
        of three." This is a strange use of the engineer's term ,"safety
        factor." If a bridge is built to withstand a certain load without the
        beams permanently deforming, cracking, or breaking, it may be designed
        for the materials used to actually stand up under three times the
        load. This "safety factor" is to allow for uncertain excesses of load,
        or unknown extra loads, or weaknesses in the material that might have
        unexpected flaws, etc. If now the expected load comes on to the new
        bridge and a crack appears in a beam, this is a failure of the
        design. There was no safety factor at all; even though the bridge did
        not actually collapse because the crack went only one-third of the way
        through the beam. The O-rings of the Solid Rocket Boosters were not
        designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong.
        Erosion was not something from which safety can be inferred.

His point about NASA's nonsensical use of the "safety factor" is not that you could drive over a bridge, and look, it didn't break, so it must be OK!

It's even worse, you drive a truck over it, afterwards 1/3 of the steel is cracked, so you conclude that it must be able to safely accept 3x the weight. Nonesense! This is the sort of moronic engineering that killed the crew of the Challenger.

1\. [http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roger...](http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers- commission/Appendix-F.txt)

<comment><USER5> > This is the sort of moronic engineering that killed the crew of the > Challenger.

Note that it wasn't even engineering, reading the story in full (it's great, and covers the software side for which Feynman had nothing but praise) Feynman repeatedly noted that engineers were fairly realistic[0] and had been ringing alarms pretty much all along, this was entirely manglement mangling.

[0] unless the spectre of manglement was involved, at least for some of them

<comment><USER4> It's been some time but I've read the entire report cover-to-cover. While yes, the general conclusion is that NASA's dysfunctional management structure and institutional optimism driven by moneyed interests is the primary culprit. The report never really tries to perform a root cause analysis on how something like the O-ring "safety factor" problem arose.

Something which, as summarized by Feynman's quote above, should be patently obvious to any engineer as bullshit.

Feynman's appendix is the only part that even tries, but it doesn't go far enough through no fault of Feynman's, he had no resources to pursue this line of inquiry. It was a struggle just to get that appendix into the report.

They should have interviewed every single person in any way remotely involved in that O-ring decision, find out if they objected to it, and if they didn't what money/institutional/social obstacles there were to prevent that.

Did some engineer actually sign off on the aforementioned "safety factor"? We don't know, but somehow I doubt that's language management came up with on their own, and if they did that there was no way for an engineer to spot that and report "wtf? The system doesn't work like that!".

Reading between the lines some engineer actually did come up with that estimate, but likely that engineer was where he was because NASA had a culture of promoting mindless yes-men.

<comment><USER5> > It's been some time but I've read the entire report cover-to-cover.

I meant Feynman's later recounting of the whole affair (in "What do you care what other people think"), rather than just the report.

> Did some engineer actually sign off on the aforementioned "safety factor"? > We don't know, but somehow I doubt that's language management came up with > on their own

That doesn't mean they were fed that by an engineer, only that they'd encountered the term before.

> and if they did that there was no way for an engineer to spot that and > report "wtf? The system doesn't work like that!".

And then what? Upper-management uses "safety factor" in a completely bullshit manner, and engineer spots that (because they're masochistic and read management reports?), tells their direct manager it's inane, and then what, you think it's going to go up the chain to upper-management which will fix the issue? Because IIRC (I don't have my copy of What Do You Care on me so I can't check) Feynman noted that engineering systematically got lost somewhere along management ladder as one middle-manager decided not to bother _their_ manager with a mere engineer (or worse, technician!)'s concern or suggestions.

> Reading between the lines some engineer actually did come up with that > estimate, but likely that engineer was where he was because NASA had a > culture of promoting mindless yes-men.

That's really not what I read behind the lines considering engineers had failure estimates in the % range and management had estimates in the per- hundred-thousand range.

<comment><USER4> > I meant Feynman's later recounting of the whole affair

I've read that too. You're dangerously close to getting me to re-read everything Feynman's written, again. I don't know whether to curse you or thank you :)

> And then what? [...]

I feel we're in violent agreement as to what the actual problem at NASA was, yes, I'm under no illusion that if some engineer had raised these issues it would have gone well for him. This is made clear in the opening words of Feynman's analysis,:

        [...] It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the
        probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The
        estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher
        figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from
        management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of
        agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a
        Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could
        properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the
        machinery?"

I'm pointing out, not to disagree with you, but just to use your comment as a springboard, that to an outside observer this whole process led to some "moronic engineering". Engineering is the sum of the actual construction & design process and the management structure around it.

The real flaw in the report is that it didn't explore how that came to be institutional practice at NASA, Feynman is the only one who tried.

> That's really not what I read behind the lines.

Regardless of what sort of dysfunctional management practices there were at NASA they couldn't have launched the thing without their engineers. If they were truly of the opinion that shuttle reliability was 3 orders of magnitude less than what management thought, perhaps they should have refused to work on it until that death machine was grounded pending review.

Of course that wouldn't have been easy, but it's our responsibility as engineers to consider those sorts of options in the face of dysfunctional management, especially when lives are on the line.

<comment><USER6> I think the engineers (and astronauts) accepted 1 in 100 odds of failure as a price they were willing to accept to be part of the project. That is not a "death machine", just a risky and exciting one. For comparison, that risk is equivalent to working 5 years in a coal mine in the 1960's. [https://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-coal- mining...](https://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-coal-mining- deaths-in-the-us-1900-2013/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, which is fair enough, and personally I think that's fine. With odds like that you'll still get people to sign up as astronauts, and it'll be easier to advance the science. In the grand scheme of things it's silly to worry about those deaths and not say death from traffic accidents.

The real issue was that that's not how NASA presented it outwardly. I doubt that teacher that blew up with Challenger was told about her odds of surviving in those terms.

As human launch vehicles go I think the shuttle's reliability was fine. The reason I called it a death machine is that if you make a vehicle that explodes 1% of the time you better advertise that pretty thoroughly before people step on board. NASA didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tufte wrote an essay on how the data available suggested that there was a high likelihood of O-ring failure, but that the data and findings were poorly communicated. This led to the decision to launch, the subsequent failure of the O-rings and loss of life. This essay appears in the booklet "Visual and Statistical Thinking"[0], among other publications, along with an other essay on how the source of cholera was traced to contaminated drinking water in 19th century London by John Snow. He plotted cholera cases on a map, and looked at where the outbreaks were most frequent.[1] This also led to the discovery of the vector of cholera, which up until then was unknown or at least misattributed. Both are great reads.

[0]: [https://www.sfu.ca/cmns/courses/2012/801/1-Readings/Tufte%20...](https://www.sfu.ca/cmns/courses/2012/801/1-Readings/Tufte%20Visual%20and%20Statistical%20Thinking.pdf)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak#/media/File:Snow- cholera-map-1.jpg)

<comment><USER8> Some of the engineers at Thiokol whose work Tufte criticized have responded over the years. There's at least one painfully academic paper out there, although if you wanted to you could start here:

[http://www.onlineethics.org/Topics/ProfPractice/Exemplars/Be...](http://www.onlineethics.org/Topics/ProfPractice/Exemplars/BehavingWell/RB- intro/RepMisrep.aspx#misrep)

[https://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about- th...](https://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-the- challenger)

It's been longer since I read Feynman but I recall his assessment as being a lot more grounded, and fairer to the engineers.

<comment><USER5> > It's been longer since I read Feynman but I recall his assessment as being a > lot more grounded, and fairer to the engineers.

Feynman laid the vast majority of the blame on management ("NASA officials" in his Appendix F), noting that engineers had fairly realistic views of the matter (and failure rate estimates) and IIRC that they'd tried to raise concerns but those had gotten lost climbing the manglement ladder.

The one unit for which he had nothing but praise was the Software Group:

> To summarize then, the computer software checking system and attitude is of > the highest quality. There appears to be no process of gradually fooling > oneself while degrading standards so characteristic of the Solid Rocket > Booster or Space Shuttle Main Engine safety systems.

Nothing that they had to constantly resist manglement trying to mangle:

> To be sure, there have been recent suggestions by management to curtail such > elaborate and expensive tests as being unnecessary at this late date in > Shuttle history.

<comment><USER9> > Nothing that they had to constantly resist manglement trying to mangle:

Such a failure to hold up standard was the main reason for the failure of the first Ariane 5 launch. They reused some subsystems from the Ariane 4 rocket, that crashed on Ariane 5 because a numeric overflow. This happened because the much more powerful Ariane 5 came much further during the time this subsystem ran, and had a greater angle that caused the overflow to happen. This had apparently been proven could not happen in the Ariane 4 rocket.

When the subsystem and its software was decided to be used on Ariane 5, they did not even run the subsystem with the projected trajectory of the new rocket. If they had the problem would have been found prior to launch. This was luckily not a manned mission.

