Microsoft buys AR headset patents for $100-150M – report - <AUTHOR> http://www.totalxbox.com/74099/microsoft-buys-ar-headset-patents-for-100-150-million-report/ <comment><USER2> For those confused by the acronyms: A virtual reality (VR) headset would show the viewer an image completely produced by the device. An augmented reality (AR) headset allows you to see through the glasses at the actual world in front of you, and just projects extra data or graphics onto of this. Think of a heads-up display for a fighter pilot.

<comment><USER3> As someone who is working on an AR project and has to constantly explain to people WHAT AR is, I find it a tad disheartening that this is the top comment in HN comments. I would have expected that the readership would have been well versed enough that it would have been mid-level.

This does serve as a good data point about technology penetration though. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is more likely a response to Google Glass, not Oculus.

I assume Google has built a patent portfolio around Glass. This may even be a defensive move by Microsoft. Still, looks like another tragedy of patent abuse brewing.

I wonder about the upcoming patent lawsuits against Oculus. Maybe that's their real reason for embracing FB -- protection.

<comment><USER5> These patents look silly. I have done work in the AR/VR space and these patents are chaff. Much of the stuff coming to market right now is not patentable because this research goes back so far. Which is a _GREAT_ thing.

<comment><USER6> Just in case, you have heard of Ask Patents prior art request 'section'¹? There's a lot of 'unpatentable' stuff that gets through or almost gets through the process.

¹ [http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior- art-...](http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior-art-request)

<comment><USER5> I am going to get a migraine and an ulcer reading those. I think filing bogus patent claims should be an actionable offense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gah, it didn't occur to me that the reason the Oculus sale was so expensive might have been patent-related. VR tech is not all that complicated. I mean really, if protocols like HDMI and Thunderbolt weren't so complex, DRM and patent laden themselves, how hard is it to put an image on two screens and sync it to gyroscopes/ultrasonics/infrareds? This is college-senior-project level complexity.

Software patents are such an obvious incumbrance to programmers, but I wonder if we should think about the toll that hardware patents are taking on innovation overall Maybe it's time to take a stance against all patents.

I'm hopeful that rapid prototyping might alleviate some of this because hardware could be open sourced and then people could assemble it themselves. Unfortunately they probably won't be able to pay someone else to do it. That strikes me as fundamentally wrong and when the law doesn't fit the public interest, we'll probably see black market and bootleg manufacturing appear.

We need 21st century solutions for intellectual property, when the vast majority of manufacturing is automated and even innovation itself has been augmented by machine learning. Otherwise I see the end of innovation and only the biggest megacorps being able to afford to play.

<comment><USER8> Patents are a fine idea in principle. There's little doubt that they promote innovation in pharmaceuticals, for example.

The problem arises when the patents last much longer than the "innovation cycle" in an industry. As software takes over the world, we're seeing cycle times go down in many fields, but patent laws aren't keeping up with technological reality.

<comment><USER9> Yes, shorter patents would address a decent number of the issues.

To pick one area I'm somewhat familiar with, a lot of the patents in digital- audio synthesis were _initially_ reasonable, in my opinion. Furthermore, the system largely "worked" as it was supposed to to incentivize innovation and ensure that commercializers of technology paid some royalties to those developing it. A research group like Stanford's CCRMA would develop a new synthesis method, patent it, and license the patent to a commercializer such as Yamaha, who put it in their synthesizers and paid a royalty. Without patents, there would be a strong incentive to do this monetization via keeping things secret instead, rather than openly publishing them somewhere that Yamaha could just read.

The part where it starts seeming unreasonable is when a 15-year-old synthesis method, which is by that time ancient and textbook-standard material, is still patented.

<comment><USER10> 20 year doesn't seem like such an awful term for a patent. You think 15 years is too long, no doubt there are other people who thin 10 or 5 are too long, just as there must be some people who think it should be 25 or 30 years. I feel like 20 years has stuck because it's approximately the length of one human generation.

<comment><USER11> What on earth gives you the idea that a generation is a good measure of time for a monopoly? Patents are intended to promote innovation for society not give protection to a racket. The _only_ reason to give people a monopoly on production is to allow those who invested in the invention and research to reimburse the costs of research and development to allow for further investment in innovation.

After the time period the patent / copy rights should be released to the public domain so that everyone may benefit from cheap economy of scale production.

The only reason I could think you feel this way is that it is all you've known. In most cases a couple of years worth of profits from monopoly should suffice. In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation.

<comment><USER9> _In most cases a couple of years worth of profits from monopoly should suffice. In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation._

One tricky issue is also the lead time to market. In the synthesis example, Yamaha came out with a synth within ~2 years of licensing the patent. But in some areas (like medicine) it can be common for it to take 5-10 years for a product to come out, in which case a 5-year patent would be worthless, because it would expire before you can sell anything.

<comment><USER11> Sorry I should have probably continued on, there was a bit of an implication here:

In reality it depends on how much was spent on the initial innovation [ _and how long it takes to reap the return on that investment_ ].

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think AR is at least 10 years behind VR in terms of mainstream adoption or "usefulness". VR is almost there (I think with 4k resolution, it will be) to provide incredible advantages over what we have now. AR on the other hand will most likely be mainly a gimmick for the next 10 years or so, even if they can show some pretty cool demos initially. Take Microsoft's Illumiroom for example which is "sort of AR". The immersion is much greater in VR than what Illumiroom offers, and I'd much rather be "present" in a VR world, than see some light show on my walls, at much poorer quality and much lower realism.

<comment><USER13> I've never been in an illumiroom, but I have been in a CAVE like environment with 3d projected walls. Pressing a button on the motion tracked handset and seeing (and hearing) a lightsabre blade come out of it was by far the coolest technology mediated experience I've had. I've got a Rift, but I don't think anything it offers will be as good as that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How stupid. Microsoft pays a bunch of people who invented a bunch of ideas that are now restricted from being used.

What a joke the patent system is. We're paying people to innovate ideas, and prevent any product with those ideas from coming to market.

Patent holders should have to pay a substantial tax / fee every year to keep their patents. If these ideas are so valuable, they should be building products and benefiting society with them. Not stuffing them under the mattress and waiting to sue some poor sap who actually wants to ship something.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think the comments in this thread talking about AR and VR as if they are different are misplaced -- AR and VR will converge:

[http://willsteptoe.com/post/66968953089/ar-rift- part-1](http://willsteptoe.com/post/66968953089/ar-rift-part-1)

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't wait for AR similar to the show Dennou Coil to become a real. It seems potentially feasible to be a real thing even if at the time the show was made it probably seemed impossible.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very interesting development. Personally I don't see AR being anywhere close to VR in terms of usefulness, polish, and mass market appeal. VR obviously is going to be a major player in the gaming/entertainment industries, while an AR headset is more of a general use device for everyone. It'll be interesting to see what MS comes out with.

<comment><USER13> AR is potentially much more useful, but VR is much more likely to lead to useful products in the near future. VR is hard, but AR has all the same problems of VR plus a whole bunch more.

<comment><USER4> AR will no doubt be helped along by VR tech. But I'd guess mass-market AR will first appear in vehicle and building windows.

<comment><USER18> Some AR is already present in some vehicles. My mother has a "HUD" that reflects off the glass that displays speed, and gas consumption in the direct LOS while driving, but not intrusive enough to distract, mid 2000's car.

But if I abstract what you are saying a bit, I would have to agree that AR is going to be an "easier" sell in b2b than b2c, it has been for a while. I think the cross over will happen when consumers are more exposed to the ways businesses leverage it.

Here's a scenario I can see before mainstream adoption: Imagine a sales clerk or rep with it as you walk into the store to pull in data from across the web about you from facial recog and be able to automatically point you to where you might be interested, maybe even using google's/microsoft's/facebook's/yelp's/some startup's "intent" api that pulls in your latest queries that may be relevant to the store you just we're identified in.

Then some people see such things used, and then want the same capabilities as they navigate their cities around them seeing that it could be useful in their life.

<comment><USER19> > Some AR is already present in some vehicles.

If HUDs are considered AR (a valid viewpoint, as far as I'm concerned) then they've been in warplanes since WW2.

I don't see AR getting mass customer adoption before it can be directly grafted.

> Imagine a sales clerk or rep with it as you walk into the store to pull in > data from across the web about you from facial recog and be able to > automatically point you to where you might be interested

That sounds horrifying. And unlikely, that customers efficiently go through their purchases in the least possible time is not really in most store's interest.

<comment><USER18> > _That sounds horrifying._

Well, the technology is here, the behavioral patterns in the way people use services are here, and with companies like foursquare[0], who are basically doing the same thing (minus the facial recog, which the tech is present for, but the challenge now is connecting disparate data sets available which can be leveraged at scale for general purposes [which I'm working on], and not being shackled to things large companies typically are [we don't have user accounts, so we don't have "users" to appease, and we don't have $X billion in revenue so we have to take chances/experiment in order to grow]), this will be a growing market where consumers will be exposed to such technology and its benefits (and drawbacks because not everything is rose colored through my lenses).

My startup is working in the periphery of this area now, so I can't say that I don't have financial/technical interest involved with this. From the issues that we get notified now about our current product is basically people are afraid because they don't have "control" over "their" data and don't understand how others are able to technically leverage it (or anything technical about how the internet works, besides the profitable skinner boxes that make up most consumer tech companies). People make baseless legal threats all the time against us, but it is always interesting how it is always complaints about them as the individual and not about for others; those same people are happy to observe/give up information about other people.

