Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ <comment><USER2> Wow.

This is simply one of the best guides I've seen to anything...ever. It's uncommon for an online guide to have well-written text, even rarer for it to leverage HTML's structure and organization, and almost unheard of to incorporate interactive __useful __elements that gel with the textual sections.

Well done.

<comment><USER2> Looking through the rest of the author's (Bret Victor) website, I'm in awe. If this guy wanted to declare himself the Edward Tufte of interactive visualization, I think he'd have a good case for it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, and taking a look at his CV he also did a lot of Apple-interface design work. And has a best selling product (neat synthesizer). And a lot of other top-notch work. This guy is a definitely a neo-Tufte candidate for the digital era.

<comment><USER4> his PhD application is pretty unique, too: <http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~bret/create_humor_gradapp.html>

<comment><USER5> oh my goodness, that is the most hilarious thing ever, and whats more suprising is that hes an EE and not a CS major

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Definitely read the appendix "Tools & Implementation". He expresses frustration with the current state of the art in building visualizations.

My guess is that he is using his javascript library for "reactive documents" called Tangle <http://worrydream.com/Tangle> for all the demos in this article.

I'll just add that I really find this whole piece astounding and many levels above the majority of things I find on the internet.

<comment><USER6> Excellent stuff, as others have mentioned, I thought of Tufte meets Web.

The "Tools & Implementation" section had me thinking of the pure data sound programming environment - the way you drag the numerical parameters in the code (cheekily reminiscent of processing) that draws the circles to change values.

tangle.js is referenced in the html of the page, and I shall certainly be looking into that for maths visualisations at a more humble level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looking at his website, his resume and his project, I just feel like stopping everything I do. A little bit like if you start to run for a couple miles and after 5-6 when you're pretty tired, you ask your friend how much remains. And he smile at you, start running even faster and says 195miles.

Or, it's like playing Starcraft agains a good player. You get beaten pretty hard but you still played your best and are proud. But then, somehow, you play a real professional gamer.. and you just feel like stopping playing that game. Nothing works, you look like a total beginner, you get 5/0-ed, and then, you learn he was on the phone the whole time.

Meh.

<comment><USER8> I feel exactly the opposite way. I find this essay and his site in general really inspiring, and I always get lots and lots of ideas for things to do when I read them! I'm also really glad he's implemented Tangle, because it means _I don't have to_ ; I can just _use it_. Although I haven't yet.

<comment><USER9> Exactly - the takeaway is that Bret can create amazing things as a result of building off of his own creations. He's not running, he's building reusable components for a rocket ship.

<comment><USER8> That's not what I get from it. I think Bret is creating amazing things because he's doing something different from the crowd, he's worked hard on it over a period of many years, his standards of quality are extremely high, and he's spent even more years developing the skills (programming and visual design, in this case) needed to make it work. (And he's pretty smart, too, which is kind of a multiplier to the above items.)

Building off of your own creations and 750¢ will get you a cup of coffee. Build off other people's creations where you can. If you're doing something different from the crowd, sooner or later you'll get to a point where you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you have to be able to do that or you'll hit a wall. But it's far from sufficient.

<comment><USER9> "he's worked hard on it over a period of many years, his standards of quality are extremely high, and he's spent even more years developing the skills" - completely agree with that too. However, just view this as pre-requisites to building work that is so good that no other building block will suffice. Tangle would not have evolved if not building off Magic Ink and other work. This article would not have been nearly as meaningful without Tangle and the other visualization patterns he created in past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a physicist studying nucleon structure. This is a field so complicated that other physicists typically shake their heads and mutter "must be mad". We typically work at several layers of abstraction.

This (Tangle) is the one tool that I've seen that is capable of communicating well to non-physicists what I do, without their needing to know Mathematica or C++ in detail. I really need to get around to writing a web page that does that. Awesome. Inspiring. Ridiculously, breathtakingly good. Bret's entire website is outstanding.

<comment><USER8> You mean you've used Tangle for that, and it worked? Are your explanations public?

<comment><USER10> Work in progress; if/when it gets finished, I'll post it on here.

<comment><USER8> Cool! Maybe email me too? firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fascinating read and absolutely gorgeous to look at. This is the guy behind Magic Ink <http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk>

<comment><USER8> I agree. And I think you can see both this essay and Tangle as further work in the direction he identified in Magic Ink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Totally speechless. Feel like this is what I ought to be working on/with. I look forward to the day when online news sources take advantage of the medium to cover wars and budget proposals in this format.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very impressive, but I am not sure his comment about Mathematica is right. The Wolfram Demonstrations project is about aiding such explorations in Mathematica. It may not look as pretty, but it's definitely capable of enabling explorations using the Manipulate[] command.

<http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/>

Example: [http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/DigitalTiltShiftPhotograph...](http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/DigitalTiltShiftPhotography/)

<http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Manipulate.html>

<comment><USER14> Work is very nice by web standards, but Mathematica's version of interactive documents is much more sophisticated. Strange that he seems to be unaware of what Mathematica can do, given the rant on tools at the end. Its pretty much exactly what he wants, only just proprietary and not on the web.

<comment><USER15> "Its pretty much exactly what he wants, only just proprietary and not on the web."

Which is exactly what he doesn't want. The authoring tools should be accessible to everyone.

Secondly, after exploring his site I'm guessing Bret would reject Mathematica even if it were free & open source. Because even then it's not accessible to everyone - you still need to know how to program.

<comment><USER14> One of his featured projects is <http://worrydream.com/#!/Tangle>

It requires knowing how to program.

All I'm saying is that its a shame he doesn't seem to know about what Mathematica has done in version 6 and beyond, since its seems squarely up his alley... which is ironic because he specifically calls out Mathematica in the article for not being interactive enough.

<comment><USER15> Tangle is just a stepping stone as far as I can see: <http://worrydream.com/KillMath/>

Right now he's simply playing around with some basic ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bret Victor is one of the great people working in computing (not computer science) today. I expect something paradigm-shifting from him in the coming years.

<comment><USER17> I'd never come across his site or anything by his hand before, and feel like I've missed out on a lot.

On the upside, I'm excited at going through all of his archives. I haven't felt inspired like this in quite a while.

<comment><USER2> You feel exactly the same way I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the future of education. He just laid the blueprints.

<comment><USER19> I don't know whether this was a one off, a subject which he was able to knock out of the park or if you are right. I do think someone should pay him a lot of money to find out.

<comment><USER16> Definitely not a one-off project. It's part of his "Kill Math" series that he started earlier this year. Check out the introduction: <http://worrydream.com/KillMath/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bret Victor, as usual, is a humbling reminder of how much I don't know and how constrained my thinking is. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER21> Beautiful site. But I hope anyone actually trying to solve the example problem of guiding a car on a road uses a PID controller and not a binary threshold. Here's an interactive example for those interested: <http://fstutoring.com/youlearn/pid/controller>

<comment><USER22> I agree. It's a nice site and a lovely visualization, but it's not the right way to solve the problem. A PID controller or something similar like a Kalman filter is the way to go.

The Anybots robots are a great example of a PID filter in action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is definitely one of those moments where something inspires me to look at everything I'm working on and want to throw it all away, and rebuild it at this level.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the best part of it is the car at the top. I can easily play with that for a few minutes. They do say 80% of the gains come from 20% of the effort right? :)

<comment><USER25> Nice little bit up there, but it was absolutely frustrating at first since I wasn't able to go down the page with my up and down keys and I was wondering why for almost 5 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I see what this author has done, and I wonder to myself if I could ever possibly have the time to write myself tools to do the things he suggests. Then I wonder if I have the time not to.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this behaviour supported (and easy to use) on mobile devices as well?

A great use of this would be for electronic math textbooks for showing students (high school) how various parameters influence graphs, etc.

<comment><USER28> Impressed on iPad here...

<comment><USER2> From his CV: <http://worrydream.com/cv/bret_victor_resume.pdf>

Apple: >>I designed the initial user interface concepts for iPad, iPod Nano, and half a dozen experimental hardware platforms. Initiated, designed, and prototyped over seventy concept projects, including radically reinvented interfaces for video editing, animation, drawing, learning, collaboration, mail, photos, and much more. Invented features for Mac OS X Lion. Worked with designers and engineers from all parts of Apple. Routinely presented to top- level management

<comment><USER29> He sounds rather bitter about his experience at apple: <http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple>

<comment><USER30> Did he actually expect that the work he created would all be used? Or that if it wasn't used that he would be able to take that work (now property of Apple) and show it to the public? I don't think either positions can be considered reasonable.

Also, in general, direct manipulation of objects (mapped to real world gestures/physical object interaction) is not the end all be all of HCI. The use of abstraction in the pursuit of increased expressiveness and user input magnification is perfectly acceptable. Being able to immediately understand something is not more important than being able to efficiently accomplish a task repeatedly.

<comment><USER31> "The use of abstraction in the pursuit of increased expressiveness and user input magnification is perfectly acceptable. Being able to immediately understand something is not more important than being able to efficiently accomplish a task repeatedly."

Whoa that is a pretty strong statement you just made there. I'd say there are two pretty strong and valid camps about this -- one saying its important to understand immediately and another saying tis important to do a depth of work effeciently. Both have extremely valid examples of why their theory is better.

