Chris Lattner: "Turns out that Tesla isn't a good fit for me" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/877341760812232704 <comment><USER2> Getting a job is like getting into a nightclub. If you're a celebrity, the bouncers open the velvet rope and usher you straight into the club, leaving the long queue of punters waiting to be told that their shoes aren't right, or that its a private party.

<comment><USER3> I wish I was so successful I could publicly declare my failures without it affecting my all future job prospects.

<comment><USER4> You are. No one cares if you declare "X company was not a good fit" or "I messed up on doing this".

You clearly haven't because you, in error, think it'll nuke job prospects.

It won't. They won't care. Trust me.

<comment><USER5> The most important men in town will come to fawn on me They will ask me to advise them, Like a Solomon the Wise "If you please, Reb Tevye?" "Pardon me, Reb Tevye?" Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes Ya va voy, ya va voy voy vum

And it won't make one bit of difference If I answer right or wrong When you're succesfull they think you really know.

<comment><USER6> > If I were a rich man

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've had the impression it's pure chaos over at Tesla's autopilot division for quite a long time. They have so much to gain if they get the pieces right, but I'm not sure it's guaranteed to happen.

<comment><USER8> I just saw their latest marketing literature on their website. They promise:

> All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the > hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level > substantially greater than that of a human driver.

[https://www.tesla.com/autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot)

It seems somewhat irresponsible to promise that you have enough hardware to achieve something that nobody has ever achieved before, with any hardware.

Tesla has plenty of impressive-looking videos on their website of autopilot working well, but if you Google for "Tesla autopilot fail" you can also find plenty of stuff like this, which is just surprisingly bad: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg)

Tesla strikes me as over-promising and under-delivering here. I wouldn't want to work in a division like that.

<comment><USER9> They say "at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver". This is a low bar to meet - some human drivers are _really_ bad. I know I would much rather trust my life to one of the Google self-driving cars than some of the people I got in a car with in college, for example.

It's also the wrong bar to meet, because lawmakers are going to be much tougher on AIs than on human constituents. It's not enough to be better than a human, you have to be _so much better than a human that it 'd be irresponsible not to mandate self-driving cars_.

<comment><USER10> I also don't think the bar should be "safer than a human driver", but "safer than than an experiended, sober, well-rested, defensive driver who doesn't use this phone while driving".

<comment><USER11> Why should the bar be any higher than the median actual human driver?

Adding vehicles operating at a higher skill level than the median to the pool of vehicles driving around should reduce incidents per mile driven.

And then if autonomous vehicles become prevalent, it becomes less punitive to raise the standards for licensing humans.

<comment><USER12> > Why should the bar be any higher than the median actual human driver?

Marketing. The western world is mostly afraid of robots so they'll need to be at least 10x safer in a hybrid (human/autopilot) environment in order to gain adoption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Working at Mozilla on the Rust compiler would be the best possible fit skills- wise (other than going back to LLVM).

<comment><USER14> There does happen to be a research engineer position open at Mozilla right now, but it's for Servo, not Rust. To say nothing of the irony of having Chris Lattner working on Rust while Graydon Hoare works on Swift. :P But hey, Rust could undoubtedly benefit from a full-time LLVM engineer...

<comment><USER15> From one the presentations of this year's WWDC, I had the impression that there may be some of Rust's ownership concepts incorporated in future versions of Swift. It would definitely be very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what's the connection between Lattner and autopilot. When Tesla hired Lattner, my impression was that he would oversee the entire systems software architecture. Why they couldn't have retained Lattner and also hired Karpathy is beyond me.

<comment><USER17> I had understood he would help with getting as much performance from the Tesla hardware as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's strange to me is why he would think it was a good fit in the first place.

His main work has been in languages, compilers and developer toolsets. Sure, Tesla makes use of those, and might even make a few of their own, but it's nowhere near their core interests.

Google maybe?

<comment><USER17> Well, Swift on Android would be pretty cool.

<comment><USER19> Swift on Android already exists.

[https://news.realm.io/news/swift-on- android/](https://news.realm.io/news/swift-on-android/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish I had been this decisive the last time I joined a team that was a bad fit.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd recommend he join the Go team but, like, they seem pretty committed to their non-LLVM based compiler strategy.

<comment><USER22> I agree. Although, I would point out they recently accepted the Go LLVM port in a somewhat more recognized role:

[https://go.googlesource.com/gollvm/](https://go.googlesource.com/gollvm/)

Unclear to me in what capacity it is "recognized" or "official" though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have no doubt Apple (and the Apple developer community at large) would love for you to come back.

</comment><comment><USER24> They just hired karpathy as director of autopilot division

<comment><USER25> Andrej Karpathy, research scientist at OpenAI.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/20/tesla-hires-deep- learning-...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/20/tesla-hires-deep-learning- expert-andrej-karpathy-to-lead-autopilot-vision/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I liked the tweet that suggested he should work on server side Swift. Doesn't sound like he's wanting to start a company though.

<comment><USER27> IBM has people working on server-side Swift, but (as I understand it) those people are mainly focused on ways to make the IBM cloud service more enticing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, Julia just got some financing. He should go there and help Julia's future interoperability with Swift.

<comment><USER18> I might be wrong, but I think Julia's financing is nowhere near enough to hire someone like Lattner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Chris has updated his resume

[http://nondot.org/sabre/Resume.html#workhistory](http://nondot.org/sabre/Resume.html#workhistory)

"Tesla

VP Autopilot Software January 30 - June 20, 2017 When I joined Tesla, it was in the midst of a hardware transition from "Hardware 1" Autopilot (based primarily on MobileEye for vision processing) to "Hardware 2", which uses an in-house designed TeslaVision stack. The team was facing many tough challenges given the nature of the transition. My primary contributions over these fast five months were:

We evolved Autopilot for HW2 from its first early release (which had few features and was limited to 45mph on highways) to effectively parity with HW1, and surpassing it in some ways (e.g. silky smooth control). This required building and shipping numerous features for HW2, including: support for local roads, Parallel Autopark, High Speed Autosteer, Summon, Lane Departure Warning, Automatic Lane Change, Low Speed AEB, Full Speed Autosteer, Pedal Misapplication Mitigation, Auto High Beams, Side Collision Avoidance, Full Speed AEB, Perpendicular Parking, and 'silky smooth' performance. This was done by shipping a total of 7 major feature releases, as well as numerous minor releases to support factory, service, and other narrow markets. One of Tesla's huge advantages in the autonomous driving space is that it has tens of thousands of cars already on the road. We built infrastructure to take advantage of this, allowing the collection of image and video data from this fleet, as well as building big data infrastructure in the cloud to process and use it. I defined and drove the feature roadmap, drove the technical architecture for future features, and managed the implementation for the next exciting features to come. I advocated for and drove a major rewrite of the deep net architecture in the vision stack, leading to significantly better precision, recall, and inference performance. I ended up growing the Autopilot Software team by over 50%. I personally interviewed most of the accepted candidates. I made massive improvements to internal infrastructure and processes that I cannot go into detail about. I was closely involved with others in the broader Autopilot program, including future hardware support, legal, homologation, regulatory, marketing, etc."

The original version apparently ended with the text "In the end, Elon and I agreed that he and I did not work well together and that I should leave, so I did."

</comment><comment><USER30> Perhaps it's time to try a non-hardware company.

<comment><USER31> "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware" \- Alan Kay

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> OK, I want you to program FizzBuzz on that whiteboard.

<comment><USER26> Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. [https://m.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our...](https://m.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/21/ken_thompson_take_our_test/)

<comment><USER32> I doubt this anecdote. There was no such test in 2011, and I haven't heard any tales from older timers about it either. It sounds like it's conflating some totally optional style-guide-conformance procedures you can do, with permission to check in code at all. And no-one gets to check in code without review regardless of how much expertise you've demonstrated.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure why you doubt the anecdote. It's a published quote in a published book by a respected author, and to my knowledge Thompson hasn't refuted the statement. The original quote doesn't have the trashy editorialization. Thompson simply had no need to go through the approval process so he didn't.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA474&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=2kMIqdfyT8kC&pg=PA474&lpg=PA474&ots=MlbvncLJAI&sig=PzQLg4KadXJ0aSxiTlfbvuw2Qdk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM96qFmc_UAhUQ_WMKHefIDrEQ6AEIITAC)

When this was published, it was widely circulated and no one at the time stepped forward to claim it was untrue or that the requirement didn't exist. Given the fact that you make reference to "old timers" in this context, I doubt you were at Google in 2011 and are merely asserting your assumption as a fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this serious??? I don't get why he is leaving the company that soon, nor what it announces it on Twitter before getting a new job.

<comment><USER18> > _I don 't get why he is leaving the company that soon_

Because he doesn't like it there.

> _nor what it announces it on Twitter before getting a new job._

Because it's his Twitter and he has nothing much to hide. It's not like he wont find employment (actually it might be not like he even needs employment that badly -- he could easily have a couple of million in the bank).

<comment><USER35> > Because he doesn't like it there

More likely the other way round.

<comment><USER29> You really think they'd fire a showy public hire this fast? Unless he was committing felonies it's almost impossible. They'd be working with him to try to salvage the situation.