<comment><USER10> >When the subsystem and its software was decided to be used on Ariane 5, they did not even run the subsystem with the projected trajectory of the new rocket.

On one hand, I find that incredibly hard to believe. Yet on the other I am old enough to have seen exactly that kind of thinking often enough that I don't find it hard to believe at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My university has a course (maybe in the business or statistics departments? I'm not sure, as I didn't take it) that has a project where the professor gives this very pre-launch data to groups of students in a totally different context: It is presented as Formula One race data, and the task is for the students (the racing team) to decide whether or not to pull out of the important race based on current weather conditions and the potential safety implications for the driver.

The next class period, only after the teams propose their decided course of action, it is revealed where the data really came from. I imagine it's quite jarring, especially for those who decided to proceed, albeit with different risks in mind.

<comment><USER2> This is often taught in business schools and one case is called Carter Racing:

[http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/ma...](http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-A.pdf)

<comment><USER12> That's only the first file in the series. There are -B.pdf and -C.pdf files as well.

[http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/ma...](http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-B.pdf)

[http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/ma...](http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-C.pdf)

And here's a convenient link to all three, apparently an Apache feature I didn't know about: [http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/ma...](http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-D.pdf)

> _Multiple Choices_

> _The document name you requested ( /executive- > education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-D.pdf) could not be > found on this server. However, we found documents with names similar to the > one you requested._

> _Available documents:_

> _[http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- > education/maine-2012/ma...](http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- > education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-A.pdf) (mistyped > character)_

> _[http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- > education/maine-2012/ma...](http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- > education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-B.pdf) (mistyped > character)_

> _[http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- > education/maine-2012/ma...](http://heller.brandeis.edu/executive- > education/maine-2012/may/pdfs/BHLP-102-READING-Carter-C.pdf) (mistyped > character)_

> _Apache Server at heller.brandeis.edu Port 80_

Also, each document has the following item in the footer. I suspect that Brandeis.edu is violating their license agreement by hosting these, and also that the license agreement was designed by someone who really doesn't like the Internet or computers:

> _Not to be reproduced, modified, stored, or transmitted without prior > written permission of the copyright holder or agent._

<comment><USER13> You are correct, if you want to use this for team training - you should really buy it, it isn't expensive:

[https://www.deltaleadership.com/store/shopexd.asp?id=15](https://www.deltaleadership.com/store/shopexd.asp?id=15)

<comment><USER14> It seems like that case is missing a piece. Where is the final analysis showing the results of choosing to race or not? Are there separate instructor notes somewhere?

<comment><USER15> Having had this in Policy school (albeit a decade ago), I remember the follow- on class basically being: "So, this happened in real life. Except it wasn't racing -- it was the Challenger". (A room of 70 promptly headdesked). What jumped out in the class discussion was how focused the conversation was on economic risks and rewards (x% chance of y payoff, etc), and how "life of the driver" was basically never mentioned as one of the risks of proceeding.

Anyway, eventually you learn to play "spot the Challenger graph" from a mile away. I think it showed up 4 times in assorted courses I've taken over the years (re: Data Visualization and Organizational Design).

<comment><USER12> > how "life of the driver" was basically never mentioned as one of the risks > of proceeding.

To be fair, a failed engine rarely causes the driver to die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Richard Feynman, on NASA's attitude toward the space shuttle program: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

<comment><USER17> The gaming industry needs to understand that this applies to coding for games as well. It especially applies to multiplayer.

<comment><USER18> multiplayer? We do fool clients all the time with extrapolation, just to shave half of the latency. And when we get it wrong, we "correct" it retroactively.

<comment><USER17> The laws of nature are different in this context, but you have to follow them with the same diligence with the same harshness awaiting when you fail. In games, it's not what is logical or mathematically correct. It's what feels correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll add another recommendation for Tufte's writings on the Challenger explosion. It should be required reading for all engineers. People who criticize Tufte for oversimplifying miss the point entirely. It's not about analysis, it's about communication. It's one thing for domain specialist to have a complex, multi-dimensional understanding of their specialty; extracting a relevant summary for non-experts is something else entirely. If you've ever been in a meeting where you had trouble getting your point across, you should read this. Make diagrams like Tufte does to get your point across, make more detailed ones as backups if you need to dive deep into details.

[http://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/tufte- cha...](http://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/tufte- challenger-1997.pdf)

<comment><USER20> I think there is a tendancy to trivialise the difficulty of communication on large projects. I have had people tell me that "it is not rocket science". Well actually, maybe it is much harder than that. A small team can design a rocket engine. Getting a small team of managers to know all the right facts is very hard and on many projects seemingly impossible. And that is on projects where you can have very large margins of error. Obviously that is not always possible building things with strict mass limits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's an interesting example where just because something is done by the "public" doesn't make it safer than done privately.

Everyone knows about regulatory capture (when companies manage their safety regulators). Normally it's private organizations pushing public safety regulators.

Here, on the other hand, it was a public organization that took risks.

The reason is simple. Every organization has certain needs. Boeing needs to make planes (make $), Ford needs to make cars (make $), etc. Safety is an annoying thing they need to get over with ASAP to get to their primary purpose (make $).

Nasa needed to launch, and (at least for the managers) it became an acceptable risk. If it flies 20 times and blows once, they win.

So should there be a NASA and a NASAOC (NASA oversight committee, to check on them)?

Then the organization on top of both (Congress, the President) will choose which one to listen.

This is the general problem of self-policing.

And the only way to get around this is by having multiple, independent, providers. So if NASA doesn't think SpaceX is safe enough, they can shut down the contract while still having access to space.

If Nasa had that in 1986, the Shuttle would have been (rightfully) decommissioned then and there. Unfortunately, it required _another_ accident before anything moved.

And the lesson can be learned to matters outside space.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was only 5 when this happened, but I remember what a blow this was to my school. Were past missions, like the Apollo's, dismissive of concerns like this as well and just lucky? Or was the shuttle missions just more complex, with more points of failure to be concerned about?

<comment><USER23> My understanding is that the attitude of NASA management changed from the Apollo era's "Prove to me we are good to go." to one of "Prove to me we can't go." Some might put it: Gene Kranz retired.

Source: Anecdotes from an old friend who is a quality assurance engineer. He was one of the boys on the ground in Huston that brought the Apollo 13 crew home.

<comment><USER24> Another comment on this thread linked to a paper[1] that tells a narrative that the "Prove to me we can't go" was specific to this launch (specifically it claims that since NASA didn't want to ground all shuttles for 2 years, they instead accepted the recommendation that no launches be made outside of the environmental envelope of previous launches, but then this decision was reversed specifically for Challenger).

Not in the paper, but from my own memory, the launch was high profile due to the first civilian on a NASA mission and was repeatedly delayed by the time they launched. In fact my family had tickets to the launch, and we ended up getting various tours of the space center instead since they kept on delaying.

[edit]

Also, my understanding is that Kranz's hard-line began after the Apollo 1 tragedy. Was your friend there early enough to comment on that?

1: [https://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf](https://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Of course if politics hadn't caused parts of the shuttle to be built far away from the launch pad, they wouldn't have needed O-rings in the first place

<comment><USER26> Yes, it is well known that American engineers do not use O-rings.

In fact, Americans could have built the entire shuttle without using any parts at all.

<comment><USER27> The Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters were mainly built in Utah, and many people assert that this choice of location was due to political patronage. The fact that these boosters were built inland, far from barge-capable waterways and distant from the launch site, meant that, rather than being completed as a single large piece at the factory, it arrived at the Kennedy Space Center as four pieces, which were then joined together with the O-rings in question. This made them vulnerable to a blowout of the kind experienced with Challenger; solid rocket boosters made in a single piece are generally much less vulnerable to this kind of failure.

<comment><USER26> Fair enough, I don't know what I'm talking about. Thanks for explaining.

(I thought OP meant no O-rings would've been used in the entire shuttle, not just these particular ones.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just so we on the same page - if you read enough about this sad story, you know damn well it wasn't an explosion or the faulty/frozen O-ring that killed those brave souls - it was a horrible amount of bureaucracy and ignorance towards engineers, who rang warning bells long before Challenger's liftoff.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is why I always have my visualizations overlay both failure rates and usage.

A given failure rate (or even worse, a failure count) doesn't tell you much about the system without also including the totals of both success and failure.

I'm sure I could be more rigorous with this though. Is there a way to express a given failure rate in terms of certainty? As in, we have sampled the failure rate of a component with fixed parameters a, b, c, and we are x% certain of the failure rate? (Maybe I'm wording this wrong - I don't have much of a stats background).

<comment><USER30> > This is why I always have my visualizations overlay both failure rates and > usage.

Do you have an example? I love having more viz tools in my toolbox!

<comment><USER29> Sorry for the late reply - where I work we use an in-house platform that uses Kendo for rendering charts.

