Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 1984, followed directly by Brave New World. Our world resembles a lot from each of these books. Much like in 1984, we have devices and companies constantly monitoring us (iOS, Android, Facebook, etc.), we have "news programs" and websites seemingly modeled after the "two minutes hate", and we clearly have some Ministry of Truth-like misinformation getting spread around while accurate information gets lost or ignored. Much like in Brave New World, we have soma-like drugs, distractions and trivialities occupying people while they accept the world as it is and even shy away from wanting to change things. Really, we live in a world that blends together much of what was described in 1984 and Brave New World. Neither book predicted the future accurately, but together the picture these books painted is pretty damn accurate, and disturbing.

<comment><USER3> >Much like in Brave New World, we have soma-like drugs, distractions and trivialities occupying people while they accept the world as it is and even shy away from wanting to change things.

Now hold on. There are millions of people in the streets demonstrating on a regular basis these days. How many have to be _trying_ to change things before we stop labeling them all distracted, sleeping, over-amused sheeple?

<comment><USER4> "We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us."

— Neil Postman (Author of Amusing Ourselves to Death)

<comment><USER5> I first learned about Neil Postman in the last year from Alan Kay's reading list. I've found myself wishing he were still alive to champion his ideas today - they seem just as relevant in the era of Facebook as they did in the era of television.

[http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp](http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> * The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley. [0]

So famous it became a bit of a cliche. I read it years ago and it didn't make any sense to me. But now that I've been studying Buddhism and practicing meditation for a while I picked it up again and I found it nothing short of brilliant, packed with interesting insights on philosophy, the arts, theology, the history of mysticism and the quest for the meaning of life. I know it sounds trite, but I simply wasn't ready for it the first time.

* The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera. [1]

I read this 10 years ago. It touched my heart back then and it did it again this time. It's one of the few works of fiction that changed, a little or a lot, the way I think about love, relationships, loneliness and happiness.

I can't wait to re-read it a third time, in 10 years.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5128.The_Doors_of_Percep...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5128.The_Doors_of_Perception_Heaven_and_Hell)

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9717.The_Unbearable_Ligh...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9717.The_Unbearable_Lightness_of_Being)

<comment><USER7> Island by Huxley is also a fantastic book with great social commentary on the west vs. an idealistic society. It's interesting to see, for example, his early take on preventative vs curative medicine in "modern" society, or how education needs to be reformed. One of my all time favourites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

"A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole."

<comment><USER9> That's a wonderful quote echoing some of my thoughts regarding the post-work economy. Does one need to read the entire "Hainish series" to enjoy this book? Or can I just jump right in?

<comment> david-given They're not really a series --- just a shared setting that gives her an excuse to have curious but almost human aliens visit strange worlds populated by almost humans. In fact, the Ekumen barely get a cameo in _Dispossed_.

Read it; it's really good, and works well as a pair with _The Left Hand of Darkness_.

Oh, yeah --- the Old Hainish were Not Nice People.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Small Gods.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34484.Small_Gods](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34484.Small_Gods)

It's the 13th book of Terry Pratchett's superb Discworld series, but it's the perfect entry point for anyone who hasn't read any of them because it doesn't require any exterior context, and it's pure Pratchett in his prime.

I honestly can't recommend it, and the rest of the series, highly enough. If you haven't experienced Pratchett's work then I implore you, beg you, to get a copy of this book _today_.

<comment><USER11> Say I read this entry in the series. If I end up liking it, would you recommend that I then go back and start from the beginning?

<comment><USER10> Ah, well, this is a bit of a contentious question in the Discworld community, with no clear correct answer.

Discworld has a number of major story arcs which are generally able to be read separately although they often overlap, and so some people prefer to follow one of the many Reading Guides out there to determine which books to read and when.

But a lot of us disagree and say that you should go to the very first book, The Colour of Magic, start there, and read the whole series in order, because it lets you experience Pratchett as he evolves from a pretty good writer into one of the best fantasy authors of all time. Plus you get to experience the Discworld itself evolving, as the Disc is broadly an allegory of Earth in the 1700s / 1800s with many of the same technological progressions.

It's important to note, though, that the first few books in the series can be tough to get through if you don't already have an appreciation for what's coming, and some readers are put off by them, but please, please don't give up, you have no idea what you're missing right now.

God, I envy you so much. If I had three wishes, I would genuinely spend the third one on forgetting the Discworld series just so I could once again experience the joy of reading it for the first time.

<comment><USER11> We have a winner, folks! I'll order the first book this week and take it from there. I've read quite a bit of sci-fi and I can appreciate good world building, so I won't be giving up that easily. Thanks for the advice.

<comment><USER10> Fantastic, I'm so excited for you!

I would also highly recommend reading The Annotated Pratchett[1], which provides insight into the many fascinating real-world events, objects, people, myths, legends, and more that Pratchett subtly (or not so subtly in some cases) referenced in his work.

Don't get ahead of yourself of course, wait until you've finished reading the entire book before you read its corresponding APF entry so as to avoid spoilers :)

[1] [https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/](https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cryptonomicon - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/816.Cryptonomicon](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/816.Cryptonomicon)

<comment><USER13> Probably my favorite novel. And, unfortunately, more relevant than ever.

A quote: If the entire world were to become a police state obsessed with recovering old secrets, then vast resources might be thrown at the problem of factoring large composite numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Daemon - AI, AR (or MR), 3D printing, crowdsourcing, this book brings them and more together in a facinating manner. [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6665847-daemon)

and the second in the series [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8488830-freedom](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8488830-freedom)

<comment><USER15> Just finished Daemon and about to start Freedom. Great read, and it's amazing how quickly it ramps up near the end! I hadn't been hooked to a book like that since "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Dune"

<comment><USER16> I just re-started this one recently too. If you enjoy those, check out one of Suarez's other: Influx.

It's not a sequel but has some common threads.

<comment><USER17> I have read Daemon, Freedom and Kill Decision so far. A thing I noticed with Suarez' books is that they very much remind me of the two books of Dan Brown that I've read, yet not having to cringe hard at every scene that involves technology makes them infinitely more readable to me. The settings and plot with both are ludicrous at times, but yet Suarez manages to put some interesting ideas in. I got a similar vibe off of Stephenson's Snow Crash.

By the way: I'm not the only one for whom Sobel's bio screamed "John Carmack" from the first page he's mentioned, am I?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Deep Work by Cal Newport. [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep- work](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work)

Eye opening reading for everyone who works in IT, science or any industry that requires long chunks of deep attention.

<comment><USER19> +1 for Deep Work, especially in this easily distracted world (get off Twitter and do deep work instead).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

[https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving- Counterintuitiv...](https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving- Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713)

<comment><USER21> I can not recommend enough Mark Manson work. Also, if you are into stoicism, you may love Ryan Holiday books too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How to get Rich - Felix Dennis

[https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest- Entrepreneurs/d...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Rich-Greatest- Entrepreneurs/dp/1591842719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486214516&sr=8-1&keywords=How+to+get+Rich+-+Felix+Dennis)

<comment><USER23> For those put off by the title, Felix Dennis is/was a billionaire and makes a point of differentiating himself from people becoming wealthy giving advice about how to become wealthy.

He dropped out of high-school and bummed cigarettes and crashed at friends, apparently. He talks about several lessons and how he remained associated with several people who've helped him when he was "nothing". The case of a banker who agreed to open a bank account for him despite being broke out of sympathy/pity.

Dennis likes to write poetry and some of the passages are intense and tear worthy (van Gogh passage). The style is to the point, tells it as it is (He doesn't hesitate to state that his employees are not likely to become wealthy working for him and that he encourages them to fly on their own. He also talks about the less flattering aspects of doing business and says that even between friends, they were on good terms because none of them depended on the venture to survive. He also says never to give shares of your company to anyone and to remain in control).

In his subsequent book, 88, he states that people didn't get that "How to Get Rich" was a cautionary tale about what it takes to become wealthy, which is obvious from many passages in the book. [One of which is when he says he'd rather have stopped at £30 million and wrote poetry while young, instead of pursuing becoming rich at an old age).

It's a worthy read in style and content.

Dennis is buying forests the Government can't take care of in a philanthropic effort to save them.

<comment><USER24> You write as if he is alive, he died over 2 years ago.

<comment><USER23> I forgot. The information is still relevant, I hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I separate my books into levels. Level 0 are the books that I reread steadily over the years (also the ones that I pack in my suitcase when I'm moving as opposed to shipping), so I'll just post that list here, in no particular order: 'Good Poems' edited by Garrison Keiller; 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen; 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen; Fitzgerald's translation of 'The Rubaiyat'; Ford Madox Ford's 'Parade's End'; Hafiz, 'The Gift'; Modesitt, 'Gravity Dreams'; Heinlein, 'Time Enough for Love'; Bulgakov, 'Master and Margarita'; 'Ovid in Love' (Guy Lee's translation of the Amores).