Impetuous quitting over some specific issue he holds dear is only a thousand times more likely.

<comment><USER33> I find it really odd that you assume him quitting for some petty reason is the most likely scenario. Why do you have so little respect for Lattner?

<comment><USER29> Since when is "specific" the same as "petty"? Why do you have so little respect for the english language?

<comment><USER33> What do you imagine "impetuous" means?

acting or done quickly and without thought or care. "her friend was headstrong and impetuous" synonyms: impulsive, rash, hasty, overhasty, reckless, heedless, careless, foolhardy, bullheaded, headstrong, incautious, imprudent, injudicious, ill-considered, unthought-out

<comment><USER29> I didn't see "petty" in there.

If you reread my comment, it didn't say he didn't have a good reason, just that he might have acted quickly or emotionally. Like many of us do.

<comment><USER33> So he's got a _good_ reason to leave but the decision to leave is rash, foolhardy, reckless? These don't seem to fit together. If you leave for a legitimate reason, I'd hardly call that an impetuous decision.

<comment><USER29> If you work in a good place with one huge flaw, and management assures you they will address the flaw, then you blow up one day because they haven't addressed it yet and quit, that's an impetuous decision for a good reason.

It's not necessarily rash, foolhardy or reckless, since those are synonyms. In this case they are similar, but not exactly the same.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


"I could build that in five minutes " - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/08/i-could-build-that-in-five-minutes/ <comment><USER2> The one I got "Couldn't you do it in Wordpress faster?"

</comment><comment><USER3> "Go ahead, show me how it's done."</comment>


Ask HN:  Password manager? - <AUTHOR>

With the recent news about Heartbleed and the advice to change all passwords (which should be done periodically anyway), I figure it's time to look at the state of password manages again.
I've got a general set of requirements, but I'm also interested in what HN likes in general.
My general requirements are:
- MacOS/iOS/Linux support
- Cross-platform syncing, but not reliant on a specific service provider (e.g., WebDAV sync or folder sync is preferred over Dropbox sync)
- Encryption done locally - the syncing should really just send a blob of encrypted data.
- The usual browser integration, password generation, storage of metadata (password last changed, notes, etc) stuff.
So far 1Password with WiFi sync looks like the closest fit, but I'm curious to know what else is out there. <comment><USER2> I would recommend using LastPass as a password manager. Here is some advice I recently wrote up on passwords.

In regards to Heartbleed, the Security Check that LastPass offers will help with that in terms of notifying you of the sites that you should change your passwords on since they were vulnerable to Heartbleed, but really all sites could be vulnerable to it, so I would recommend changing all your passwords fairly frequently over the next few months.

As long as the password is not contained within a list of commonly used words and isn't in the dictionary, length is the most important thing. The second most important thing I would say is using the widest variety of characters possible including lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

You want to generate a secure password from a password generator such as GRC's Password Generator. I always generator my passwords to be 50+ characters but everything over 15+ characters will be fine.

Also, make sure you change your passwords every 3 months and don't share your password with anyone. Lastly, store your passwords securely using a password manager such as LastPass ([https://lastpass.com/](https://lastpass.com/)). You should have a strong master password with LastPass and use two factor authentication. You should also use two factor authentication with all of your other accounts that offer it.

If a site requires a secret question, make sure the answer to that question no one else would know or make it a password or phrase that you would remember. Don't reuse passwords on other things as well (only use the same password once).

Make sure when you are logging in that the site is using HTTPS (the browser addon HTTPS Everywhere can help with that) and you aren't logging in from a public network such as from Starbucks. Even if you are logging in from a private network, I recommend using a VPN that uses encryption such as proXPN. For your home or office network that you are logging in from make sure it is using WPA2 encryption, it has a random network name, a secure password, you have changed the default credentials for the network settings to something secure, you have disabled WPS, etc.

That is all I can think of right now in terms of password security, but those are the main things that you should focus on in terms of secure passwords.

</comment><comment><USER3> You might want to also check the site search for past entries. This question comes up at least monthly here in an Ask HN: format. Heartbleed hasn't changed which password manager I've used but that's b/c mine is offline. It may have changed some other folks' though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did a couple of searches and only came up with stuff from years ago. What terms did you use?

<comment><USER3> With the new search engine, you can easily add "ask hn" to any keyword you want and just use that as a filter -

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=password+manager#!/story/forever/0...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=password+manager#!/story/forever/0/password%20manager%20%22ask%20hn%22)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm an OSX and Android user. My current setup is to use MacPass on my laptop and KeePasDroid on my phone. The database is synced using Dropbox. The only problem might be browser integration, but I'm not that lazy and I can copy- paste the password from the app.</comment>


AI system will warn you if your partner is in an argumentative mood - <AUTHOR> https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/ai-system-warn-you-your-13950005 <comment><USER2> This thread on a previous discussion seems rather relevant if things go wrong [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10933136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10933136)</comment>


Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users  - <AUTHOR> http://delyan.me/08-01-2013/samsung-agency-is-buying-off-stackoverflow-users/ <comment><USER2> Hi all. Delyan here.

I'm kinda bummed I didn't submit this myself. I would've loved to cash in on those most precious of internet points. Oh, well. :)

To address the question of discussing this publicly: I don't think I'm doing them any favours right now. I'd like to think that the developer crowd (especially the one at HN) is not as easily swayed by competitions, challenges and brands as to forget sleazy behaviour like this.

I'm calling them out publicly because our places of discussion are very rarely guarded by tall walls. Instead, they let everyone in (and that's what makes them great). The price is that every once in a while we all have to push some people out. That's what I'm trying to do by writing this post.

Also, I apologize for the spelling and grammar, I wrote it early in the morning and my brain was still complaining about sleep deprivation and whatnot. Stupid brain.

P.S. also, guys, can I ask a quick favour? If anyone notices the site is down, please drop me a line (my email is in my profile). It's shared hosting and I'm not sure how well it will cope with top-of-HN. Especially when PST wake up.

<comment><USER3> Your website is working fast and up,which host you use? It scaled up brilliantly.

<comment><USER2> I'd love to say it's my amazing architecture and optimizations skills. But it's not. It's just a static blog, generated with Ruhoh ([http://ruhoh.com/](http://ruhoh.com/)) and nginx. I'm on Webfaction's cheapest plan, on the Amsterdam servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is, in my mind, evidence that companies like this are out of touch. They want to treat Stack Overflow like a search engine and marketing tool to be optimized, and, in their ignorance, don't see it as something different than what it actually is: a community of people passionate about their craft and helping others with it.

Eventually people are going to learn that the way you leverage a community like that toward doing something is to become a respected member of the community yourself. It seems that today is not that say for Samsung. Honestly, they would have been smarter to just have their engineering team dedicate time to answering questions on SO every week, then have a piece done in tech media about why. That is still a bit gimmicky, I guess, but much cooler than this method.

I know that I, at least, would be really entertained to have an exchange with a Samsung engineer about a problem I was having on SO.

<comment><USER5> Out of touch? This guy maybe, but I would be surprised if SO, like most other communities, wasn't already successfully being gamed by marketeers a hell of a lot smarter than this clown.

And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people that are at least as clever as we are but who have specialized themselves in manipulating people instead of bits and bytes.

No place where human beings gather, virtual of physical, is safe from this. It's only the clueless an lazy ones that get caught like this.

<comment><USER6> I'll bite.

"And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people..."

You're vastly underestimating how many people are interconnected in this hodgepodge of gray matter we call HN.

Blind allegiance (or antipathy) is not how things work here.

Part of the reason this community is different from others is that the best way to respect people like pg or tptacek or anyone else who's been around is to call them on something when you disagree. I think that's how they'd like it as well.

It has nothing to do with being "smarter". It's got everything to do with being genuine.

In that regard SO is at a marked disadvantage because it's such a tempting target for drive-by dropping of bait for marketing. With the exception of a handful of long time contributors, the vast number of accounts there have no discussion between each other (since that itself leads to the question getting closed) and so they have no means to get to know each other really. That's not what happens here.

You can follow people, you can read their past threads. You can even go back and watch people evolve in their thought process with the kinds of discussions we've had. Try that on SO.

<comment><USER7> HN is being used for astroturfing according to PG.

<comment><USER8> With it's connection to YC there's a bit of it implicit in the model - e.g. YC applications.

And, no I am not finding fault with the connection to YC or the special status, just pointing out that the HN playing field is not natural grass, and that it is that way for very reasonable reasons and that it is, in my opinion, almost certainly to the benefit of the HN community.

On a site with a larger commercial tie in, "astroturfing" like "weed" in a horticultural setting lacks scientific definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone who finds this shocking, I have news for you; every large company has been and is doing this type of astroturfing all over the internet for well over a decade now.

I guess it can be surprising when you get asked to participate in it directly, but every type of site that's driven by "the public" (Slashdot, Digg, reddit, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc.) is going to be a target for this type of activity.

It's usually pretty obvious, and I think if we ever want it to stop I think it's important to publicly shame companies who do it like this.

<comment><USER10> Really? Come on. To be fair, since the immediate comparison that jumps to mind is between Samsung and Apple, let's put it right on the table: I don't think Apple does this.