[http://demos.telerik.com/kendo-ui/bar- charts/column](http://demos.telerik.com/kendo-ui/bar-charts/column)

What I do isn't anything particularly sophisticated, I usually do a multi-axis chart with a line & column chart, with one axis corresponding to usage, and the other axis corresponding to failure rate. Imagine a basic multi-axis chart in Excel, except rendered in a browser, and you're 90% of the way there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Am I reading this wrong or did they launch the thing at a temperature way outside the range where they normally launch shuttles?

Wouldn't there be a whole bunch of different stats measured, which would all say that you should be cautious when trying a region far away from what you know?

In any case, a very good example of how stats is unintuitive. I hadn't guessed about the missing "no error" data until I read it. I'm sure there's many more little things like that. Simpson's paradox, those kinds of things.

<comment><USER5> > Am I reading this wrong or did they launch the thing at a temperature way > outside the range where they normally launch shuttles?

No, that's correct, the launch was the coldest yet and reached temperatures at which the O-rings had lost their flexibility and couldn't spring back fast enough to seal. In fact an iconic scene from the Challenger hearings was Feynman showing (on TV!) the loss of ductility after having dunked an O-ring in ice-water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember that day vividly, I was in jr. high school. It's hard to describe how traumatic it was; the school teacher on board made it ten times worse. I would compare it to 9/11 for those that aren't old enough to remember.

As we learned later about the rubber o-rings failing in cold weather, the solution has always been framed as not launching in those conditions.

But, why not use a different material, or design away the o-rings to avoid the problem in the first place?

Edit: question is already answered here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13239241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13239241)

<comment><USER33> >I remember that day vividly, I was in jr. high school. It's hard to describe how traumatic it was; the school teacher on board made it ten times worse. I would compare it to 9/11 for those that aren't old enough to remember.

It's interesting (albeit depressing) to think about how every generation in the television (and now internet) age seems to have at least one of these events that occurs right on the border of adulthood; when you've become old enough to have a sense of the world and the personal impact of the event kind of jolts you into reality, so to speak. For my dad it was JFK's assassination and for me it was 9/11.

It's also notable that when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry in 2003 the media and public at large didn't seem to pay it much attention at all (or at least I don't remember it being such a big deal).

<comment><USER21> >It's also notable that when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry in 2003 the media and public at large didn't seem to pay it much attention at all (or at least I don't remember it being such a big deal).

Probably because it wasn't broadcast live.

<comment><USER34> It certainly was broadcast live -- every major TV news organization in the US broadcast the re-entry. Of course Columbia was very high altitude when it broke apart and the cameras (fortunately in my opinion) couldn't get very close-in shots.

There's a point to be made that people were more prepared for a possible disaster given the reports of damage to the shuttle that the crew provided days ahead, compared to the absolute surprise and shock at Challenger, and the horrifyingly clear camera footage provided at a lower altitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The Challenger explosion is a great case study. But in focusing on that chart from the Rogers Commission report, this piece reinforces what is basically a well-told fable about the Challenger disaster.

The piece says: "Below is the key graph of the O-ring test data that NASA analyzed before launch" and reproduces the famous chart. It continues, "NASA management used the data behind this first graph (among many other pieces of information) to justify their view the night before launch that there was no temperature effect on O-ring performance [...] But NASA management made one catastrophic mistake: this was not that chart they should have been looking at."

I think these statements are pretty misleading without some major caveats.

Tufte ("Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions"; [https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward- Tuf...](https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward-Tufte-Visual- and-Statistical-Thinking.pdf)) writes:

"Most accounts of the Challenger reproduce a scatterplot that apparently demonstrates the analytical failure of the pre-launch debate. The graph depicts only launches with O-ring damage and their temperatures, omitting all damage-free launches (an absence of data points on the line of zero incidents of damage). First published in the shuttle commission report (PCSSCA, volume 1, 146), the chart is a favorite of statistics teachers. [...] The graph of the missing data-points is a vivid and poignant object lesson in how not to look at data when making an important decision. But it is too good to be true! First, the graph was _not_ part of the pre-launch debate; it was _not_ among the 13 charts used by Thiokol and NASA in deciding to launch. Rather, it was drawn _after_ the accident by two staff members (the executive director and a lawyer) at the commission _as their simulation_ of the poor reasoning in the pre-launch debate. Second, the graph implies that the pre-launch analysis examined 7 launches at 7 temperatures with 7 damage measurements. That is not true; only 2 cases of blow-by and 2 temperatures were linked up. The actual pre-launch analysis was much thinner than indicated by the commission scatterplot. Third, the damage scale is dequantified, only counting the number of incidents rather than measuring their severity. In short, whether for teaching statistics or for seeking to understand the practice of data graphics, why use an inaccurately simulated post-launch chart when we have the genuine 13 pre-launch decision charts right in hand?"

(For a response to Tufte's essay, see [https://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf](https://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf), also cited elsewhere here.)

<comment><USER24> That Robinson paper is amazing, and I hadn't seen it before.

TL;DR:

The engineers said "Make these two fixes" and got 1.

The engineers said "Don't launch until the O-rings are redesigned" and were informed that 2 years of no-launch was unacceptible

The engineers said "Okay then, at least don't launch with an O-ring colder than any previous launch[1]" and this was accepted until a high-profile launch was repeatedly delayed.

Finally they were told "We will launch unless you can prove to us it's not flight ready" and due to natural uncertainties and a small number of data points they could not meet this burden of proof.

1: Well actually they weren't focused just on temperature, so it was really more of "outside of the envelop of previous launches"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The Challenger explosion is one of my first vivid memories from my childhood as my mom was letting me watch the launch on TV as a 3 year old. I also had an understanding of death at the time as I asked my mom if they were in heaven (which was as advanced as my understanding was at the time). This is a fascinating read 30 years later.

</comment><comment><USER37> The full data chart reminders me of Abraham Wald asking the question "where do we never see damage on a returning plane?" to understand that those areas meant complete loss of the aircraft and would most benefit from more armor.

</comment><comment><USER38> Institutional failure: don't forget the second shuttle disaster on reentry (Columbia) with the known issues with tiles getting knocked off by foam. Badly engineered contraption.</comment>


Ask HN: Where should a UK carbon impact investment be getting the word out? - <AUTHOR> (Sorry if this is treading on YC's toes: do zap this post if out of order!)
We're a start-up in the UK aiming to lop several percent off Europe's carbon footprint (at low cost) by making domestic space heating work better before building fabric improvements.  We have product, and we are selling it.
We have a crowd-fund in progress, see examples below of promotion in social media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyRadbot/status/1199374186008985602 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/vestemi/
The longer-term question is though, WHERE should we as an impact / climate / fuel-poverty investment (with that wired into our company objects) be getting ourselves heard?  Though we are using IoT and AI, we aren't a typical solution in search of a problem, so I think that with just specialist tech and general social media channels, were missing a trick and people who'd want to engage with our sort of activities and goals.
Advice please!
What don't I know that I don't know? <comment><USER2> Post like this are fine (unless you repost and repost and repost it). But I think a post with more technical information may get more traction here.

How does the sensor work? Can you give more info?

Does it detect movement? Is it confused by movement in the street that is visible though a window? Is it confused by a dog? What if I'm sitting in a big sofa that hides me from the sensor? Does it work when I'm sleeping?

Does it detect heat? Is it confused by sunlight? A fireplace?

Does it detect sound? Is it confused by a TV?

Does it detect phones? What about children?

There are like a million of technical problem that can be a nice subject of a technical blog post. (Include some photos and graphics.) Even the failed approach can make nice blog post.

One problem with heat is that you need some time to reach a nice room temperature (it's not like light that can change instantly). How do you solve that? Let's say the kitchen when it is not cooking time, can I have a setup to have a intermediate temperature there?

What about the bill reduction angle? This is a subject where money and environment go in the same direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cannot think how I missed your reply! Thanks and sorry!

Occupancy sensing is primarily but not only by light. Movement sensing is not used, in part because it would likely not work well from the common low-to- floor positioning of radiator valves, often obstructed by furniture. Sound is not currently used.

You can get a good idea of the tech underpinnings at the open-source site, though there is significant secret sauce on top for the commercial product:

[https://github.com/opentrv/](https://github.com/opentrv/)

Radbot effectively contains an internal physics model to work out what is going on further into to room. A simple low-pass filter that can be engaged when needed is a big part of that in practice!

Our driving goal is cutting carbon emissions, which goes hand-in-glove with reduction in energy use and also bills. The target for this product is 30% reduction in space heat demand, carbon and £££s.</comment></comment>


Fake audiophile opamps: OPA627 (AD744?) - <AUTHOR> http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/OPA627-AD744-real-vs-fake-china-ebay <comment><USER2> Counterfeiting of chips is such a big problem that the US DARPA has a major program to develop tiny cryptographic chips that can be embedded inside chip packages to prove their authenticity. It's called the SHIELD program (solicitation number DARPA-BAA-14-16 if you want to ask for money).