<comment><USER30> Ideally you would have a balance between the two. What put me off in his statement regarding working at Apple (aside from what seems to be some unrealistic expectations) was his statement that he became known for "pervasively direct-manipulation interfaces (where the user does his thing by moving and gesturing with meaningful objects, instead of relying on verb buttons and other indirect controls)." I think there's certainly a place for that sort of interaction, but I can see why Apple would not entirely embrace it to the exclusion of other types of interaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Damn this guy is good. Check the whole site out, well worth it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does it bother anybody else that he fails so miserably at solving the example he uses for this article: keeping the car on the road?

<comment><USER10> No. He's not trying to keep a car on the road. He's trying to let you understand the problems behind keeping a car on the road, so that you should solve that problem for yourself.

<comment><USER33> I'm sorry then. I just personally find that how dumb his example is keeps this from being interesting at all.

Why not pick an example where his clear ability to make useful visualizations reveals some startling insight about an initially complex system that he then abstracts away to simplicity?

EDIT: Thanks for downvoting guys. If you felt this blog post revealed something fundamental and astonishing, how about explaining it to me instead of downvoting me out of anger? I think I'm done posting on this website.

<comment><USER34> I think the downvotes reflect the fact you are belittling this post when it is clearly brilliant.

Your reasoning that "he doesn't keep the car on the road" misses the point. He's demonstrating abstraction itself, and using a medium (reactive documents) that are really engaging.

Focussing on the car itself, kind of misses the point.

Calling his examples "dumb" just looks petty and deserves the downvotes, there is nothing about this that is "dumb"... it verges on "genius".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The intro is a really good guide on how to build interesting (exploration) games. Minecraft comes to mind, for example people making charts of ore beta distributions in effort of understanding the inner workings of the world they play.

</comment><comment><USER36> That was fantastic. In case you missed it, use the arrow keys to move the car in the header to jump up the ladder.

<comment><USER37> Annoyingly, the arrow keys are hijacked, and I can't use them to scroll the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The only thing that could make this better is if the arrow keys still worked for scrolling (Firefox 7).

</comment><comment><USER39> Awsome!</comment>


Hyaluronic acid does not hold a thousand times its weight in water - <AUTHOR> https://www.oumere.com/blogs/news/hyaluronic-acid-does-not-hold-1000-times-its-weight-in-water-not-even-close <comment><USER2> This is on the commercial website of a company that wants me to buy their non- HA containing $150/bottle eye serum.

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but the assumptions are poor to begin with. Most skincare products containing sodium hyaluronate are either micronized or in a crosspolymer so that it can penetrate the skin, not HA on its own (something I'd expect a chemist/dermatologist to know). Cursory googling it seems the writer/owner was attaching her name to reddit submissions of scientific articles unrelated to her to game SEO and give her credibility that it it's painfully obvious she doesn't have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Daltons are used to measure something very low in mass"

Why not just use nanograms or picograms?

<comment><USER4> Apparently picograms are still orders of magnitude bigger and thus not useful for this type of measurement. Science!

Looking further into it, yoctagrams or zetograms would be small enough to express the measurement. I suspect daltons are used because they're pegged to a 1/12 of a carbon atom and that makes the math easier to reason about or something like that.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, one Dalton = one neutron or one proton [0], so it's a convenient unit if you're literally adding up atomic weights to find the weight of a single molecule.

[0] This is true for chemists, but not for physicists, who pay more attention to the mass defect rounding error.

<comment><USER6> To expand on that, for physicists Carbon-12 is exactly 12 daltons also denoted 12 Da or 12 u. All other isotopes deviate slightly from a whole number of daltons. If I recall correctly the number of nucleons minus the daltons continues to decrease until you get to iron, which has the lowest nuclear binding energy, after which it continues to increase again (although there's some variation between isotopes so this is more of a general trend).

<comment><USER5> And that's why you can have nuclear power either from combining really small atoms (fusion) or splitting big ones (fission) but nobody would propose a nuclear reactor that runs on iron?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I skimmed the article and I think the author should have used CaCl2 to improve the gelling strenght. Ca-alginate which is comparable in structure forms gels in very low concentrations when Ca ions are present.</comment>


Slack is Down - <AUTHOR> https://status.slack.com/2018-01/d8cf1517de9ecfa8 <comment><USER2> I hate it that my work is dependent up on a web-app that freezes when network connections go haywire. I struggled the last 10 minutes troubleshooting my network connection, force-quitting the app when it freezes. Please please give me a native Mac app.

<comment><USER3> Slack has a native Mac app. But it is notoriously bad at maintaining a network connection or handling connection breaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First bitbucket and now slack?

not a good day to be an enterprise saas...

</comment><comment><USER5> Even the slack status page is down.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is now back up</comment>


Ask HN: How to learn systems architecture? (e.g. microservices arch.) - <AUTHOR>

I think I'm a pretty decent programmer and can write well designed libraries, applications, etc.
That being said, I really suck at system level architecture: how to cleanly separate a monolithic process into smaller processes that communicate with each other, how to chose the right database / message queue / proxy / caching system / asset packaging / etc. How to leverage OS level utilities like crond / upstart / etc. How to deploy / how to scale. And the worse is I don't know what I don't know. I know I'm not the only in this situation given the popularity of Heroku and co. which make a lot of those decisions for us.
What I would really love would be a book with case studies which would explain why a certain architectures/tools were chosen over others.
I'll start with a few resources I have found:
- http://highscalability.com/
- http://microservices.io/
- http://singlepageappbook.com/ <comment><USER2> Honestly the best way to learn is to be lucky enough to work at a company that faces scalability issues. Second best is to try to speak with engineers who work on this kind of stuff.

FWIW I work at such a company (Microsoft/Yammer). I've learned more in 2 months on the job than the previous year I spent reading stuff on the side. Nothing like hearing the wisdom of seasoned engineers. I'm happy to chat if you are interested.</comment>


Scientists Take Quantum Steps Toward Teleportation - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128910996&ps=cprs

<comment><USER2> Flagged. Nothing new here, literally. No new breakthroughs, nothing newsworthy. You could replace this article with a link to Wikipedia.</comment>


Google Ordered to Remove Links to Stories About Google Removing Links to Stories - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/google-ordered-to-remove-links-to-stories-about-google-1725473144

<comment><USER2> It's not dumb at all, nor hard to understand. Those stories are material which references that person and their criminal record. The reason that those stories exist is that the information was leaked.

Those leaks were almost certainly Google's fault. Either Google leaked the information themselves, or they leaked it indirectly. If we read the enforcement notice, it claims that Google at first complied with the order to de-index the web site which published that person's criminal record, but Google _also notified that website owner_. In other words, they tipped off the owner, which can be regarded as a form of defiance of the court order: agreeing to the letter of the order (performing the delisting) but not to the spirit (earnestly helping to bury that person's past).

So that might be the source of the leak; maybe the website owner's feathers were ruffled, and they reacted by gleefully leaking the story to the media. Such a reaction is so predictable that it's likely Google tipped off that website owner _on purpose_ in order to generate the leak. Knowing that the leak will reveal details about that person, and knowing that the Google index will in turn pick up the stories resulting from the leak. Also knowing that they could refuse to delist those stories on grounds that they are are noteworthy stories of recent interest, representing the journalistic judgment of their respective news organizations that Google has no reason to second- guess.

Google should have removed that index entry _quietly_ , without notifying the website owner. Then the removal could easily have gone unnoticed and there might now not be any stories mentioning that person.

They are now simply being asked to mop up the leak that they caused.

Whether or not you agree with this "right to be forgotten" business, you have to agree that particular twist in the plot isn't any _dumber_. It's just more of the same.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The depths of stupidity of the European "right to be forgotten" likely still hasn't been reached yet.</comment>


I'm sleeping alot less thanks to Airbnb - <AUTHOR> http://www.pressreader.com/australia/wentworth-courier/20160127/282256664515050/TextView <comment><USER2> Off topic, but I really dislike that website design

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry that was the best of the worst. The original source is a propitiatory e-reader thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In short, Sydney, Australia-based voyeur views the comings and goings of Airbnb tenants, losing sleep, apparently, due to fears over property damage.

In my opinion, not worth the time/effort to read.

<comment> atom-x Agreed, especially due to the inane way that the site's designers decided to covert vertical scrolling to sideways scrolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alot is not a word.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. I didn't allot enough attention when I typed that title in.</comment></comment>


Lego to pilot audio and Braille instructions powered by speech synthesis - <AUTHOR> https://www.lego.com/en-gb/aboutus/news-room/2019/august/audio-and-braille-instructions/ <comment><USER2> I am so curious as to what a fully blind person would find _most_ enjoyable about legos.

Does the texture or shape hold special meaning?

I imagine hoding a model car in your hands is like "zooming out" for a blind person, enabling a contextual perspective that they cant get when interacting with the real world thing.

I imagine that scaling up to a whole new understanding of the world. Imagine the first lego set of the space shuttle a blind space enthusiast builds, and the immense set of knowledge that they cant otherwise get.

What a great idea to make this easier for them!

<comment><USER3> They're just so easy to work with, and while directions are great, they're not strictly necessary to at least make something. Compare that with the handful of model cars I tried playing with, which had so many screws/bolts/gears that weren't at all interchangeable. I wanted to play with those, but doing so required me borrowing someone's eyeballs to get the thing built, and that deprived me of some of the fun of having a toy like that.