<comment><USER11> I am sorry if this comment spark off any other pointless debate and argument or offended any Apple Fan boys or Samsung Fan boys.

But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple.

Ans Samsung are at the top of this game. They are number 1 in spending on advertising and they spend double the advertising budget compared to 2nd in place. ( And their Rate are pretty awesome too compared to others )

You see heavy advertising on a Newspaper from Samsung? Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence? You should make up your own mind.

Compared to all other dirty thing that Samsung does behind the scene, these things are really tips of the iceberg.

<comment><USER12> _But the truth is, pretty much every company does this.. except Apple._

Any evidence or even subjective reasoning why I'd believe Apple is any different from any other company? In the absence of evidence I wouldn't accuse Apple of anything but only a fool would give Apple a pass on something that "every company [supposedly] does".

 _Lots of bashing and irresponsible reporting while bending the truth on Apple. Coincidence_

Good point; Apple never trashes the competition, that's above them.

<comment><USER13> Apple simply does not engage in anything even remotely resembling astroturfing. The simplest reason is that they don't need to, but the more accurate reason is that it's not in the company culture to do things like that.

As a semi-related example, I'm sure you're familiar with product placement in TV shows and movies. Most product placement is done because the company paid for it to be there (for example, all of the Windows 8 stuff I've seen in Arrow I'm certain is paid product placement). However, despite the fact that Apple products are used frequently in TV shows and movies, Apple does not pay for product placement; all the Apple product placement you see was free.

In any case, I personally don't think Apple is the only company that doesn't engage in astroturfing. I'm sure there are many large companies out there that don't do it.

<comment><USER14> No, they "lose" phones in bars though (twice) and do other very sneaky things. Apple is super sneaky. They also do things like making gimped software and drivers for other platforms part of their business plan. I consider this worse than astroturfing.

<comment><USER13> What are you talking about? Trust me, when a prototype device gets stolen in a bar, that's absolutely _not_ guerrilla marketing. That was serious business, and I'm certain the only reason the engineer didn't get fired is because it would have been bad PR. Apple takes its prototype hardware extremely seriously.

And I really have no idea what you mean with the "gimped software and drivers for other platforms" claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, this is an interesting topic. I especially like the informative news link. I was also wondering if anyone here has heard of the Samsung Smart App Challenge because I was thinking of entering. I heard the best apps will win great promotional prizes and the latest Samsung devices. I also heard that Samsung devices are 4X faster than leading competitors devices because of their advanced technology. Does anyone else here have questions about Samsung's latest products and services because I heard they have great brochures and contests all the time and amazing fast technology in their devices that are affordable for all budgets.

Thank you and please visit our web site .... Oh wait, am supposed to paste this paragraph too? I better ask John do I paste the entire email body or just the first paragraph?

Hi John,

I pasted the email you sent as instructed. Is it $500 per paragraph per post? I have high HN karma so my rate is $500 per paragraph. Also I responded to several posts about child trafficking because it was a very interesting discussion, hope you don't mind.

Thanks. Still waiting FOR MY Check, John!

<comment><USER16> Hey snorkel,

> I heard the best apps will win great promotional prizes and the latest > Samsung devices.

yes I heard of it too and I am going to submit an app! Wish me luck. I am submitting my battery draining app. By the way do you know how Samsung Touchwiz manages to heat up my phone? It is an awesome feature and it seems to be unique to Samsung because I could not find the function the Android SDK! Can you believe that?! Ha!

I really look forward to winning the new Galaxy Note as I compared it to a bunch of other Android phones and it seems that it not only offers the best hardware but also the biggest surface for heat dissipation. I have a cold currently and can't stop thinking about how awesome it would be if I could use my cell phone as a portable hot-water bag. That reminds me of a story about Samsung and illness: 2003 I had a heart attack. I was so shaky and panicked that instead of the emergency services I dialed the Samsung hotline. I got to speak to a support agent instantly! He calmed me down and explained to me how there is a secret resuscitation function built into my current Samsung phone then he hung up. As my heart rate came to a halt I yanked up the vibration strength in the settings menu and with his callback a powerful electric shock ran through my body giving my heart the much needed kick to start beating again.

As I thanked him he explained that this function was not openly advertised because Bill Gates had a patent on breaking bones through muscle contractions caused by an electric shock for using a Linux product. But because the implementation was too similar Samsung hid the feature.

Beat that Apple!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I work at Stack Exchange, and contacted Samsung as soon as this was brought to our attention last night.

1\. The company engaging in these tactics was not hired by Samsung; they appear to have been sub-contracted for some promotion by the company they did hire. Now, it's obviously possible that they turned a blind eye, or don't want to know what methods are used, but in fairness, there's no evidence that they had any idea this was happening. And given the directness of it all, I suspect they'd have objected, if only because it looks so bad.

2\. Everyone who was contacted due to being a user on our sites has now received a follow up communication from the company that sent the first message redacting the offer and apologizing for the inappropriate contact and request.

None of that makes any of this... lovely, but it does help clarify that any potential harm or noise this might cause seems to have been contained.

<comment><USER18> Big company decides to pull a grassroots-focused marketing campaign. Picks an inappropriate venue. Backs off.

Is fb, for example, a more appropriate venue, selling likes and all that? They explicitly allow sponsored posts that appear to have been made by friends. I think the marketing person figured that stack overflow was similar to fb for nerds. Whoops.

<comment><USER19> Yep. Reminds me of the time WalMart paid a couple to blog about their RV trip across the US, without the couple disclosing the entire trip and blog was a WalMart marketing experiment: [http://kevin.lexblog.com/2006/10/13/fake-blog- walmart-gets-c...](http://kevin.lexblog.com/2006/10/13/fake-blog-walmart-gets- caught-with-its-pants-down/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I try to refrain from being a spelling nazi here, but "So, I shot back this brisque email" made me laugh. It's like a portmanteau of "brusque" and "brisk."

<comment><USER21> For a more daring approach, try sending a brisqué email.

<comment><USER22> brisqué | adjective abrupt or offhand in speech or manner which is showing a wish to deal with things quickly and slightly indecent and liable to shock

<comment><USER23> also tastes faintly of crab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The agency (FLLU) seem really small. Too small in fact, because most companies would engage a substantially larger firm and have account managers and would handle all of this stuff coherently from one place rather than use potentially hundreds of firms this size (3 people).

Before everyone jumps to conclusions... could it not be the case that someone with just a very small bit of budget said "Wouldn't it be great if..." and then hired this little company "I know a few guys who could..." to help promote it, failing to understand what form that promotion would take.

Of course, it can and should be argued that Samsung (and their many departments and entities) had a tighter leash for their managers and such "little" projects and initiatives... but I wouldn't argue that not having a tight enough leash is tantamount to Samsung consciously trying to bribe users.

This is where I long for journalists over bloggers... perhaps someone could find out who hired FLLU? Then perhaps someone could ask that someone the basis for the campaign and whether it was authorised by Samsung.

<comment><USER25> There are a lot of big companies who cannot even function without hiring tiny companies and freelancers to do the work. I've done marketing contracts for public companies as a one-man operation and had a shocking amount of control over the messaging. It's likely you'd find people at Samsung who think this sort of stuff is great and others who think it is abhorrent. That's the nature of big organizations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to- posting...](http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to-posting-fake- user-reviews-on-the-web.html)

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/7192/update-on-gpu- optimizatio...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7192/update-on-gpu- optimizations-galaxy-s-4)

Maybe they know that the HTC One is a better phone?

</comment><comment><USER27> They could have just bought some ads on Stack Overflow. From the Help Center:

> If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or > website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. _Our advertising rates > are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details._ We also offer > free community promotion ads for open source projects and non-profit > organizations.

[http://stackoverflow.com/help/behavior](http://stackoverflow.com/help/behavior)

That would have been a lot less sleazy, and probably would have gotten more views than most questions about programming contest code.

<comment><USER28> And now you should know the price was not the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> And then you put it in HN front page. It is probably a lot more than the visibility in StackOverflow... =)

<comment><USER25> I would argue that HN is much easier to game than SO, which makes it doubly ironic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me of

[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/02/10](http://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2006/02/10)

and William Gibson's 2003 book Pattern recognition that dealt with this.

This is a pretty old and known thing. Whether it's the street, bars or online forums, this has been going on for over 10 years at least.

</comment><comment><USER31> And their example questions would be off-topic on Stack Overflow and likely closed immediately. Whoever is behind this seems to have no idea what SO is and how it works beyond "it's a huge site with programmers on it".

<comment><USER32> This. Folks try this kinda crap all the time; the community and/or mods just delete it.

Still sucks that legit users end up being contacted over it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is this so bad?

Samsung know that developers are the key to apps and so they go to help promote them by getting questions asked on Stack Overflow. They didn't specify exactly what the questions should be, they didn't say that they had to link to a particular site.

I often hear devs bemoan the fact that the OS/hardware combo they love isn't used by anyone and how despite the fact that it's THE best platform/hardware combo around today they just don't have the apps on it they want.