<comment><USER3> I'm not an EE, but I imagine that a much better solution would be a universal device where you can connect a chip and run a publicly available test suite against the chip to confirm that is performs as expected.

Like @wyager, I'm extremely skeptical of a program like SHIELD.

<comment><USER2> They think that the embedded chip (which they call a dielet), which responds to a crytographic challenge from a handheld device on an assembly line, can avoid testing, which is much more time consuming and complicated. To test, you need to connect the device's pins to something and power it on. These devices are for military systems: you'll need to test lifespan and performance under a variety of environmental conditions. I don't know if the dielet idea will work out, but it's specifically to verify authenticity without having to test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone point out where are the laser trimmed resistors in the photos, and maybe explain some more of the components?

<comment><USER5> If you're interested in this sort of thing, there is a great class at RPI which has its lecture slides available:

[http://security.cs.rpi.edu/courses/hwre- spring2014/](http://security.cs.rpi.edu/courses/hwre-spring2014/)

The slides for lecture 4 ([http://security.cs.rpi.edu/courses/hwre- spring2014/Lecture4_...](http://security.cs.rpi.edu/courses/hwre- spring2014/Lecture4_Layout.pdf)) shows what various types of components (such as laser-trimmed resistors) look like on a die.

<comment><USER4> I am and this looks awesome. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you can't tell the difference without dissolving the chip in acid... perhaps then there is no difference?

<comment><USER7> The interesting thing here is that the part has been substituted with another part that's comparable in quality and only slightly less expensive. The margins for counterfeiting this part can't have been very good.

It's pretty common to counterfeit electronic parts. I've come across counterfeit op-amps, exotic transistors, power transistors, ordinary transistors, capacitors, and even fake resistors which is amazing. It always just makes me wonder what is wrong, collectively and institutionally, with China? Making counterfeit goods of all kinds is apparently a common line of business in China. Is it just because _everything_ is made there so counterfeiting has proportionately shifted there as well?

<comment><USER8> Fake resistors? How is one supposed to fake a resistor? There are no manufacturer markings on them, just (easily testable) resistance/precision indicators...

<comment><USER9> Resistor is more than resistance. There is also other characteristics like power capacity, accuracy, tolerance, frequency responses, temperature coefficient etc.

The cheaper resistors are typically very loose for most of these characteristics. A tight characteristics means a high level of quality control at manufacturing, and this is usually lacking for the fakes.

For Op-Amps, the interesting spec is their frequency response as the op amps are not typically used in DC situations.

<comment><USER10> Especially if you get a batch that was manufactured in the original factory, and the faulty one put on the grey market. Indistinguishable product, but guaranteed and tested to be out of spec (might be a important parameter, or not).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Best to only buy from TI franchised suppliers. Can't find any that go down to $16 though

[http://octopart.com/opa627au- texas+instruments-420817](http://octopart.com/opa627au- texas+instruments-420817)

</comment><comment><USER12> "Hey! This is lizard oil, not snake oil!"

</comment><comment><USER13> til; that resistors are trimmed with lasers [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_trimming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_trimming)

<comment><USER14> They also may use lasers to trim and tune the mostly-crystal oscillators used in timing circuits, such as the small quartz "tuning fork" found in many digital watches.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inside_QuartzCrystal- Tunin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inside_QuartzCrystal- Tuningfork.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment> Johan-bjareholt I have previously bought two of these chips and they sound pretty good, sad that they are fake though.

Will buy the genuine one for comparison, will see if I can hear any sound quality difference

</comment><comment><USER15> How do they get such high resolution? An electron microscope or something? Such a cool blog, I've seen it featured on HaD a few times.

<comment><USER16> Analog circuits are fairly big, this is taken with a regular microscope. You can see that the chip is a few millimeters square.

Besides, electron microscope pictures are monochromatic.</comment></comment>


Two Dope Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.twodopehackers.com/

<comment><USER2> It's like staring in to eternity and having eternity stare back in to my soul. It's... beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this site intentionally horrible?

<comment><USER4> Seriously, I have no idea what's going on here.

<comment><USER5> Looks like they are looking for ideas and polish to get paid.

#AlwaysBeLearning

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, thanks for looking! Everyone's commenting on the design being bad but the site is best viewed in Netscape 3, FYI.

In all seriousness, we thought this would be a fun way to find opportunities. Hope you guys share our sense of humor!

</comment><comment><USER6> They could've pulled it off but the Netscape 3.0 button was just a step too far.

</comment><comment><USER7> What?! No view counter? Come on guys, you're slackin'!

</comment><comment><USER8> hahaha!! site created with notepad... :D

I feel young looking at this site... Netscape... wow!</comment>


Ask HN: Debitize is shutting down, any alternatives? - <AUTHOR> Woke up to a copy of the below email. I'm disappointed. The service let me treat a credit card like a debit card and automatically pay off the credit card each week.
Any alternative solutions to keep the same basic idea?
I am writing to let you know that Debitize has been acquired by Trim (www.asktrim.com). Debitize will be wound down and will not make any new withdrawals. All payments to your cards should be completed in the next week.
This is incredibly bittersweet for us and I know many of you will be very disappointed with this news. Along with the rest of the Debitize team, I have spent years building out this product and have been inspired by some of the messages we have received from you and some of the results you've shared with us. While we remain dedicated to improving financial health, it has become clear to us that our business model is not sustainable on its own. Although this is the end of the Debitize story, your financial journey doesn't end here. Trim is here to (edit not be debitize) ...
We have listed below important information on what will happen next with your accounts.
Important Dates Starting today, 4/6: There will be no new withdrawals from your checking account to Debitize Wednesday 4/10: Last day of automatic bill scheduling Sunday 4/14: Any remaining funds in your Debitize account will be transferred back to your checking account (IMPORTANT – Please do not unlink your checking account until we transfer all your money back to you) Saturday, 4/27: All bank and credit card accounts will be unlinked if you have not already done so Sunday 5/26: App and website will be disabled.
How to Close Your Debitize Account
If you have money in your Debitize account, please make sure your checking account is still linked. Funds will be transferred back automatically.
Otherwise, there is no need to do anything. Debitize will automatically unlink your banks and close your accounts within 3 weeks... <comment><USER2> I've worked in credit cards and this business model (like most fintechs) isn't sustainable. There's just a fraction to be earned on transaction fees so not surprised it's being bought out. I'd say for many alternatives, they will eventually follow the same route.

</comment><comment><USER3> All, check out SteadiPay in apps. It looks almost identical to Debitize. Not sure if it's on Android but there an iPhone app. I haven't tried it yet. I'll set it up once I phase out Debitize.

</comment><comment><USER4> Before I found Debitize, I was doing it manually with my Delta Amex Plat. I go to my transactions and am presented with the option to pay each transaction. It's pretty great. But since it's not my main CC, I would love an alternative too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apparently there was Debx which Debitize bought in September which in business terms seems to be a 'if I'm going out I'm taking you with me' scenario.

There's this Tally service but apparently it is just an abstraction line of credit between your bank and your credit card. Doesn't auto pay the card.

I may just have to manually pay off that card then close it out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm so bummed this service is no longer available. It was so nice to have the money withdrawn for purchases, held in a reserve and then paid. I would've paid a monthly fee for it! I'm also on the hunt for a substitution but nothing so far...</comment>


SalesCrunch: Pissing Us Off Isn't Much Of A PR Or Marketing Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/12/salescrunch-maybe-your-pr-strategy-should-be-mor-just-be-pissing-us-off/ <comment><USER2> This is a prime example of what most content on TC has been, lately. I've been sensing a decline in the quality of content on that site, lately.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really pathetic that MA and TC think they own "Crunch" like Facebook owning "face" and "book" and MSFT owning "Access" "Word" "Outlook" "Publisher" etc.

I like the comment that points out Nestle beat TC to crunch.</comment>


Show HN: An interactive visualization of Switzerland's public transport network - <AUTHOR> https://tempusfugit.ch <comment><USER2> Really nice visualisation!

</comment><comment><USER3> dead

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this constructive comment. The visualization is using deck.gl which requires WebGL. I'm working on a fallback message but for now it won't show any data if your browser doesn't support WebGL.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your startup struggle and how did you overcome? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The whole thing is a struggle. Building a product, revenue, marketing, investors. Being stuck in a shitty situation, with no money, no food, no clear way out, only choosing between one risk or another.

It's no surprise the topic makes for good HBO drama.

There's no shortcut. Just stay calm in the chaos. Focus on one thing after another, especially when it's tempting to do many things. Don't outsource core stuff early on; it's tempting when time is always short, but it often makes things worse.

Be honest, completely, brutally honest to yourself. Startups are the last place to lie to yourself. You don't have 'hope', you have plans and hypotheses.