As an adult, I derive similar pleasure from woodworking and other crafts, but it's challenging enough to do that as a normal kid, to say nothing of also contending with folks who can't/don't support you because they don't know how or are too afraid. So, in the end, you have either legos or the simplest snap- together models to satisfy your building urge.

Even as an adult, I have a soft spot in my heart for legos. I've considered using them as snap-together cases for custom electronics projects, but haven't delved into them enough to know what sets would work best for that application. And as much as I like them, I really don't want to buy some castle or spaceship set just to build custom cases for my DIY doorbell or assorted RPIs. :)

<comment><USER4> If you do want to get into DIY stuff with lego, if you have someone you can describe what you want to they can make it in Studio, building software that you can find at [https://studio.bricklink.com/v2/build/studio.page](https://studio.bricklink.com/v2/build/studio.page)

You can then have them export the element list and you can buy the individual elements from the seller or sellers of your choice on [https://www.bricklink.com](https://www.bricklink.com) on the secondary market and then you don't need to buy an entire set.

You could also just have someone sit down and help you buy a bunch of common elements in common colors from one or more of the larger sellers so you can have a nice little inventory of pieces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm, they'll have to start designing sets differently then. You'll often have the same element in more than one colour in a given set. Obviousl the colour won't matter to the person constructing it but to anyone viewing it, it certainly would.

Modified elements would probably need to be fairly descriptive:

\- "place the 1x2 with the cylindrical protrusion"

\- "place the 1x2 with the cylindrical depression".

\- "place the 1x2 so that the rectangular textured masonry surface is facing out"

<comment><USER5> The instructions start by telling you to have a sighted person help you sort the pieces by color.

[https://legoaudioinstructions.com/lego-11001-classic- mobile/](https://legoaudioinstructions.com/lego-11001-classic-mobile/)

<comment><USER4> ... but... might as well just have them sit there and hand you the next piece. Hrmmm, oh well it's a start.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes it's about taking what you can get, even if the solution is only partial. As a blind woodworker, I can't route a pattern laid out on flimsy material, but make a wooden template and I'm fine. So for more complex projects, we'll have someone make us a template we can trace, but we're still doing most of the work.

Granted, I'd love a solution that doesn't require sighted help. For this case, some sort of color identifier app might help. Given that Lego's color palet probably doesn't span too widely, this would probably be an easy weekend project.

<comment><USER4> That's actually a good solution. Color detection is relatively easy, given it has been used for paint mixing for a long time.

The current lego pallet should still be at 51 colors, there might be issue with clear elements but for the most part they'll be significantly different than the other elements in a set being things like windows, windshields and cockpits. Also in a given set you are unlikely to have many, if any, of the same elements in similar shades that might get confused by an app.

The app would be useful for those that can see too just for listing elements on secondary markets like Brick Link.

It is far beyond my means but as an adult fan of lego I definitely see value in it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A brief history of badge ribbons at SF conventions - <AUTHOR> http://twincitiesgeek.com/2020/01/a-brief-history-of-convention-ribbons/ <comment><USER2> I do really love these ribbons, you can find them everywhere at just about any geek/fandom convention these days.

</comment><comment><USER3> The collections of ribbons pictured reminds me of the tape balls we used to make when I played hockey. We had to use athletic tape to hold on our shin pads.

One girl on the team had one so big she could almost play soccer with it.</comment>


A Scientist Who Helped Amy Adams Talk to Aliens in "Arrival" - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-scientist-who-helped-amy-adams-talk-to-aliens-in-arrival <comment><USER2> I read "Stories of Your Life and Others" this year and it was for me the best fiction in a few years. Cognitive sci-fi, sometimes with religious themes (e.g. what if Kabbalah were a basis for the industrial revolution).

Also, quite a few stories by Ted Chiang are available online, see links in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang).

EDIT: Freely accessible stories converted to mobi (the Kindle format): [https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbhdyer9qfpexcm/Stories%20accessib...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbhdyer9qfpexcm/Stories%20accessible%20online%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.mobi?dl=1)

<comment><USER3> I will second this, that book was fantastic. I hope the movie is as good as the story, but I don't think it will.

<comment><USER2> But you will go to the movie anyway, fully knowing that it will not meet your expectations... ;)

(Also, free will vs time seem to be one of his favourite themes - at least two other stories are about that.)

<comment><USER3> > But you will go to the movie anyway, fully knowing that it will not meet > your expectations... ;)

Yes :( Same with the Martian. The movie was good, but the book was just fantastic.

<comment><USER2> It was a very in-joke (cf.: would you conceive a daughter if.. [spoiler]). Actually, I heard that the movie is good.

<comment><USER3> Oh, haha, I didn't catch it at first. Good one :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tangentially related:

In a conversation with a producer and a screenwriter after my first film consulting contract, I quickly learned how much more attractive realistic scripts can be to potential directors. The fact that the film industry is actively embracing subject matter experts not only for establishing overarching themes and very central elements to plots but also to accurately represent even the most minor details is a fascinating turn in the last twenty years of filmmaking.

Minor details in the case of this film might be things like deciphering written sentence structure and realistically assembling new sentences. Minor details in the case of e.g. the matrix might be the use of SSHNuke. It's just nice to see.

•••

As for Arrival, it was easily one of my favorites this year, if not one of my personal favorite film of the last five. You should see it it you haven't. It's easily one of the most emotionally complex films we've had in quite a while.

<comment><USER5> While Arrival is emotionally complex, it's also not very original or "sensical" with cliches and the overblown importance of Amy Adams' character - a couple other countries arrive at the same conversational point first with their linguists and the whole mahjong thread is both wrongly simplified (it's a game of win/lose) and impractical. The immersion in a language giving you superpowers? The reuse of the final shot of (the movie) Enemy midway in the film? The purpose of the other ships (oh, earth distraction?). The implication you can have the concept of weapon without the concept of tool...it's fundamentally broken storytelling. The attempt at realism (a la Close Encounters) but with a demonization of the military and mischaracterization of breaking quarantine rules (taking off the suit initially would have gotten her removed, obviously and limiting a word list wouldn't be a concern and is forgotten quickly as the herring it is). Just a sloppy movie that's a vehicle for an M Night Shyamalan trick. It might as well all have been a dream sequence and it's the exact same movie.

<comment><USER6> > weapon without the concept of tool...it's fundamentally broken storytelling.

You're actually objectively† wrong, at least about _why_ it is broken storytelling (which I don't think it is).

For example, you're complaining about: the fact that there was a protagonist, the plausibility of the sci-fi premise, some minor self-plagiarism, a political slant you don't agree with, a misremembered plot point about why there were several ships, a debatable concern about medical protocol in an unprecedented situation, and other sundry things.

These things are all essentially irrelevant to well-crafted storytelling.

If the movie didn't work for you, the things you were noticing are more like symptoms of the problem. Which by the sound of it was that you were just bored by the aesthetic choices the movie made.

I mean, I was totally transfixed and fascinated for almost the entire duration of the film. It might be that the contemplative mood, haunting music, deliberate editing, subtle acting, subdued lighting, etc. all provoked a kind of melancholic trance in me that made me insensitive to any story-telling deficiencies, it's hard to tell, but also, I don't care and the point is you're wrong.

† I justify the word objectively by claiming that the ensemble of extant human brains responds pretty predictably to these cultural artifacts we call stories. And there are people whose profession it is to understand how stories work and how to tell them. And I've grown up around several such people, and paid attention to what they have to say. And yeah I have the gall to think your post is just unbearably wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apparently Stephen Wolfram and his son were involved in the making of Arrival [http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might- the-a...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-the-alien- spacecraft-work/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I very much recommend the short story the movie is based on, The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. I can tell from the trailer they've built upon it but they'd certainly need to do so to make a feature length film.

<comment><USER9> Very much agree. The experience of reading it was interesting for me: on first reading I did not like it much, but the more I thought about the story and about how to interpret it, the more sense it made, and the more depth it gained in my view.

I should add I haven't seen the film yet but am looking forward to it. Has anyone who's read the story seen the film?

<comment><USER10> I did, just saw the film last night.

This is a rare case where the film has preserved the feeling and the central concept of the story fairly well, but the film changes the plot significantly in order to do it. I wasn't entirely able to predict the plot as it unfolded based on prior knowledge of the written version, unlike with The Martian.

I still like the written story better, but the movie stands on its own as a great movie, and I'm happy with their take on trying to tell the same story a different way.

<comment><USER8> I think what they did with the movie was great. It felt totally true to the story even though the plots aren't exactly the same. Even though I knew what I thought would be the twist they still got me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For more "making of" information, there's a lot of material online about Eric Heisserer who wrote the script (based on Ted Chiang's story.)

Heisserer did a recent Reddit AMA: [https://m.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5ay3h2/im_eric_heissere...](https://m.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5ay3h2/im_eric_heisserer_writerexec_producer_of_arrival/)

It's a bit unfortunate that Heisserer made the visual design choice of a circle as the basis of nonlinear writing. It's a little trite. Overall, I'm thinking that maybe this story didn't need to be visually realized, even if it's a good script. A radio play instead?

<comment><USER6> When I came back from watching "Arrival" I immediately looked Heisserer up, thinking "this guy did his job well, he must be behind some other interesting movies". Yeah. "Final Destination 5", "The Thing" remake.

Makes you wonder how many very talented people are stuck doing shitty things in any industry because things just didn't line up for them. At least they have for Heisserer, now. He's like the inverse of Lindelof, who turned out after all the hype to be a phony.