> _And unlikely, that customers efficiently go through their purchases in the > least possible time is not really in most store 's interest._

Valid point for some stores, but I was thinking about this from the perspective of the store rep trying to establish some kind of human touch to the shopping experience more so than they do now, while leveraging the data they have so they can more efficiently decide who they should focus their efforts on rather than the stereotypes made from their experiences. I guess what I'm saying is that it may not be as clear cut as what some make it out to be, and in that ambiguity lies the opportunity.

[0] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/foursquare- revenues/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/05/foursquare-revenues/)

<comment><USER19> > Valid point for some stores, but I was thinking about this from the > perspective of the store rep trying to establish some kind of human touch to > the shopping experience

I don't think this[0] is a "human touch". A creepy stalker touch maybe. And your scheme would go even further.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping- habits.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html)

<comment><USER18> >[...] _creepy stalker_ [...]

Which are attributes usually assigned to human beings, no? Or do you enjoy being trailed by officers/staff when you shop because of the color of your skin, or do you not have to face nor think about such things when you shop or in other interactions in your life? Because I don't particularly enjoy that either, and I'm doing what I can to address it among other issues assuming that if others could leverage information that is already out there about me, maybe, just maybe I won't have to be treated as subhuman by some on initial interactions, or at least while I patronize a store on occasion. What are you doing to address the problems you have surrounding the use of technology in such ways beyond vocalizing your displeasure? Do you still use social networking, webmail, play apps via smartphone, purchase via credit cards online/offline, etc…? If so, your behaviors are telling others otherwise.

I'm just stating that's the direction things are going in now, and for anyone to avoid such realities means that they shall continue to be suspended in a state of cognitive dissonance. Hardly just my "scheme", I'm just a piece in the puzzle that was already being built before I was even born.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That is interesting, I wonder what patents or provisionals CastAR has in the pipeline.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not surprising. If you had the billions that Microsoft does, you'd invest in patents too. At this point it's the software equivalent of buying out the supply chain like Apple famously does with hardware components.

</comment><comment><USER22> I only thought about this for their Xbox division, until I saw the comments in here.

But the idea of glasses that shows you ammo count, health and other infos while your playing. Basically a HUD on your face. is really appealing to me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Meta are the company to watch in the AR space.

</comment><comment><USER24> MS and patents? A very bad mix.

</comment><comment><USER25> Am I the only one who saw the UPGRADE NOW banner ? despite Adblock?

</comment><comment><USER26> This website breaks mobile safari. The bar at the bottom does not appear when scrolling up.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's 2014 and Microsoft keeps on being the "me too" of consumer technology.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love how the real MS shows up from time to time to remind us that all the 'new openness' and fair play talk is exactly that, and probably always will be.

<comment><USER29> I tend to agree with the sentiment, but exactly what ill-intent does acquiring patents actually demonstrate?

<comment><USER28> That's a fair question, and maybe I am jumping the gun with this particular set of patents. But my interpretation is in context with other patent licensing news (March 26th, 2014):

[http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA2P1VC20140326?irpc...](http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBREA2P1VC20140326?irpc=932)

So I was primed to read this as opening a new front in an ongoing, contemporary effort to use patents aggressively. Maybe the downvotes are a clear signal that I'm destined to be proven wrong in this regard. I guess we'll see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Microsoft, as usual, following other's footsteps. Kinda sad since they used to lead the game.

<comment><USER31> > Kinda sad since they used to lead the game.

May be when they first made their Basic interpreter. And Word for Windows.

But everything else was an acquisition or a clone. DOS bought, Windows cloned from Xerox and Mac, Excel cloned from Lotus-123, FoxPro bought, XBOX cloned from playstation, Internet Explorer bought.

<comment><USER32> And iPhone closed from the Palm. And the iPod cloned from the Archos Rockbox. And Linux of course cloned from Unix. And the Mac cloned from Xerox. And the iPad cloned from tablet PCs. And the PlayStation cloned from Nintendo. Nintendo cloned from Atari 2600. Atari 2600 cloned from board games.

BTW, Word cloned from Word Perfect. BASIC interpreter cloned from all the previous BASIC interpreters that existed.

Being first or "leading" don't matter. It's about execution and a bit of luck. Look at Android. It sure as heck wasn't first, but they executed. Windows wasn't first, but they executed.</comment></comment></comment>


Social Advocator & Cross-Hair Rewards....? - <AUTHOR>

Please don't kick my teeth out. We're in stealth mode but we'd love to have you.....You won't be disappointed. Early adopters can belly up here: http://yet.is/signup.php?refer=1000
Thanks <comment><USER2> I'm lovin this! I can't wait for it to blow up!

<comment><AUTHOR> A solid years work and research, patents filed, demo done, software is sweet. You have good reason to be impatient as I believe Yetis will change the face of things as they currently exist. Wish I could share more with you but there is good reason why we're keeping a lid on this. Thanks</comment></comment>


The 23rd-Best Sandwich I've Ever Had - <AUTHOR> http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/12/18/the-23rd-best-sandwich-ive-ever-had/

<comment><USER2> That makes no sense. You only have to remember one sandwich at a time to decide on the best sandwich, but you have to remember at least three numbers to recall the mean and standard deviation.

<comment><USER3> Technically, you would have to remember all sandwiches you've eaten up to the point you decide to start keeping track of your favorite.

<comment><USER4> The first sandwich you ever have is the best one you've ever had, too.</comment></comment></comment>


A tool that lets you hear both Yanny and Laurel - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/16/upshot/audio-clip-yanny-laurel-debate.html <comment><USER3> I think what's going on here is that the context of the sonic character of an individual's voice is crucial to the brain's processing of the phonetic content of utterances.

I spend my whole life listening critically to things. I was 100% YANNY on two sets of headphones and signal amplification paths. When I moved the slider bar about 1.5 notches to the left, LAUREL sort of "came into focus", and I felt like I grasped the human voice behind this severely distorted recording. Then, when I moved the slider back to the neutral position, I could not hear YANNY at all anymore. Only by taking a brief pause could I 'reset' my brain to hearing YANNY.

There's another processing step going on that helps us deal with distorted or band-limited voices. We're reconstructing in our heads the ideal sonic image of the human voice we're supposed to be hearing.

I hypothesize that if the sample in question came at the end of a few words by the speaker, not related semantically, e.g. "right, seven, purple, elephant, laurel", so the listener could reconstruct a more complete "imprint" of the speaker's voice in their mind, the YANNY outcome would drop to <1%.

<comment><USER4> Likewise. I had "Laurel" initially, but after going into "Yanny" territory, I can progressivley put the slider back to 100% "Laurel" and still hear "Yanny". Less so in the other direction.

Perception is about matching input to pre-conscious expectation. Once your brain has been primed to one word, you keep on hearing it when given an ambiguous signal.

Keyword: "priming", there's a lot of research on the topic.

<comment><USER5> Exacly what happened to me, except that I heard Yanny first

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aside, this whole Yanny vs Laurel quarrel exposes a good example of how humans seem to approach opposing views in general.

The video sparks thousands of comments on Reddit and Facebook, many of them amounting to "I hear <X> and the rest of you are wrong!" \-- surely in jest most of the time.

You have to wonder what fraction of people have the healthy response of "I hear <X> but I want to try to hear <Y> like other people, interesting."

Imagine if this was human nature, instead: "I hate Javascript, but I'd like to understand why someone would choose it on the server instead of assuming they are an amateur." HN would be much more relaxed. :)

Same with that blue vs gold dress "debate." \-- Why is it a debate?

I don't mean to suck the fun out of it, though. But I do think it's a caricature of human nature in general.

<comment><USER7> I don't think you understand social interactions online very well...

People don't say it with a serious tone. It's mostly a friendly jab. It's similar to how people say "Chicago has the best deep dish and anyone who says otherwise is simply WRONG". The exaggeration is meant to be a joke

<comment><USER8> Some people are jokingly exaggerating and some people are being serious. I've heard people have arguments that became fairly angry about which pizza in town is the best. I've heard rather than participated in those arguments because it's laughable (and sometimes scary) when people don't understand the difference between subjectivity and objectivity. Some really do think their way of seeing the world is correct and anybody who varies from that is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I first heard Yanny and now I can only hear Laurel.

This one is even more interesting for me: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8)

If I _think_ "Brainstorm" I hear that, but if I think "Green Needle" I hear that.

<comment><USER10> This one blows my mind. I must have replayed it two dozen times, trying to think of one word but to hear the other one. It just can't be done. There's no in-between, no fuzziness. When I think of "brainstorm", the word is unequivocally that. I even looked for "brain needle" or "green storm", but nope.

<comment><USER11> I can do "brain needle" or "green storm". Just like Yanny / Laurel, I believe the lower voice (brainstorm) is what is intended to be heard. The distortion artifacts in the higher frequencies just happen to match up with "green needle" \- super interesting.