Startups are this long march. You either die or you make it rich. If you can simply avoid dying, you will be rich.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely getting the first few paying customers. Luckily I have a vast network of potential users from previous jobs, but asking them to pay feels weird when it's an MVP (mostly).</comment>


Graphene Gives You Infrared Vision in a Contact Lens (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/optoelectronics/graphene-gives-you-infrared-vision-in-a-contact-lens <comment><USER2> Should have 2014 in the title.

They demonstrated a technology the size of a contact lense, but did not make a functioning prototype that resides on an eye.

Still a neat approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> Terrible, horrible click-bait title.

Lenses. do. not. work. this. way.

You can't coat a contact lens with a magical coating that expands your ability to see.

This particular technology allows you to build infrared light detectors, as in photo cells or pixel arrays. You can make them as thin as you want -- they're going to do fuck all on a contact lens.

This whole article should die in a fire.

<comment><USER4> Technically you could cover your eyes with an anisotropic photon up/downconversion material and "see" infrared/ultraviolet. But yes, clickbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just make them regular glasses instead. It's probably why we Haven't heard of it in 2016

</comment><comment><USER6> The comments section for this article hilariously has someone correcting the author's grammar only to be corrected by the author in a subcomment.</comment>


Visualizing Music with SDL and Perl - <AUTHOR> http://www.perl.com/pub/2011/01/visualizing-music-with-sdl-and-perl.html

<comment><USER2> Been a while since I've seen SDL mentioned... got me started on my first C++ video game. I didn't understand casting at that point, so the code was an unholy spaghetti horror, but SDL sure didn't get in the way.</comment>


What I learned recording an album on my own, in my room - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/what-i-learned-recording-an-alternative-album-on-my-own-in-my-room-c440b8201c9 <comment><USER2> Really nice details. Actionable.</comment>


(First Release) PyO3:  a Python-Rust Binding Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PyO3/pyo3 <comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks to Nikolay for authoring it!</comment>


Google rolls out "If This Then That" support for its $200 OnHub router - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/googles-onhub-router-finally-gets-some-smart-home-features-via-ifttt/ <comment><USER3> OnHub is one of the best routers I've ever owned. I've been buying custom router hardware for years -- I even went as far as building my own OpenBSD / PFsense router way back when, but nothing I've ever built (or bought!) has given me the same reliability / stability / speed as the OnHub.

I'm seriously impressed with it.

Also: the OnHub management app for mobile is AMAZING. It is so cool.

Awesome product. Really great to see them put more effort into it and support integrations with IFTTT :D

<comment><USER4> Curious: what do you do with the management app?

I have an Apple Airport thing and had a similar experience - years of buying cheap routers then suddenly I had one that "just works". To the point that I haven't had to open/use the administration panel in an absolute age.

<comment><USER5> The app also gives you insights into what's happening with your OnHub -- per device traffic sums, speed tests, alerts, etc.

And we're constantly improving it.

IMHO that's the real win with the OnHub; the router itself is constantly upgraded with up to date firmware with security updates and new features. And the mobile app that administrates it is constantly getting new features.

Maybe I should transfer to marketing.

<comment><USER6> Honestly Google's rep for discontinuing support for stuff is why I'm not interested in such a connected device. Will it continue getting updates after Google drops it in 0-5 years? Who knows. Will the open-source community be able to put OpenWRT on it or something to give it life after it can no longer receive firmware updates? Not sure.

I do know that my current Ubiquiti and Apple network infrastructure devices will still work if I plug them in in 10 years. I can't say the same for this. $200 seems reasonable for what it does, but less so if it's knocked down to dumb router mode if Google pulls the plug some day.

<comment><USER4> What reassurance does Apple give that Google do not?

<comment><USER7> I have an OnHub, but even then I'm a little wary of Google's track record when it comes to "sunsetting" products.

There is no explicit foolproof assurance from either Apple or Google, but in Apple's case they haven't been known for introducing products and then dropping all support for it when it fails to live up to sales/strategic expectations.

In fact Apple's modern track record is pretty impressive - the latest iOS runs on a phone introduced in 2011.

Google's "throw everything at the wall and keep the stuff that sticks" approach is IMO one that only makes sense when you discount brand value completely and assume nobody will remember the stuff that didn't stick, and their unceremonial shutdowns. It's a theoretically appealing approach but IMO impractical because people remember.

Even when Google compensates people for the shutdowns - see the Nexus Q - <USER2> still leaves a bad taste, and makes people wonder if they're buying a real honest product in a particular space or an experiment to be cut lose at a moment's notice.

<comment><USER8> Wow, what kind of bias would lead this comment to be downvoted into grayness?

<comment><USER9> A positive bias towards anything coming from Google. Just look at the number of Google employees on this thread...

The "let's see what sticks" approach might work well for software, especially the Google kind: ad-supported "free" cloud-based software services. Complaints trigger the knee-jerk reaction of "you never paid." It doesn't work for hardware, and I don't know why Google would risk its reputation for what must barely move the needle on their income statements.

Apple's approach of providing SDKs that work with their existing devices, thereby testing the waters and seeing what products get built, what consumers like, etc. before entering it themselves seems like a much more sensible move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Until they discontinue support and turn the service off in a 18 months. It's hard to put any faith in google products anymore, especially with the new alphabet revenue strategy put into place.

<comment><USER11> _The opinions stated here are my own, not necessarily those of Google._

If you are referring to Revolv, Nest/Revolv stopped selling the device the day Nest acquired them (Oct 2014), and they are also issuing refunds to anyone that contacts them[0]. The other major hardware cancel I know about was the Nexus Q which Google also provided a full refund for anyone that contacts them.

Sure, Google could cancel it, but they seem to only do that with something if it was a total flop, and they then do what they can to fully refund whoever was effected.

[http://revolv.com/](http://revolv.com/)

<comment><USER12> I think the problem is more that many people feel that Google doesn't care about their customers, for a variety of reasons that I'm sure you can imagine.

That's an image thing, and I'm sure you can come up with all kinds of historical facts on why that image is not right, or not right anymore, but that hardly helps fix the image.

I think that if Google really wanted to fix that image, they could do revolutionary stuff like promise long term support, or publish a phone number.

EDIT! westernmostcoy pointed out that actually they do, clearly, publish a phone number, which is pretty decent of them. I got the HN points anyway so it's too late now, but still, good to see! Maybe I should read a site before I criticize it.

<comment><USER13> This line of conversation is an easy way to get points on HN, but if you actually looked for a phone number for OnHub support you'd find one quite easily. Here it is in two locations:

Bottom right: [https://on.google.com/hub/support/#ready](https://on.google.com/hub/support/#ready) "Contact Us" on: [https://support.google.com/onhub#topic=6243113](https://support.google.com/onhub#topic=6243113)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> some-guy I tried OnHub, but unfortunately it didn't have the option to force 5Ghz over 2.4Ghz for devices without going through some hacks. Where I live, 2.4Ghz wireless has 10% packet loss on average, no matter which router I use.

I'm happy that routers are finally getting the UX treatment they deserve, and their target market isn't for people who know the difference between the two, but OnHub should keep the nitty-gritty details accessible to power users if they so wish. I eventually had to return the router and go back to forcing 5Ghz on my old one.

<comment><USER14> An AP cannot prioritize 5 GHz over 2 GHz. It's up to the client to decide what to connect to.

<comment><USER15> Not true at all. The AP can reply to 2.4GHz requests with a delay so that the device gets connected to the 5GHz network first. If the AP is really sure, it can also send a force disconnect. That's how most roaming is implemented these days.

We have a version of hostapd that will do this for you: [https://gfiber.googlesource.com/vendor/opensource/hostap/](https://gfiber.googlesource.com/vendor/opensource/hostap/)

We call it "bandsteering".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just wish more of these companies would add support for a locally runnable IFTTT equivalent, or at least something like MQTT support so you can bake your own.

<comment><USER17> Yeah - I bought some belkin wemo devices, thinking that I could use their "smart" light switch to control an outlet on the other side of the room which it wasn't wired for.

It ended up working, but because the comms had to go through IFTTT servers, the lag was something like 10-15 seconds, which is awful when you want to just turn on a light.

<comment><USER18> The Wemo mobile app works on the local network and doesn't require IFTTT (?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The gratuitous negativity of this article is entirely uncalled for.

I would _much_ rather that a device integrate with IFTTT and thus gain connectivity with the hundreds of services which IFTTT supports than for it to attempt to hand-roll integrations with a much smaller subset of services.

In case anyone disputes my claim of gratuitous negativity:

> Some smart home features finally come to OnHub, but using a non-Google > ecosystem.

> Its only real differentiators were the funky design, easy setup, and the > promise of future updates.

> Now with the IFTTT update, the OnHub finally supports some smart home > features—but it's using someone else's ecosystem.

> IFTTT is now the gateway for controlling other things in your house via the > OnHub rather than using some kind of Google communication standard like we > expected.