<comment><USER12> So much credit goes to Villeneuve, who elevates scripts that could easily go wrong into works of art. See Sicario if you haven't, for example—a script that would have been a pedestrian drug war film in lesser hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Those interested in language in sci-fi could do worse than to read The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell), about a Jesuit exploration mission to a foreign world discovered after a song signal captured by SETI efforts. The protagonist is a Jesuit linguist, and the story features a first encounter that I found quite moving.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ted Chiang reads the introduction to his latest short story:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ZtZZIyuJw&t=2m50s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ZtZZIyuJw&t=2m50s)

[20 mins]

</comment><comment><USER15> 503 for me now, mirror: [http://archive.is/tDOg9](http://archive.is/tDOg9)

</comment><comment><USER16> Computational psycholinguistics is very interesting subject in AI. Language as a window into the brain. Recently interviewed an expert who works in the field. Made me aware of the famous "nun" study which was able to predict dementia 50 years prior based on the idea density of their entrance essays. [https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/michael- covington](https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/michael-covington)</comment>


Gold particles in Eucalyptus leaves and buried gold deposits - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3614 <comment><USER2> And my mother always said "Money doesn't grow on trees."</comment>


Americans prefer 40-hour workweek, not the flexible work schedules - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/6119.html <comment><USER2> It's fairly broad to say 'Americans' when this is based off of people applying for a Call Centre job.

I suspect a lot of people applying were looking for steady 'full time' aka 40 hour weeks. And answered as such.

~ The best 40 hour week in my opinion is 4x10 Monday to Thursday. Long weekends and 10 hour days really aren't much worse than 8's.

</comment><comment><USER3> _irregular work schedules set by employers on short notice_

I suppose that's flexibility for some definition of 'flexibility'.

</comment><comment><USER4> When you're young, flex hours are great. When you have kids, the standard 40 hours are great because you have to match your schedules to many other people.</comment>


Text Mixing Desk - <AUTHOR> http://lazaruscorporation.co.uk/cutup/text-mixing-desk/

<comment><USER2> The remixed text from this is actually quite readable. This would be a good lorem ipsum alternative as you would get "real" text but with it mixed so you don't blatantly rip-off the source material.</comment>


Show HN: PodTalk – Discuss podcasts with your voice - <AUTHOR> https://podtalk.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN

PodTalk is a podcast app that lets you add voice comments and talk with other listeners.

It features a Reddit-style comment system with upvotes and all that.

Right now there is only _one_ podcast available: EconTalk. If there's enough demand, I will add a couple more. I'm deliberately limiting the podcast selection.

I made this app because I often talk to myself while listening to EconTalk. I thought there might be other people doing the same.

Download: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podtalk/id1396330843?ls=1&mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/podtalk/id1396330843?ls=1&mt=8) Screenshots: [https://podtalk.app/shots.html](https://podtalk.app/shots.html) Video demo: [https://youtu.be/2xC-oxpiKo0](https://youtu.be/2xC-oxpiKo0)

<comment><USER2> Cool idea, thanks for the explanation.

The website doesn't give me a lot of information - The main page has a neat screenshot, but it wasn't evident that it shares the posts or has community about them.

Maybe you can add some information about that community element to the main page?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Page has been updated.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mixtube, DJ your party from any browser (needs flash) - <AUTHOR> http://burnsmod.com/fun/mixtube/mixtube.html#

<comment><USER2> I know the guy that knows this guy. I believe in the guy that knows this guy, so it must be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know this guy, and I've seen this iteratively evolve at various parties based on what goes wrong. pretty happy to see it at this stage now. well done!</comment>


XLParser: A C# parser for Microsoft Excel formulas - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spreadsheetlab/XLParser <comment><USER2> Hi! I'm one of the authors and did most of the implementation work, very surprised seeing this appear on HN!

If you want to see the tool in action, check out our online demo [1].

If you have any questions you can ask them here. We also have a paper [2] which described the innards and design choices.

[1]: [http://xlparser.perfectxl.nl/demo/](http://xlparser.perfectxl.nl/demo/)

[2]: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B79P2Uym3JjvMjlaWWtnTWRLQmc...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B79P2Uym3JjvMjlaWWtnTWRLQmc/view?usp=sharing)

<comment><AUTHOR> You shouldn't really be surprised, this immediately looked like awesome work showing up in my twitter feed, and I think the comments largely agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see this, and thanks for open-sourcing it. We (by which I mostly mean Dan Barowy ([http://people.cs.umass.edu/~dbarowy/](http://people.cs.umass.edu/~dbarowy/)) burned a considerable amount of time and energy on parsing Excel formulas for our CheckCell project ([http://checkcell.org](http://checkcell.org)), but yours looks more general (for example, CheckCell doesn't care about precedence, so we didn't implement that).

<comment><USER2> Glad to hear, that's exactly why we open-sourced it.

We want to prevent everyone from doing the same work over and over again and provide a basis to work from if people so desire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One feature that would be cool is an Excel addin to which you would designate a bunch of cells from a spreadsheet as inputs and one output, would follow the logic and emit code to replicate this logic as a function.

Code in VBA would be an obvious candidate, allowing non technical users to apply a complex Excel based logic to a whole list of entries for instance, by making a function that can be called on every line. Or allowing to hide the logic in a password protected VBA project so that the spreadsheet can be shared without disclosing the logic.

Could also be used by IT departments when they inherit from spreadsheets they need to integrate in systems. In fact it could even be used as a UI. Business users express the business logic in excel, a syntax they are familiar with, and update the logic in a system automatically by the system parsing the spreadsheet.

<comment><USER5> > One feature that would be cool is an Excel addin to which you would > designate a bunch of cells from a spreadsheet as inputs and one output, > would follow the logic and emit code to replicate this logic as a function.

From having "you suck at excel" run in the background a few weeks back, I learned that feature is already in excel, there are "input", "calculation" and "output" cell formats/styles: [https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c?t=2756](https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c?t=2756)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I would have thought that Excel formulas would be relatively easy to parse, but they with things like array formulas, etc it could start to get a bit hairy.

This might be very useful for a project I have coming up, so I'll definitely look at it further!

<comment><USER2> The basics are very simple, but there are some very intricate rules/quirks...

For example, the following are valid formulas:

        `=SUM(IF(TRUE,A2,C7):C10)`
        `=SUM(A1:B3:C2)`
        `=SUM(A1,,,,,,A2)`
        `=SUM((A1,A2),A3)` means something different than `=SUM(A1,A2,A3)`, both are valid
        `=SUM(A:A 1:1)`

We still have only <<100 production rules while the official Microsoft one has hundreds. If you don't care about the complicated structures (and our research indicates that they are very rarely used) you can make the grammar _a lot_ simpler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do you always need the most recent Visual Studio version for projects?

<comment><USER8> It could be written with C# 6 and Visual Studio 2015 is (currently) the only version of Visual Studio to support C# 6.

You can see C# 6 features like the nameof operator in use here [1].

[1] [https://github.com/spreadsheetlab/XLParser/search?utf8=%E2%9...](https://github.com/spreadsheetlab/XLParser/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=nameof)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Too bad I didn't have this year ago, it would have saved me some work with [http://excel2flow.asp2.cz/](http://excel2flow.asp2.cz/)</comment>


Show HN: Focal, a daily look at life, from an internal 2-day hackathon - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id899231594

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a small hobby app a small group of us built. It originally came out of an internal hackathon here, and we've slowly been adding to it over time. Today is our "public release" day, where we've agreed to share it out with the world. It's a simple app, but we had fun building it and using it. In the true spirit of hackathons, we had QA people building websites and product managers learning how to code iOS apps.</comment>


JavaScript newb like me? Get excited about learning it - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/jsguru/why-javascript-fda221646c66 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a very opinionated piece -- the author even admits that in the introduction -- but he covers the pros and cons of JavaScript quite fairly. He also links to a lot of great resources that helped me, who am very very new to JS and coding, learn about the different JS tools and applications in a very short time.</comment>


AOL Might Just Have Invented Email's Next UI Paradigm - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671036/aol-might-just-have-invented-emails-next-ui-paradigm

<comment><USER2> Aggregation networks that focus on a individual users experience across mutliple channels rather then a single channel will be the driving force for the next wave of big startups IMO (and providing they can get the data cleanly).

ALTO confirms this, Its not just a new paradigm for email UX but communication UX. HootSuite and others have attempted similar by focusing on a few networks or channels and they have shown that people want a service where then can manage their online profile and communication from a single system. Attach email and file management capabilities and its a one stop shop.

btw: I would also add this is where Google has failed to capitalise in the marketplace. Users don't want another social network, The want control of everything from a single point.

<comment><USER3> Strongly agree - there will be a wave of consolidation coming soon

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is this one of Paul Graham's Frighteningly ambitious startup ideas in the making? <http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html>

Is AOL's current position that of an incumbent or a disruptor?

</comment><comment><USER4> First MySpace and now AOL. There's some great design where you least expect it. :)</comment>


Strolling through "Nigeria's Best Buy" (A Photo Essay) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/06/strolling-through-nigerias-best-buy-a-photo-essay/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but does anyone see the unintentional sarcasm of this article. Sarah lacy - tech tw*t.</comment>


PHP best practices - <AUTHOR> http://www.odi.ch/prog/design/php/guide.php <comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for posting something so out of date, it was a request on an ask HN and I goofed up. By means of compensation, please consider these instead:

[http://blog.macronimous.com/php-best-practices-and-worst- mis...](http://blog.macronimous.com/php-best-practices-and-worst-mistakes/)

<http://fwebde.com/php/best-practices/>

[http://www.devtheweb.net/blog/2010/03/02/common-php-best- pra...](http://www.devtheweb.net/blog/2010/03/02/common-php-best-practices/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, super outdated, to the point where most of it is flat-out wrong. Almost every point has been superseded by new PHP functionality and features.