To me, the "Laurel" "Yanny" wasn't as interesting, because I could clearly hear both at the same time in different registers. But I really like this example because I can't hear "brainstorm" and "green needle" at the same time - it really seems like my brain shuts the other one off once I start listening to the audio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I may be overanalyzing this entire "phenomenon", but it serves to remind me that our own understanding of ourselves is incredibly limited. There seem to be a number of processes happening under the surface that are completely unbeknownst to us. It made me wonder what else I have missed or misinterpreted in other aspects of my life. How often have I been utterly convinced of something? How often am I so sure that what I'm feeling or thinking is the "correct" way to feel or think about a problem? It amazes me that something as simple as a good night's sleep (the phrase, "Sleep on it", comes to mind) can completely change my perception of an event in the course of a few hours. Whereas in the prior evening it felt as if my world was caving in on me, in the morning things became more manageable. The event itself did not change, only my perception. I liken the human mind to an iceberg. We're cognizant of such a small part of it while the rest remains under the surface and out of our sight.

<comment><USER13> We are repeatedly finding ways to hack general human perception the same way we can hack AI neural network perceptions. It's all very well pointing and laughing at the way we can construct pathological data: 'look, here's two pictures of a kitty, but the AI thinks the second one is an emu and can't be convinced otherwise!'

And then it turns out we're very much in the same boat.

<comment><USER14> 100%. This is going to be one of the big struggles with AI, especially in an interaction like driving. By and large, I don't think humans realize how much they misperceive things, and make little mistakes. How many times have you momentarily seen a face in a bush when it's dark, misheard a sound as your name, thought that you saw a dear old friend across the room, failed to figure out where the lanes are on the road?

We're really good at adjusting to these little mistakes, covering them up, because they're insignificant. But we do them constantly...and then forget they happened. I think that most of us overestimate humans' abilities in really mundane matters. We do well, not because we don't make mistakes, but because we recover from them quickly. (And when they're done in a social context, we have rules of politeness that usually allow us to forgive others' tiny mistakes.)

That high evaluation of our own cognitive ability means that an AI that's "less" than that, which makes "silly" mistakes, isn't good enough. Even if an AI makes far fewer mistakes than a human would at some task, any mistake is evidence that it's not good enough, because "no human would have made _that_ mistake". Our meta-perception of our own perception is so clouded by (natural) hubris that we can't even realistically imagine a typical human's performance for comparison.

This, to me, was a great revelation about the human mind when I studied AI: perception is _hard_ , and I'm actually not that good at it. I just muddle through, with some kind of metaprocess smoothing over all these silly little bumps. (And there's an interesting link here, too, to old meditative practices.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> After playing with this, I can make my brain hear either — and even in rhythmic patterns (Yanny, Laurel, Yanny, Laurel, Yanny, Yanny, Yanny, Laurel). It's a neat reminder of how much "preprocessing" our brains do before we experience a sound (filtering out what are perceived to be the irrelevant frequencies).

</comment><comment><USER16> I was firmly Yanny for the longest time, but now I'm hearing Laurel "by default" now. But I can easily hear both throughout most of the slider. In the middle it sounds like two people talking over each other.

<comment><USER17> > two people talking over each other

This effect very well might be just a side effect of humans' subconscious ability to focus on a single conversation in a noisy room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's well known that humans vividly hallucinate sounds - <USER2> overtones - that aren't really there; given specific sound (harmonic frequency) combinations.

It may be that how well you are able to "hear" (hallucinate) overtones is involved in this effect. Moving into the bathroom changed what I heard, and extra reflection of sound would alter overtone perception. I interpret that as (rather weak) evidence for the hypothesis.

<comment><USER11> I don't think we're hallucinating the overtones here - with an EQ (like in the link I believe) you can clearly separate the high and low freqs, and they sound like different words. So it's overtones baked into the audio file.

<comment><USER18> But what you're describing is exactly what you'd expect if you were dealing with overtones, actually - one tone of the two actual tones that create the illusion of the overtone has to be substantially lower than the other, always. If you knock out one tone by dumping some frequencies, the overtone vanishes, and those who were hearing it now hear something else. Those who never heard it, hear what they heard before.

The basic idea here is that if the harmonic match of the two fundamental (actual) tones isn't exact, then some listeners will hear the overtone, but less sensitive (or perhaps more refined) listeners' brains won't hear it. And many conditions will make it easier or harder for the listener's brain to (falsely but vividly) infer the overtone, including a lot of acoustic reflection (my bathroom example.) Completely knocking out one of the two fundamental tones will change what's heard by some - since now everyone will be hearing the same thing.

Similarly, shifting all frequencies up or down, even if all the information is preserved, can cause everyone to lose the overtone since the overtone is now at a frequency above (or below) what we can hear, so the brain doesn't hallucinate what is beyond it's capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Crazy thought: Hearing loss starts at higher frequencies- so is it possible that we have a large portion of population with hearing issues due to years of abusing technology? (I.e. Loud music in headphones, cars, homes?)

<comment><USER20> The BART is damaging thousands of people's hearing every day and nobody seems to care.

>long or repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss. The louder the sound, the shorter the amount of time it takes for NIHL to happen.

[https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/noise-induced-hearing- loss](https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/noise-induced-hearing-loss)

We were convinced for months before my friends and I got our hands on a decent decibel reader (didn't trust the phone apps) and it strays well past 85 up to 95 even, for up to 20-30 seconds between stops.

If you ever see a group of nerds with earplugs in our ears shouting at each other on BART, that's my friends and I, we carry extra individually packed earplugs, feel free to ask us for a pair.

<comment><USER21> 30 seconds isn't nearly long enough for 95 a decibel noise to permanently hurt your ears. Even at 100dB permanent damage take on the order of minutes, not seconds. At 90 dB it's measured in hours. Your BART ride isn't hurting you.

<comment><USER20> Twice a day, every day, for years?

Do you have evidence to support this claim because it goes against my own research.

<comment><USER21> The OSHA standards are a good starting point. Factory workers aren't even required to wear ear protection if the average noise over their 8 hour shift is under 85 dB. For 95 dB it's something like 15 minutes. From what I understand (and from what I've experienced), the every day repetition isn't the issue, it's the sustained noise for long periods of time. 2 little noisy bursts a day that are hours apart just aren't going to affect anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm reminded of what you would get (aside from a ruined needle) when you played some records backwards.

One example I remember: if you play the opening line of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" ("life is a mystery") it was supposed to sound like, "he will save us, Satan."

It's like pareidolia, but with sound. Once primed, you can hear whichever version you were primed with.

<comment><USER23> Another One Bites The Dust / it's Fun To Smoke Marijuana is a classic example, here's a nice mashup featuring a priest warning the world about it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdXek5d2ocw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdXek5d2ocw)

</comment></comment><comment> matt-attack Wow, I found it depends on which way I'm moving the slider. If starting from the left, I continue to hear laurel until right around the very right side. If I start on the right, and move it left, I start to hear yanny more and more. Even on positions where I was certain I heard laurel when coming left-to- right.

<comment><USER24> Yes, same here. BUt there is an obvious bias for one of the sounds. I can head yanny all the way to the left side if I step through it slowly. I can only hear laurel until 1/2 of the yanny side. A cool effect happened when getting at an "edge point" where I could hear both laurel AND yanny at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So this is an auditory analogue of, for example, the young/old woman illusion,[0] right?

0) [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl- OldWomanIllusion.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl- OldWomanIllusion.html)

<comment><USER26> This would be even more fitting, since it's about frequencies. If you blur your eye (removing the high frequencies) you see Marylin, otherwise Einstein.

[http://infohost.nmt.edu/~armiller/illusion/einesteinmonroe2....](http://infohost.nmt.edu/~armiller/illusion/einesteinmonroe2.htm)

<comment><USER25> Agreed. There is some of that for the young/old woman image, but it's clearer for Monroe vs Einstein. And it's even clearer in this video: [https://youtu.be/tB5-JahAXfc](https://youtu.be/tB5-JahAXfc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Slider all the way to the right, only hear demonic "Laurie".

<comment><USER28> To me the "Laurel" just gets more and more distorted, and I start to hear a faint squeaky _yerry... yerry... yerry_ on top of it. But it sounds more like an artifact than like a separate voice. I have no idea how it sounds like Yanni to anyone, but maybe I've lost my ability to hear high frequencies with age. (40m)

<comment><USER29> This was my experience too, and then it abruptly changed. I couldn't figure out if the tool or my brain was at fault

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't know about this. I mean, to me, the letters 'l' and 'y', and 'r' and 'n' have a very obvious difference. There is another such audio illusion where the word 'oil' sounds the same forwards and backwards, both ways effectively sounding 'oyo'. This is due to the position of the letter 'l' and the sort of elision that happens. However with the laurel thing, I can't imagine it sounding yanny. I could mistake it for wallow but it takes a lot of adjustment to hear yanny. May be I just belong to that 45% or so that always hear laurel.

<comment><USER31> I have the same feeling and I believe that the initial L of Laurel really strongly shapes the rest of the word. When I move the slider towards Yanny I can still always hear Laurel but I can distinguish the "yaew" that makes Yanny; it's very distinct from the L. I assume that people who naturally hear Yanny first have the same understanding with the weird "yaew" hiding the L. If I'm just expecting Larry I can only sense the deformation as a weird vibration in the sound.

Also I checked on a couple of videos to test my hearing range because I expected it to be quite damaged and assumed that was the main factor and even though it's not a very good form of testing I'm now more convinced that it's the brain treating slight variations differently, with priming playing a strong influencing factor.