> This is all still happening over Wi-Fi, too, so the OnHub is still not using > any of the smart-home antennas it shipped with.

<comment><USER20> It's negativity, but I'm not convinced on the "gratuitous". They clearly mention the (IMHO reasonable) expectations compared to which this is negative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cannot understand why anyone would buy hardware from Google. Chromecast for $35 a pop is as much as I'd be willing to pay from something that they could arbitrarily shut down.

<comment><USER21> Im curious how you think they'll shut your router off?

Certainly, they could turn cloud based features such as this off, but the router itself?

<comment><USER22> What would stop them?

EDIT: @sohailk, think you're missing the point, which is not if it's logical, but what literally would stop them from doing this?

(Hardware, legal, etc.)

<comment><USER23> common sense? locking down unnecessary software features is bad but not gamebreaking. locking down hardware would just be crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Shucks. I just bought eero over OnHub because the former seems to answer the multi- floor wireless solution than OnHub.

I'm in a 4-story town home with PoE between floors, which works great, but Apple's AirPort Extreme + Express CONSISTENTLY stops resolving DNS while the wired connections are fine.

Looks like I have another alternative if eero doesn't work...

</comment><comment><USER25> The remote update "feature" means this has a built-in backdoor into your local network. So you don't want to install this in a law office, anywhere that has to be HIPAA compliant, or any environment requiring security.

<comment><USER26> Why would you put this in a business? I suppose the same argument holds for space stations prisons but we haven't brought that up.

The lack of remote updates for any router probably also means that it has a back door. There's a pretty extensive list of home router vulns out there already.

Being HIPAA compliant is not generally an indication of a well secured network.

<comment><USER27> You might run a home business

<comment><USER26> A home business that his HIPAA compliant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does IFTTT make money? I can't figure it out.

<comment><USER29> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378278)

<comment><USER30> I read quite a bit of that and I'm not sure where it mentioned their revenue source.

I did see some mention of funding, and of very small fees (relative to operating a company) for having your integration on their platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This relies on an internet connection, right?

So many of these sorts of products do, and it is infuriating. It makes them utterly inapplicable for many environments. I'm building a home in a school bus. There will most certainly be times when I don't have a good (or any) internet connection, but I still want local and customizable automation.

My plan is to just roll my own with Raspberry PIs.

<comment><USER32> I'm willing to bet that you represent a very small segment of the population and are thus not a target for this product.

A product can't do everything and be the solution for everyone, each product has a target market and since you're in a niche, most products won't solve your problems.

<comment><USER33> Seriously... It's a _router_. Most people buy it so that they can get wireless _internet._ Needing to be connected to the internet for extra functionality isn't that odd in this case.

I'd be willing to wager that 98% of people who own one of these have a persistent internet connection.

If you live in a school bus, yeah, you're gonna have to make some compromises or roll your own sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Every time I read a story about IFTTT support, I want to shout "Please look at Zapier, it's so much better!"

Really, it's so much better.

Zapier = AWS Lambda with hundreds of pre-built integrations, webhooks for the rest, multi-step jobs, arbitrary code execution (JS and Python) ... all in a UI with monitoring that makes all the trouble go away.

<comment><USER35> Perhaps it is better, but it is very expensive if you want more than 5 zaps or 100 tasks/month.

Right now, I have 25 recipes on IFTTT, if I would have the same number on Zapier I would have to pay $49/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Went in to look for a recipe and didn't find it: I want to be notified when any new device connects to my network.

It seems pretty obvious to me and more useful than most recipes I've seen there.

</comment><comment><USER37> It was super annoying to set up the OnHub. Instead of a standard web interface, they require installation of a mobile app.

<comment><USER38> I'd take that any day over the insecure, circa 1999 web UI on my Asus router.

<comment><USER39> There are many cases where native has advantages over web applications. Router config UI is about as far from that as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There's also a contest going on to win one, if you can think of a creative way to use the new IFTTT integration.

[http://blog.ifttt.com/post/143084444158/onhub-on- ifttt](http://blog.ifttt.com/post/143084444158/onhub-on-ifttt)

</comment><comment><USER41> This is also of note today too: [http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/29/11535232/microsoft-flow- if...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/29/11535232/microsoft-flow-ifttt- competitor)

</comment><comment><USER42> Is there a beginner guide for modern, home-use or pro-sumer quality, networking hardware in general, or device specific purchase recommendations for otherwise technically savvy people? Could someone please share a link? I've only ever used the hardware that comes for free with the contract from my cable operator, and I guess it works most of the time... but recently blind spots and and slow-speed-spots have been a nuisance.

</comment><comment><USER43> Rules that depend on the number of devices connected to a router? Doesn't seem like a very reliable concept.

</comment><comment><USER44> Where would "If This Then That" be if not without "Put That There"? [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyBEUyEtxQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyBEUyEtxQo)

</comment><comment><USER45> > To create Recipes for things you would like to happen automatically, just > register and login at IFTTT.com (it's free) and connect to the OnHub > channel. Then start cooking up the Recipes that serve you best. Because > OnHub on IFTTT works with so many products and services, there are lots of > options for Recipes you can create.

And why this needs to be cloud service? Instead of locally running demon on a raspberry pi?

<comment><USER46> Maybe to make it more accessible to normal people?

<comment><USER47> I know a dozens of normal people who need a router but no non-tech oriented person who knows, cares about or would find utility in IFTTT.

Even if this was the case, a solution for normal people doesn't necessarily mean cloud based.</comment></comment></comment>


The ACLU's Longstanding Commitment to Defending Speech We Hate - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/aclus-longstanding-commitment-defending-speech-we-hate <comment><USER2> > The guidelines do not suggest that the ACLU should not represent a speaker > because his speech causes harm. Rather, they "attempt to identify the kinds > of questions that ought to be considered, the processes for their > consideration, and the measures that can help mitigate the harms to > competing interests."

In other words, it does exactly that, but buried under a mountain of weasel words.

Direct link to the leaked document in question:

[http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621ACL...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621ACLU.pdf)

Even taken at face value, it states that the "harmful impact" of speech in a given case should be a factor weighing against the ACLU choosing that case to defend – just not "dispositive". By itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, it's a description of how the ACLU has presumably always operated to some extent. It would be unrealistic to expect them or anyone else to be completely blind to ideology; that's just not human nature.

But considering the context of when and why that document was promulgated, combined with the wordy and defensive feel of its writing, it's hard to escape the conclusion that someone is trying to have their cake and eat it too. It's a change under the guise of a clarification. They'll still defend speech they hate… just a bit less often. And personally, I might even approve of that change; it's not like white supremacists' speech is especially vulnerable to government suppression at the moment (quite the opposite). But the blog post's energetic rebuttal of the idea that the document could possibly be trying to change anything just feels, well, dishonest.</comment>


Judge Says Search Warrants for E-mails Must Be 'Limited' - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/judge-says-search-warrants-for-e-mails-must-be-limited/

<comment><USER2> A decision going straight to the end of the 4th Amendment: " _... and no Warrants shall issue [without] particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized._ "

</comment><comment><USER3> This amused me:

"That is to say, use data-mining techniques to not rummage through everything."

Data mining basically /is/ rummaging through everything.

<comment><USER4> Well, the idea is that the computer would do the rummaging and the human viewers would only see the things of relevance.

It's debatable, I guess, if there is any constitutional violation if a machine performs an unauthorized yet unbiased search of your property. But I think most could agree it's better than a human doing it all themselves.

<comment><USER5> Do you accept that a robot performs a search of your house without a warrant because a robot is "unbiased" ?

<comment><USER6> No, the point is that the judge determines the precise programming of the robot, and requires that it be programmed to only retrieve certain types of things (e-mails containing certain keywords, in this case).

<comment><USER5> Do you trust a program to have no bugs ;-)

<comment><USER6> Never :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" He suggested that the search order be limited to certain keywords or that an independent vendor be asked to automate the process of finding relevant material. "_

Not sure that this is great, but baby steps.

<comment><USER8> An important step would be to limit the time frame of emails covered by the warrant. I dissected the article hoping this would be mentioned but it wasn't.

<comment><USER9> There are many more limiting factors that can be applied: the sender/recipient being a critical one for me. Why should the government get access to all the emails you send your significant other? In some states there are even laws against that that such a blanket order would circumvent. If the government thinks that he was using email to facilitate the transfer, it should name the parties and their emails and get only the emails between those two parties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Frank Boyd Says Fibre Cable Tapping Must Be 'Limited'

He Also Says It's About Mass Surveillance, Not A Specific Technology

</comment><comment><USER11> Who cares about what a judge says? It's just a person with a hammer and a robe.

<comment><USER12> And who has made it their profession to study the principles of justice, how they are reflected in the law, and what the law means. It doesn't mean they're right, but it probably means their opinion is worth reading.</comment></comment>


Solve for X - <AUTHOR> http://www.solveforx.com

<comment><USER2> Hi, I was a speaker at the first Google "Solve for <X>" conference (see <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8qcDQaY8Mw>).