The way apps to get built on hardware is that manufacturers support and nurture a developer community. So a company comes along and uses some pretty intelligent ways to go direct to the developer community (help increase the documentation around the system) and they're lynch-mobbed for it.

Granted, the questions were naive (about a competition rather than technical) but there's no need to hang the poor guy or publish his email for it. He's a marketer and doesn't realise SO isn't for idle chat. Instead of lambasting him as the mortal enemy of devs why not just write back to him and point out that SO is the wrong place to promote a competition?

<comment><USER34> This is astroturfing; that is, a form of marketing where the advertisement is disguised as natural behaviour. Most countries have laws to limit or ban it. It's not normally considered legitimate marketing.

Samsung was recently fined by Taiwanese authorities for an astroturfing campaign there, though, so it's not like it's new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I really hate the practice of astroturfing, but what's even more annoying is when someone accuses someone else of doing it in an online forum. For every time someone maybe, possibly legitimately calls someone out for being an astroturfer, it seems like there are 100 or 1000 instances of someone doing it just because they disagree with what the other person is saying, and they're too immature or whatever to realize that reasonable people can come to different conclusions about things without one person being paid to do so.

Astroturfing is one of those things that by itself probably has limited impact, but a much worse side effect: fueling paranoia in online communities and giving dumb people one more tool in their flamewar toolbox.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Make it look organic" is a lofty goal, but I don't think it's realistic. As Misery from Ruby Gloom says, you don't tell people you're starting a craze, a craze just happens.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm the developer of a small but "better than current offerings" product. Everywhere my product gets mention two or three shills jump in to recommend theirs. Wecome to WebSpam 2.0

<comment><USER27> This is the main reason that the entire "product or tool recommendation" category is off-topic on Stack Overflow. Those types of questions invite that kind of spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Soooooooo... Anyone know anything about SSAC?

<comment><USER39> Wouldn't have heard about it except for this article :) Could I get some feedback on this app I'm about to submit to the SSAC?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> That's sleazy, but it's to be expected now SO is such a significant player in the online developer market. The interesting thing being a question along those lines would be flagged, and closed pretty sharpish.

I can't imagine that this is the last time we'll see people trying this trick though.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm very interested in how this plays out. Right now I add Stackexchange to search queries in Google, precisely because the SEO effects haven't hit.

The morality question may not be so black and white, though. If it's ok to accept goodies to monetize a Klout score, why not for StackExchange? Unfortunately, it only takes a small amount of people doing this for a variety of products to ruin the site.

My impression of this as an outsider hearing only one side of the story is Samsung asked an agency to help get the word out in the tech community. The agency probably knows more about advertising than digital, or views digital advertising as Twitter and Klout. I think their less than subtle approach will backfire.

<comment><USER42> _The morality question may not be so black and white, though. If it 's ok to accept goodies to monetize a Klout score, why not for StackExchange?_

By "monetize a Klout score," you mean spam your followers on social networks sites, right? That seems pretty morally clear to me.

<comment><USER41> Is it morally clear though?

Kim Kardashian gets paid to plug god knows what, and it's not immoral to be a shill.

That isn't to say that I would do it. (I won't) But it isn't black and white. It might be a dark gray, but it's still gray.

<comment><USER42> _Kim Kardashian gets paid to plug god knows what, and it 's not immoral to be a shill._

Thankfully, I wouldn't know what Ms. Kardashian plugs, since I'm not from the US and our regular news coverage doesn't cover such events. But as for shilling not being immoral, I have to say I seriously disagree. Advertising may not be, but shilling certainly is, in my moral code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> You realize you're promoting it on HN now right?

<comment><USER44> Merely discussing something is not promoting it. The GLBT community has fought this battle again and again, when various parties sought to suppress any mention of homosexuality in public schools, because that would be "promoting the homosexual lifestyle". This discussion may make more people aware of the Samsung contest, but it is in no way a promotion of it.

<comment><USER45> > Merely discussing something is not promoting it.

But in this particular case it is. There will be people who are interested in the contest, and doesn't mind that dishonest promotional tactics was used.

<comment><USER44> So would you have preferred that the original poster not bring it up on HN at all? I could just as easily claim that someone who was planning to enter the contest before learning about Samsung's practices will now choose not to. We have no data. In the absence of data, I think the OP did the right thing by letting us know about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Need some feedback on the app I am about to enter for the Samsung Smart App Challenge."

I guess that one could have worked. A real question on some programming problem having this as a side note...

They didn't really understand SO, but they could have done worse.

</comment><comment><USER47> Half the scumminess here is that they don't understand StackOverflow isn't a general purpose forum, I think. It would be less offensive if they were paying a popular forum member to mention the contest. On StackOverflow, however, you are supposed to post questions about something you are programming, however. So it really isn't valid to just bring up a contest as a contest. I suppose theoretically, if they wanted to do something close to what they want they'd have to pay someone to try using their APIs and post questions they encounter and mention the contest on the side. Although even that is kind of stretching it.

</comment><comment><USER48> $500 to be a whore. No.

<comment><USER41> So is it just a matter of price? At which price would it be ok?

<comment><USER49> 500BTC is my price.

<comment><USER41> I dare say you are simultaneously too cheap and too expensive!

<comment><USER49> Bitcoin, just like a quantum bit, in all states at the same time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Gumtree (Craigslist equivalent in UK) offered me money to do similar kind of stuff for the sake of "Word of mouth" marketing. They offered bonus if I could post a blog on my personal blog too.

</comment><comment><USER51> Samsung is always using scam PR agencies, see before:

[http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/12/13234078-sams...](http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/12/13234078-samsung- hired-a-marketing-agency-to-fake-blog-about-its-products)

[http://int13.net/france/blog/i-won-a-contest-to-go-to-the- lo...](http://int13.net/france/blog/i-won-a-contest-to-go-to-the-london- olympic-games/)

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Another warning to big companies who are employing sketchy marketing companies. With more and more of these stories coming out, I'm wondering when companies are going to stop taking chances with these "agencies" and simply bring their marketing back in house. Then they can have more control and oversight on what goes on with their brand.

This just makes Samsung and the whole Android community look bad, regardless of who actually was doing it.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm pretty sure that SO/SX already run various promotional products, like the Microsoft Windows Phone app challenge/contest. That said, I'm also sure such promotional deals come with a set of rules to ensure SO integrity. After all, a lot of work has gone into making SO one of the best (if not the best) places to learn and interact with dev community.

Would be interesting to see how this revelation affects any dealings with Samsung...

<comment><USER53> The Stack Overflow Microsoft app contests rewarded people for asking legitimate Stack Overflow questions. In fact some of the contest prizes were hard to obtain because they required X questions/answers with a score X or more votes. Many of the topics were sufficiently covered already, making additional questions/answers duplicative. However, this ensured that the integrity of Stack Overflow was maintained even if it did make the contest more difficult.

<comment><USER52> But it's the right way to do it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What is so difficult about promoting it via the usual channels? Advertisements, (legitimate) posts on appropriate forums, mailing lists, blogs, etc. Assuming they are presenting an attractive value proposition I don't see why it would be hard to get the message to the right people without resorting to this kind of thing.

This subterfuge only seems to make sense if what you are promoting fundamentally sucks or if you have a very limited budget.

</comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone else besides me think that this is a very cheap technique to use in a smear campaign? Throw up some fake "viral marketing" company website, offer to pay $x to some people for fake reviews / secret paid promotions but don't actually pay, and wait for public complaints from either people with ethics or people who didn't get paid?

<comment><USER56> cheap yes, effective not so sure. I really wonder what the net effect for a giant company like Samsung will be for a little scandal like this. any of the big electronics corporations seems to have scandals or fuckups or unethical actions of some sort or other.

it might be pretty devastating to smaller companies, perhaps? although it's still hard to say, depending on how they deal with it, it might even result in a net positive publicity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Okay, be honest. After reading this, how many of you searched for "Samsung Smart App Challenge".

[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Samsung+Smart+App+Ch...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=Samsung+Smart+App+Challenge#q=Samsung%20Smart%20App%20Challenge&cmpt=q)

I'm not sure that Samsung hasn't won this round...

</comment><comment><USER58> Hilarious, especially in light of this text from the front page of their website:

"Paying for followers will not get you the results you need. Follower growth needs to be organic. We like to keep things All Natural here at FLLU. It's all about Organic Growth! "

[http://www.fllu.com/](http://www.fllu.com/)

</comment><comment><USER59> Looks like they're already in damage control mode. My buddy just received this e-mail from firstname.lastname@example.com

[http://pastebin.com/EVm8jH3s](http://pastebin.com/EVm8jH3s)

</comment><comment><USER60> Those kind of competitions are really just work with non-guaranteed pay.

</comment><comment><USER61> Why do sites like this disable pinchzoom? What purpose does it serve?

</comment><comment><USER62> Yup, AirBnB did (kinda) the same thing to listers on Craigslist.

</comment><comment><USER63> Whatever. If you don't think this sort of thing isn't happening at EVERY web top-100 web site, you've got another thing coming.

</comment><comment><USER64> They'd be better going after people who center themselves around Android dev and have a lot of followers on Twitter, G+, etc.