<comment><USER30> Yes, with the slider at near extreme right it sounds yanny (it spooked me a bit) but I guess there's a lot of mathemagic happening. In the twitter post that was posted yesterday [1] however, which I believe was untouched, it was just impossible for me to hear yanny.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17080800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17080800)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow, so I listened to a clip the other night, and it was very distinctly laurel sound to me. This tool sounded like yanny, even with the slider all the way towards laurel, which I thought was confusing. Then I realized that I'm listening to this on my phone, and maybe the speaker not facing me and the sound rebounding off surrounding surfaces affected it. As I rotated the bottom of the phone, and thus the speaker towards my face, it started to sound _much_ more like laurel to me. Cool.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm not an english native speaker and all I hear sliding he slider to the right is "Yelly" \- with "l's" much like "jelly".

<comment><USER14> I was wondering about this: how your, let's say, "native phonemes", might affect what you hear. Is there a word like "Laurel" in Arabic, for example? Would that bias non-English-native speakers to "yanny", or another interpretation entirely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yeah, well... Yanny/Laurel ain't got shit on Brainsteam / Green Needle: [https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/y...](https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/you_can_hear_brainstorm_or_green_needle_based_on/)

<comment><USER35> Can't hear "needle" anywhere in that, I absolutely can't.

<comment><USER36> I only hear needle and I'm a Laurel guy. It's mind boggling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I find the Brainstorm/Green Needle audio to be far more interesting, as you basically can make it hear whichever you want (including combinations of the two).

[https://youtu.be/5pRY3wlKwm8](https://youtu.be/5pRY3wlKwm8)

</comment><comment><USER38> I feel like I'm alone on this so I'll speak up. I convincingly hear Larry. Are there any other claims or do people pretty much just claim to hear Yanny or Laurel?

<comment><USER39> I her Yammy more fwiw

<comment><USER40> I can't hear "Yanny" at all. It's more like "Yaewwy".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The frequency response of the playback system probably plays a role here too. Try listening on headphones, on speaker, on laptop speaker, on in-car audio.

</comment><comment><USER5> I heard Yanny first and after I started hearing 'Laurel', it took me to slide a lot to the yanny side to hear 'yanny' very distinctively from laurel. I hope that make sense. Like somebody else commented here, did it open up my brain's receptors to recognise that frequency of sound after being exposed to it only?

</comment><comment><USER42> Is this phenomenon anything like adversarial images in neural nets? [https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/robotics/artificial-i...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/robotics/artificial-intelligence/hacking-the-brain-with-adversarial-images)

</comment><comment><USER43> Amazing psychoacoustic illusion.

I found the balance point (a bit to the right of center) where I could merely _think_ yanny or laurel to myself in a random sequence and I would hear the matching word 100% of the time.

I finally know what it feels like to have the power to change radio stations with my mind!

</comment><comment><USER44> I kept hearing yanny even on full laurel, then I tried thinking "laurel" and there it was. ... Ok, when I imagine myself talking with a deep voice I hear "laurel" even in the middle where "yanni" was super clear. Strange!

</comment><comment><USER45> One of the most stunning illusions of perception I have ever witnessed.

Not feeling so loquacious just now but if you want to dig deeper the threads to pull are perception as bayesian inference and the sampling hypothesis. Olshausen and co are a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER46> It sounds more like Yaw Yee to me.

</comment><comment><USER36> I can finally hear Yanny 1.5 notches to the right, but I have to overshoot and then return. Moving it anywhere left of that first notch instantly goes back to Laurel.

</comment><comment><USER47> I enjoy forcing myself to hear one of the other.

</comment><comment><USER48> I only hear Laurel no matter where on the scale I am. Even with 100% yanny, I still just hear a very distorted Laurel.

<comment><USER49> I was like you until I made a surprise discovery. I hear "Yanny"* if I tense my inner ear a bit (as if I'm about to pop my ears - doing this on demand is not a universal skill apparently)

* I still don't hear "Yanny" \- it's more like "Yi-a-hee". Weird, but close, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I can hear Laurel, but even with the slider all the way right I hear "yierry" and not "Yanny".

</comment><comment><USER51> I can selectively hear either if I want to. It's like one of those optical illusions

</comment><comment><USER52> I still hear 'yanny' even with the slider all the way to 'laurel'

</comment><comment><USER53> The room matters to me. I hear it as Laurel in my bedroom but yanny in the bathroom.

<comment><USER18> Ditto here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I would be surprised if this isn't dependent on the listener's accent.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron I can't help but feel that there's an entity somewhere that's benefiting from this somehow.. Crowd-sourced machine learning training? The pessimist in me says that something spreading virally (globally) so rapidly must have some purpose behind it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Am I alone in being able to hear both Yanny and Laurel in the sound?

<comment><USER56> I could also hear both the first time I listened to it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is the current 16-inch MacBook Pro the most commented thread on HN? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious if current MacBook Pro thread [0] is the most commented thread on HN, what are top 10 most commented threads here ?<p>[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523780 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523780)

This one has 2500 comments. Found by clicking trough the first 3 pages of the search.

<comment><USER3> Mistakenly you've shared the same link as OP.</comment></comment>


How I lost €4k in a Facebook scam - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Niek/Niek/blob/master/facebook-scam/README.md <comment><USER2> Did you reach out to PayPal as well?

Can you ask for chargeback?

<comment><AUTHOR> I initiated a chargeback process, but I'm not sure how successful that will be. Facebook is a pre-approved merchant so I doubt they'll honor the request.

<comment><USER2> If you provide them with these details, it should work.

A friend of mine works in a bank and deals with these things. If they have your full story, they should get it all sorted out.</comment></comment></comment>


Origin: Making 3D Printing Ready for Mass Production - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@m2jr/origin-making-3d-printing-ready-for-mass-production-1f48193ec3af <comment><USER2> Sounds good at first glance.

But what's the actual technology?</comment>


Spotify files for $1B IPO – The Verge - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/28/16846064/spotify-ipo-public-offering-announced-music-streaming <comment><USER2> Latest available numbers, $4.99 billion in revenue for 2017, but with a loss of $1.5 billion for the year. As expected the highest cost is paying music publishers. So while the revenue and user growth is tremendous, it's hard to see how they will turn a profit anytime soon because of how the deals are structured.

Interesting to see the similarity but also the differences between Netflix and Spotify. Technically very similar in business model and their reliance on third parties, but Netflix has structured better deals and evolved beyond that, and the question now is will Spotify get into publishing itself, taking a page from Netflix?</comment>


Ask HN: What Does the New Apple iPhone 'Neural Processing Unit' Do? - <AUTHOR> Apple just released a new ARM chip - the A12 Bionic.  The described it as having a "neural processing unit" which performs "5 trillion calculations per second" and speeds up "machine learning".
Does anyone know what the unit does and/or have any further information?  Is it good for inference only or does it also help with on-device training?
There is very little info on it around it seems. <comment><USER2> Runs Core ML models real real fast:

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml)

<comment><AUTHOR> :)

But do we think it's limited to inference only? No on device training?

<comment><USER2> Well, form the docs there I think there is no on device training but you never know until the new os and hardware is in your hands.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Vs Bing search - <AUTHOR> http://www.bingiton.com

<comment><USER2> Google wins every time for me but apparently people choose bing (except of course they don't, as actual usage statistics are quick to point out). Nice idea that is backfiring horribly, showing that google is in fact better, something that I hitherto only suspected. But they had nothing to lose really as I wasn't using bing anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> I ended up choosing Bing which surprised me. I had two draws and 3 times I chose Bing. Google did not win any for me.</comment>


Hackers Threaten Security Researchers: 'We'll Analyze Your Brain with a Bullet' - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hackers-threaten-security-researchers-well-analyze-your-brain-with-a-bullet <comment><AUTHOR> Really just a VICE writeup of the Citizen Lab report - available and for discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10703626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10703626)</comment>


PutFixedDueDateScheduleStorageFixedDueDateSchedulesByFixedDueDateScheduleIdRespo - <AUTHOR> https://reprog.wordpress.com/2017/10/19/putfixedduedateschedulestoragefixedduedateschedulesbyfixedduedatescheduleidresponse/ <comment><AUTHOR> I note with amusement that I had to delete the last three characters from this title to get _Hacker News_ to accept it. We have an identifier too long to be a _Hacker News_ title.</comment>


Kuala Lumpur: Kinda Lousy? - <AUTHOR> https://jetholt.com/kuala-lumpur-kinda-lousy/ <comment><USER2> Pretty weird article. If you're going to "judge" a place, why not do it on the basis on the interactions you had with other people? Your comment about Bali also makes no sense.

You're literally a foreigner visiting another culture, and the best you have to say is, "I'm unhappy with the pavement!". I recommend you look at photos from 30-40 years ago. All that modern garbage built there right now is because of mass tourism from a western society.

Did you not play in dirt when you were a kid?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just pages of uninteresting whining about trivialities. Yuck.</comment>


Ask HN: Did your perspective about Microsoft changed? - <AUTHOR> Just out of curiosity, did your persepctive / hatred towards MS changed since they made .NET framework open source and uploaded on Github?
I'm fairly neutral towards language / framework / OS, but some ppl around me hated MS for being closed, and .NET framework only work on MS (still work only on Windows, need to rely on Mono for other OS) and not open source.
They still hated for just because Windows (I do hate some parts of it, but I think some parts are better on Windows, compared to OS X e.g. native window management without app) and MS.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Over a lot of varying things, I've become a lot more open to Microsoft now that they're no longer a monopoly. They can no longer be the bully they used to be.