</comment><comment><USER4> A couple of notes I'd like to mention on this.

SANITIZE ALL USER INPUT. ALWAYS. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Examples of such user input include GET variables, POST variables, cookies, email, web services (yes even your most trusted partner site can be hacked), etc. If you don't have control over it, sanitize it.

That means using the appropriate parameter binding functionality of your database / abstraction layer when inserting data. Anything that displays user input text also needs to be sanitized for preventing malicious client side code (XSS).

As noted in this article, I recommend having a global include file that all other files can utilize. This lets you define the absolute path to various directories that your application can utilize throughout the code base. If you ever need to switch locations, you only need to change the config variables and not your entire codebase.

How to work with databases is often a touchy subject. On one hand you have data abstraction which helps remove many of the deep down logic on how to interact with databases, saving the programmer's time. Indeed, if you switch to another database that is supported by your abstraction layer, it will be easier to migrate. Unfortunately, if you start writing SQL specific to that database, the "easy switch" advantage starts to become null and moot, as you'll have to rewrite much of your SQL anyways.

On the other hand you have those who write SQL code specific to the database at hand, making sure to utilize the best performance possible. One thing to also take into consideration is that with data abstraction, you will have to go through the logical branches that the abstraction provides every time you want to work with the database. If you need to do a very large amount of queries constantly, you may start to notice the side effects of this in terms of speed. It's best to take these issues into consideration when designing a database driven application.

With regards to localization, I recommend looking at PHP's gettext extension:

<http://us3.php.net/gettext>

With this approach, you can provide links or a dropdown to set a session variable, and all strings can be localized to that session variable's value. Obviously you will have to use the gettext functions wherever translatable strings are available, but it's well worth it to make the ease of providing newly translated versions of your site a matter of just doing the translations with minor tweeks here and there.

<comment><USER5> > SANITIZE ALL USER INPUT. ALWAYS. NO EXCEPTIONS.

I really don't like that word. Or "filter", "clean" or whatever people call it.

It implies that you can somehow run a variable through a filter and scrub of all the evilness. But that is not how to deal with the problem. What need be done, is to encode strings properly when embedding them in a context, that is interpreted in some other context. For example encode entities when inserting into html or urlencode when inserting into a url.

Bottom line is - This has nothing to do with user input. It has to do with how you output data.

<comment><USER4> If you're preventing SQL injection, you do need to run the variable through a filter (mysql_real_escape_string, parameter binding, etc.) in order to prevent a successful attack.

The other issue is that if I encode entities when inserting html, that means I have to call this on every page view. For simple strings that's not too big a deal, but if I have a lot of content, this gets resource intensive pretty fast for larger scale sites with lots of people hitting a page at once.

In this case I'd rather due the encoding once, which handles a majority of cases.

<comment><USER6> Encoding is dirt cheap. You probably pay more just for a TCP stack that isn't perfectly tuned for your workload.

And you can't pre-encode a string without baking in bad assumptions that you know how it may ever be used. You're going to regret having your data store polluted with HTML-specific encoding as soon as you build an API or integrate a third-party tool (e.g., analytics or sales support), because they will need either raw values or some different encoding than HTML text (SGML entities).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sorry to be so negative, but I disagree with a lot of those points.

> _short_open_tag: Always use the long PHP tags: <?php echo "hello world"; ?> > Do not use the echo shortcut <?=._

It's just a minor point, but why are we advocating the longer version which is also more difficult to read? It's not like there are typically any other XML PIs in a PHP file, so there is really no potential for confusion here.

> _Use Value Objects (VO)_

It may be a widely used J2EE pattern, but that in itself is no justification for using it. I _love_ VOs in JavaScript, they're handy and light-weight, they're the core of what's awesome about JSON. But PHP has perfectly good associative arrays that can do the same job, without all the declarative overhead of VOs. If we're not going to implement behavior inside these objects, really what is the point?

> _Use Data Access Objects (DAO)_

And once again with the J2EE worship. Why?

> _Generate code_

This has got to be the most unnecessary of all. Sure, if you're going to use lots of VOs and DAO, you'll probably need code generation, but that's just circular logic. But this is also thoroughly besides the point, and it's a performance nightmare. What happened to efficient, terse code? A CGI call in PHP is not made against a static class environment: all this stuff has to be initialized for every single request. At a fundamental level, this betrays a failure to understand the crucial differences between the PHP runtime and, say, a servlet container. It is essential that programmers make use of the individual strengths those systems have, instead of translating Java code _and_ design patterns blindly into whatever environment they happen to work with.

That said, there are very many valid design points that benefit almost any code in any program language. But in the cases above, PHP best practices simply should not be derived from a wish to mimic Java (probably stemming from a misguided attempt to fake the appearance of sophistication and academic validity).

</comment><comment><USER8> I noticed a somehow weird thing -- most of this guides mention "use namespaces".

As far as I remember, having no namespaces wasn't that much of a problem 5 years ago. They used static class methods and that actually looked like a good ol' double-colon syntax. With that kind of atrociousness php team had put into the language and labeled "namespaces", I'd still resort to doing static methods, if I was still doing php. Backslashes? _Really_?

</comment><comment><USER9> 2005-7-11

Kinda old..

</comment><comment><USER10> Article invalidates self early on by claiming that this is a value object:

class Person { var $id, $first_name, $last_name, $email; }

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ValueObject>

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool thing! PHP is really great if you want to get things done in a quick-and- easy way but it also tends do get a little messy! This article is also good for people (like me) using PHP in a pure functional way (=no classes) - <USER2> others may now boo :)

<comment><USER8> What you actually meant is procedural way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just use a framework. Most of these basics are built in.

</comment><comment><USER13> Note that while some of the practices hinted in the article are good, the article is over 5 years old and not all facts stated and practices preached in the article are valid today; PHP has gone through dramatical changes since 2005. Just to mention one thing that stood out: "In PHP there are no database- independent functions for database access apart from ODBC (which nobody uses on Linux)." - PHP has since long had 3 abstraction layers available apart from ODBC (they are PDO, dbx and DBA).

</comment><comment><USER14> PHP Best Practice #1: Don't.

<comment><USER15> I didn't see that one coming....</comment></comment>


Betaworks Launches Chartbeat To Track Who Is Paying Attention To Your Website Right Now  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/02/betaworks-launches-chartbeat-to-track-who-is-paying-attention-to-your-website-right-now/ <comment><AUTHOR> I use Chartbeat for <http://tipjoy.com>

It's pretty fun. They should incorporate user ids, and the ability to chat in real time. It would be awesome if you could track that user X was doing Y, and had a 404. Imagine a chat window that pinged them to see if everything was OK.

This obviously doesn't scale well, but for a good number of users, you could give them a delightful experience.

<comment><USER2> I've played with Chartbeat also -- it's clearly a big opportunity.

Real-time chat with users has to be done carefully in my opinion. Done wrong I think it could be very intrusive and off-putting to users. I imagine it being user initiated, like support chats on hosting providers.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why I brought up the 404 page. That's implicitly user initiated. You could also have a button that says "help!"</comment></comment></comment>


Face ID beaten by mask - <AUTHOR> http://www.bkav.com/d/top-news/-/view_content/content/103968/face-id-beaten-by-mask-not-an-effective-security-measure <comment><USER2> I wish they'd tone it down a little. This is really interesting, but stuff like this makes it hard to take them seriously:

"Apple has done this not so well. I remember reading an article on Mashable, in which Apple told that iPhone X had been planned to be rolled out in 2018, but the company then decided to release it one year earlier. This shows that they haven't carried out scientific and serious estimation before deciding to replace Touch ID with Face ID."

I'm amy case, this doesn't worry me personally too much. I don't expect biometrics to be more secure than a password, just reasonably secure and more convenient. Before Touch ID, my passcode was 0000 with a four-hour lock timeout. I only had it set because some apps reduced functionality if no passcode was set. Real world security for me increased a lot with biometrics.

As for fingerprints versus facial recognition, the article claims fingerprints are better, but I'm skeptical. For one thing, my phone is covered in my own fingerprints, so getting something to copy is a lot easier.

<comment><USER3> Biometrics are weaker than anything that relies on knowledge, for the simple fact that a physical attack IRL cannot be resisted. One could die without revealing a pin or password, but a biometric device would reveal his secrets very quickly through simple coercion and even after death has occurred.

<comment><USER4> > _One could die without revealing a pin or password, but a biometric device > would reveal his secrets very quickly through simple coercion and even after > death has occurred._

Well, that's hardly a criterion for most people. I'd rather give the password than die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Troy Hunt already posted about this [1].