</comment><comment><USER65> What is even better is that you complained about this in a blog, and posted to Hacker News. Before this I didn't know anything about the Samsung Androids, but thanks to your blog and posting on Hacker News probably more people know about this than any fake $500 posting on stackoverflow. And, Samsung didn't have to pay a cent for your publicity -- or maybe they did pay you for this clever bit of marketing.

<comment><USER66> You didn't know Samsung had androids, really? Because the only real information content about whatever this 'Challenge' is is that they want you to buy some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No surprise for Samsung is doing this. Abusing community by ad is the only their real professional at.

</comment><comment><USER34> Astroturfing via StackOverflow has to be the most pathetic possible form of unethical marketing.

</comment><comment><USER67> They ended up getting some amazing free advertising out of this via this HN post!

</comment><comment><USER68> So everybody now know about Samsung Smart App Challange. Mission accomplished.

<comment><USER28> And no change at all on brand image. If their brand value is already -INFINITE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> What's up with the blatant Samsung bashing recently? Does Apple have to fall back on these kinds of tricks?

<comment><USER34> Sorry, pointing out Samsung's use of unethical marketing is "bashing"? What?

> Does Apple have to fall back on these kinds of tricks?

Are you suggesting that Apple is pretending to be Samsung and soliciting shills? That's impressively tinfoil-hat-y, especially given that Samsung has been caught practicing questionable marketing techniques before ([http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to- posting...](http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to-posting-fake- user-reviews-on-the-web.html), [http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/12/13234078-sams...](http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/12/13234078-samsung- hired-a-marketing-agency-to-fake-blog-about-its-products), [http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/samsung- sor...](http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/samsung-sorry-for- bloggers-berlin-nightmare-20120904-25bby.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> So in the end you've chosen to advertise it on HN?

</comment><comment><USER71> Shame on them.</comment>


Antisocial attitudes and physical strength may have the same underlying cause - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/biff-was-born-nasty-and-then-he-got-some-bicepts <comment><USER2> Higher natural testosterone levels in the aggressive and eventually stronger boys? I was disappointed they didn't even mention testosterone.

<comment><USER3> The actual relationship of testosterone levels – natural or supplemented – on aggression is quite a bit murkier than, and perhaps even the opposite of, common folklore. See for example:

[http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/cognoculture/testosteron...](http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/cognoculture/testosterone_and_human_aggression_or_180520)

Note one of the interesting results mentioned there: _telling_ people they got testosterone made them make less-fair offers in a negotiation game... while actually administering testosterone resulted in fairer offers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > bullies ... taking a classmate's lunch money

Gotta love USA.

Any other language it would be more like "juvenile delinquents stealing money from children"</comment>


Randomizing your knowledge base - <AUTHOR> http://edwardshui.blogspot.com/2011/03/startup-idea-no33-mar-2011-randomizing.html

<comment><USER2> Not sure if this was the OP's intent, but doesn't "a place where people can learn by being given some random topics" basically describe sites like Hacker News?

Edit: Just noticed that the OP is the post's actual author, so I assume this was not in fact the implicit joke. Given that, the blog post would be more compelling if it indicated how such a place would be _different_ than HN (or, say, Reddit)...

<comment><USER3> It seems to me that there is a fundamental difference. Reddit and HN are good for dropping the user into a giant bin of information, but this seems to be focusing on things we can actually categorise as knowledge and, hopefully, would include ways of actually encouraging and reinforcing that knowledge. The idea's very rough, but I can see a place for it that HN/reddit/what have you just doesn't fill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @masterzora for your kind words! I definitely agree the idea's still very premature. And that's why I would love to get some inspirations from the experts in HN community.

The rationale is really to encourage and engage people to learn something new, different and useful.</comment></comment></comment>


The French School Where Panama Canal Pilots Train in Cute Little Ships (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/11/panama-canal-pilot-training/

<comment><USER2> John McPhee write an excellent article about this: "The Ships of Port Revel" by John McPhee. It was an atlantic article and is included in his book "Uncommon Carriers".

[https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0865477396](https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0865477396)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had the opportunity to cross the Panama Canal on a 48ft sailing yacht, starting on the Atlantic side. Inside the watergates we were tied together with two other yachts, one on each side (ours had the strongest engine, so we were in the middle). The canal itself is mostly surrounded by jungle, and you get a specific time slot for crossing it because the traffic is usually quite high, and the watergates need some time to get filled. During the trip it didn't really feel like there was much going on, even though many large vessels crossed us in both directions.

Thanks for posting this and bringing back some memories.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is one of those things that pretty much is guaranteed to be replaced with VR simulations in 10-15 years. I have to believe that the challenges associated with doing "true to life" simulations of waves, wind, and impact of tugboat, will benefit greatly from a half dozen (remaining?) iterations of Moore's law.

Though - I'm also wondering, is there an opportunity for automation here as well?

<comment><USER5> I doubt it. I visited an operational naval submarine simulator recently. It was basically the electronic guts of the actual submarine, hooked up to sensor simulators and wired into a replica of the bridge (or whatever they call it on a sub). If they wanted to replicate a ship, they could. there must be a reason they prefer to simulate it in the real world on a smaller scale.

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that simulators today aren't powerful enough to provide real-world acuity, so, that even though these smaller-scale models come with their own artifacts (including time compression, and in the case of the panama, unrealistic visual comprehension of the environment) - the scale model is still significantly more realistic than what you can do in a simulator.

They probably won't be powerful enough in 5 years, or perhaps even 10 years, but I wouldn't take the bet that in 15 years they won't be able to simulate, with sufficient fidelity for pilot training, a ship moving through the panama canal.

I'm guessing the complexity of the ship-in-panama model environment is a couple orders of magnitude less than what the first officer of an airplane has to deal with; it will be a lot longer before we'll be able to faithfully replicate _that_ environment - if ever. (Far enough out that I can't even begin to guess if it's 50 or 100 years from now).

Now, the wild card is, that even though you might be able to do the Panama simulation in 15 years from a computing perspective, it may still be much cheaper to simply do your 25:1 replica, particularly as you don't really need to train all that many pilots in the big scheme of things...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do all of the ship handling parameters scale in the same fashion as the size of the ship is reduced? The article doesn't elaborate on this, but I bet there are some interesting technical considerations involved in ensuring that everything is "true to scale" (or even in defining what that means!).

<comment><USER7> No, they would have to do some interesting things to the density or viscosity of the water for the handling to be similar. Or they could operate at 25x the speed that they currently are, but that doesn't seem feasible. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems perfect for illustrating my docker container slides!

</comment><comment><USER9> Pilots?! Where are the aircrafts?

<comment><USER10> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot)</comment></comment>


Americans drink so much, it's now a 'public health crisis' - <AUTHOR> https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/qvv4p7/americans-drinking-so-much-its-now-a-public-health-crisis <comment><USER2> We are barely in the top 50 for drinks consumed per capita.

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

<comment><USER3> Perhaps the article says more about the publisher — and journalistic practices generally — than it says about the Great Americans Drinking Public.

A quick look finds this throughly unscientific statistic:

> In 1790, United States government figures showed that annual per-capita > alcohol consumption for everybody over fifteen amounted to thirty-four > gallons of beer and cider, five gallons of distilled spirits, and one gallon > of wine.

[http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday07/drink.cf...](http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday07/drink.cfm)

People who keep yelling "Scary Monsters Under the Bed" can be ignored.</comment></comment>


List of command line tools for manipulating CSV, XML, HTML, JSON, INI, etc. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dbohdan/structured-text-tools <comment><USER2> [lnav]([https://www.lnav.org](https://www.lnav.org)) is a terrific little tool, a "mini-ETL" of sorts with an embedded SQLite client and a clean, powerful interface. Its sweet spot is logfiles, but given regex-based custom formats, works great with any semi-structured input. Lnav easily handles a few million rows at a time. IME it pairs really really well with eg mitmproxy/mitmdump for client request logs, as well as webserver logs.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for linking that. It's going to make my life easier this week, and I had not heard of it. I was weighing setting up something like Graylog for some troubleshooting and kind of dreading it. lnav looks like a perfect middle- ground between that and my wiki page full of grep commands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks like a great resource. The tools you'd like to have for a specific problem are often quite un-googlable. So you either need complex hacks to get inferior tools to work or you spend an hour googling the tools for a tiny problem.

Of course, it would be even better if you could easily tell which of the dozen JSON query tools is the best choice for the task at hand, or which you should code if you only want to ever use one of them.

In fact I'd love if someone would like to share their set of tried-and-true tools. Personally I mostly go with the POSIX tools, plus jq or gawk on occasion (but I have to read their docs every single time...).

<comment><USER5> Nit: awk _is_ a POSIX tool, and has multiple implementations that you've probably used (Debian/Ubuntu comes with mawk, and Mac OS with nawk).

[1]: [http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/awk...](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/awk.html)

<comment><USER6> Besides mawk and gawk, Debian ships also the original awk:

[https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/btl.mirror/](https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/btl.mirror/)

<comment><USER5> Yes, and it works well on Debian. But I can't recommend switching to gawk on Ubuntu.