Between open sourcing major frameworks, picking up more sane licensing models on some other things, they've really turned around expectations.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion the evolution of C# and .NET itself signified the end of "MS sucks" and a transition to "MS rocks". Them going open source is the cherry on top.

They still seem pretty clueless about what direction to go with Windows and phones and all, but that's a whole different issue. Language and API design wise they are among the best.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Once they feared you. Then they matched you. For a while they laughed at you. Now they ignore you. You have lost."

Microsoft has become irrelevant ever since Vista. Up till then they had stuff that was essential, even if you only used it a few times a year.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the CEO deserves support for taking them into what is clearly a new direction. Curious to see how it plays out…especially with their "bitcoin in the browswer" initiative.</comment>


Moto X Feature Video Leaks - <AUTHOR> http://technow.info/2013/07/moto-x-feature-video-leaks-from-rogers/ <comment><USER2> I'm going to guess that it is a little fancier than that, because simply being "always on" would kill the battery, the CPU would have to be constantly running hotword detection. It needs to have some kind of extremely low-power hotword detection for this to work. Like with Glass, some of the conspiracy nuts in other forums are out with ideas that its recording everything and piping it to the NSA, but that's unlikely for a device where they've hinted battery life was a major thing they're concentrating on.

<comment><USER3> In the case of the recent NSA spying revelations, those "conspiracy nuts" turned out to be correct.

<comment><USER4> Technical feasibility is not something the NSA can wish away. They're not magic. The fact is that keeping a microphone array active all the time would crush battery life, especially if it was constantly recording and transmitting.

Right now, even the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your phone. Doubt this will change anything in the short run.

<comment><USER5> Who's to say the NSA wouldn't just add their own hotwords to the "extremely low-power hotword detection"?

<comment><USER4> Sure, but that's a little different than listening to everything. Not to mention trivial to detect. Just watch CPU consumption and start spouting off trigger words.

<comment><USER5> >Sure, but that's a little different than listening to everything.

The NSA never cared about listening to everything, that would be completely unmanageable, flagging conversations with key phrases has always been the course of action.

>Not to mention trivial to detect. Just watch CPU consumption and start spouting off trigger words.

It'd also be trivial to detect that you were using a CPU usage monitor and turn off those keywords, viruses do these sorts of things all the time to avoid detection.

<comment><USER4> That's not correct. Since 2001, the NSA has been retasked to recording all SIGINT information, and figure out what's relevant later. This was the reasoning behind NSA Total Information Awareness (hence the name,) as well as its successor programs including PRISM, FAIRVIEW, MARINA, BASKETBALL, etc.

Also, if you want an undectable CPU monitor, just use a temperature sensor strapped to the processor. Temp-monitoring was even used to find TOR hidden services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions Rogers as 'one of the most popular Canadian cellular companies' but the term 'popular' implies Rogers is liked, however in my limited experience they are either universally reviled or many feel indifference towards them.

They are effectively Canada's Comcast (largest cable company) so take that as you will.

<comment><USER7> They are using 'most popular' as a synonym for 'biggest' here. Regardless it has nothing to do with the content of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are we really moving to a space where always listening devices are going to be common? If so they might be taking their first step at the wrongest possible time (Ongoing NSA paranoia).

Everyone is throwing the Xbox One under a bus for having a always listening device, I wonder how receptive those same people would be to this, especially if it gets added to the core functionality of Android.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very reassuring, after recent news about spying and whatnot, and uploading of credentials to motorolla servers

</comment><comment><USER10> It's like Google doesn't even realize.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, that's totally worth doubling Google's headcount.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are these "Moto X Features" Android 4.2.2 features?

</comment><comment><USER12> So we don't care about battery life anymore?

<comment><USER13> Android 5.0 should have a lesser energy-consumption :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What do they mean by "New Google"?

<comment><USER15> Judging from the fact that the carrier's name is displayed prominently on the status bar, and that it's only available on one carrier, I think they meant "New Motorola".</comment></comment>


Tetris in Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://lambdacolyte.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/tetris-in-haskell/

<comment><USER2> There's a pretty big collection of games (of varying maturity and complexity) at the Haskell Wiki, including a couple of tetrises [1]. One of them, Frag [2], is a pretty cool 3D first-person shooter. It's one of the most popular current downloads from Hackage [3]. The source code [4] is well-factored and uses functional reactive programming (FRP) to model time and user input/output.

1\. [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Applications_and_librarie...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Applications_and_libraries/Games)

2\. <http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Frag>

3\. [http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/haskell-package- popu...](http://donsbot.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/haskell-package-popularity- rankings-august-2009/)

4\. <http://code.haskell.org/frag/src/> (Darcs 'get' enabled)

</comment><comment><USER3> this is a video of somebody playing tetris, it could have been programmed in java, haskell or brainfuck for that matter.

Without the code to go with it haskell hasn't got much to do with it. Would be nice to see the source!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the source code would be very good to see.

<comment><USER3> If it _is_ programmed in brainfuck though I'm going to eat my hat or something. Do penance in a major way ;)

<comment><USER4> I'm afraid most brainfuck implementations don't have non-blockind IO; therefore, you can't. Otherwise it would be very fun.

<comment><USER3> hm... time to get coding :)

maybe we can 'memory map' some of it ? Subsequent locations in memory that you plot to a screen on over modificiation (b/w would be ok in this case I guess), a bunch of bitfields that get 'latched' whenever a key is pressed that the brainfuck mainloop has to walk by every now and then, resets and uses as branching points ?

That should do it.

It doesn't need blocking io, see. Polling latched inputs is the way the machines of old did it, it's a bit less efficient but it works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Presumably this is newsworthy because building Tetris in Haskell is harder than in an imperative/OO language? Why is that a good thing?

<comment><USER6> Presumably this is newsworthy because everyone assumes building Tetris in Haskell is harder than in an imperative/OO language. This is a good thing because it proves that it's not.

<comment><USER7> He says its taken him a week to do it and has had to ask lots of people for help. So I'd say its much harder than in a language like C#. I could (and so could most other people here) make tetris in 1-2 days without help.

<comment><USER8> But the thing is, functional game development techniques are nowhere near as developed or established as those of OO game development. The solutions to the problems at hand aren't as immediately obvious.

This comes to mind: <http://prog21.dadgum.com/23.html>

<comment><USER5> You don't need to do anything non-trivial for imperative/OO game programming.

If something non-trivial is required for functional programming, then it is more difficult.

<comment><USER9> As far as I know there is nothing non-trivial that I had to use apart from introducing state when it was needed by the game via monads and muteable variables. At first they were tricky because I was used to taking such things for granted.

What I can tell you is that the backend (which really needs no state) is much more easier to write in Haskell IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is an implementation of tetris in haskell with the source code: <http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Ian.Lynagh/Hetris/>

I discovered it when a regular contributor contributed an article on the game to my FOSS gaming encyclopedia.

<comment><USER11> Could you provide the link to the encyclopedia of yours?

<comment><USER10> Since you wishes so: <http://libregamewiki.org>

<comment><USER11> tnx!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Use a:visited in your CSS stylesheet - <AUTHOR> https://evertpot.com/visited-links/ <comment><USER2> You can use the a:link selector to only set the color of regular links that have not been visited yet. Visited links will keep their default color (purple or whatever color chosen by the browser or the user).

So: don't use a { color: ... }, use a:link { color: ... }

<comment><USER3> If you don't set it, you can't guarantee that a:visited contrasts sufficiently with a:link or the background.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh the irony. He himself has failed to include a:visited in his CSS stylesheet.

<comment><USER5> No I believe he did, look at the pingbacks!

Also "Confession: I added this rule minutes before I posted this article"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> override it globally in your browser with userstyles!</comment>


At Silicon Valley's debutante ball for startups, there's more biology than ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2018/08/22/demo-day-y-combinator/ <comment><USER2> This seems like an opportune time to reflect on what Derek Lowe calls the "Andy Grove fallacy".[1][2]

[1][http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/04/02/sil...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/04/02/silicon_valley_sunglasses)

[2][https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Andy-Grove- fallacy](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Andy-Grove-fallacy)</comment>


Show HN: open source Sudoku random board generator for iPhone / OS X - <AUTHOR> http://jayfuerstenberg.com/devblog/open-source-code-for-developing-sudoku-for-iphone-and-os-x

<comment><USER2> This looks way too simple to generate good quality sudoku puzzles. Does it, for example, check if the puzzle has only one solution?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, towards the end of the generation each number is tested for uniqueness within its horizontal and vertical lines as well as its sector.

What makes a board a "good" one is of course the quantity and placement of the initially displayed numbers. My code does not address that aspect. It only dabbles in randomly generating the full board so that players aren't subjected to the same pre-generated ones over and over.

<comment><USER2> So, it only generates fully solved boards? That's a pity. Picking the initial numbers is the tricky part. I don't think there are many opensource libraries for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe when I get some free time I'll tackle that very interesting problem. Thank you for the feedback!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building Containers Without Docker - <AUTHOR> https://blog.alexellis.io/building-containers-without-docker/ <comment><USER2> Bazel's rules_docker ([https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_docker](https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_docker)) is also capable of stomping out container images without using a Docker daemon. It also has its own freestanding pusher.