I've been revisiting a lot of Le Guin's novellas ('The Found and the Lost' is a great collection) and Borges's stories since the election. They have been a source of great comfort.

I find that I don't reread nonfiction. I'll reference something I remember in it, but I can't think of a work of nonfiction I've reread in the past few years.

<comment><USER26> > Heinlein, 'Time Enough for Love'

Not within the last year, but I've probably re-read that between five and ten times. I think I first read it as a teenager in the early 70s, or in the Navy in the late 70s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Siddhartha - [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2500](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2500)

3rd time; learned something knew every time.

<comment><USER28> Excellent book. The first time I started reading it, I couldn't grasp it and stopped after a few pages. But then picked it up again in 2015 and read it in one sitting. It's a wonderful little book. To be honest, I don't think I can sum up how it felt but it was liberating. I remember keeping the book on my chest and getting lost in thoughts about what the purpose of life is. It was really deep, I was on a totally different plane with my thought process. I read it again last year on a flight but couldn't finish it and it didn't evoke the same emotions but it has a very special place in my heart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_ , Tom Stoppard. This is a hilariously clever play so packed with verbal and physical humor that you almost have to read it aloud to yourself and move about your own living room to fully digest it. It explores the sensation that supposedly random events are somehow orchestrated into a purposeful coherence by an unseen force (Stoppard? Shakespeare?) More than one character has an existential crisis involving, though not explicitly invoking, the fourth wall. And the commentary on death is quite thoughtful and thought-provoking.

<comment><USER30> This was made into a movie a while back as well. It really liked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Most notably, _Blood Meridian_. It had probably been more than fifteen years since I last reread it. What was unusual was that as soon as I reread it, I turned around and reread it again.

[edit] Among programming books: _How to Design Programs_...I've got a print copy. There's a lot of sophistication and relevant experience behind its programming fundamentals content (e.g. tests and documentation before (2002) tests and documentation became the new black).

</comment><comment><USER32> Seveneves by Neal Stephenson [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves)

One of the few books, that when I'm finished, I just want to turn it over a start again.

Covers a wide range of important and relevant topics in technology, biology/genetics, ethics. My only problem is it is too short! Could easily have been a triology like the Baroque Cycle (another favorite) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle)

<comment><USER33> It very clearly was set up to be the first of a series.

<comment><USER34> Except by all accounts it wasn't and there are no plans to continue it.

<comment><USER33> _by all accounts_

Oh really? Please share one such account. Because this is a statement from Stephenson himself:

 _There's nothing currently in the works. A lot depends on what happens in the next few months, how people respond to the book, if there's any interest in doing media adaptations_

That's pretty clear it depends on how well it sells, whether film rights get bought and how that goes, etc.

<comment><USER35> > There's nothing currently in the works.

That seems clear enough.

<comment><USER33> "Set up to be part of a series" and "Nothing currently in the works" are not mutually exclusive. It's not uncommon for the decision to invest in a sequel to hinge on sales.

Have you read the book? There's no way someone could read this book and not think, "Yeah, the author clearly purposefully left room for this to be a very large series."

<comment><USER34> I thought as much myself but shortly after finishing it I went looking through interviews and there was one from Neal Stephenson where he explicitly stated that he had no intention of doing a sequel when he was writing it, hence my initial statement. Due to the minimal information we have on the last few chapters it seemed like it was created intentionally but the author said otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Really, anything by Gibson is worth reading multiple times, simply for the great writing style. Pattern Recognition also does something special: have you really ever /thought/ about brands and advertising? Lots of commentary on culture, memetic fashion, and what it means.

Recursion by Tony Ballantyne is a book that I didn't actually like all that much, but reread anyways. It covers a lot of topics I love (global AIs, Von Neumann Machines, tulpas, trusting trust, and a totalitarian utopia). The plot leaves a lot to be desired, but the concepts are worth it.

<comment><USER37> Pattern recognition was great. William Gibson can make some very compelling characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Man's search for meaning by Victor Frank

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning)

<comment><USER39> Re-listened many times the audio version. He reads it himself in a nice consumable speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _The Diamond Age_

Even more than Star Trek, this novel caused me to think about a post-scarcity world. If we could have anything and everything, what should we do with it?

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

<comment><USER3> >If we could have anything and everything, what should we do with it?

Really? I always thought of _The Diamond Age_ as being about class conflict and social hierarchy in a _partially_ post-scarcity world.

<comment><USER40> Yea, there'd be less scarcity in that one if it weren't for all the DRM. Possibly a lot more anarchy though. I think the agrarian-nanotech society that Dr X wants would be hard to establish and harder to maintain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wanted some light relief so I started re-reading Charles Stross' Laundry files, starting with The Atrocity Archives.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101869.The_Atrocity_Arch...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101869.The_Atrocity_Archives)

There are 7 books in the series now, and hopefully I'll finish the re-read not too long before the next one comes out!

</comment><comment><USER42> _What I Talk About When I Talk About Running_ by Haruki Murakami. I'm on at least my third reading and imagine I'll read it again.

Also re-listened to _Getting Things Done_ by David Allen. This could also be any number of times.

Sort-of related, currently re-watching _Westworld_. I burned through ten episodes in two sittings first time around and wanted to properly appreciate it this time at a more leisurely pace.

</comment><comment><USER43> Nassim Taleb's Antifragile. First read it when it came out in 2012, and I was still unmarried and unemployed. Interesting to re-read it now that I'm married and have been working for 4+ years.

<comment><USER44> I've read a few of Taleb's other books. He seems to have a few brilliant points with lots of supporting materials and rants. Can you summarize the new insights you got after being married/employed?

<comment><USER43> I wouldn't say there are any new insights per se; I'm maybe just more intimately acquainted with them. Ie when I first read it, most of the descriptions about things like how a paycheck influences your thinking/behavior were just intellectual ideas for me, but having had a mortgage + paycheck for 4 years I've come to personally witness how it's 'domesticated' me in a way, made me more fragile, however you want to describe it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Godel, Escher, Bach.

But I'm not fully re-reading it, because the first time I only got to one third of it.

So, until I get to that first third, I'm re-reading, and after that, it is all new.

<comment><USER46> I'm looking forward to starting GEB a third time. It is by far my favorite book I've never finished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie. Timeless wisdom that is good to be reminded of regularly.

</comment><comment><USER47> Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

<comment><USER48> Hats off to you. Most don't even complete this once, you have re-read it. It will be great if you can tell what made you re-read this one?

<comment><USER49> A recurring interest in recursive programming to break out of an iterative lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Neil Strauss' _Emergency_ and Peter Heller's _The Dog Stars_.

I read the piece in the New Yorker about rich tech guys and their bug out plans for the apocalypse (including Reddit's Alex Ohanian).

I love Strauss' journey from survivalist to community volunteer. It changed the way I think about preparedness.

Heller's book is one of only a few that I find myself thinking about all the time. I'm a sucker for any book with a dog in it though, so that might color my opinion.

<comment><USER51> You might also like "The Knowledge" by Dr Lewis Dartnell.

<comment><USER50> Looks pretty interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.

<comment><USER52> If you like dogs, you should read "The Art of Driving in the Rain" it's a surprisingly good novel.

<comment><USER50> Oh jeez, that looks good. Added to my wishlist. I really wish I either had more time to read or could read faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Just started re-reading the Baroque cycle and plan to follow with Cryptonomicon. Re-reading really reveals a lot that was a bit of a mystery the first time.

<comment><USER13> I noticed the same thing.

The second time through I was much better able to keep the characters straight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> The Fountainhead. Makes me a better person Everytime.

<comment><USER55> Agreed. In fact, I think it's about time I should start a re-read of _The Fountainhead_ myself. It's been a few years since I've read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I've read two books recently:

* Contact by Carl Sagan

I had previously seen the movie. The book (or rather the movie) takes a bit of a departure. The backgrounds on all the different characters as well as the political parts weren't that interesting to me. But overall the book was great.

* We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse) by Dennis Taylor

I'd suggest listening to it on Audiobook. Excellent read. Makes me want to buy the book and read through it again. I can't wait until the next one comes out in (March?)

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Contact-Carl- Sagan/dp/0671004107/ref=...](https://www.amazon.com/Contact-Carl- Sagan/dp/0671004107/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486236067&sr=8-1&keywords=contact+book)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Legion-Bob- Bobiverse/dp/168068...](https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Legion-Bob- Bobiverse/dp/1680680323/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486235995&sr=8-1&keywords=we+are+legion+we+are+bob)

</comment><comment><USER57> Creativity Inc.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity- inc](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-inc)

</comment><comment><USER58> Cry The Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Whenever I feel short of compassion, this books helps me gain some senses and completely change the way I look at the world - literally everytime.