I think this quote is fitting:

 _" More than anything though, we need to remember that Face ID introduces another security model with its own upsides and downsides on both security and usability. It's not "less secure than a PIN", it's differently secure and the trick now is in individuals choosing the auth model that's right for them."_

[1] [https://www.troyhunt.com/face-id-touch-id-pins-no-id-and- pra...](https://www.troyhunt.com/face-id-touch-id-pins-no-id-and-pragmatic- security/)

<comment><AUTHOR> From Troy Hunt's article:

> given the processing power to actually observe and interpret eye movements > in the split second within which you expect this to work, this would be a > really neat failsafe. Apple highlights this as "attention awareness"

Yes, it would be a great failsafe.

However, if the PoC demonstrated by Bkav is legit, it would seem that Face ID doesn't look for eye movement; it just checks if the eyes are oriented toward the device.

That said, I agree that regular people probably don't need to worry about any of this.

<comment><USER6> You can also turn attention awareness off. They didn't specifically mention whether they turned it off or left it on.

<comment><USER7> According to tweets from Wired, the attention features were disabled when they initially observed the test. There were also questions that they asked that the Bkav team refused to answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a consumer this doesn't worry me as to be able to crack my phone it looks like they would already have to have access to my face to make the mask (and an expert sculpture to make a nose).

If they could demonstrate it working from a 3D printed mask taken from a surreptitious scan at distance in the outdoors then I think we'd have reason to be worried.

For spies, spooks, government agents etc. I suspect that Face ID would always be a no-no as it is much harder to control the ability of others to eavesdrop.

<comment><USER4> > _As a consumer this doesn 't worry me as to be able to crack my phone it > looks like they would already have to have access to my face to make the > mask_

So like what they can gather from 100s of one's photos in social media and other places?

<comment><USER9> This assumes a lot.

As the OP said: demonstrate that from that data you can produce a sufficiently accurate model that works with this method.

The article hasn't.

It may be possible (you only have to match the resolution of the IR depth map) but it is _not currently demonstrated_.

Plus I imagine it's quite easy to refine FaceID in the software as well so an attack like this may not be very long lasting.

<comment><USER10> Attacks only get better with time. Check back in a couple years and someone may have done just that.

<comment><USER9> Defenses only get better with time too. That isn't a good argument. Based on that logic we should have no security ever on anything because it's always pointless long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Once someone is at the stage where they're going to 3D scan you, create a replica of your face and steal your phone to get into it...why wouldn't they just coerce you into unlocking your phone with force? See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber- hose_cryptanalysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis)

<comment><USER12> Obligatory [https://www.xkcd.com/538/](https://www.xkcd.com/538/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most of these answers basically say nothing. e.g.

"""Q: How did Bkav develop the mask (for example why you use silicone for the nose, why 3D printing for some areas while special processing for others, etc.)?

A: You are right. Many people in the world have tried different kinds of masks but all failed. It is because we understand how AI of Face ID works and how to bypass it. As stated above, we were the first in the world to show that face recognition was not an effective security measure for laptops."""

is a really nice way to dodge the question of why they used silicone for some parts of the mask.

</comment><comment><USER14> They're an "Interesting" company...

I'm not sure the authenticity of this story. The authors of the hack claim to be: "the leading firm in network security, software, smartphone manufacturing (Bkav.com/Bphone) and smarthome"[sic] and one of their products is a "gold plated SmartHome for _super_ luxury villas".

I wonder if it will work is ordinary luxury villas...

<comment><USER15> their bphone is just an overpriced android phone. they even goes as far as re- branded chrome to be bchrome. probably without google's permission as well as installing market and google default apps.

</comment></comment><comment> nezza-_- I feel like this demo is not really good. A video where a (real) face is learned in and then the mask is used to unlock would be good, this could just show that the mask is learned into FaceID.

<comment><USER16> And then the question would have been if it could be beaten after the system was given time to learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _The 1st point is, everything went much more easily than you expect. You can try it out with your own iPhone X, the phone shall recognize you even when you cover a half of your face. It means the recognition mechanism is not as strict as you think, Apple seems to rely too much on Face ID 's AI. We just need a half face to create the mask. It was even simpler than we ourselves had thought._

Interesting. I expected this to be some quite obscure technique.

<comment><USER18> > We used a popular 3D printer. Nose was made by a handmade artist. We use 2D > printing for other parts (similar to how we tricked Face Recognition 9 years > ago). The skin was also hand-made to trick Apple's AI.

That seems reasonably obscure (:

<comment><USER19> This is the first step, it's only going to get easier from now on.

<comment><USER18> Sure, but Face ID will also evolve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If somebody is going to try this hard to get through my Face ID, I'm enough of a high level target that I'm not relying on a shortcut unlock feature of a consumer cell phone. And I've likely got bigger problems.

<comment><USER21> If you are that high level then your family and close associates are all targets. Same goes their family and network...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Because... we are the leading cyber security firm ;)

But you don't even use HTTPS. Why?

<comment><USER23> Because the information was meant to be public anyway?

<comment><USER24> Their "download" page is also HTTP which is a bit more concerning. Pretty sloppy for a company that provides security tools imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd really like to see more details about how this was done, and less of the over-the-top rhetoric.

Claims such as "we are the leading cyber security firm" and "we understand apple's AI and how to beat it" do not make you look more competent, just more boastful.

<comment><USER26> Yes, the whole tone (and lack of specificity) of the article does not add to its credibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can sombebody explain this:

 _" A: It does not matter whether Apple Face ID "learns" new images of the face, since it will not affect the truth that Apple Face ID is not an effective security measure. However, we knew about this "learning", thus, to give a more persuasive result, we applied the strict rule of "absolutely no passcode" when crafting the mask."_

Does it mean passcode was completely off and the phone would not lock itself after a few failed attempts? Because there's a difference between trying until it works and getting a mask within 24 hours that does not fail three times.

<comment><USER28> It most definitely matters. I have read Face ID tries to learn more about your face if you unlock it with the passcode after having issues unlocking with your face. What are the chances it learned the mask?

<comment><USER27> That's a super interesting thought. Face ID is a bit of a black box. Though I'm not trying to defend it to death, I can imagine it's better than all of the face scanners before it but far from super secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Isn't it strange that a room-temperature face can unlock the phone when Apple has made it clear that the iPhone X uses the temperature of the face to detect masks etc.? From the perspective of the IR camera, the mask and that guy's face should look completely different. This attack makes it look like it's not using this information at all.

<comment><USER30> The IR camera is near-infrared, it measures more or less light that your eyes can't see, and no heat frequencies. The IR camera is used to recover 3D information: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured- light_3D_scanner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured-light_3D_scanner)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Video of this working: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4YQRLQVixM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4YQRLQVixM)

<comment><USER32> i enjoyed the presentation, he has a flair for the dramatic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So, fingerprints are not "secure", face recognition is not "secure"... Are passwords/double authentication the only way to keep things private and secure these days? Are there any serious alternative?

<comment><USER34> Fingerprint or face or retina is not a "password", it is a "login". And we should have a proper password in addition to the login, not as a substitute.

<comment><USER35> I wonder if Apple experimented with using eye movements as a passcode? I imagine they have the technology available to do such a thing. That would make it so your face is your username and a specific movement you made with your eyes the password.

<comment><USER36> There are conditions that may make an average person unable to perform the movement, like getting a severe cold or an eye infection that makes an eye water. They may still want to use their phones with minimum inconvenience, instead of resorting to entering a passcode. It may not be possible for some people to configure it well either, and may probably result in eye movements that others may consider weird (imagine rolling your eyes in front of your boss because you wanted to unlock your phone).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was hoping they released more details about the process. One possible method is that they trained the iphone's Face ID on the mask by repeatedly failing to unlock it with the mask and then entering the passcode which trains the iphone's neural net on the new face (mask in this case). There was a video a few days ago where the iphone X was unlocked by a man's brother by doing this : [https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/04/face-id-siblings- fail/](https://9to5mac.com/2017/11/04/face-id-siblings-fail/) .

This was posted 2 days ago, any statement from apple on this story?

<comment><USER38> They address this in their second point:

> It does not matter whether Apple Face ID "learns" new images of the face, > since it will not affect the truth that Apple Face ID is not an effective > security measure. However, we knew about this "learning", thus, to give a > more persuasive result, we applied the strict rule of "absolutely no > passcode" when crafting the mask.

<comment><USER39> Yes, they addressed it, but why not demonstrate it if it was actually true? As in register on camera then point it at the mask.

My guess would be because it doesn't actually work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I re-read the whole thing but cannot find what _special processing_ is all about. Is it molding using clay or something?

<comment><USER41> The _special processing_ is done to large areas of skin, so I would say that it is makeup powder to make the plastic have IR reflective properties of real skin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Why not layer on more data? Like a facial gesture (smile, wink, tongue out, etc) _and_ a fingerprint? Both using thermal readings as "proof". Given you're almost always using your face and hands, this isn't much of an inconvenience but it's powers more secure. All for pennies (in comparison to a $1k device).

It's infuriating that each time a mass-produced biometric scanner comes out, it's hogtied by the fact this cheap technology isn't quite good enough yet.

<comment><USER43> This type of 'layering' could be done with other devices in the eco-system, too. The Apple Watch for (a crude) example:

> Does this person have an Apple Watch? Is the device in range? Is it > unlocked? Do the wearer's biometrics match?

Most individuals have (for better or worse) bought into the (relatively) closed system of Apple products – why not continue leveraging that to their advantage?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> So Ive been thinking about biometrics and phone security a bit, and it seems to me there is a pretty easy way to tell how secure your phone needs to be on an X/Y chart where Y= Security needed and X = Data sensitivity/Personal-ness.