Rulesets like rules_go ([https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go](https://github.com/bazelbuild/rules_go)) also support pretty decent cross compilation, meaning that you can, for example, build Linux containers containing Go microservices on your Mac and push them into a registry immediately. All without running VMs/Docker daemons/... on your Mac.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Similarly in need of mention: Nix/NixOS's `dockerTools` [https://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual/#sec-pkgs- dockerTools](https://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual/#sec-pkgs-dockerTools)</comment>


Glycans, predictive biomarkers of cardiometabolic risk - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/glycanage-science/glycans-predictive-biomarkers-of-cardiometabolic-risk-525a2570afb7 <comment><AUTHOR> If we could detect cardiometabolic conditions in their infancy and offer well- defined lifestyle improvement measures, what feature would we need to build to encourage progress?</comment>


Developer Fallacies - <AUTHOR> http://www.heydonworks.com/article/developer-fallacies <comment><USER2> While I certainly agree with most of these, I feel that the Daphne & Celeste fallacy needs a bit of elaboration.

Code readability is somewhat correlated to its maintainability, all else being equal. If you're writing messy code that could be greatly clarified by extracting a variable or adding an extra line, experience has taught me that one should typically do so.

Of course there are always performance, style, and other concerns, but abstractions are a key component of software development, as they allow us to do things like extract or isolate necessarily "messy" bits of code. I like the WAI-ARIA example, as it clearly fits with the fallacy, but just using that css snippet as a supporting example reads a bit like a bifurcation fallacy. Ugly code is not necessarily poor code, but it can sometimes indicate a missed opportunity for abstraction or refactoring.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The number of records in a database has no relationship to the complexity of that database's overall structure."

Huh? This is absolutely false. As data size and throughput requirements increase ("scale"), the structure of data changes. It may be indices, denormalization, paradigm changes (NoSQL), or sharding. You don't just slap sharding on an existing arbitrary database structure. It has to be designed with that in mind.

The author has good points, and I believe in YAGNI too. But this statement is just false.</comment>


Blockchain Is Latest Bitcoin Start-Up to Lure Big Investment - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2014/10/06/blockchain-is-latest-bitcoin-start-up-to-lure-big-investment/ <comment><USER2> It takes a while to fully understand how blockchain.info works, and how their wallet is very different from something like Coinbase/Circle/Xapo. Once you do, you realize that blockchain.info is an amazing example of the types of things that can be created with cryptocurrency that weren't possible before. They truly embody the spirit of Bitcoin.

Now if only they would support HD wallets so you don't have to backup your wallet after every transaction...

<comment><USER3> And how exactly is Blockchain "very different from something like Coinbase/Circle/Xapo"?

<comment><USER4> The Bitcoin private keys are created and encrypted on the user's machine, in JavaScript (Chrome extension available).

Those companies have custody of the user's private keys, meaning that there exists the potential for government seizure / hacking theft of users' coins.

<comment><USER5> In other words, exactly like the first Bitcoin wallet ever created (Satoshi's), but less secure (subject to the JavaScript being MITM'd, something breaking out of its JS sandbox and getting your private keys, keys being recovered from de-allocated memory because they can't be wiped by JS, etc.)

I'm just not a big fan of blockchain.info, so I have a strong reaction to midas's gushing above. What does blockchain.info do that "wasn't possible before"? It can't take credit for Bitcoin itself. It's like an online bank? Doesn't seem very innovative in that sense.

Again, the things that might seem like pluses (being able to access your bitcoins from any computer with an internet connection and a browser; keeping your own keys) are also really dangerous. I'd rather just use an actual application that lets me keep my own keys, without being subject to the browser's attack surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great news, and nice work by Roger and the whole team. Blockchain is the way Bitcoin's lights are turned on so that most of the world can see what's happening, and has awesome potential both for monetization and better reach.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think someone already said it in another thread I'm not seeing now, but I have to say I've been a bit miffed about the "Blockchain" name. It was OK when they were blockchain.info, literally a few pages with public "info" about the "blockchain". Since they've added wallets in the last few years, and now with whatever they need $30M to do, it's confusing, incorrect, and maybe a bit unfair to call themselves "Blockchain."

It'd be kind of like an American payroll company calling themselves Automated Clearing House. It doesn't make sense, because ACH is actually the shared technology, not created by them, that enables them to do their work. It's unfair because people might hear about ACH transfers and think they can only be done by this one company.

blockchain.info doesn't control the Bitcoin blockchain, and they shouldn't control the name either.

</comment><comment><USER7> > But despite the failure of some Bitcoin-related sites and new regulatory > challenges, more than $250 million has been invested in Bitcoin companies, > most of that in the last 12 months, according to Wedbush Securities, a > financial services firm.

Interestingly, there's a good chance that the sum of the valuations given to these Bitcoin companies in the past year is equal to a not insignificant percentage of the total value of _all_ the Bitcoin in circulation[1].

Xapo[2] and Coinbase[3] alone were both reportedly valued at more than $100 million in their last rounds, and I wouldn't be surprised if Blockchain received a similar valuation.

From a technical perspective, the current Bitcoin chart[4] doesn't look good, and hasn't for a while[5]. If there isn't a sustained recovery, the sum of the valuations investors have given Bitcoin-related startups could one day exceed the value of all the Bitcoin in circulation.

[1] [https://blockchain.info/charts/market- cap](https://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap)

[2] [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/08/bitcoin-startup- xapo-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/08/bitcoin-startup-xapo-valued- north-of-100-million/)

[3] [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/12/12/andreessen-boosts- bit...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/12/12/andreessen-boosts-bitcoins- legitimacy/)

[4] [https://blockchain.info/charts/market- price](https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price)

[5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7500000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7500000)

</comment><comment><USER8> Congrats to the blockchain.info team!

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know where Blockchain Ltd is registered? In the UK, Nicolas Cary (executive named in article) is the Director of Blockchain-UK Ltd[1], while Blockchain Ltd appears to be registered to someone else[2] not named on blockchain.info.

[1] [https://www.opencompany.co.uk/company/08880875/blockchainuk-...](https://www.opencompany.co.uk/company/08880875/blockchainuk- ltd) [2] [https://www.opencompany.co.uk/company/08858277/blockchain- lt...](https://www.opencompany.co.uk/company/08858277/blockchain-ltd)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is it just me or does anyone else have a tendency to treat all .info TLDs with a high degree of skeptisism?

I naturally assume that a .info site is going to be a scam or of poor quality or fleeting at most.

I wonder if they will buy themselves the .com with all that cash?

<comment><USER5> They have blockchain.com (and bitcoin.com), but they started out on blockchain.info.</comment></comment>


Fastmail.com suffering DDOS attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastmailstatus.com/services/general/2016-06-30 <comment><USER2> Is this part of a more general attack on Internet infrastructure today in the U.S.? [http://downdetector.com/](http://downdetector.com/) has been showing many sites with issues (Google, Outlook, etc.)

<comment><USER3> Does Google ever have DDOS problems?

<comment><USER4> Just going off the public numbers for one of google's ASNs[0], with the amount of public peers they have (and likely far more private peers, and I'm just assuming google doesn't buy transit and ignoring that), it's unlikely that a DDoS would ever cause an outage for more than a small subset of people. You may be able to saturate a link or two, but that's not difficult to route around generally.

That is of course only for network saturation DDoS, I'm sure there are ways google could be ddosed at the application or server level, but they likely have enough infra in place to be able to eat the attack without anyone outside of google noticing.

[0] [https://www.peeringdb.com/net/433](https://www.peeringdb.com/net/433)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given the timeframe, I commend them for keeping the notices open and public. It's nice to see. When I went through the A(zure)pocolypse a few years back, didn't see anything for about 15-20 minutes... though admittedly if I weren't in the middle of testing something may have not noticed for a while either.

All said, you can't mitigate all DDoS easily, and it's nice to see that they were pretty responsive and open... Also, while email can be very important, it shouldn't be eminently critical.

</comment><comment><USER6> Something i'm realizing more and more... What the hell do I _really_ need remotely hosted mail for?

We all know mail is insecure. Unless you look _really really hard_ , you aren't sure if the mail you received was spoofed or modified, a child can spoof mail and any MitM can modify it. So in general you can't trust your mail anyway, even if it's received by a reputable company. Sending mail is almost just as subjective... a random ISP's mail smarthost is just as good for getting your mail delivered as a hosted mail provider.

All I _really_ need is a way to get my mails, once. Once you have the mail, you can back it up to an infinite number of places (Git repository, anyone?) if in the future you need to search it.

So really, the only thing I need is 1) to receive mail, 2) to filter the spam, and 3) to keep a backup of my mail somewhere.

Considering this, why do we even need domain-specific mail? Like, myusername at Gmail dotcom, for example. I don't _need_ it sent to GMail... I need it sent to _me_. I don't care what server receives it. I don't even need to store my mail there once i've read it - I can keep it offline, and back it up to remote repositories to search. With a format + protocol like Git, this would be fast, efficient, reliable, secure, and compatible.

So really, if we just had a distributed decentralized peer-to-peer mail network, a unique address system, and a retrofitted mail storage protocol (IMAP5?), we could send mail anywhere, receive it anywhere, store it anywhere, and spam could be filtered by whatever product or company was hosting your Git backup. With the new address system we could even build in personal crypto keys and teach people how to send real, honest-to-god, secure mails, potentially even anonymously.

Now somebody tell me how someone already thought of this and how it won't work :-)

<comment><USER7> > format + protocol like Git

> distributed decentralized peer-to-peer network

> a unique address system

> personal crypto keys

Funny. You just described a perfect fit for Urbit.