[1]: [https://askubuntu.com/questions/1011414/gawk-is-crashing- for...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1011414/gawk-is-crashing-for-complex- regexp-when-lang-is-set-to-utf-8-on-16-04)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great.

One thing I could suggest for the XML list is xmllint. It can be really useful for converting xml to canonical format so you can then use diff to compare it.

E.g. something like diff <(xmllint —c14 first.xml) <(xmllint —c14 second.xml)

I'd love to heat about more command line SOAP tools if anyone can recommend some.

<comment><USER8> I'll look into xmllint. I currently use HTML Tidy for this:

      tidy -xml -indent -wrap 0

or

      tidy -xml -indent -wrap 0 -quiet

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> kdb+/q is another really good choice for dsv[1] and json[2]. You can certainly create single-file databases (if you really want to e.g. for exchange), but splayed table[3] is faster so you'd usually do that.

[1]: [http://code.kx.com/q/ref/filenumbers/#load- csv](http://code.kx.com/q/ref/filenumbers/#load-csv)

[2]: [http://code.kx.com/q/ref/dotj/](http://code.kx.com/q/ref/dotj/)

[3]: [http://code.kx.com/q/cookbook/splayed- tables/](http://code.kx.com/q/cookbook/splayed-tables/)

<comment><USER4> The problem with that might be the licensing costs once you use it commercially (eg. at work). IIRC the license prices aren't public, but you're looking at over $10k in any case.

I personally prefer J to K in the APL family of languages. They also have a relatively cheap database, Jd [1]. Individual licenses are $600. Still a bit too much for my data mangling needs. :)

[1] [http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Index](http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Jd/Index)

<comment><USER9> $10k isn't a lot (assuming that's right; it could be). I mean, it's a lot if you're used to something like MySQL or Postgres-levels of quality, but I've seen quotes for Oracle being almost $50k per core. MS-SQL is something like $7k per core, and kdb+ is definitely a lot more useful to me than MS-SQL.

There's also a per-core/minute pricing which might be useful.

<comment><USER4> Sure, kdb+ would probably be worth every penny even at $100k/year when it's the right tool for the job. I gather it's genuinely the best in-memory database for computing arrays of varying rank.

But a lot of the use cases these other tools are good for are small tasks every now and then. I feel kdb+ is in a different category.

<comment><USER10> Anecdote: I frequently use kdb+ for small tasks. For me, its in the "all- purpose" category. The limitations are only in the ability I have to use it.

For example, removing nonconsecutive, duplicate lines from a file, such as a CSV file:

       exec echo "k).Q.fs[l:0::\`:$1];l:?:l;\`:$1 0:l"|exec q >&2;

where Q.fs is a function in a script thats bundled with the interpreter; the chunk size for reading the file into memory is adjustable by editing the function.

<comment><USER9> You can make it simpler:

        l:0;.Q.fs[{if[x~l;:];-1 l::x}each]`:input

or if you have memory:

        -1 distinct read0`:input

...or if you want to use k:

        -1@?0:`:input

<comment><USER10> Stupid question: With -1, how would I suppress the return value? Use a function?

       k)a:{-1@?0:`:input;};a[]

<comment><USER9> It's not a stupid question.

        ;

What this does is return generic-null :: which .Q.s doesn't print.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I took the time to learn recutils a long time ago, and it has been the gift that keeps on giving

Sure, it is not as fast as many other formats, but on the other hand it integrates very well into Emacs an org-mode. I manage a large part of my different collections using a combination of both, and the Emacs integration means it is all less than 2 seconds away.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're curious what's "tabular JSON":

[https://johnkerl.org/miller/doc/file- formats.html#Tabular_JS...](https://johnkerl.org/miller/doc/file- formats.html#Tabular_JSON)

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand why csvkit is listed in the SQL-based utilities section. csvkit is a suite of multiple command-line tools, including csvcut, csvsort, csvgrep, csvjson, csvstat, csvstack, csvjoin, etc. and multiple converters, so is not only csvsql

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome. But a list like this could grow indefinitely. I wrote two CSV utilities a few years back; a data generator ([https://github.com/pereorga/csvfaker](https://github.com/pereorga/csvfaker)) and a column randomizer ([https://github.com/pereorga/csvshuf](https://github.com/pereorga/csvshuf))

</comment><comment><USER13> On macOS there's also textutil, a pre-installed utility for working with text in different formats. Manpage: [https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Dar...](https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/textutil.1.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm very glad to see the 'silly' tools there, cut/join/paste/sort/uniq. While I would never build anything 'important' with them, they're an extremely useful tool to have in your toolkit.

<comment><USER15> Why silly? I use those (especially sort and uniq) all the time, both in my scripts and in command line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone recommend a command line tool for manipulating Excel files, that runs on macOS?

Edit: I'm looking for a command line tool that allows me to open an Excel file, make a few simple changes, and then save again as an Excel file.

<comment><USER17> Try visidata.

[https://github.com/saulpw/homebrew-vd](https://github.com/saulpw/homebrew-vd)

<comment><USER18> What an unfortunate choice of repository name. I definitely do not want to get Homebrew VD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> csvfix, prob some overlap, but i've found this one invaluable.

[http://csvfix.byethost5.com/csvfix15/csvfix.html](http://csvfix.byethost5.com/csvfix15/csvfix.html)

<comment><USER20> CSVFix author here - please note a better link is [https://neilb.bitbucket.io/csvfix/](https://neilb.bitbucket.io/csvfix/)

<comment><USER19> Sweet, ty! Staring at what was starting to look like a much larger python script than I'd anticipated, then realizing I could do it in 16 lines of (very basic) bash with csvfix + csvcut/sed/iconv was big day for me! Some of my fav code never written I think. Actually had most those files copied locally because was afraid the bytehost link would disappear.

That said, link to the manual in the bitbucket link not working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is missing comparison tables.

<comment><USER6> What do you want to be compared?</comment></comment>


Almost every flight today is slower than in the 60s - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1QEj09Pe6k <comment><USER2> norm</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you freelancers find your clients/work? - <AUTHOR>

I know a lot of freelancers find their clients in different ways. I want to see what advice you have for someone looking to land their first few clients (ex. referral, specific websites, etc.)
I'm a UI/UX Designer, mobile designer, front-end developer, I can also do some backend in Rails, etc.
Thanks! =) <comment><USER2> I had a lot of luck frequenting events where small business owners are (i.e. people with problems and money.) Networking events, mixers, business lectures, and so on.

I also spent a LOT of time cultivating my past clients list and encouraging a steady stream of referrals.

When I was running my consultancy (before jumping ship to products), I had to maintain $100k+ revenue a month in client projects. Let's just say I got pretty good at the whole "getting work" thing :-)

<comment><USER3> To drill down a bit: How did you find these events?

<comment><USER2> Chamber of Commerce, any technology partnership groups, meetup.com, there are a _million_ of these sort of events in any decently sized area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that can be a bit silly but really works to a degree. Is to dress and act a little bit geeky, do not be shy to walk around with a t-shirt or a hoodie with the python,ruby or some linux logo on it. Talk about software and computing with people you meet. Market your self as a guy that know a lot about software and the word will come around.

I have met several people for example in the gym that have offered me a job or some consulting work because they have seen me with a linux t-shirt on. Of course they did not threw me a job because of the t-shirt but it led to a small chit-chat and then it escalated from there.

</comment><comment><USER5> While you're specifically asking about finding your first few clients, this previous thread has some great overall advice for finding clients in general as a freelancer: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4585435>

Also, we recently launched the beta of matchist (<http://matchist.com>) to help freelance developers like yourself find quality clients and get paid on time, every time.</comment>


Why I bought your software - <AUTHOR> https://justinjackson.ca/software-saas-product-marketing/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was trying to honestly describe the emotional battle I had inside of me as I made the purchase.

Not all my thoughts were rational; but I think that's the point! Customers aren't as rational as we think they are.

If we're trying to optimize for people buying we need to assuage their emotional needs as well as their functional requirements.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great article!!! And the follow up video, even better.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article! Thanks for sharing!</comment>


You don't own your Kindle books, Amazon reminds customer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/you-dont-own-your-kindle-books-amazon-reminds-customer-f1C6626211

<comment><USER2> This story is from October 2012. It's not very obvious from the NBC website, but if you follow the link to BoingBoing it is. I seem to remember there had been some change/improvement in Amazon's TOS over this issue sometime in the last 18 months, though I don't recall when exactly so I might be wrong.

I understand old stuff getting posted because many websites recycle non- current stories automatically as 'you might also like...' linkbait, but it is worth checking the date of something before you post.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure. Don't buy e-books from DRM afflicted distributors. There were enough stories that anyone should learn that lesson by now. And that applies to everything, not just e-books.

By buying from them you only help proliferating that sickness.

</comment><comment><USER4> -1 for nbcnews disabling pinchzoom on mobile devices, and rendering text on only the left 5/8 of the screen.

</comment><comment><USER5> Related: [http://www.quora.com/Do-my-heirs-inherit-my-Kindle-ebooks- or...](http://www.quora.com/Do-my-heirs-inherit-my-Kindle-ebooks-or-other- restricted-ebooks-when-I-die)

<comment><USER5> From the terms, here: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201014950)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to wonder if the authors who demanded DRM from Amazon have figured out that this is the kind of behavior that drives people to download books illegally, or if they still fail to see the connection.