In general it's an invite only conference. They invite about 15 speakers and overall ~60 people to the event. Very high level people - from the google co- founders, many google[x] employees, google svp's, investors (Steve Jurveston, Mark Andreessen and other) and google friends.

I got there for two reasons: 1) My company (<http://genomecompiler.com>) is a Singularity University company and Peter Diamandis referred us 2) We fit the bill for a moonshot (huge problem, breakthrough technology, radical solution)

It's in a very pleasant cordevalle resort and they treat you to great housing, food and discussions. Like late night slide show from the international space station with astronauts <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Garan> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Coleman>

Like sitting in dinner table with Sergei and hear Peter talking space flights and astroids just to have him launch a astroids mining company after a few month. Or listening to Google Glass head talk about electronics in contact lenses (!) a few months before google glass was released :-)

Anyhow - I love what they are trying to achieve, both in this effort and in supporting Singularity University - to get people to solve humanity grand challenges with the fast moving technologies that are coming online. Be a support group and cheerleader for you while you're in the ups and downs of extremely "out-there" startup.

Amazing opportunity and the time of my life.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is Solve for X?

Solve for X is in collaboration with TED, MIT Technology Review, Singularity University, X PRIZE Foundation, GE Focus Forward, and the ASU Center for Science and Imagination to provide a forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork.

It's a place to hear about and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help millions or billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audacity of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction. And radical in the sense that there is some real technology breakthrough on the horizon indicating that these ideas could really be brought to life.

Source: <https://www.solveforx.com/about/>

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice if someone who knows what this is about were to explain it. It looks potentially interesting but a quick look at the (slow to load) site didn't immediately reveal it's purpose.

<comment><USER5> it almost looks like a TED competitor? high-level talks about potentially world-changing ideas.

<comment><USER6> The footer says "In collaboration with TED" + a few others. Sounds more like a partnership of sorts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got to say the grid layout is really ugly. I think it could have worked if it didn't scale up to the screen size.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think letting anyone submit an idea is interesting but will quickly fail unless they pump a lot of money into ensuring crank stuff doesn't get in.

The difference between science and pseudo science can be hard to tell at times. Unless you have a barrier of entry like for instance being asked to do a talk, then pulling it off, you will get a lot of noise. Even with this TEDx is still getting into issues for instance.

Maybe mooonshot is meta in this regard.

This seems to currently be on the front page(Link broken), which is interesting.... <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUHLNjWn68g>

</comment><comment><USER9> Great SolveForX talk: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVzR0kzklRE>

(Planetary Resources' Peter Diamandis and Eric Anderson on space exploration)

</comment><comment><USER10> "The requested URL /moonshots/thorium-an-energy-solution-thorium-remix-2011 was not found on this server. "

Hmm.. you should be validating your links if their are created dynamically.

<comment><USER11> I can see it when I'm logged in (I submitted that one), but not otherwise. Doesn't seem to show up as submitted on my profile either. Perhaps they're leaking videos in moderation on the homepage?</comment></comment>


Belief in black magic persists in Papua New Guinea - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/its-2013-and-theyre-burning-witches/558/ <comment><USER2> This is horrific.

A good time to remember that if you're reading this, you are in the <0.001% of humans privileged enough to live a life without having to worry about such things on a daily basis.

Compared to things like that, our preoccupations seem so trivial, and I don't know what we can do about it.

<comment><USER3> There are several things you can do about it. Donate to <http://ncse.com>, <http://ffrf.org>, <http://www.au.org> and/or similar orgs in your own country.

Everything from witch-burning to the teaching of Creationist doctrines in public schools is possible because we somehow still consider it not only socially acceptable but _desirable_ to be superstitious in the twenty-first century.

Civilization isn't a gift, and it didn't just happen. We had to _build_ it. The people who are burning witches in New Guinea are not monsters, or aliens, or mutants. They're us, and we're them. The only differences lie in the decisions we make, as individuals and as a culture.

<comment> mc-lovin Those organzations are nothing to do with the persecution of witchcrafit in PNG. Did you even read the article.

If you want to stop these horrific acts of violence, it would be better to give to the Catholic Church since it was a catholic nun who saved the woman in that article.

Your prejudice against religion is as irrational as what you accuse religion as being, since you put your secularist ideology ahead of the facts when you lump completely unrelated phenomena together into the category of "superstition".

<comment><USER4> What word do you prefer to superstition?

<comment> mc-lovin It's the the word, it's the use of the category that I object to.

Imagine a person who says "everything from the holocaust, the the weathermen, to Obamacare is possible once we accept collectivism". The problem with statement is not that there is no such notion as collectivism, but that the different manifestations of it are in no way comparable in terms of their relationship to these forms of violence.

The person I was replying to was ignoring the important, immediate causes of this event (which are described in the article), and focussing on the least important factor, i.e. superstition in general.

<comment><USER4> Why would you say they are burning women as witches, if not superstition? "Why could they believe that witches even exist?" seems like a pretty damn important question to ask, but I suppose that is just my opinion.

Superstition must be fought with education if we are to fix these problems. There are other ways to fight superstition, but they are almost universally not palatable.

<comment><USER5> "Superstition" is just an outlet for these peoples' troubles, their fears, and their anger. Coupled with truly despicable individuals who would take advantage of this situation for power and pleasure, you can have such a mob mentality in any of the "enlightened" communities.

Education certainly helps, and I'm not saying it wouldn't, but blaming this on superstition as though that's the true cause is woefully misguided.

<comment><USER4> Despicable people will exist without superstition, but superstition has an unprecedented ability to allow good people to feel okay about doing horrible things. If superstition can be said to be a tool of the truly despicable, then we must remove it.

Perhaps without superstition those men would find another way to rile up a crowd into burning more women, but taking that tool from them is sure as hell worth a shot. What is there to lose?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"She had dragged herself [...] into the clinic, her genitals burned and fused beyond functional repair by the repeated intrusions of red-hot irons."_

 _What?_ This made me very angry. But how do we combat it if even law officials are aware of it going on and don't do anything to stop it? There's so much corruption, and the government legally acknowledges sorcery and punishment for sorcery as valid.

In order for this to stop, the entire society and way of life would have to change. Is the United Nations looking to do this? It needs to be done.

<comment><USER7> > _What?_ This made me very angry.

And anger is what made this happen in the first place.

I'm not trying to draw any platitudes or grand truths here. Just... think on that.

<comment><USER8> I don't even want to know on what planet mob lynchings and indignation at the brutalization of a defenseless individual are the same thing, just "anger" -- but I suggest it be nuked from orbit, because one might just as well argue it's sloppy thinking and the resulting stupidity that causes this crap. And by crap I don't mean a group enacting punishment on an individual[1], but the crooked ways in which they arrive at their judgement... because that a mob is angry might be okay, great even; depending on what they're angry at, and how they act on that anger.

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." -- Albert Einstein

"Anger is a gift." -- Rage Against The Machine

[1] notice how even we have that, and that nobody is angry in the process does not help someone who, say, has been framed and is sitting in prison for 20 years. Even if all inmates were excellent to each other all the time, even if the prison food was delicious and varied and healthy, it would still suck, no? How does anger even enter into any of it?

<comment><USER7> > I don't even want to know on what planet mob lynchings and indignation at > the brutalization of a defenseless individual are the same thing, just > "anger"

It is the planet Earth, your home, and it is not as simple as you wish it were.

Men who do and wish violence upon others -- and women, but mostly men -- claim to for various reasons: money, power, fun. But it's blatantly obvious that we live in a universe where escalation to violence is almost never the best way to attain your desires.

But us mammals, we grew up in a much more dangerous world. We grew a brain function to overrule _our own better judgment_ , to make us look tough when we feel our weakest, to make us fight when we would retreat. Anger is the feeling of wanting to do violence and _not knowing why_ , because there was no time to ask questions.

But we have time now. Something unconscionable has happened, and we should ask questions like "How do we fix the damage? Why did this happen? What could we have done?" But anger seizes the thoughts of men -- and women, but mostly men -- and transforms this into: "Who should suffer for this?"

Of course, no one in this thread is going to raise their hand because of this (nor, I imagine, does anyone here have anything more productive to do). But I'm not asking anyone here to change their behavior; just to think on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where/how does ritualized abuse/murder originate?

This article talks about PNG, but I recall reading of similar incidents in various parts of Africa while the US has it's own fairly recent history of lynching [0].

0: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States>

<comment><USER10> Huh? Most lynchings, both against either whites or blacks, were a result from vigilante justice. It was completely illegal, but a result from accusations of rape or murder, not witchcraft.

<comment><USER11> > Most lynchings, both against either whites or blacks, were a result from > vigilante justice. It was completely illegal, but a result from accusations > of rape or murder, not witchcraft.