</comment><comment><USER59> The Martian

I love it. It's about doing the impossible, one step at a time

<comment><USER49> The attention to technical detail in this book is awesome. Mentioning the priority inversion bug on the lander made me smile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer. Many arguments about why and how are answered in that

<comment><USER61> "This is Berlin", Shirer's collection of transcripts of his CBS radio broadcasts from the Nazi capital 1938-40 is excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. The Guards is my favorite arc in Discworld and Samuel Vimes is my favorite character among all the fiction I've read.

</comment><comment><USER63> Excession - Iain M Banks. Going through the whole Culture series again.

</comment><comment><USER64> The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

I understood a lot more of the jokes this time through, I think I was in Elementary school the last time I read it :)

<comment><USER65> Took me two reads to realize that the magical word people didn't understand, described as "reflected sound of underground spirits", was economics.

That moment of realization; d'oh!

<comment><USER64> Hah, yea, same here. He _almost_ explains it in the book, but not quite.

<comment><USER44> Heh .. my fav book in the discworld series is Going Postal, and its sequel. I highly recommend them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> _State of the Art_ by Iain M Banks

<comment><USER67> Consider Phlebas is one of the few books I have read more than once. The Culture series is unparalleled. Surface Detail is probably my pick for #1, as Consider Phlebas isn't really set within the Culture proper, so stands in its own category in a sense.

<comment><USER68> Maybe you can advise me. I read Consider Phlebas, and I didn't like it at all. I rarely like war fiction.

Is Phlebas typical of the whole Culture series, or are the other books a different kind of story?

Thank you.

<comment><USER66> Banks often used conflict as a plot device, but (from memory) only _Consider Phlebas_ and _Use of Weapons_ include much actual warfare.

You could try _The Player of Games_ (my personal favourite) or _The Hydrogen Sonata_ , which has a fairly peaceful storyline. And _The State of the Art_ \- a collection of short SF stories - is very good too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Code - [https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Softw...](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Software/dp/0735611319)

</comment><comment><USER70> I read this every year

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040JHNQG/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040JHNQG/)

<comment><USER71> Great book!

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War

</comment><comment><USER73> Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. I highly recommend it. Takes only 4-5 hours cover to cover

</comment><comment><USER74> In the last several weeks, I read all of the Harry Potter series. Because I wanted to fall into another world, where I knew things would end well. And I've been re-reading Laurie King's Mary Russell series, because I want to be surrounded by smart people.

In fact I'm doing a lot of re-reading. The world is full of so much uncertainty, these days, that I can't even cope with not knowing how a book ends.

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm currently reading Neuromancer again. Still doesn't feel dated.

<comment><USER76> Feels the opposite too me. It shows it's been written in the 80's. Would "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." make sense to young people nowadays?

<comment><USER40> Or the "3 megabytes of hot ram" :)

Still a good story though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> The Arabs: A History

[http://amazon.com/dp/B007TV0PJE](http://amazon.com/dp/B007TV0PJE)

</comment><comment><USER78> I just reread _On Writing Well_ by William Zinsser -- a book with a lot of great advice for writing non-fiction (creative mostly, but also technical and business writing).

It's a little dated, but a lot of what he says is timeless.

About a year ago I reread Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_ which is one of my favorite books. I can't explain why, but I think about it often.

</comment><comment><USER79> Ready Player One.

Though the recent second time was as an audio book on a long car trip.

</comment><comment><USER80> Hyperion

Reading this book is a nice way to step into another universe for a while.

</comment><comment><USER81> 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1303.The_48_Laws_of_Powe...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1303.The_48_Laws_of_Power) Recommend for techies struggling to "play the game"

</comment><comment><USER82> Use of Weapons - Iain M. Banks

</comment><comment><USER83> I'm in love with Rethinking Innateness. I'm posting half in the hope someone suggests an up to date version, but it's brilliant and fascinating itself. It was prescribed when I was studying my CS MSc and I've read it three times now.

I got initially into computers because I would press something on the keyboard and knew there was a sequence of commands that directed the graphics card to output something – I needed to understand that. Now, as I assume applies to so many people here, my curiosity has expanded to human development, this books is _the bridge_ between CS and psychology.

[https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Innateness- Connectionist-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Innateness- Connectionist-Perspective-Connectionism/dp/026255030X)

</comment><comment><USER84> Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome

I consider this timeless humour, because it gets me to laugh out loud in public. People get startled by this. Also, I read episodes from the book to my 7 year old, who loves it. Occasionally, I need to explain a very dry joke, but some I leave for him to discover later.

<comment><USER85> "I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it." This kind of humor on a book from 1889 is just unbelievable, I have to read this. Thank you for the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up

[https://www.amazon.com/Schiit-Happened-Worlds-Improbable- Sta...](https://www.amazon.com/Schiit-Happened-Worlds-Improbable-Start-Up- ebook/dp/B00Z5IFTYO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486216491&sr=1-1&keywords=schiit+happened)

Goldmine of information about practical things you have to deal with when starting HW startup.

All the content of the book + extra chapters are available in forum format and you can read it here: [http://www.head-fi.org/t/701900/schiit-happened-the- story-of...](http://www.head-fi.org/t/701900/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the- worlds-most-improbable-start-up)

</comment><comment><USER87> I re-read 'The Hobbit', which made me marvel again at such a delightful, thoughtful story, the world and characters that Tolkien wrought, and the morals of self-discovery and self-sacrifice... and sad for what the movie(s) could have been instead of what they were.

<comment><USER19> I re-read it two years ago, and was blown away by how good it was. A really good read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I am re-reading "Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury, it made a strong impression on me four or five years ago, with its pessimistic yet poetic view of the Mars colonization. My new boss is an annoying Mars colonization enthusiast so I'm counterbalancing.

</comment><comment><USER89> _Peopleware — Productive Projects and Teams_

[https://amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom- DeMarc...](https://amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-DeMarco- ebook/dp/B00DY5A8X2/)

</comment><comment><USER90> The Hard thing About Hard Things, but Ben Horowitz. Before that was The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. I've been on a business book kick lately, but currently took a break and am reading Amy Schumer's book for kicks.

</comment><comment><USER65> The Dune series. The Lord of the Rings. All the Amber books, by Zelazny. Pretty much the same books I read every year or two.

I'm going to start re-reading the Steven Brust Vlad-series, in the near future. Mostly to anticipate his forthcoming novel.

</comment><comment><USER91> People Over Profit. Really enjoyed it both times.

[https://www.amazon.com/People-Over-Profit-Purpose- Successful...](https://www.amazon.com/People-Over-Profit-Purpose- Successful/dp/0718021746)

</comment><comment><USER92> * Steven Levy – _Crypto_

* Stephen King – _11 /22/63_

* Michael R Underwood – _Geekomancy_ series

11/22/63 in particular is hard to put down, King doesn't need the supernatural to create a thrilling story.

</comment><comment><USER93> Permutation City. Immediately before that, I had read Ready Player One, and felt I needed something rich in nutrients to balance out the refined sugar high.

</comment><comment><USER94> Cryptonomicon, very dense almost requires a second reading to fully understand how everything ties together.

Considering it was written in 1999 still feels very contemporary.

</comment><comment><USER95> House of Leaves. I read it in college and thought it was okay, but I had some ideas about the world I think I was trying to project on it, and I didn't really "get it." Some stuff happened in my life recently, and for some reason I remembered it and felt compelled to re-read. I'm glad I did. I felt like I understood and identified with it a great deal more.

</comment><comment><USER40> HPMoR

<comment><USER96> I loved that book more than the original. I think they should make it a movie.

How do you continue learning more types of stuff that the book teaches you?

<comment><USER97> Check out [http://lesswrong.com/](http://lesswrong.com/)

Also, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a book called Rationality: From AI to Zombies.

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25131230-rationality](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25131230-rationality)

<comment><USER98> If you want to jump right in, you can start with The Martial Art of Rationality, here: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/gn/the_martial_art_of_rationality/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/gn/the_martial_art_of_rationality/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale, the best novel I read last year. Alternate history: Rome invades Cahokia.

No affiliate link: [https://www.amazon.com/Clash-Eagles-Trilogy- Book/dp/11018853...](https://www.amazon.com/Clash-Eagles-Trilogy- Book/dp/1101885300/)

Edit: corrected author's name

</comment><comment><USER100> _The Renaissance_ by Will Durant, part of his _The Story of Civilization_ series. I was inspired to review the Renaissance by last year's Burning Man theme, especially a collection of Renaissance inspired art by an Israeli photographer.

I'm kind of in a perpetual re-read of Pierce's _Types and Programming Languages_.

</comment><comment><USER101> The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. For motivation

</comment><comment><USER102> "Kingmaker", by Christian Cantrell[0]. I needed a dose of anti-plutocrat in my daily brain food and his novel was a fun near-future fix.

[0] [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17687575-kingmaker](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17687575-kingmaker)

</comment><comment><USER103> The first 5 books of the Honor Harrington series, I'm on the 6th now and planning on re-reading all 13 the whole thing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse#Honor_Harrington_se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse#Honor_Harrington_series)

</comment><comment><USER104> _The Reverse of the Medal_ by Patrick O'Brian. I needed a bit of quality, mindless fun after 2016.