Id say the ideal plot would follow an exponential curve, and seems that if you didn't keep a lot of personal data on your phone and all your social, financial and mail accounts can be reset quickly via the web, you don't need much security provided you maintain custody of your device. That said, Im glad that any claims as to the security of biometrics are not just taken at apple's/samsung's/google's word.

I remember the iPhoneX event stated that there was a exponentially smaller chance that someone else's face could unlock your phone, and that masks "wont work". I could also be mis-remembering, but there is a way to tell the iPhoneX to not allow your face if you find yourself compromised in some way. So unless someone has access to make a 3d rendering of your face, the means to make a mask and the opportunity to take your phone before you can signal that you want to authenticate with a password it seems pretty secure...

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm actually going to be very interested to hear how FaceID works for the average user. False positive is one issue and one Apple lauded as being lower than TouchID.

What about the false negative rate however? This is what will actually aggravate users.

As a user I like touch unlock. I can do it without looking at the phone, having the phone gave me, in the dark, wearing sunglasses and so on.

To me face recognition just seems like a huge step backwards. I'd love to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER9> Only negative results I've had were due to either proximity (it can't see my face properly- too far away or too close) or obfuscation (lying on pillow which obscures too much of my face)

Overall it's much smoother and non-intrusive than TouchID

I've never needed to unlock my phone in a situation where I'm not about to look at it so I'm not sure what use case you're running into there.

As for in the dark: it automatically scans when you swipe up, so no issue. Don't think of it as "using Face ID" think of it as "swipe up to unlock phone". The Face ID is just an implementation detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> One thing that's usually missed is that passcodes aren't that secure if you unlock your phone with strangers around or if there are surveillance cameras filming you.

</comment><comment> yoz-y The one answer that is missing from this QA is how many tries they had before it worked.

Did they configure Face Id, made the mask and then it worked immediately? Did they tinker with the mask until it worked? From the way this is written I suppose the latter.

Nevertheless, I thought Apple was detecting small movements in eyes to ensure that the subject in front is actually a living human. I don't know where I got this from, but now I am disappointed.

<comment><USER47> *I thought Apple was detecting small movements in eyes to ensure that the subject in front is actually a living human

Face ID does track eye movement ("require attention"), but you can turn off that setting. I haven't found any information as to whether the firm disabled the eye tracking for this crack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > A: We used a popular 3D printer. Nose was made by a handmade artist. We use > 2D printing for other parts (similar to how we tricked Face Recognition 9 > years ago). The skin was also hand-made to trick Apple's AI.

> Q: What's the approximate cost of the mask?

> A: ~ 150 USD

Taken together, the second answer cannot be true. Only if the cost stated is related to material cost only, which is is only one input factor to assess the total cost of this approach

<comment><USER49> What other cost are you referring to? The 3D printer? You can send your design to a studio and they'll print it for you and send it, or you can rent time in some places to get access to a printer, without needing to buy one.

In any case, if it needed only a paper print, you wouldn't count the cost of the printer, since you can print it anywhere.

<comment><USER50> Human labor is expensive. Not accounting for that is a bit disingenuous.

<comment><USER51> Artists aren't particularly well paid.

<comment><USER52> … for pure art, maybe. For commercial artists, especially ones capable of precise results on a deadline and, in this case, also not asking too many questions?

<comment><USER53> not true either, read up on past stories of skilled forgers of paper currency: their labor was surprisingly inexpensive.

<comment><USER52> Do you have any citations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I would really appreciate an option for 2FA: Require both a PIN and Touch ID / Face ID to unlock the phone. With long passphrase to disable this again.

</comment><comment><USER55> Would it be possible to just capture the IR beams with a camera, and use a projector to send to the phone's sensor a new set of IR points as they would appear if they were projected on an actual 3D model? This would allow to use only a digital model of a face, without the need for printing it.

<comment><USER56> FaceID resists this by using a random dot pattern. If the pattern it gets back doesn't match what it sends you get a lockout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Biometrics are usernames not passwords. Biometrics should never be used on the sole authentication method they should only be used in conjunction with something else.

<comment><USER58> _Biometrics are usernames not passwords_

That such a meaningless slogan. Passwords and biometrics have different pros and cons, but they are the same in that they increase security.

 _Biometrics should never be used on the sole authentication method_

* Biometrics is _always_ better than no security.

* Biometrics done well is certainly better than a 4-digit PIN.

* Biometrics on an iDevice is in fact always used with something else, which is device itself: Touch/FaceID on an iPhone can only be used to access that particular iPhone. Ie. if you manage to steal my fingerprint, you can only use it to access the devices that I have set up to use my fingerprint. This means that my fingerprint alone is not of any value, unless you can also gain physical access to my phone. Compare this with a password which, if stolen, allows attackers on the other side of the globe to access to my accounts.

<comment><USER57> >That such a meaningless slogan. Passwords and biometrics have different pros and cons, but they are the same in that they increase security.

It is not a meaningless slogan, if Biometrics give the wider public a FALSE sense of security in that companies like Apple pitch them in unrealistic and inaccurate ways in their marketing that gives the average Joe the false idea that bio metrics are more secure than they really are, and secure more data that it really does.

>Biometrics is always better than no security.

That not only a pointless statement, but a False Dilemma Fallacy as well

>Biometrics done well is certainly better than a 4-digit PIN.

Done well is the key part, and again that is a False Dilemma Fallacy as you assume the choice is between a 4 digit pin and Biometrics, it is not

> if you manage to steal my fingerprint, you can only use it to access the > devices that I have set up to use my fingerprint. This means that my > fingerprint alone is not of any value, unless you can also gain physical > access to my phone. Compare this with a password which, if stolen, allows > attackers on the other side of the globe to access to my accounts.

it is funny you mention that because often time I see people set VERY insecure passwords because they believe that thei biometrics protects their password. So they set a insecure password "They will never use or need" because they relay biometrics and believe it provides all the security they need not just the security of the device, but since they only access their data from that device they are lulled in a false sense of security that the biometrics are protecting not only their device but ALL OF THEIR ACCOUNTS

<comment><USER58> _Biometrics give the wider public a FALSE sense of security_

Oh, please! There is an abundance of evidence to show that the wider public is completely uninterested in security to the degree that a majority will disable security features altogether if they are inconvenient to use in the slightest. People don't use biometric authentication because they are misled to believe that it's more secure than other methods of security. They use it because it's the most convenient method.

 _That not only a pointless statement, but a False Dilemma Fallacy as well_

In principle perhaps, but not in practice. Before biometric authentication became widespread, it was completely normal not to protect your phone at all. And when it was protected, it was almost always with a 4-digit PIN that you only had to enter after some amount of time had passed since you last unlocked the phone.

 _often time I see people set VERY insecure passwords because they believe that thei biometrics protects their password_

That's a nice anecdote which may be a completely accurate account of what someone told you. Or not. I find it hard to believe with no evidence that such a specific misunderstanding should be widespread. I do find it very believable that people use bad passwords, because people have always used bad passwords. As long as we're exchanging anecdotes, I can tell you that I personally changed from a 4-digit PIN to a longer password when I got Touch ID, because it wasn't as inconvenient when I only had to type it in once in a while as opposed to every time I unlock my phone.

<comment><USER59> It's also worth noting that iOS defaults to asking for a 6 digit PIN when you set up a new device. You can switch it to 4/0/alphanumeric, but the default is 6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Cool that they took the time to explore the limits of it, but FaceID is about convenience with security, not maximum security. Having physical access to the phone is still required, which is a pretty big obstacle for this kind of attack.

There is also a quick button squeeze you can do that requires passcode for the next unlock, so you can do that before you go to bed if you're really afraid someone is going to gain physical access to your device.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish both companies would allow us to have both PIN/PASS + biometric together and not strictly separately as it is now. At least as an option.

<comment><USER61> It would make a lot of sense for the new iphone actually, since with the PIN you're usually already looking at the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'd love to see more details. When TouchID was hacked, it caused a minor sensation. When details of the hack emerged, it turned out to be not a sensation at all, but a process that can hardly be replicated by real criminals.

</comment><comment><USER63> What stops someone from taking the phone and "flash" it to your face, having the phone unlocked before you understand what's going on. Or do you have to hold the phone to the face while typing the password ?

<comment><USER64> The same thing that stops someone from jumping you and forcing you to unlock with Touch ID.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> well, we only need a process to rotate faces now every month and a minimum complexity check because faces with only one nose are clearly not secure enough

</comment><comment><USER66> "the phone shall recognize you even when you cover a half of your face". I wonder what half and why this works.

<comment> yoz-y Probably because of clothes such as hats and scarves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Nevermind. Should have read the article. I thought it was the same as the one I saw over the weekend.

<comment><USER68> Edit: the op asked if this could be done with the user knowing (I don't know why the question was removed).

"We might use smartphones with 3D scanning capabilities (like Sony XZ1); or set up a room with a 3D scanner, a few seconds is enough for the scanning (here's an example of a 3D scanning booth). An easier way is photograph-based, artists craft a thing from its photos. Take the nose of our mask for example, its creation is not complicated at all. "

<comment><USER67> I tried to delete it but you were too quick to answer so deletion was blocked. The question was clearly answered in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I hope this does not result in me getting 3D face scanned as I pass through border control

<comment><USER70> I think the "self-service" passport gates in the EU already do this.

<comment><USER71> Actually quite a few countries already do this e.g. Australia.