The fact that the _accusations_ were of rape or murder doesn't make the murder any less ritualized.

<comment><USER12> I would argue that the United States death penalty is a form of ritualized murder.

<comment><USER4> It is highly ritualized. The last meal, final words, gathering others to watch... really the only way that you could say that it _isn't_ ritualized murder is if you want to nitpick about _"when the government does it, that means it is not murder"_.

<comment><USER13> It's not about who does it, it's about whether there is a sufficiently fair establishment of guilt. In a developed country anyone calm and reasonable enough to be part of establishing a trial is extremely likely to let the government handle the trial. But it's entirely possible to have a fair hearing without involving the government. Once you've shown guilt of a sufficiently heinous crime beyond reasonable doubt then from my point of view it's not murder to kill them. It doesn't matter _who_ is doing that killing.

There are other, simpler circumstances where you can show guilt to a reasonable degree, such as self-defense. If someone is shooting at you you can shoot back, for example. No murder.

<comment><USER4> As I said, you can object to the terminology "murder", but that is as far as the objections can go.

<comment><USER13> My objection is to comparing it to lynching. Not on a technicality based on who is performing the act, but based on the existence of a fair trial. Versus a mob acting on mere accusation.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, though it is essential to remember that the problems with lynching are not just that the court system is not used. There have been many lynchings that occurred after the trial and a guilty verdict (for example, the infamous lynching of Jesse Washington, where he was dragged from the courtroom immediately after being sentenced to death.)

Of course trials at that time and place were anything but fair, but we don't generally refer to those state-run executions as lynchings (perhaps we should).

<comment><USER13> Well, if the mob wants to drag a guilty person out of the courtroom and kill them via firing line or guillotine or proper hanging or some other quick method, it's less than ideal but acceptable. Torture is a completely different issue, and can never be justified as punishment.

<comment><USER14> How could that possibly be acceptable? Not just the fact that it remains mob justices, post trial or not, but what about appeals? Errors? New evidence?

And how is any of that not torture? Seems like your definition of torture is just "doesn't result in death."

<comment><USER13> Sometimes appeals are needed but that's getting far too into the picky details of the court system. And if the evidence was wrong somehow it's probably not going to get fixed: justice is wrong sometimes and the only solution is to never jail anyone, that is not a debate for this conversation.

Anyway torture, simply defined, is an act causing extreme pain in someone. And not just for five seconds. Hanging-done-wrong can be torture. Many ways of killing someone are torture. But the fast methods are not. Tell me your definition if it can somehow apply to the use of a guillotine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Papua New Guinea the prion based disease, Kuru, transmitted by cannibalism was last reported in 2005. There is still cannibalism among the Korowai tribe. Papua New Guinea has many corners that are a far, far different place from the modern Western world.

<comment><USER16> Go ahead and peruse wikipedia for "prion diseases" ... it's a fascinating subject with some very scary subtopics. Of particular note:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia>

... and the account of one patient who valiantly struggled to prolong his life in the face of this disease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> To be fair, the US was imprisoning witches as recently as 30 years ago.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse>

</comment><comment><USER18> Take a good read, people. This is who we are.

Just different manifestations of the same problems, at a more archaic level.

I felt disgusted reading the article, but before pointing the finger look what's happening in OUR "modern" society:

\- fanatic belief in all sorts of superstitions and stuff (christianity, islam etc)

\- mass savage violence (war) against each other, even when above belief forbids (love your neighbour, don't kill your neighbour etc)

\- incredible abuse against our mothers, sisters and daughters (rape, gang rape, FGM, murder, beatings etc); not to mention abuse against children!

\- mass scale butchering of other species so we can be a race of fucking obese creatures

That's how fucking elevated we are.

Our only hope, if any, is a good education.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like guantanamo bay

"Two days earlier she had tried to rescue Angela (not her real name), an accused witch, when she was first seized by a gang of merciless inquisitors looking for someone to blame for the recent deaths of two young men. They had stripped their quarry naked, blindfolded her, berated her with accusations and slashed her with bush knives (machetes). The "dock" for her trial was a rusty length of corrugated roofing, upon which she was displayed trussed and helpless."

</comment><comment><USER20> Belief in a lot of ridiculous stuff persists and is very mainstream depending on your stance on general religious belief. It's hardly isolated to PNG.

I read an article recently about suggestions that the Japanese PM wasn't moving into the prime ministerial home because it had a macabre history and was thought to be haunted by ghosts. The official response was a denial, but there seemed to be comments from other politicians suggesting that this was not a ridiculous position to hold.

</comment><comment><USER21> What's with that headline. The real story seems to be that they are out of control of their environment. It's been heavily invaded by modern society, which is extracting natural resources. As people are harmed by modernity, they can't figure out the reasons.

There are people in the US like this, too. Look at the lunatics in the Westboro Baptist Church.

Or the Tea Party for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am amazed as to how similar the word "sanguma" is to the Zulu word for a traditional healer (and also an area of witch burning) "sangoma". Anyone can offer some enlightenment on the linguistics?

</comment><comment><USER23> Gruesome video of witch burning in Africa

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5qYhmf- boE&bpctr=1369466...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5qYhmf- boE&bpctr=1369466352)

Warning:Content is very Graphic

<comment><USER24> This was quite depressing to say the least. The fact that one is so helpless against the hivemind and unable to defend oneself against such mob-driven attacks makes me shrivel

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes, let's go tell these backwards people their antiquated superstitions are ridiculous. Emphasis on their... our own antiquated superstitions are completely OK.

<comment><USER4> Who said that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I lived in Papua New Guinea for over two years, teaching in a school not far from a mining town. Sorcery was just a part of daily life. I remember a kid telling me he would be off school for a week as he had to go back to his village. When I asked him why he explained that one of his wantok's had been killed by a sorcerer and he was going back to the village for payback.

Payback in general was very common. A kid was run over in our town and it was all the police could do to stop the driver from being massacred by the kid's family with bush-knives. It was lucky that most of our policemen were from outside of the district so they had a disconnect from the local community. We were advised that if we were ever driving and by accident ran over a dog or a pig, we should get to the nearest police station as fast as possible, to protect ourselves from payback.

What shocked me about the article was the torture that was described. I'd never heard of this kind of thing back in 2000. Payback was usually brutal but quick, whether it be retribution against a sorcerer or anyone else. I do have to wonder where the concept of torturing victims has come from, as this seems to be a fairly new development.

</comment><comment><USER27> I just want to take this moment to point out to all the good little leftists of HN that we can learn so much from tribal life in Papua New Guinea: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/06/jared- diamond-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/06/jared-diamond- tribal-life-anthropology)</comment>


Why is there nothing about Aaron on Reddit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/?

<comment><USER2> Not so surprising if you consider that 8 hours after sandy hook the only current event on the front page was was guyin china knifing a few students to death.

</comment><comment><USER3> You mean this [http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/16fgi6/cofounder_of_red...](http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/16fgi6/cofounder_of_reddit_aaron_swartz_commits_suicide/) ?

It was on top of the front page last night, a couple of hours after the news. I think they've moved on to more pressing matters. /srcsm

</comment><comment><USER4> I was wondering about the same thing right now, it's EVERYWHERE but there.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/16fob6/why_are_al...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/16fob6/why_are_all_of_the_posts_about_aaron_swartz_being/)</comment>


Lunascript, Lunascript, Lunascript - The future of web apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.asana.com/luna

<comment><USER2> Are there more code snippets that the "chat" one ? From my (very shallow) understanding/guessing this provides:

1) statically typed records with some high level web-friendly types (automatically serializable to json). There is a "User" type, I wonder if there is a UserString one.

2) a purely functionnal core. "Mutation" with operator "+=" is available only in handlers, so it seems there should be a monadic type underneath for transactions.

3) XML litterals are first class primives, even more integrated than in scala, etc...

4) Relational queries are first class primitives (in the video). Is it typed for them to correspond to the sql schema ?

5) It is reactive (in the FRP sense). "messages.map(renderMessage)" updates the page fragment automatically as messages appear, message[] is a stream with push semantics.

Those are very good points, and I think the web should be programmed somewhat like this. It reminds me a lot ideas in Ur/web (<http://www.impredicative.com/ur/>), with a more web-developper friendly syntax and less academic presentation, but I don't know if the static garanties are as strong (record types).

An obvious question is : what about deployment ? (is it compiled ?)

<comment><AUTHOR> See, they left google and facebook to build _collaborative task and project management software_.

The code is compiled into javascript, and the whole server side is actually written in javascript.

See more at [http://www.quora.com/Server-Side-JavaScript/Does-Asana- use-s...](http://www.quora.com/Server-Side-JavaScript/Does-Asana-use-server- side-JavaScript) and <http://asana.com/blog/?p=21>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nothing against the language, directly, but the the name seems to similar to lua (which means moon in Portuguese) for something that can also be billed as "A better javascript".</comment>