</comment><comment><USER105> Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

</comment><comment><USER106> Homo Deus - A Brief Bistory of Tomorrow

</comment><comment><USER107> Rereading my way through the two Dune 'trilogies' now. Currently in the middle of God Emperor.

This time through it's been shocking to me to see such parallels between the politics, policies, and consequences there of and the world today.

There's a lot to think about in Dune.

</comment><comment><USER108> Two books by Simon Singh:

The Code Book

Big Bang

He has an amazing ability to go really deep into what he's explaining. No hand waving over the details. And yet, it's so very readable.

Unfortunately that wasn't true with his other book - Fermat's Theorem - probably because the subject matter was too complex?

</comment><comment><USER109> reinventing organizations [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20787425-reinventing- org...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20787425-reinventing- organizations)

</comment><comment><USER110> I just re-read _Righteous Indignation_ by Andrew Breitbart -- Fascinating in retrospect as it accurately describes so much about the emergence of new media and what manifested itself in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

</comment><comment><USER111> The First and Last Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

<comment><USER65> For a moment I thought you were going to say "The First and Last Men" \- but then I realized I'd mis-remembered the title:

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

This is an excellent sci-fi exploration of possible future, especially given the year in which it was written. I've not re-read it since I've only finished it a few months ago, but it was an excellent read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> The Dictator's Handbook: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610391845](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610391845)

Fascinatingly relevant right now.

<comment><USER49> >Fascinatingly relevant right now.

How so?

<comment><USER113> The guy who we liked expanded executive power and now the guy who we don't like inherited it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> The Alchemist

</comment><comment><USER115> Zero to One. If I had to highlight the most important parts of the book, I would end up highlighting the whole book. :S

</comment><comment><USER116> "The Encounter", a National Geographic photographer's meeting with a tribe of telepathic Amazon Indians.

</comment><comment><USER117> I've been re-reading the aeneid and the summa theologica. And as for tech, mostly RFCs and wikipedia articles.

</comment><comment><USER118> The Cuckoo's Egg. Plus ca change.

</comment><comment><USER119> Not books as such, but I have re-read a fair number of Shakespeare's plays since about Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER120> Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

</comment><comment><USER121> The Name of the Wind, and The Wise Man's Fear -- great fantasy books by Patrick Rothfuss.

<comment><USER122> I just finished reading these for the first time and am disappointed to learn that the 3rd book was at the _finished manuscript stage_ 4 years ago, but still no 3rd book :[

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> _The Elements of Style_ \--- well, parts of it. However, I mainly read it for pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER124> I re-read Fahrenheit 451 recently. I had read it only once when I was young.

<comment> jon-wood Good call, I read it long ago when I was growing up, cover to cover in one sitting having picked it up from my Dad's bookshelf with no real idea of what it was about. I really should reread it and see how I feel about it as an adult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> Matilda by Roald Dahl.

</comment><comment><USER126> 0 to 1: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

</comment><comment><USER127> "Flash Boys" \- Michael Lewis

</comment><comment><USER128> The art of multiprocessor programming

</comment><comment><USER129> "Master Switch" by Tim Wu

</comment><comment><USER130> The Prince by Machiavelli

</comment><comment><USER131> Zero to One (audio book)

</comment><comment><USER132> The Machine That Changed The World

Good Prose

Titan

</comment><comment><USER133> Three books I tend to re-read every 3-8 years are: Farmer in the Sky[1], The Chrysalids[2] and Dune[3][4]. Read them as a teenager and thirty years later still re-read.

Others I've re-read recently are:

* Camouflage [5]

* The Green And the Gray [6]

* The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August [7]

* The Martian [8]

* I Am Not A Serial Killer series [9]

I plan to re-read in the near future:

* Touch [10]

* The Hollow City [11]

* Pulling Up Stakes [12]

Yes, I read a lot. [13]

\---

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50851.Farmer_in_the_Sky](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50851.Farmer_in_the_Sky)

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/826845.The_Chrysalids](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/826845.The_Chrysalids)

[3] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1000049.Dune](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1000049.Dune)

[4] Only the first book in the series. Really disliked all the rest. Last couple of times I've listened to the Audible audiobook version which is excellent.

[5] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21607.Camouflage](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21607.Camouflage)

[6] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216455.The_Green_And_the...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216455.The_Green_And_the_Gray)

[7] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18295861-the-first- fifte...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18295861-the-first-fifteen- lives-of-harry-august)

[8] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18007564-the- martian](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18007564-the-martian)

[9] [https://www.goodreads.com/series/49883-john- cleaver](https://www.goodreads.com/series/49883-john-cleaver)

[10] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23561543-touch](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23561543-touch)

[11] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13034956-the-hollow- city](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13034956-the-hollow-city)

[12] [https://www.goodreads.com/series/94696-pulling-up- stakes](https://www.goodreads.com/series/94696-pulling-up-stakes)

[13] [http://www.michevan.id.au/content/reading-habits- of-2015/](http://www.michevan.id.au/content/reading-habits-of-2015/)

</comment><comment><USER134> Snow Crash

</comment><comment><USER135> "Hamilton" by Lin Manuel Miranda. This is the story of how the play came to be after his first white house performance.

Here is a short post I wrote a few days back:

Hamilton is an absolutely fantastic musical. An amazing history : probably the most interesting story of a founding-father. It has got everything : rags-to- riches, heroism, fighting, betrayal, sex scandal, .. you name it. The musical is based off of Ron Chernow's door-stop sized biography. Lin Manuel Miranda adapted it to a Broadway play. And if you are like most, you will end up becoming a huge fan of Miranda. The musical won a Pulitzer as well as a lot of Tony's including the best musical. What a beautiful way to tell the story of a founding father with Rap, Hip-Hop, R&B and a bunch of other genres. Mind blown!

If you can get a ticket to the musical, consider yourself lucky and go watch it. I haven't. So ended up doing all the other reading / listening before the musical finale. :)

I got so interested in this that I have now listened to the musical (many times), read all the coverage of it in NY Times (published as a book) and also the book that Miranda himself wrote about the genesis of the show and watched a dozen videos of Lin on youtube.

Here's Lin's first presentation of this idea in a poetry recital at the White House: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNFf7nMIGnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNFf7nMIGnE)

The entire musical is available on many streaming services and on youtube too.

The book by Lin Manuel Miranda : Hamilton : [https://www.amazon.com/Hamilton- Revolution-Lin-Manuel-Mirand...](https://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Revolution- Lin-Manuel-Miranda-ebook/dp/B015X056G4/)

This is the book that covers all articles on NY Times: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FWP73AM/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FWP73AM/)

A few cool Lin videos:

SNL Monologue: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsupmN90wBk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsupmN90wBk)

Freestyle rapping in the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31jboLYcH4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31jboLYcH4)

Freestyle with Ellen: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqhKeIr6Zbc&t=201s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqhKeIr6Zbc&t=201s)

Ron Chernow's book: [https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Hamilton-Ron-Chernow- ebook/...](https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Hamilton-Ron-Chernow- ebook/dp/B000QJLQZI/)

[yet to read this massive tome -> saving it up as the finale].

</comment><comment><USER136> "Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire" (1992)

[https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft- Empire/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft- Empire/dp/0887306292)

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41611.Hard_Drive](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41611.Hard_Drive)

Mostly re-read the parts of the book that talk about the 80s (the creation of the PC, DOS, Windows, the PC clones, Microsoft and Intel outsmarting IBM, Microsoft bullying the rest of the industry, etc.).

<comment><USER87> I've not read 'Hard Drive', but I've re-read 'Gates' by Manes and Andrews, and can recommend it.

<comment><USER136> Well, ditto. I can recommend 'Hard Drive' just by its sheer writing/research quality. Apparently the book came out of a series of articles in "The Seattle Times", back when newspapers employed quality writers/researchers.

It gave me

a) a whole new understanding of the computer hardware/ecosystem I grew up with

b) a re-newed insight into why Gates was a horrible, horrible monopolist who held back software development for the world quite a bit. My best guess is by about 5 years. (And that estimate is actually quite generous towards Mr. Gates.)

<comment><USER87> I don't think you'd be surprised in the large by anything in 'Gates', though there may be a story here or there that 'Hard Drive' didn't present, and vice versa. I'll make a point to read 'Hard Drive' as well, I find the perspective helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER137> _American Gods_ by Neil Gaiman.

Just because I needed a bit of fun fiction to break up all the non-fiction. And because it (perhaps accidentally) says something interesting about the gods of a land of immigrants and future-philes.

</comment><comment><USER138> Programming the network with Perl.