Although I am not sure if it's based on your head or just scanning your iris.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> <here was a misleading comment>

<comment><USER73> He does no such thing. The passcode is never entered in front of the mask. They also explicitly state in their Q&A that the passcode was never entered in front of the mask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> It's conspicuous that the real face of the user of the iPhone isn't shown in the video or in photos on the site.

<comment><USER75> In the video, he shows the iPhone being unlocked with his own face at 1:06:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i4YQRLQVixM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i4YQRLQVixM)

<comment><USER74> So it does. It seems that the iPhone is better at recognising faces than me at least.

<comment> yoz-y On the bright side, this seems to confirm that one would be able to use FaceID if mugged and beaten black and blue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> finally a useful application for 3d printers

</comment><comment><USER77> Wonder if this would work have Apple not relaxed their FaceID sensor requirements to ship the phones more quickly.

<comment><USER8> While I recall this rumour I thought it was widely discredited. Was there any actual evidence of this?</comment></comment>


GE is working on a massive 3D printer for jet engine parts - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/21/ge-massive-3d-printer-jet-engine/ <comment><USER2> Original source is more informative and has a video [http://www.gereports.com/ge-building-worlds-largest- additive...](http://www.gereports.com/ge-building-worlds-largest-additive- machine-3d-printing-metals/)</comment>


Ask HN: What was the secret that Jan Sloot took with him to the grave? - <AUTHOR> This has to be one of the largest (and personally the most interesting) IT myths out there.  I have my own belief of what happened (which I might share later), but I'm really interested in reading what others believe went on and how (or if) he was able to actually reduce a full movie down to a fraction of its size.
Brief summary for those who haven't heard of him: Sloot claimed to have invented a system that was able to compress a full digital movie down to 8 KB which he privately demonstrated to different groups several times.  He was even in contact with Roel Pieper who was Philips CTO at the time and just before they were about to go big, he passes away.
Jan Sloot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Sloot <comment><USER2> He said it wasn't "compressing", but rather called it a "coding system" that used some "reference memory". His early patents describe some mechanism that uses a combination of RLE and references to lines of pixels stored in that reference memory. I haven't seen any materials that suggest something revolutionary. Claims like these have been made many times during the past decades but either got busted or their inventor mysteriously died or disappeared. IMHO just another story for conspiracy theorists :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Another theory that I read was that Sloot had somehow linked analog and digital (he was supposedly a TV technician before) and that he was parameterizing data from an analog signal using a small amount of data.

Source: [http://jansloot.telcomsoft.nl/Sources-1/More/CaptainCosmos/N...](http://jansloot.telcomsoft.nl/Sources-1/More/CaptainCosmos/Not_Compression.htm) (comment by Koen near the bottom of the page).

Now conspiracy theory or not; one can't claim that it's not an interesting read since he privately demonstrated it to at least 20 people and was also able to get Philips to work with him.

<comment><USER2> Here's a lot more on Sloot and others: [http://www.endlesscompression.com](http://www.endlesscompression.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds more like encryption than compression and I don't understand how it could save space the majority of the unique data is still needed for each movie.

I hate to say it and I would love to be proved wrong, but my theory is that it was a hoax (an impressive one as he was able to convince big names) and I think he did it with encryption. Here's what I think: what's fairly established is that Sloot used "shared resources" which each user of the system was required to have in order to decompress/view the movies (here's a picture of the box with the shared resources: [http://www.nethwork.nl/images/kastjesloot.jpg](http://www.nethwork.nl/images/kastjesloot.jpg)).

Now this box had one or multiple storage devices which stored encrypted copies of the hundreds of movies that he used for the demos (with perhaps some RLE to save space). The chipcard contained the secret key for each movie and here is how I think it worked:

1\. The chipcard (8 KB in size) containing a secret key is inserted into the machine.

2\. The source code is decrypted using the key and compiled for each run (this would explain why no one was able to get their hands on the source code).

3\. The movie is extracted/decrypted from the shared resources by following the sequence provided by the secret key.

In other words, he got away with storing the full sized movies on the disks simply by saying that they were shared resources.

Once they got a few days away from the release the realization that he be exposed, caused the stress that lead to his unfortunate death.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An RF-powered cordless phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/this-cell-phone-can-make-calls-even-without-a-battery <comment><USER2> Neither the title of this item (currently "A cell phone powered by ambient light") nor the article's ("This Cell Phone Can Make Calls Even Without a Battery") is really accurate.

 _Because the phone relies on those signals for its energy harvesting, it has a range of just 15 meters from the basestation._

This is neither a cellphone nor solar-powered. It's an RF-powered cordless phone. Interesting nonetheless.

<comment><USER3> Well, _technically_ RF-harvesting phone _is_ powered by "ambient light". The title says nothing about solar, or _visible_ light.

<comment><USER4> The word "light" denotes EM radiation in the visible spectrum or in the near IR/UV only, not generic EM radiation.

<comment><USER3> To normal folks, maybe, but in technical language it can refer to the entire EM spectrum (as there's no meaningful difference between "visible" and "invisible" EM radiation for anything other than human eyes).

EDIT:

I looked up the spectrum PV cells tend to respond to and some sources on the usual meaning of the word "light", and I admit my original comment was me being pedantic about the more obscure usage of the word. Sorry :(.

<comment><USER5> ...which makes it pretty meaningful to humans.

Also consider what of the sun's radiation makes it to the surface of the Earth.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An IPhone battery has a capacity of roughly 10Wh. The energy density of the sun is approx. 1kW/m2 on earth. Let's assume a solar cell with 20% efficiency, so 200W/m2. To charge the iPhone battery in 4h you would need a solar panel with an area of 11cmx11cm. So the phone is probably not very powerful. Certainly it's power draw is nowhere near current smartphones. (It's mentioned in TFA, 800mW when calling, tens of microwatts when on standby)

<comment><USER3> That... sounds too good to be true. 11x11cm panel is basically a pocket one; hell, my S7 has surface area (one side) of ~80% of that. And 4h for charging a smartphone is a typical time.

So it sounds like not only this should be very useful according to those numbers, but would also imply that solar chargers for smartphones are not complete bullshit fake non-product I always assumed they were?

<comment><USER7> Huh, I guess you're right.

My phone has a battery of around 12 Wh and lasting maybe 30 h on a full charge, that's a power consumption of 0.4 W on average. With a surface area of about 70 cm², we get about 60 W/m².

Phone eats 60 W/m².

Sun provides 1000 W/m².

Okay, let's cut that into a fourth because, you know, clouds and nights and stuff. Retake.

Phone eats 60 W/m².

Sun provides 250 W/m².

Essentially, if you find a solar panel with 25% efficiency and the right size, you can slap that on the back of your phone for a very tiny size increase, and you now have a phone that powers itself as long as you put it down in the sun instead of in your pockets when you don't use it!

<comment><USER8> 250 W/m2 is still rather optimistic -- though not absurdly so!

Obviously it varies a lot depending on where you are. For example, in Germany the total sunshine you have to work with is approximately 1000 kWh/year[1], or 115W/m2 on average. I think that still assumes you find a way to perfectly align your phone to be perpendicular to the sun's rays; otherwise you get less energy still.

[1] [http://www.solar.lucycity.de/index.php/sonnenenergie/9-sonne...](http://www.solar.lucycity.de/index.php/sonnenenergie/9-sonnenstrahlung) I think the technical term may be solar irradiance, here's a global map: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#/media/File:S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#/media/File:SolarGIS- Solar-map-World-map-en.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two observations:

1\. This sounds very useful both as a backup capacity to make calls when your battery died; a smartphone could run in a restricted, super-power-saving mode off that. Could be handy in cities, where there's _lots_ of RF background.

2\. Energy that can be harvested this way from human-made RF is energy wasted. I expect less and less of such background RF to be enabled as time goes on and people figure out more tricks to do hyper advanced magic with beamforming.

<comment><USER9> >1\. This sounds very useful both as a backup capacity to make calls when your battery died; a smartphone could run in a restricted, super-power-saving mode off that. Could be handy in cities, where there's lots of RF background.

Just make 5% battery the new 0% and whatever super-power-saving mode magic you have to run off that 5%. I think that might make more sense in terms of power envelope than to bother with all this stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a link to the research paper for those who are interested: "Ambient Backscatter: Wireless Communication Out of Thin Air" ([http://abc.cs.washington.edu/files/comm153-liu.pdf](http://abc.cs.washington.edu/files/comm153-liu.pdf))

</comment><comment><USER11> It looks like the power limitations of running from radio waves are limiting. What about a battery or phone that charges from radio waves? It would give the phone a lot more power to operate, because the phone itself doesn't run 24/7.

<comment><USER12> from the article, harvesting RF generates tens of microwatts at best, which probably isn't enough to even operate the charging circuitry much less actually charge anything.</comment></comment>


Can You Recover from an Amy's Bakery Style Social Media Meltdown? - <AUTHOR> http://www.velocitydigital.co.uk/can-you-recover-from-an-amys-bakery-style-social-media-meltdown/

<comment><USER2> There are certainly ways to recover from such episodes but if the people who caused that episode had the capacity to, as the article puts it, "put your hands up and say sorry", they wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

Another proven tactic is sitting it out. Just disappear from the surface of the, well, Internet. People tend to forget rather quickly and the next Facebook/Reddit/Twitter meme is just around the corner.</comment>