<comment><USER3> Probably most of the time it's not demanded by authors, but by legacy publishers. They have some distortion in their mind, which was already compared to Lysenkoism:

[http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and- blog...](http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory- doctorow/article/50413-with-a-little-help-digital-lysenkoism.html)

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but then I am left wondering about newly written books -- why are the authors continuing to endorse DRM? Why are the authors continuing to do business with the publishers who demand it?

<comment><USER3> It's not about new vs old books, it's about forward thinking vs backward thinking publishers.

I.e. the story goes like this:

When authors write books, and want to publish them, most of the time they has no means to do it. So they look for publishers to fund that. If publishers are thick-sculled and backward thinking (i.e. afflicted by DRM Lysenkoism), or otherwise somehow crooked, they demand DRM to be part of the deal. Authors might not like that, but they think they have no choice etc. If publishers are normal on the other hand, they don't care about DRM. Crowdfunding often helps to prevent all this mess, and it's starting to play a bigger role in publishing, not just for books, but for other media (video, games, etc.) which also is often afflicted by DRM because of the legacy publishers. Notably, practically no self publishing authors ever use DRM.

As with many areas, old publishers for some reason most of the time are afflicted by DRM. Newer ones - less so. I can't explain the exact correlation, since DRM is really such a stupid thing than anyone with common sense would know that it's bad for business. More than often my feeling is that DRM is used for stupid (Lysenkoism) or side sinister and selfish reasons (covering one's incompetence, controlling technology progress, spying on users or what not).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That reminds me of this which happened a few years ago: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/18/amazon_removes_1984_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/18/amazon_removes_1984_from_kindle/)

</comment><comment><USER8> yes I do. I rip them off the device as soon as they download and store a copy on my PC.

<comment><USER3> That might help preserving the backup, but that contributes to the bigger problem (since you are supporting those who proliferate DRM). Voting with your wallet and avoiding distributors who insult users with this unethical garbage is a better approach.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but then you are forced to make a choice: avoid authors who fail to provide non-restricted books, or download books illegally.

<comment><USER3> It's even better that way, since you'll support sane authors and publishers who don't use DRM. I see no problem avoiding others. It's like global pollution. One can choose to avoid those who heavily contribute to it and prefer those who don't.

<comment><USER8> DRM isn't effective. Sooner or later the businesses involved are going to discover this. DRM doesn't actually inconvenience me (I'd be taking a backup anyway) so I don't mind publishers wasting their time pushing it. If DRM was effective and got in my way then I'd pirate their books; not really from an ethical stance, but purely because of convenience. Eventually the penny is going to drop and they'll realise that DRM _causes_ piracy instead of preventing it and they'll stop using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Take that thing to the Consumer Protection Ombudsman in Norway

<comment><USER10> Seems like it was bought in the UK, from Amazon.co.uk, so what relevance would Norway have? They're not even in the EU.

(If I import some random device from China, I don't complain to the FTC when it doesn't work.)</comment></comment>


New Dyslexia Documentary Explains Entrepreneur Link - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2011/05/journey_into_dyslexia.html

<comment><USER2> The underlying "study" is chock full of design flaws and interpretation weaknesses mentioned in Peter Norvig's article about how to spot problems with research studies.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

I would look for MUCH more replication of this finding across other data sets before supposing that there is any advantage to dyslexia. (P.S., the incidence rate for dyslexia in the general population reported in the thought-provoking submitted article is just one of several reasons I'm doubtful about the factual claims in the article.)</comment>


70% cheaper Kubernetes cluster on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://carlosbecker.com/posts/k8s-sandbox-costs/ <comment><USER2> Try Google Cloud, it may get even cheaper. [https://thehftguy.com/2016/11/18/google-cloud- is-50-cheaper-...](https://thehftguy.com/2016/11/18/google-cloud- is-50-cheaper-than-aws/) (disclaimer: I work at Google)

<comment><USER3> I hope you prove me wrong, but I question Google's ability to maintain interest in the GCP side-project over the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are going to do the work of setting up and maintaining Kubernetes why not put it on dedicated hardware? It would be ~10x cheaper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because of the burden of maintaining the hardware itself. We also already have everything else on AWS.

<comment><USER4> I mean dedicated hardware you rent from someone else (OVH, Online.net, Hetzner, PhoenixNAP, etc)

Not colocated hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> nice tip on the ingress stuff. We're also spending money with all those ELBs. Thanks!</comment>


Army restricts access to The Guardian in the wake of NSA leaks - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/army-restricts-access-to-the-guardian-in-the-wake-of-nsa-leaks/

<comment><USER2> Please allow me to clarify a few common misperceptions.

#1 When you volunteer to be a soldier you voluntarily waive your rights to free speech in a few specific ways. You may not speak out against the Commander in Chief, you may not be a part of "extremist" political groups (extremist is defined as what your command says it is), you may not participate in many types of demonstrations. You can of course vote however you please.

#2 You are explicitly ordered not to obey unlawful orders and there is a process in place for refusing to follow an unlawful order. If you refuse to follow what you believe to be an unlawful order then you had better hope you are right because if you just feel you are right by the UCMJ and you are in fact not then your life will become miserable.

#3 Being in the military is a day job that bleeds over into many other areas of your life, the computer systems at work contain lots of sensitive information, things that you might find mundane. If you are deployed you may find it convenient to use a computer on NIPR in the TOC for personal use. Use that gov't hardware wrong and you can get in deep doo-doo. As a soldier I'd be happy to know they're helping me not do things on their hardware that would get me in trouble.

#4 Each soldier signs agreements to follow the rules around classified information, including not reading documents they do not have clearance to read.

#5 Being a good soldier requires shouldering an immense amount of responsibility without the frivolity of youthful indignation. In combat arms especially attitude and indignation get people killed. Indignation is reserved for private citizens, so use it on their behalf but don't expect them to rise up in defense of themselves.

#6 If a soldier is truly being wronged he or she knows they can go to IG, and if IG isn't working out they can write a letter to a congressperson and things will actually happen.

#7 If you think the way the military works is ridiculous, I understand, but don't assume that you know better. The military exists to kill people and break things not further social agendas (right or wrong). Most rules and regulations are written in blood, meaning someone had to die or get hurt, or some major loss of expensive or sensitive hardware happened to create that rule which you are ordered to follow.

#8 Most of your comments sound ridiculous to me (as a soldier), it's a different world with a different set of "BIG PROBLEMS" to deal with and you really don't understand it.

<comment><USER3>
        #5 [...] Indignation is reserved for private citizens, so use it on their behalf but don't expect them to rise up in defense of themselves.

Can you elaborate on that? In particular, the "use it on their behalf" and "to rise up in defense of themselves" parts.

...and...

        #7 [...] don't assume that you know better [...] Most rules and regulations are written in blood [...] someone had to die or [...] some major loss of expensive or sensitive hardware [...]

The excerpts I've pointed out in #7 represent a very serious philosophical grey area. Considering that some militaries around the world harness the power to use nuclear weapons to which can destroy entire cities full of people, there is a very broad scope of the definitions which can encompass the word "hardware" in this context.

Weighing the difference between the value of inanimate objects and the value of human lives isn't easily quantifiable, but in the military sense the leap is literally made from an ambiguous grey to starkly contrasted blacks and whites. But we're entering into times and places now, where we rely on these inanimate objects to animate themselves according to (sometimes imperfect) artifacts created by people well-removed from the circumstances of a conflict.

In my humble opinion, given the bizarre abstractions that many highly advanced technologies introduce into all spheres of human behavior and activity, and the rapid pace of continued advancement that has transformed how human beings inter-operate in coordinated behavior throughout the world, it feels incredibly dangerous to me, that not just military personnel, but the world at large is disinformed of precisely how decisions to kill and destroy are even made anymore.

Consider that civilian web traffic is being used to indict and adjudicate killing decisions around the world, which would be considered extra-judicial death sentences in the civilian sphere. Consider that the analysis of such web traffic relies on machine learning and algorithms. Consider that even the people that design the machines that govern civilian web traffic can't even instruct each-other on how to exert explicit willful control over these devices, such that no one person can honestly claim that they have total control over a given device resting in the hands of a casual civilian. Consider that we have invasive software designed to sabotage industrial systems, that have accidentally leaked into civilian infrastructure. Consider that no less than a former general and director of the CIA (which advises the pentagon), had his career ended by a political scandal involving gmail.

There's a very complex and disturbing equation emerging here, and as events continue to take shape, I think the more any one person refrains from questioning decisions made at any level in any hierarchy, the more we place all of our lives in jeopardy. This becomes especially true when we have to now question the very nature of some of our so-called "inanimate" objects.

Sorry to be long winded, but certain ideas can't be summed up briefly and easily. Not trying to be an arm chair general, but everyone, including the all military personnel, needs to carefully understand what it means to trust modern electronic devices of any scale or scope, and especially who might be placing trust in electronics, and at what level.

<comment><USER2> You asked me to elaborate on two statements and then wrote six paragraphs. How exactly would you like me to elaborate on #5 and #7?