[https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Network-Perl-Paul- Barry/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Network-Perl-Paul- Barry/dp/0471486701/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486213994&sr=1-5&keywords=Perl+network)

</comment><comment><USER139> _Wage Labour and Capital_ by Marx.</comment>


Data breach: Find out if Docker holds your personal data - <AUTHOR> https://tapmydata.com/ <comment><USER2> Some may find this interesting about how they dont use your personal data.

[https://tapmydata.com/we-dont-want-your-data-data- collection...](https://tapmydata.com/we-dont-want-your-data-data-collection- end-to-end-encryption-for-apps/)</comment>


Show HN: Modern OpenGL ES (3.0 / 3.1 compute shaders) with Java for Android 5.0+ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/typhonrt/modern-java6-android-gldemos

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad I could get my first open source effort up after all these years. There are few if any modern OpenGL ES 3.0 / 3.1 demos for Java with Android and this is important tech. I spent a good chunk of the last week pulling out code from my commercial middleware (TyphonRT) to make a lightweight and concise GL framework that makes working with modern GL much easier. I also provide a few demos with more forthcoming though this is a spare time effort. The nice thing is that the demo code is separated from the framework, so the framework can be used separately. Eventually I'll be porting the NVidia Gameworks demos to Java / Android. Lots more to say, but I'd be glad to answer any questions about modern OpenGL on Android. I'll be expanding the wiki on the repos linked here in the next week.

If you think the code above is useful or cool it's the basis for where I'm headed with building a next-gen video engine for Android. I have ~9 hours left on a crowd funding campaign that will help me get it out sooner than later having bootstrapped to 95% of the way there spending 2.5k hours over the last year building it. I'll keep it short as there is a video available to check out of it in action. Also bumped into Robert Scoble a week or so ago and he gave me a couple of amazing endorsements:

"It's the first app that makes me excited about Android in a long time..." \-- Robert Scoble [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ0kYC4sFo8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ0kYC4sFo8)

"This Android app makes me jealous. Video effects. Feels like a new age in video." \-- Robert Scoble [https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152876836024655&set=v...](https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152876836024655&set=vb.501319654&type=2&theater)

KS here: [http://kck.st/1xA3R61](http://kck.st/1xA3R61) At this point I'd really just like to connect with interested early users as the funding goal is well... yeah... Thanks folks!</comment>


San Francisco Considers Raising Taxes on Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/no-more-deals-san-francisco-considers-raising-taxes-tech/ <comment><USER2> remember to tax what you want less of.

(although I do like the tax on CEO pay vs employee pay ratio)</comment>


Young Detroit entrepreneurs profiled in 'Generation Startup' documentary - <AUTHOR> http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2016/10/05/generation-startup-documentary-detroit-entrepreneurs/91540642/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to the trailer, it's imho pretty good:

[http://www.generationstartupthefilm.com/#trailer](http://www.generationstartupthefilm.com/#trailer)

I've got a friend who was a VFA fellow who started a company at the same time in Detroit but to my knowledge he's not in the film.

Hope they make it available to buy online.</comment>


Emergency IP list in case SOPA goes through Congress - <AUTHOR> http://pastie.org/pastes/3038363/text/

<comment><USER2> People seriously need to stop using pastebin & its clones to disseminate these lists. <https://github.com/timClicks/hosts> is distributed and will be far more useful if DNS is suddenly broken.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ultimate phishing scam. Without some sort of trusted party or verification process lists like this are ripe for exploitation.</comment>


The World Cracks Down on the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/world-cracks-internet

<comment><USER3> A friend and I were discussing the Brave New World and 1984 once. We took it for granted that our world resembles one of these dystopias, if not both. She summarized there difference in terms of access: Orwell's universe depended on a restriction of information to keep its citizens ignorant of the very concept of justice; Huxley's world was flooded with information (but only just enough) and so people couldn't sort the important from the pleasurable.

It seemed like our world was looking more like Huxley's. There is so much crap in cyberspace that justice is hidden from view (but its out there...).

But the what-seems-like-de-facto centralization of mainstream internet makes Orwell's fantasy seem all too real. That China uses "strategic, timely" censorship is only one side of the coin. Surveillance too, whether from browser cookies or 'telescreens,' is driving us towards an even deeper conflation of these two nightmares.

<comment><USER4> You may like this letter Huxley wrote to Orwell:

[http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new- world....](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html)

"Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article misses that the United States and allies _do_ use the internet to spread Western culture and ideas, start revolutions, and kindle insurrection. It is not just some excuse.

The United States CIA attempted (and nearly succeeded) in inciting a revolution against Castro by pretending to be a series of grassroots movements on Twitter and inciting anti-administration feelings within the Cuban population. That was earlier this year.

"USAID effort to undermine Cuban government with fake 'Twitter' another anti- Castro failure" [1]

The United States has an ongoing effort to use Internet media to 'deradicalize' the next generation of Middle Easterners and actively manipulates public opinions in Jordan, Cairo, Syria and other Middle Eastern states. Here are some quotes from one DoD MINERVA paper:

"...it is imperative that we develop empirically-based procedures for countering messages that promote violent extremism and anti-Western beliefs..."

"...Neural predictors of Twitter impact in Cairo (UCLA & Egypt). Our prior work (Falk et al., 2012), indicates that neural responses of a small group can predict which persuasive messages will be more successful in mass media campaigns..."

"... Defense Group Inc. already tracks Twitter trends specific to Egypt and will identify which of the selected Twitter topics went on to be highly influential over the next month and which did not..." \- Matthew Lieberman, UCLA, September 30, 2012, Department of Defense MINERVA Initiative [2]

Here's one US company that does it. MARAYA MEDIA - "Driving Intelligent Dialog". [3]

The United States engages in targeted mass media and social manipulation to stir dissent in target nations, and to quell dissent where destabilization would hurt policy objectives.

The DoD's MINERVA project specifically looks to understand the cultural components of stability of various countries and mechanisms to encourage or disrupt that stability. Among a great number of social studies you will find DoD research on how to seed information inside of specific Asian countries, including China, for the targeted introduction of instability. I will leave speculations of possible connections to the Hong Kong protests to the reader. [4]

This should not come as a surprise given the history of the US: The United States and allies are known to target media in other countries to stir dissent. Radio Free Europe, "Voice of Iraq" (cough American), the Lincoln Group infiltrations and partnerships, etc.

But now with global interconnectedness it is easy to set up 'foreign media', blogs and other politicizing content to influence other nations' populations.

In the past decade it has become a global issue.

This year Egypt sentenced Al Jazeera journalists that they believed were partnered with geopolitical interests of other states. Putin's administration is now requiring bloggers to register if they have a certain number of readers, so that his administration can curtail international influence. China blocks many American services including Facebook and Google. The usual story in America is that they are censoring free speech. The truth is that they do not want foreign influence to destabilize their population and that they do not want their citizen's data in America's PRISM program (there's a reason it's called the FISA "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" court).

The Snowden revelations showed us how intelligence agencies are involved in PsyOps - the term for 'psychological operations' used by the CIA and others.

The GCHQ's BIRDSONG/BADGER/GATEWAY/SLIPSTREAM/ETC and partnership with the NSA are used to influence online polls, discussion forums and to vote up and down content that aligns with policy goals. [5][6][7] The giant meta-data graph created by the NSA is also particularly valuable for 'influencer' and 'social contagion' analysis (leaks showed they do use it to understand internal chain- of-command and organization structure for target selection). It's why metadata matters. A nice illustration of this is the article "Finding Paul Revere."

And so we have issues here with the use of targeted social influence in America as well. First there are instances where other countries are trying to incite disruption in the US - the US wants to study and curtail it. [8]

A number of journalists have called out that the state has been extremely aggressive to dissenting opinions, even to go so far as labeling current policy on the issue "War on Journalism". American officials have exported a number of journalists with Middle Eastern descent and journalists like Ayman Mohyeldin have been pulled from Gaza and other conflicts when reporting has erred on the side of other state interests. The crackdown on journalism is worth another post I don't have time to write.

Just look at how central a role controlling internet dialog is for running a modern US presidency. A Google search for "Obama internet campaign" [9] results in headlines "How Obama's Internet Campaign Changed Politics", "How Obama won the internet", "Barack Obama and the Facebook Election", "Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency" \- this isn't because of grassroots discussion but because both Obama and McCain (and Romney before him) had cyber centers in control of internet PR engaging tens of millions of dollars in Twitter messages, etc.

You can nudge public opinion by bombarding them with an influx of the same message, slightly disguised in one way and then another. The MINERVA program has plenty of good reading with regard to this. Anyway, the USG does this overseas. It is not merely an excuse these other countries have 'to be evil.' How Jingoistic.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid- effort-t...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-to- undermine-cuban-government-with-fake-twitter-another-anti-castro- failure/2014/04/03/c0142cc0-bb75-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html)

[2] [http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp- Lieberman.pdf](http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf)

[3] [http://www.marayamedia.com/company.php](http://www.marayamedia.com/company.php)

[4] [http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html](http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html)

[5] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipula...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipulation/)

[6] [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/22/hacking- anonymous)

[7] [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED- The...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary- Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All)

[8] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/truthy-project-is- unw...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/truthy-project-is-unworthy-of- tax-dollars/2014/10/17/a3274faa-531b-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html)

[9] [https://www.google.com/?q=obama+internet+campaign](https://www.google.com/?q=obama+internet+campaign)

<comment><USER6> Most of what you actually quote, rather than what you add as commentary yourself, says that most of the United States efforts are designed to use persuasion counter radical movements that would sweep away freedom and democracy where those movements are active. That's a good thing, in my opinion. It would have been very good for the world, for example, if something like that were happening in German in the 1920s. That would have spared the world a lot of trouble.