<comment><USER6> Urbit seems to try to provide a centralized, personalized model for application services. I don't think centralizing is the way to go, mainly because my entire digital life is dependent on _de-centralizing_ all my services. They try to make it out to be like some kind of container you can put anywhere, but that's like saying we should all use one kind of bag for everything we ever need to carry in our daily lives. There's good reasons I have 10 different kinds of bags at home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a significant outage for Office 365 mail today also.

</comment><comment><USER9> As an avid fastmail user I did notice slight loading delays, but I attributed them to my wifi/iphone. I mean... It's mail, not live SCADA telemetry...

</comment><comment><USER10> That's why it wasn't so fast today.

</comment><comment><USER11> I guess this had to be recent. I had not noticed all day, but it seems to be the last few hours?

</comment><comment><USER12> Not many alternatives:

1.) Run your own SMTP infrastructure. Setup SPF/DKIM/DMARC. Realize your outbound emails still don't always reach their destination. Also you have to fight inbound SPAM.

2.) Use gmail or Google Apps. Things just work. Cede control to Google.

<comment><USER13> > 1.) Run your own SMTP infrastructure. Setup SPF/DKIM/DMARC. Realize your > outbound emails still don't always reach their destination. Also you have to > fight inbound SPAM.

And if someone wants to DDoS you, you're a lot more vulnerable than a major provider like Fastmail.

Personally, I use a hybrid solution: I use Gandi's SMTP servers for outbound and inbound mail, but I run my own IMAP server for unlimited storage under my control.

<comment><USER14> If the attacker has ever seen the headers of a message you sent through fastmails SMTP service they have your public IP (Received from header) and can Dos you directly anyway.

They do something similar with their webmail service, but the data is encrypted so it can't be read by a third party.

[https://www.fastmail.com/about/reportabuse.html](https://www.fastmail.com/about/reportabuse.html) (last paragraph)

EDIT: Fastmail is fairly priced (for me) and i like the features they offer but i wish they wouldn't do this (or rather, i wish they would do the same for the SMTP service as they do for the webmail service)

<comment><USER15> What happens if you send through port 565 instead of 587/465? :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Status ICO "crowdsale" dominated by a handful of whales - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6ifj7k/analysis_of_successful_contributions_to_status/ <comment><AUTHOR> Not surprising. But it's pretty frustrating for this member of the "crowd", who read the instructions, followed the rules, and was not able to successfully contribute.</comment>


Ask HN: When do you feel most happy? - <AUTHOR> Is it through your work, time off, or something else? <comment><USER2> When having sexual intercourse.

Probably not the answer you were expecting, however true as it is.</comment>


Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app's inadvertent camera access - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/12/facebook-iphone-camera-bug/ <comment><USER2> > "I guess it does say something when Facebook trust has eroded so badly that > it will not get the benefit of the doubt when people see such a bug," said > Strafach.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. That what happens when you are repeatedly caught lying and then reversing your statements only after you were caught and then pretending nothing happened.

<comment><USER4> Sadly, it seems to be the norm in business and society these days. It all started when people started espousing "it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" nonsense, which I guess is one of the pillars that made Silicon Valley what it is today. And now it's a race to the bottom as everybody now needs to follow the same philosophy to compete.

<comment><USER3> In a way it is the same thinking that speeding drivers use. They need to get somewhere in a hurry and it is too much to be bothered and slowed down by being careful. Traffic rules as a source of nuisance. Then when an accident happens or get caught by police they will blame bad luck or everybody else.

Thinking long term (playing the infinite game) is so overrated...

<comment><USER5> Make me think of "tax are bad" people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And this is the problem with losing trust.

It's perfectly plausible that this _could_ have been a bug. It could also have been some type of performance enhancement, e.g. initialize the camera in the background so you can begin a video call more quickly.

But do you believe them? Facebook has scourged any goodwill I ever had for them.

<comment><USER7> but why when scrolling instead of when the app is initialized?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> None of these "bugs" ever seem to result in accidentally accessing _less_ data. How odd.

<comment><USER9> What is this comment even trying to say?

There are plenty of bugs that result in less data... many of them are called crashes and FB has them just like any other app.

<comment><USER10> ELI5:

It's a pithy sardonic addition to the chorus of scorn rightly directed at Facebook, rearticulating the consensus opinion that one consequence of their persistent malfeasance and its regular public disclosure is a profound loss of trust, such that genuine mistakes will never be perceived as such; and furthermore, this creates a self-perpetuating cycle in which embarrassing true bugs are interleaved with further documentation of bad faith in such a way that the distinction is not only lost but essentially irrelevant.

<comment><USER9> ELI5 of my comment:

The comment I replied to is not nearly as pithy as it thinks and comes across as more corny than commentary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been going back and forth on this heavily, but two weeks ago I reached out to ISC2 and ISACA's ethics boards to begin exploring the process of terminating the certifications of several FB employees that potentially (let me emphasize 110% blameless until proven otherwise) have been in violation of the ethics code for both of those orgs.

I asked ISC2 in particular that if a certain employee was shown to be on XYZ team that handled XYZ task, if they had say ignored multiple outreaches from the community, and then also (this is key) not raised concerns internally to a reasonable degree that a single individual can in a megacorp...could their say CISSP be revoked. The answer I got was a strong yes in the hypothetical stories I proposed.

I also emphasized that I would be writing an apology to said employee, and offer to resign / terminate my CISSP/CCSP if wrong because we have to prevent this process from becoming a no-lose vindictive game.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've long suspected this as the Facebook app in particular causes the phone to get hot around where the main camera module ic is located. It is also a battery drain. They appear to be doing this in collaboration with Apple as the battery usage for the camera does not increase despite the camera constantly being initiated while using the Facebook app.

I've also noticed that when certain ad platforms inject their code into Safari taboola/outbrain the same heating occurs. This would make sense as taboola and outbrain appear to be linked to Israeli intelligence.

I guess they not only don't care about our privacy they also don't care about our battery life / health of our devices either.

It sort of reminds me of how windows would spin up your HDD In the middle of the night and scan through your entire hard drive causing it to prematurely fail. All under the guise of windows update or whatever the cover was for what I consider criminal damage.

<comment><USER2> > They appear to be doing this in collaboration with Apple as the battery > usage for the camera does not increase despite the camera constantly being > initiated while using the Facebook app.

I'm sure any battery usage from this would just be listed under Facebook.

<comment><USER13> Right, battery usage is reported by app not by hardware function. It seems unlikely Apple would be willfully letting Facebook have special capabilities.

<comment><USER14> Not too long ago, the idea of the NSA & GCHQ working together to silently strong-arm tech giants to spy on their own citizens/customers was a laughable conspiracy theory.

Then we learned about PRISM. Hard proof that Apple, Facebook, Google, and the NSA secretly collaborate to mass-collect data on US citizens. It's 100% reasonable (and perhaps in our best interest) to assume any large tech company will and does cater to the NSA/CIA/GCHQ/Mossad's interests before their customers' \- or even their shareholders'. Revenue and market share are important, but a powerful agency threatening your company takes priority over anything.

 _Until proven innocent, we should assume that any and every large tech- centric corporation either has been or can be forced to cooperate with PRISM. IMHO now that the public has access to the Snowden leaks and Vault 7, it is irresponsible (and perhaps dangerous) to think otherwise._

<comment><USER13> Yes, all that is true, and why I used the word "willful" in my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's very telling when the CEO of the company puts stickers on his cameras. Bug or not, I guess it's better to follow suit with those that know what's going on. [https://simplecapacity.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Mark-Z...](https://simplecapacity.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/07/Mark-Zuckerberg-Tapes-His-Camera-And-Audio-Jack-With- Pieces-Of-Tape.-THIS-Tells-You-Something....jpg)

<comment><USER16> Putting stickers over your cameras might be a reasonable thing to do, but it's pretty silly to pretend your threat model is the same as Mark Zuckerberg's.

<comment><USER17> I keep reading similar statements on HN. Are we honestly saying that because of Zuck's "stature", there are more people actively attacking him than people taking access of an attack vector to gain access to as many people/devices as possible? Sure, some hacker might get some cred points for being the one to hack the Zuck, but ultimately these guys are after financial gains. This seems to be a prime example of quantity over quality being the better option.

<comment><USER18> If I was a billionaire I would pay security experts to make sure my workspaces were secure, things like locking down USB ports and blocking video/audio inputs that aren't used would be a completely expected part of that. Still rich with irony though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It easy, nowadays, to do anything and say it's a bug. Easy to escape that way than getting your ass kicked by loads of lawsuits.

<comment><USER20> Same exact thing with the Robinhood infinite leverage. People tried to defend them saying "robinhood isn't responsible because it's just a bug". Being ignorant of FINRA regulations and refusing to fix it when it has come up multiple times is not a bug. Not every fuckup is "a bug". Calling it a bug does not release you from all liability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's concerning is if FB could potentially target users based upon interests/variety of other user data to "introduce" these types of "bugs".

Not trying to start a conspiracy, but given the data and reach FB has, they could potentially target unknowing/non-techy people somewhere in the world and do it without their knowledge/care.

</comment><comment><USER22> Booting the camera so it is quickly available? Sure, that is a user-facing benefit.

My immediate hunch is rather that they love tracking emotional responses such as widening eyes as people interact with content. Because knowing the true emotional responses instead of just hitting "like" on a post would be extremely valuable data.