<comment><USER3> I was asking/am asking for an elaboration on #5 only.

I think I have an idea of what you mean by it, but it might be better if you spelled out exactly what you're saying with #5, so that I don't misinterpret it. I don't want to put words in your mouth on that one, or paraphrase it unfairly.

The rest was actually about the #7 only.

<comment><USER2> Effective militaries require people who follow orders. Ours in particular functions with a bit of honor, but still it is full of people who have been indoctrinated to (and should) follow orders. Acting as an individual can be very detrimental to the group. This loss of individuality should not be a problem, because in effect we have not lost our individuality through the proxy of our civilian leadership. If the civilian leadership of this country (the elected POTUS and elected members of congress) decide that a thing is in the interest of the people then we should be able to trust this. If the civilian leadership is telling the military to do something it shouldn't, then the citizens should vote those elected persons out of office. No matter who the Commander in Chief is the volunteer members of the military have taken an oath to obey them, and they will. What I'm trying to say is if you want the military to be different, tell the civilian leadership, don't tell the soldiers at the bottom.

<comment><USER3> Okay, I don't disagree with the ideals behind that sentiment. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reason for that is that classified information doesn't magically become unclassified when it is leaked. It keeps it's classification until it is formally declassified.

This has nothing to do with censorship, it has to do with the zeal of some to follow the rule to the letter, even when it makes no sense.

<comment><USER5> _the US Army was restricting access to the UK version of The Guardian 's website_

So you're saying that because it's classified information, trusted Americans (the soldiers) are going to be prevented access but the rest of the world will be able to read it freely. Yes, that makes perfect sense.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying it make sense.

I was serving in Afgh when the Afghan Warlog were leaked, and we were told not to read the released leaks because that would constitute a breach of our 'NDA' or whatever that document we all signed that hold us responsible for proper handling of classified documents.

"Reading" enters their definition of "handling". You can't consume classified info for which you don't have the required security clearance.

<comment><USER6> You were for sure reminded that you where out there giving your with sweat and blood for democracy and free speech.

While others, more important people, told you what to read and explained to you the difference between handling and reading and the meaning of security clearance.

Big brother knows what is best for you.

<comment><USER7> I think you're forgetting that when you enter the military you're submitting yourself to being told what to do. That's part of the contract.

<comment><USER8> You also swear to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. You further face UCMJ action for following unlawful orders. When the soldier is not qualified to know the difference between a lawful and unlawful order, they default to obeying the orders of senior commissioned officers. Thus the directive from the senior most command. The soldier has no choice but to obey a lawful order and this is meant to clarify the lawfulness. This is making the access of certain unclassified, public systems unlawful according to UCMJ. We are in a position to reject this notion and speak out against it. The soldiers are not. We have an obligation here. I do not believe our obligation is to remind soldiers of the contract.

<comment><USER9> The soldiers have zero _right_ to use the Internet at all on work hours.

The government could as easily have said "just focus on _.mil and_.gov sites when you're using government computers for government work".

The military already frequently bans stuff like YouTube when dipshits keep clogging up the network watching Bieber while other people are trying to do work, or things like Reddit.

<comment><USER8> > The government could as easily have said "just focus on .mil and .gov sites > when you're using government computers for government work".

This is a great point. They could have given guidance on avoiding exposure to the leaked documents. Instead, they criminalized the consumption of publicly available information. Keep in mind that a soldier does not keep 'work hours'. They are not off-duty at any point. They are subject to UCMJ, as well as uniform and appearance regulations, even on the weekends. This includes using a personal computer to access the Guardian on the weekend from a Starbucks.

<comment><USER10> I think the point, made earlier in this thread, is that the access of that information was _already_ criminalized, from before it was released (due to it's classified nature), and that releasing it does not automatically unclassify it.

In that light, the blocking of the Guardian may be viewed as preventing soldiers from accidentally performing a criminal act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a secret for all of you not using DoD networks... like any large organization, the military blocks websites all the time. Most for being completely unrelated to _doing work_ or for being completely wasteful of scarce bandwidth in places like Afghanistan (e.g., HD video sites).

It also costs a lot of taxpayer dollars to scrub a machine of classified data when there ends up being spillage, better to avert that problem entirely.

</comment><comment><USER11> Mark my words, if this keeps going we'll soon see ISPs ordered to block some foreign media sites, and see news sites becoming regulated. You know, just to make sure no one credible publishes leaks anymore, for national security and so on.

<comment><USER12> The saddest thing about it is that they do not even need to explain it anymore. People just assume that it's a thing the government can/will do.

Maybe we need to repeat our errors every 3-4 generations to keep them in our society's consciousness.

<comment><USER13> > Maybe we need to repeat our errors every 3-4 generations to keep them in our > society's consciousness.

I think that history shows that this is probably closer to the truth than you meant it to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While reading this, I could not stop thinking about an ostrich burying its head.

<comment><USER15> Then read the original article linked in the first paragraph. It's not that they're trying to pretend the documents weren't leaked. It's that systems are all classified to handle information at a given level, and if you find e.g. TS/SCI information on an FOUO system, then you have to investigate it and take corrective action (which often means wiping or even reclassifying the system). So, rather than deal with a huge mess of pointless investigations of classification violations, they're just trying to keep the data entirely off their systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> tweet from Spencer Ackerman

'DOD wants me to know it's not deciding to block the Guardian's website, its automatic classification content filters are. So there's that.'

[https://twitter.com/attackerman/status/350597454627995648](https://twitter.com/attackerman/status/350597454627995648)

<comment><USER17> The "automatic classification content filters" that can't prevent classified material from getting _out_ , but can prevent it from getting in. What a useless idea.

<comment><USER18> And by "automatic classification content filter" they mean "someone manually added the Guardian to a blacklist".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The USA regime is becoming more and more like China regarding civil liberties, instead of the other way around.

<comment><USER20> Soldiers have different rights than regular civilians. Don't conflate issues reductively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can somebody explain me: How's that not censorship?

<comment><USER22> The Guardian can still publish, is why.

The government telling people in its employ that they can't read the publication is a different matter from the government telling people they're not allowed to publish.

<comment><USER23> The statement isn't so much that employees can't read the news source, but that government computers/network/etc must only interact with classified information via proper mechanisms. I work at a DOE lab and they requested that we not view any such material while at the lab or on lab machines because the operator could receive large fines for mismanagement of classified information, but we're free to read whatever we want when off-site on our own hardware.

<comment><USER24> > but we're free to read whatever we want when off-site on our own hardware.

I would be willing to bet that the agreement you signed to get your security clearance didn't have a 9-to-5 provision. You may not be charged for it, but that doesn't mean you aren't violating that agreement by accessing classified information for which you don't have "need to know".

<comment><USER23> Almost nobody in my division has clearance. As it turns out, assembling non- classified information from various openly published sources can create something that is classified, so we are expected to get review before starting research on something that is nearby to a classified topic. Occasional review of this sort is the closest we typically come to classified work.

Anyway, all employees received an official statement earlier in June warning against viewing those documents using lab computers (including lab computers used off-site), but with no warning against viewing them off-site on personal computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So despite being broadcast around the world for the last few weeks, this information is still considered "secret"??

I would assume any information that is published by a news organization on the world wide web is no longer considered classified. How could it be, without resorting to absurdist policy gymnastics?

Oh, I see, the smart people in military "intelligence" chose absurdity instead.

<comment><USER7> You have to understand that it being released does not change its status. People with security clearances are supposed to do the "right thing" by the terms of their clearance and not read material that they're not cleared to read, regardless if it's leaked or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> DoD has been blocking The Guardian for some time now. This is not in response to the NSA leaks.

<comment><USER27> Relevant: [http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange- Schmidt.html...](http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange- Schmidt.html#1029)

 _[...] So everyone in the UK MoD could no longer read what was on WikiLeaks. Problem solved! [...]_

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Military intelligence?

</comment><comment><USER29> I think Mike Masnick explained it pretty well why this is a pointless and stupid exercise:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130627/22485123649/defen...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130627/22485123649/defense- department-blocks-all-web-access-to-guardian-response-to-nsa-leaks.shtml)

<comment><USER30> He misses the point entirely.

As much as I believe governments over-classify massively, and look on most leeks with glee:

Consider that if an audit reveals any documents believed to be classified on an unclassified Army network, they need to deal with it.

That the documents have leaked is relatively immaterial - presumably a lot of auditing is done automatically, and adding exceptions is a lot riskier than simply blanket blocking anything that contains indications that it's marked classified, secret or similar. Even with manual audits, you don't want to give the people doing the audits too much freedom in accepting documents they _think_ have been publicly disseminated, or the extra workload of trying to assess what info is ok.

Even IF all the documents found have already been published, they'd for security reasons still want to track down _how_ the documents ended up on the unclassified network in case the route was via another leak that potentially might have more documents. Or it might even indicate the _source_ of the leaks.

In other words, it's easier and safer for them to just assume that if a document is marked classified in any way, it shouldn't ever be found on unclassified networks - then they don't have to deal with the mess of trying to ensure it's an indication of a security problem.</comment></comment>