<comment><USER5> If you look around the links (especially the MINERVA funded material), although also Cuba is a great example, there is plenty there in direct disruption, rather than "counter-radical" (which would mean what, exactly, when radical means democratic grass-roots self-determined ideas from a people - NOT from a regime?).

There was a radical shift in American dialog around the turn of the 20th century (the first revolution of Cuba and the Spanish War) when America's principles of self-determination and representation were directly challenged and contradicted by its interests in expanding and obtaining control over certain areas of the world (Cuba, Philippines).

The language of inalienable rights and of governments of people, by people for people - of rights to govern coming from the people who are governed - <USER2> morphed into republican imperalist language 'we are bringing those who do not have democracy/technology/western life what they need, even if it doesn't come with self determination.' (Neither the people of the Philippines nor Cuba wanted American rule).

It was ruled by American courts that America could control these regions but did not need to give the people governed there the full porfolio of rights garunteed by the Constitution, nor the right to vote.

You see this play out today where the US government will side with authoritarian regimes _against democratic uprisings of their people_ when the regimes in question align with Western strategic and diplomatic goals and the democratic uprisings do not.

It's really hard to actually point and say "yes, this is a place where America is liberating people and allowing democracy to shine." America is a soft-power imperalist and has been for around 100 years. This is justified by the narrative you mention - that America brings with it democracy, etc - but in the details America pursues its interests first and its ideals later.

<comment><USER7> That's how things have always worked. As far as the US goes, look at the relationship it had with the Shah of Iran prior to the Iranian theocratic revolution of 1979; reinstalling the Shah in 1953 (under Eisenhower, though the plans were presumably laid under Truman) was an overthrow of a Democratically elected government to suit US and UK oil producers.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)

But this isn't IMHO unique to the Anglo-American countries; nations have been doing this sort of thing for centuries going back to ancient times.

<comment><USER8> Why are you pointing that out? Do you think that because governments have always been so self-serving and manipulative, that it's okay? If not, then do you think that that has some relevance to the current discussion? We're talking about what Western governments are doing today, and what you're doing - saying that it's not news, and it's always been going on - is a common technique that they use for shutting down open discussion of these topics.

<comment><USER6> _We 're talking about what Western governments are doing today_

What do you mean, "We"? The submitted article purported to be about a worldwide phenomenon, and on a worldwide basis, what the Western countries and their democratically elected governments are doing for Internet freedom looks quite good. On a worldwide basis, regarding Internet freedom, the performance of China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and a lot of other countries and their governments is much worse than that of the Western countries, and yet some participants here who enjoy Western freedom are trying to shut down the broader discussion here by pointing only to the wrongs of Western governments. We know a lot more about what the Western governments are doing than we do about what the other governments are doing precisely because we live in an environment of much more free press in the West than elsewhere. This bias in availability of information shouldn't bias all of our discussions of worldwide issues on Hacker News. (Disclosure: I speak and read languages other than English and have lived in a non-Western, non-English-speaking country before, so I don't have a narrow national perspective on this issue, but rather attempt to have a worldwide perspective on it.)

<comment><USER8> Most of us live in Western nations. And Western nations, unlike the ones you mentioned, have a veneer of pretending to be free places, but are actually as oppressive and ruthless as the others to anyone who becomes a real threat. The right to free speech is rendered impotent in the face of their ability to infiltrate peaceful protests and sway public opinion.

And you are using some of the very same techniques that they do when you try to downplay the importance of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought this was interesting perspective from the linked report:

 _The U.S. Constitution includes strong protections for free speech and freedom of the press. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court held that internet speech was entitled to the highest form of protection under the constitution, and lower courts have consistently struck down attempts to regulate online content. Two federal laws also provide significant protections for online speech: Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996) provides immunity for ISPs and online platforms such as YouTube and Facebook that carry content created by third parties. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 provides a safe harbor to intermediaries that take down allegedly infringing material after notice from the copyright owner. These statutes enable companies to develop internet applications and websites without fear that they will be held liable for content posted by users._

Source: [https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2014/united- stat...](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2014/united-states)

</comment><comment><USER4> The world is cracking down on the Internet, and each country is bringing its own tool set to achieving that end.

That Russia, Thailand, China, The Middle East, etc use the rule of law isn't suprising. It's how these countries work. They have strong leaderships, and those leaderships do the enforcing.

Western "liberal" nations are ruled via the invisible hand of capitalism, and that censorship is coming accidentally from these organisations. A popular website switches off comments. Social Media Companies pull users away from distributed systems like email and IRC to heavily managed systems like Twitter and Facebook. Seemingly unrelated light-touch legislation (e.g. copyright) is used by individuals and corporates to ensure transgressive individuals are denied a voice and are threatened with job losses and other punishments.

"The world cracks down on the Internet". I'd be a fool to assume that this is happening everywhere else but where I am.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry but nothing is stopping you from throwing down $10 a month on a VPN and spinning up an IRC server in the US or in most of Europe and complain about the government or corruption of officials.

<comment><USER4> You're right. As a wealthy person with technical knowledge, nothing is stopping me from doing this.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Its good that governments fear their people. The issue at hand is far too many in Western nations fail to see the threat to their intellectual freedom, if not personal freedom.

<comment><USER12> The enlightenment was wrong about the mind:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ)</comment></comment>


Mega-Tunnels Dug by South American Megafauna - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburrows-south-america <comment><USER2> For those still curious, a "modern" fruit that we can eat thanks to these mega diggers: [http://www.kew.org/blogs/archived-blogs/taste- amazon](http://www.kew.org/blogs/archived-blogs/taste-amazon)

Spoiler: it's delicious, thanks megafauna! :-)

<comment><USER3> A more common example: the avocado.

<comment><USER4> Mangos too!

<comment><USER5> mmmh... aestivation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The wikipedia page on Megatherium, the giant ground sloth, doesn't mention paleoburrows.

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

Anyone have an info on whether other experts take this hypothesis seriously?

<comment><AUTHOR> The impression that I got from the article is that we don't know yet, because the experts have not heard of this before either. It sounds like scientific study only goes back maybe a decade, it's been largely confined to Brazil, and the scientists involved are geologists, not paleobiologists. So is it for real? It sounds both crazy and plausible to me at the same time. I think it's too soon for us laypeople to draw any conclusions.

I'm reasonably certain this is not an April Fool's joke. Here's an article in a Brazilian newspaper from 2015 (via Google Translate): [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/caverna- escavada-por-mamiferos-gigantes-descoberta-na-amazonia-17032201&prev=search)

<comment><USER7> Thanks - it's hard to be on alert when it's the 2nd here. I hope it isn't a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When was last time a natural structure this big had not been formally studied?

Paleoburrows do not even have a wikipedia entry. I suspect that's not going to last long after this article.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh god. I remember hearing some years ago about the ancient ancestors of guinea pigs... bison-sized, roaming in packs. Looking at the claw-marks, clearly from a far more enormous sloth, really puts the relatively puny Guineazilla into perspective.

</comment><comment><USER10> This story on April 1st make me nervous, but looks legit and so amazing.

<comment><USER11> The date on the article is Mar 28th

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ground Sloths? I think you mean Badgermoles.

Something something secret tunnel.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how we could differenciate among old claw and old pick-axe marks. Both could be very similar.

<comment><USER5> There is a simple solution to explore this idea further. Is the hardness of this rock bigger than keratine or enamel?.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this link is redirecting to a spam advertising page after it finishes loading. anyone else seeing this?

<comment><USER14> Yes, I tried reading the first sentence twice. Both times I won $1000 and then have up.

Edit: happened on iPhone

<comment><USER15> Same here, on an iPhone</comment></comment></comment>


Toxoplasma gondii – 30 to 50% of humanity has a brain parasite - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii <comment><USER2> My (almost) entirely unscientific thesis is that this is why cats are domesticated. They are neurotic and totally useless pets, but people love them, specifically certain people. The "crazy cat lady" probably just had toxo induced psychosis. [1] PS. The immunosuppressant drug that treats toxo symptoms in the immunocompromised (ie. AIDs infected) is the one that Martin Shkreli got famous raising the price of. [1]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how- your...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is- making-you-crazy/308873/)

<comment><USER3> _> They are neurotic and totally useless pets, but people love them, specifically certain people._

You've never had mice in your pantries before modern storing containers. ;) Cats hunt rodents and often bugs/other pests. Dogs aren't as good at hunting mice.