<comment><USER23> It's the rear camera that's activated...

[https://twitter.com/neo_qa/status/1190639141979140097](https://twitter.com/neo_qa/status/1190639141979140097)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Each time a "bug" like this surfaces they should be massively fined.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Facebook vice president of integrity Guy Rosen

The same Guy Rosen who was the CEO of Onvao - the infamous data grab app that Facebook purchased.... yeah, that integrity guy...

<comment><USER26> WTF does a VP of integrity do? Have lunches with the VP of honesty?

<comment><USER27> Integrity teams at FB are teams that handle abuse on the platform, and other bad things (fake accounts, spam, malicious developers, malicious ads, ...). Why integrity? Bunch of teams (not all) that did abuse had integrity in their name (like site integrity, platform integrity), so I guess that the name just sticks.

And what does VP of integrity do? Manages organization that handles abuse on the platform.

<comment><USER26> I guess VP of Abuse is just not a good look

<comment><USER27> well, VP of Abuse is exactly as good as VP of Spam. You know, it's not clear, whether you are trying to to reduce abuse/spam, or create it.

<comment><USER28> To be fair it's often not clear whether Facebook are trying to reduce integrity, or create it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> i'm no fan of FB, and do not have their apps installed. however, the rationale is that they initialize the camera so there is little delay when the user actually wants to use the camera, but the skeptics think the camera being initiated has a more nefarious purpose. scientific method would suggest these are testable theories to prove/disprove. could we not test the network traffic to see if a sudden spike in outbound data flows due to the camera data being sent to the mothership? is it possible that the app can analyze the video content locally on the device without needing to stream the video content back to the mothership? users with limited data plans would be destroyed by a constant "live" stream of video, but i am not hearing of these complaints in the wild.

<comment><USER29> No idea mate but what I've noticed is that when I had the facebook app installed it used to completely trash my battery on every android device I tried it on while running in the background. Imo there must be _some_ kind of processing that they are doing locally.

<comment><USER17> Would energizing the camera chip the entire time you are using FB apps not explain the battery drain by itself?

<comment><USER29> As far as the older androids I'm talking about I'm pretty sure that they didn't have the camera open 24/7 because the battery drain would have been even higher( based on my perception when taking a lot of photos), plus the camera used to overheat so I would have noticed. What I'm saying is that they are probably datamining and processing something. Not sure what that would be, but android at least is pretty pervasive with it's app permissions and used to be even more so so it could be anything on the phone really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513471)

</comment><comment><USER31> Ah, yes, a bug, how unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER32> Perhaps the bug was showing the camera image?

</comment><comment><USER33> How would the app even acces the camera without user approval? They must have done some nefarious shit to get around apple's ACLs.

<comment><USER34> This only works when the app has already been granted camera access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I noticed that the FB app is very dodgy. Now, I use a shortcut to FB in the web browser to check on things on my android.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why open source matters.

<comment><USER2> How so?

<comment><USER37> You can look at the code to see what it's _actually_ doing.

<comment><USER38> People rarely look at the code even when its open source

<comment><USER39> Not only that, even if you have reproducible builds, they're a lot harder to verify on mobile targets where you can't just compare all the installed files.

<comment><USER36> What am I missing? The binaries are the same. I dont see why paths matter. One can hash and intersect the sets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Color me unsurprised.

</comment><comment><USER41> Good time to remind that Facebook has previously intentionally bypassed permission dialogs to gather data without user permission:

[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5433555/Note- by-C...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5433555/Note-by-Chair-and- Selected-Documents-Ordered.pdf#Page=11)

<comment><USER42> Also nice reminder about that lovely photo of Zuck with a sticker covering up his webcam. Now why would he do something like that ... ?

<comment><USER43> Because he's much more likely to be targeted than any of us for things like that?

<comment><USER44> In a building he owns, on a network he owns, defended by an army of network engineers he employs?

No, he's not protecting himself from any _external_ threat.

<comment><USER45> This is common practice among US government employees as well. The fact that Zuck does it as well doesn't say anything about Facebook's practices WRT their users.

<comment><USER44> _This is common practice among US government employees as well_

Sure, but they are protecting themselves from the Russian hackers that are in all the US government networks. Zuck is protecting himself from Facebook itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Once again, my paranoia about never using FB from my phone is retroactively justified.

</comment><comment><USER47> Of course it did...

</comment><comment><USER48> Is not bug, people worked hard on this feature.

</comment><comment><USER49> Bugs are what you get when you move fast.

</comment><comment><USER50> Such bullshit.

They definitely initialize the camera in the background. That is how you are able to simply swipe to your camera view and it is immediately active. Otherwise you would get a slight delay while the camera is initialised.

What they are calling a bug is that the user actually saw it it rendered to a view...

Have no doubt - this happens on ALL apps that dont have an apparent delay on switching to a camera view. That facebook are saying this is a bug that they have "fixed", rather than admitting that they intentionally initialize the camera in the background makes me concerned as to why they would want to hide that fact...

<comment><USER51> Looking at the videos, it looks like the camera opens when the main view is swiped to the right. And you can see a ~300ms delay between when he swipes down and when the camera starts. This makes sense, because the way you open the story feature on FB is to swipe right. It's a good UX feature to start booting the camera as soon as you initiate the gesture, rather than when you've fully navigated so the camera is ready when you've finished your swipe.

Their layering system also pushes the view slightly to the right to create a perspective effect when it transitions back to the app from viewing an image.

Of course, this triggers the component that thinks the app is starting to pan to the right - and starts the camera and renders to the view behind the main view.

This seems totally plausible to be a bug - and I'm not sure why other commenters on HN aren't bringing this up.

Their app is fairly complicated, and it's totally reasonable that the team that worked on the story feature assumed that the only thing that would cause the view to move right was a user gesture. However, it looks like their layering system also caused it to move right as part of a perspective transition. This sounds like a bug to me.

If you really wanted to keep the camera open in the background, there are other ways to do so, such as literally not rendering the image to a visible framebuffer upon initiating the AVCaptureSession. iOS does not require you to attach a AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer to the capture session - and you could very easily just take those frames and process them without ever showing a preview to the user.

The bug is not that they were capturing in the background, but that the perspective transform of the main view caused the view behind it (for the story camera feature) to think the user was swiping the main view to the right and to start up the camera to make sure it's ready asap. Running the camera in the background is actually pretty expensive - you don't want to suck power doing so. As much as facebook wants your data, it also wants you to regularly interact with the app. If users think the app is draining battery too fast - they'll use it less throughout the day to preserve battery life. Making sure it isn't a power suck is important to their core business.

<comment><USER52> I have heard that facebook's app delivery pipeline is automated (so that they could release in a day if they wish) but also that they dogfood their apps with employees. So not sure how such an obvious bug us released. Either their employees don't use the app or their 100% automation is pathetically bad.

<comment><USER53> Or they knew about the bug, but considered it just a visual glitch (not considering people might get upset about privacy implications), and didn't prioritize fixing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think it's just bug.

<comment><USER55> You'll have to excuse me for being at least a little suspicious when one of the biggest surveillance capitalism companies on the planet ships an app version with a "feature" that looks a lot like surreptitious surveillance.

Facebook have demonstrated capability to do accurate face recognition, and it's hardly a stretch to assume they couldn't do enough object and possibly brand recognition from a live video feed from you phones camera as you're using the app.

Perhaps people might not make assumptions or jump to conclusions like those, if the company was one that had a solid track record of respecting user privacy and getting the protection of privacy right. That company is not Facebook...

But what would I know, I'm just "a dumb fuck"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Same goes to WhatsApp if your camera preview is accessible on swiping to the left or whatever. They must be sending small snippets of video/audio/images periodically, its too tempting to not do so at that scale if you already have the permissions.

<comment><USER57> Except that they'd be hung by their toes if they were caught doing that.</comment></comment>


A letter from an investor to an entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://innonate.com/2009/02/14/common-email/

<comment><USER2> I'm pasting a copy of this above my development screen. ...with the line ___"forget investors for the while and get building!"_ __in bold.

<comment><USER3> That's a reasonable sentiment, but only up to a point. What I read between the lines was, "You don't really understand the investment process yet, or where you need to be to begin looking for investment. Since you don't have any traction or a convincing team, you're not ready to be thinking about this."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If only all investors were this candid and polite.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why would you want to get investment w/o a working prototype? It only costs 2-3K to have a freelancer to code it up for you.

Without a working prototype you are just pitching an idea, which means that it'll be next to impossible to find an investor, and if you do find one, you'll have to give away the farm for a tiny amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER6> Every non-technical founder without a working prototype needs to read this.</comment>


The Yahoo Style Guide - <AUTHOR> http://styleguide.yahoo.com/ <comment><USER2> Example: Seed copy with keywords for SEO: [http://styleguide.yahoo.com/resources/optimize-search- engine...](http://styleguide.yahoo.com/resources/optimize-search- engines/example-seed-copy-keywords-seo)

</comment><comment><USER3> For a company that seems to have so many internal problems, the tools Yahoo gives away are really fantastic. YUI, PageSpeed, Pipes... all great stuff.

<comment><USER4> PageSpeed isn't ours but YSlow is ;)</comment></comment>


First release of dav1d, the AV1 decoder - <AUTHOR> http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2018/First-release-of-dav1d <comment><AUTHOR> As usual, if you need any info, ask me anything :)</comment>