<comment><USER2> Good point. I ommitted farm cats, despite growing up on a farm. In that case, they are useful.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What tools do you use to manage relationships? - <AUTHOR> I've been thinking a lot lately about how to maintain relationships with "weak" connections (former colleagues, classmates, etc...).  I think they can be very valuable and I'd like to stay in touch but don't really want to reach out and see if they want to hang out on a Saturday night so having them in my phone contacts seems a bit much.
I think it is important to take notes to help remember things to bring up later like things about family, hobbies, etc...
What tools do people use to manage these connections?  Does anyone use any tools or am I over-thinking this? <comment><USER2> I have phone contacts from the past decade and haven't kicked anyone off my Facebook ever. This gives me a nice large pool of people to contact when I need them and the yearly Facebook birthday wish is enough to have them remember me.

I don't take notes at all, but if I'm about to meet someone after a while, a quick look at their Facebook gives me all their current information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you use LinkedIn at all for that stuff?

<comment><USER2> I've honestly never used LinkedIn for anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Outlook.

1\. Create a people folder, with a rule for all emails from that person to go into that folder. 2\. Sort reverse chronologically. 3\. Tag emails manually on some category (personal information, business/career change, etc) 4\. Filter and sort upon meeting. 5\. Make all communication with all of your friends be exclusively over email (this is the hard part).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think most of my communication is over email anyway so not too bad... well, excluding the occasional happy hour. But I have contacts in Outlook attached, that could be included in notes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I move my startup to US and deal with work permits? - <AUTHOR> Well, I have a startup in Turkey. Because of the recent political issues, I'm planning to move my company to US as soon as possible.
We are a SaaS company and team of 8, 93% of our customer base is not from TR. This month we've reached an MRR of ~$45K, MOM growth of 18% and we are profitable.
I know that establishing a company in US is doable but I do not know how to deal with work permits of my employees. Are there anyone who has experienced such issue in the past? Is there a way to do this?
Please guide me through about the possible actions that I can take.
Thank you in advance. <comment><USER2> I don't know the process. But wouldn't Europe, say Ireland, be an easier move? Particularly since every tech capital in Europe probably has open arms right now, due to Brexit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I came here to say the same thing. Look for another country especially in Europe or perhaps Canada.</comment>


Show HN: Prophecy Spark IDE public beta - <AUTHOR> https://www.prophecy.io/blogs/prophecy-public-beta <comment><AUTHOR> Raj here, I'm the founder of Prophecy. Previously, I was the product manager for Apache Hive at Hortonworks (and wrote compilers for CUDA at NVIDIA, and Microsoft). The tooling for data engineers is really poor, and I saw many of my customers struggle with it. It's 2020, Elon just send people to Space station, and we can't build semi-decent data engineering tools?? - we've got to do better. So we'll fix it! Prophecy is unique:

\- Unlike all existing ETL tools, we're code-first and Git centric. So we're perhaps we are the first Data Engineering tool.

\- We want to give Apple like high quality design, and it-just-works experience.

We've built a unique CODE=VISUAL IDE where you can toggle between visual and code editors instantaneously. You can edit code, and the changes show up in visual graph, and vice-versa. So even if you use visual drag-and-drop view to edit a workflow, you're doing Git commits. You can just go to the underlying Git folder and do maven build. Same for unit tests. We've added one-click spin up of Databricks cluster from IDE and step-by-step execution.

We want to enable you to:

\- Develop 10x better code for Spark

\- Develop 10x faster on Spark

\- Deploy to production 10x faster with CI/CD on Spark/Airflow.

For the beta, when you submit your e-mail, we create an account and send you login details. You can create Spark workflows, spin up clusters (in-built, on Databricks, free - please be kind with usage) and execute these. Please try out and give feedback, help us make data engineering better!

</comment><comment><USER2> Looking forward to seeing launch of the beta release at #ApaxheSpark conference 2020!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great! Very cool that you can switch between visual and code environments so seamlessly.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does it also support managed cloud offerings such as EMR ?

<comment><AUTHOR> For the public beta and later our developer version, we only support Databricks.

However, for our Enterprise version, we install within your network and this supports EMR, Dataproc, Databricks.

This is only relevant where we are spinning up (and down) Spark clusters from within the IDE, you can always connect to an existing cluster from any distribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does it also support managed environments such as EMR ?

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome - great to hear</comment>


Proposing a hashing standard for URLs? - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/84e6140bb882f9c4?hl=en

<comment><USER2> What about collisions? Even if the hashing algorithm is the same everywhere, two different urls can yield the very same hash, and the birthday effect (that is, there's a very large chance that two students share the same birthday in a class of 30) makes that an important problem. URL shorteners need to have some sort of mechanism to deal with hash collisions, but this means that it can only be assumed that two identical hashes point to the same url if we know that the very same database is backing both.

Sure, you can increase the length of the hash to a level where the birthday effect isn't very significant but that would mean longer hashes. For hashes only five-six characters long, the chances of collisions are just too high.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course if you find URL references via that hash, you would still have to check that it is the correct URL. As you said, otherwise it might be the wrong one because of collisions.

I think it couldn't replace URL Shorteners, but supplement them. So you could tweet "check out <http://bit.ly/> whatever #globalhashxyz" and by looking for #globalhashxyz one could at least find references to the target URL (even if those search results still would have to be filtered).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just posted that comment in the Twitter development group because of a problem I have with Twitter URL shorteners, but on second thought I realize it might be a good idea in general?

The idea is to have a standard for generating a short hash of a URL - in a way a web standard for URL shortening. I think this could useful in a number of situations where URL shortening is usually provided.</comment>


SteamOS, Linux, and Steam Machines (Valve Pushes for Vulkan) - <AUTHOR> http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1696043806550421224/ <comment><USER2> Context: Valve removed SteamOS as a visible option from the store in the last few days.</comment>


Find the best path to any person or company - <AUTHOR> http://www.conspire.com

<comment><USER2> Would love to try this, but allowing access to all mail on my account is a deal breaker. The "It all takes just a few clicks. We never have access to your password." isn't enough for me to go past that fact -- who needs your password when you have all the emails now and in the future! (not to mention write emails on your behalf). I did check the FAQ, and although it does assure the reader only the headers are accessed, this is not enough.

I would use this only if the Google authorization checklist actually says this only access email headers, and then I would like to be able to limit the past time period of email accessed, and not give ongoing access.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I feel the same way, even though I know one of the guys working on this. That said, I do think they have a great product, just wish there was a better way for them to get the information without needing all those permissions.

<comment><USER4> Could they write a small imap application that dumped the headers into simple json or what have you that we could then verify before submitting? I know it's not exactly user friendly, but it would make the people that care about security a lot happier.

<comment><USER3> They wrote up some info on an alternative today: [http://blog.conspire.com/post/100016691078/why-we-arent- usin...](http://blog.conspire.com/post/100016691078/why-we-arent-using-the- gmail-api-yet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was excited - but stopped the sign up process as soon as I saw it was asking to access all my email. Definitely a deal breaker.

</comment><comment><USER6> I totally want to trust a brand new stuff named "conspire" and let them read all my emails including super sensitive stuff.

Seriously, this looks like an XKCD prank comic gone real.

</comment><comment><USER7> So a site called 'conspire' assumes my mail is all in gmail and wants access to it so I can surveil the contacts of people I exchange messages with and their extended networks in turn? You couldn't make this up really. It seems more ethical and less creepy to hire private detectives at this point.

</comment><comment><USER8> Accessing all my mail is a tough sell but allowing you to delete and send email on my behalf requires a lot more trust than you have built up thus far. That isn't to say I don't think this looks really cool and like a good idea, but that I am disappointed I can't try it out.

Can anyone from conspire comment on why it needs more than read-only access to your mail? From reading the privacy policy I gather that the reason might be because they are trying to actually protect people's privacy by not sharing the email address of the person they are emailing on your behalf. I'm not sure though, and if it is actually sending an email from an account that you own I don't see how they can hide that from you. They could delete the sent message to do a basic cover up but (I think) anyone who really wanted to know could probably find out the last email that was sent from their account. Then again if the messages are sent using their service as a middleman (more likely imho) then I'm still stumped as to why they need more than 'read only' access to my email.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yea I'll just let this website I've never heard of access to my email data!

</comment><comment><USER10> Paul, Conspire co-founder and CTO, here. Thanks a lot for the feedback.

I understand granting "manage my email" access is a big step. Unfortunately, Gmail/Google Apps IMAP access is currently all-or-nothing. All we need to understand the network is read-only access to message headers--not including subject line--but we're forced to ask for everything.

The new Gmail API, [https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/](https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/), adds a read-only (but not a read-only-headers) permission. We're looking forward to making the switch, but right now the performance difference between the Gmail API and plain IMAP is prohibitive. More on that here: [http://blog.conspire.com/post/100016691078/why-we-arent- usin...](http://blog.conspire.com/post/100016691078/why-we-arent-using-the- gmail-api-yet).

<comment><USER11> Paul, while we have you here, a question: The obvious trope is that we are the product, that somehow Conspire will make money "off our backs".

I think it might alleviate some concerns if you shared at least some notion of how you intend to monetize, e.g., selling anonymized marketing data, and, perhaps more importantly, how you will NOT monetize, e.g., never offering "recruiter" plans where folks get access to our stuff for a fee.

You don't have to say what you will do, but knowing what you will NOT do may allay concerns.

Thanks!

<comment><USER12> Other Conspire founder here.

We will not spam your contacts, sell your or your contacts' email addresses or personal data, or otherwise sell data about you to third parties.

Down the road, we will offer premium plans with professional search tools. An example use case is if you want to reach CIOs in northern California at companies greater than 100 people, we will identify those people and tell you the best person in your network to ask for an intro. At the moment, we're focused on growing the size of the network and making it valuable for users.

One other subtle point I wanted to mention: We don't expose email addresses via the product. The only people you can email are those for which you already have an email address. The same is true for people trying to contact you. So you won't get a bunch of spam recruiter emails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great, the biggest weakness is there it's based on gmail so the value is limited unless one's entire network is on the service. If this was based on Twitter, all the data on who follows who is public and there's more immediate value. I regularly use methods like this for business development.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ummm... Letting a service called Conspire manage my email???? It appears that people are letting this happen though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems very similar to Datahug, how is it different/better? While both services offer something compelling they both want full access to emails which isn't exactly necessary, I've done something similar looking at LinkedIn data.

</comment><comment><USER16> uhm... why does the faq page explain IMAP access when the product's using Google's EMail API? Also, "extended network" is not defined.

OTOH, nice project and blissfully simple!

</comment><comment><USER17> Building a network graph of who emails who, and using that to drive introductions/sales - I like it. Especially because of the network effects.

</comment><comment><USER18> "View and manage your mail" permission is a deal breaker for me as well. Why is this a requirement?

</comment><comment><USER19> Love the SVG animation that was done on the background of the landing page!! neat!

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool idea, and welcome to Boulder!

</comment><comment><USER21> this is the most incredible service I've seen on HN. Very nice work to the guys behind this. awesome</comment>


Comprehensive guide to installing NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP in a VM - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextcomputers.org/docs/FAQ-OpenStepOnEmulators.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, anyone looking for boot/driver floppy images, they can be found here: [http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/NEXTSTEP/Flo...](http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/NEXTSTEP/Floppy_Images/) and [http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/OPENSTEP/Flo...](http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/OPENSTEP/Floppy_Images/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd rather find a way to hook a new monitor for my old NeXT Turbo Station. The old one is busted.

I could still be fun to do tough. there are a few pieces of NeXT software I'd like to look at again for inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would love to be able to run a bunch of legacy operating systems just to study their inner working, A/UX, Mac OS, Amiga OS, SunOS, OS/2, VMS, QNX, BeOS and the entire OS zoo.

<comment><AUTHOR> In relation to Mac OS, you may be interested in this: [http://hackthemac.blogspot.com/2008/08/chubby-bunny-old- virt...](http://hackthemac.blogspot.com/2008/08/chubby-bunny-old-virtual- machine.html)</comment></comment>


Protecting user identity against Silhouette - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2018/twitter_silhouette.html <comment><USER2> For those who might have a hard time going through the summary, the attack is very simple:

If I block you, then when you load my twitter page, the load takes less time than if I don't block you.

So if the attacker wants to track 2^^N users, they number these users 1 ... 2^^N and each user can be given a binary number that is 0 or 1 in N positions, corresponding to whether N fixed accounts block them or not.

So, there is a lot of set up work to create N bot accounts that together block or don't block 2^^N people.

Then, the attacker tricks a user to loading their webpage which has a script that loads each of the N twitter profiles. If you are logged into twitter, your session cookie will be sent and the load time will be different or not for each of these accounts and so the attacker will be able to identify you if you are in the group of 2^^N users.

This type of attack is awesome (in a dark way) in that it can work for a lot of sites other than twitter. It points out a general weakness whenever a social media website takes a different time to load based on an attribute not in your control.

For example, it doesn't work with 'friends' if you need to approve friends, as you wont approve the bots friending you, but you can't block the bots from blocking you. Amazing.

The long term solution is same site cookies, which is also a solution for a lot of these CSRF type attacks. Great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> This explains why visiting twitter.com has been horribly broken for months. Literally every time I try to visit twitter.com in Safari, it would just load a blank page and do nothing, and I'd have to manually reload before it would come back to life.

Though trying right now it's working. So either they changed something, or upgrading to Safari 12 fixed this issue (or turning off legacy extensions did, which was a side-effect of upgrading to Safari 12, though I wouldn't expect Ghostery or the DuckDuckGo extension to prevent twitter.com from reloading).

<comment><USER4> The article describes that certain privacy extensions break the page from loading. It was probably ghostery.

Honestly though the blank page fix seems horrible... especially when you consider twitter has worked very hard for the "above the fold" load times, at one point rendering it server side.

I also wonder if the attacker just pops a new window ( after getting the user to click anywhere) and load the twitter page into it, if they can still time the request the same way.

<comment><USER4> I feel one better fix is to just add a small random wait from the time </html> is served and the TCP socket is actually closed. I donnt think? this should impact loads of the page when it is rendered in an html context.

<comment><USER5> The delay should not be simply random, it would need to be carefully chosen to make the load time distribution independent of the user loading the page. Otherwise an attacker could just average multiple requests to get rid of the randomness.

<comment><USER4> Youre right... the delay would basically have to be chosen dynamically to enforce a universal page load time for all html documents on twitter.com

Still feels nicer than forcing a roundtrip

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > We support a legacy version of Twitter (known internally as M2) that > operates without the need for JavaScript. We needed to make sure our > reloading solution didn't require JavaScript.

Ooh, I did not know this existed. It's nice that they've kept it alive!

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not normally one for meta-comments on HN, but reading the thread title here freaked me out for a moment... I wish I could protect _my_ identity from being associated with an attack against online privacy!

<comment><USER8> I thought it would be about how machine learning can identify you from your silhouete in videos even if you wear makeup defeating face recognition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the point of showing a different page to a blocked user then to a logged out user?

The blocked user can simply log out or switch to a private tab to see the profile anyhow.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Tuesday, 18 September 2018

…

> _Recently [emphasis mine]_ we learned of a new technique for discovering the > identity of logged-in users to online platforms including Twitter

…

> The issue was reported to us in _December 2017 [emphasis mine]_

This appears to be some new definition of 'recently' of which I was hitherto unaware.

It's definitely a clever attack, and definitely a clever set of fixes. But a better phrase would have been 'some time ago' rather than 'recently.'

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm impressed by how quickly browsers implemented the sameSite cookie attribute.

</comment><comment><USER12> So that explains why I've noticed twitter stopped working with view-source a bit ago. I was curious as to why it required to redirect on itself, or a valid referrer from itself, before letting me get anywhere.

<comment><USER13> Another reason for the redirect would be to mitigate the relentless web scraping which occurs. Some people just don't want to connect their apps with keys.

<comment><USER14> Any malicious scraper can defuse this by sending the proper referrer header.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't a better solution be to flush some small part of the page immediately (maybe just the html open tag) so that they get this immediate page load, and then flush out the rest of the page when it's ready? That way no timing is leaked, but there's still only one page load?

</comment><comment><USER16> This type of vulnerability (Silhouette) seems absolutely terrible to protect against. XSRF is bad enough, and now we need dummy pages reloading themselves for basic user privacy? Is the SameSite attribute going to be enough to stop these timing based information leaks?

</comment><comment> X-Istence SameSite is supported by many more browsers than just Chrome these days:

[https://caniuse.com/#search=SameSite](https://caniuse.com/#search=SameSite)

<comment><USER17> From the article:

> While we implemented the mitigation above, we started discussions with the > major browser vendors regarding the SameSite cookie attribute. Once we > shared the problem with them, they were keen to help. All major browsers > have now implemented SameSite cookie support. This includes Chrome, Firefox, > Edge, Internet Explorer 11, and Safari. This was an incredible effort in a > very short timeframe, and the browser vendors deserve enormous credit for > responding quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now that they have this fixed, I hope they are working on a solution for all of the clone accounts that pose as Elon Musk or Charlie Lee and others.</comment>


A Guiler's Year of Racket - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=R-hy8xLlkHA <comment><USER2> Interesting! Imagine a world in which GNU had been more successful in developing their Hurd kernel and their vision of Guile as the general embedded scripting language for GNU applications.

Had that happened, the GNU OS could have had a more unified look and feel, unfettered by the chaotic bazaar that followed the rise of Linux.</comment>