Fake "like" factories – how we reverse engineered facebooks user IDs [video] - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10936-inside_the_fake_like_factories <comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure it's not just parties outside of FB, but FB itself is implicated. Out of curiosity I paid to run ads to promote a page associated with a community group I'm trying to get up and running ("Ski the Great Lakes"); I paid about $10 to run an ad for a few days. It became clear after a day or two that most of the engagement was fake; many Indian and Egyptian etc. accounts completely outside of the targeted demographic and clearly not real accounts.

A couple months later I'm still getting the odd 'like' from these type of accounts despite not running the campaign.

I didn't seek out any third party promotion, just used FB's own promotion tools.

(I also find it objectionable that one can run ads to promote commercial pages, but there's no way to do so for "groups"; if I want to spend some $$ to expand actual community engagement, for some non-commerical purpose, I can't. I can only promote a business.)

<comment><USER4> I don't think Facebook is paying Indian companies to fake like your ad.

Those accounts are probably trying to look legitimate so when they like they're own pages, the signals are trusted.

That said, Facebook should have refunded you obvious non legitimate clicks. Did you report it?

<comment><USER5> You can set your demographic and still get many foreign likes. They are either using proxy service or something similar. FB does little to discourage and I frankly feel enables to drive revenue.

These likes also pollute your account and skew your demographic as they are not sincere. Makes it ultimately difficult to understand your buyer.

<comment><USER3> It's pretty awful; I used to work in ad-tech, and if we had this level of click fraud our customers would have had our head on a platter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote about this a year ago on my blog: [https://planiverse.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/advertising- to-⅔...](https://planiverse.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/advertising-to-⅔-fake- users-on-facebook/)

In short, the fake accounts had several factors in common: \- No or almost no public posts. \- The only public posts being an update of the cover photo and profile photo in 2017. \- The profile photos tended not to be headshots: a photo of a cup of coffee, say, or a landscape. \- Between 20-100 friends. \- Friends tended to be in places like India, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia. \- Their gender didn't match the name or photo about half the time: a "Martha" referred to as "he" by Facebook, for example.

</comment><comment><USER7> Given the power of modern day corporate actors, this is a competitive tactic, morals notwithstanding. I thought it was interesting that one person in the video did not view this as a form of fraud. But I have difficulty seeing how this is not fraud. It doesn't seem likely that everyone knows what is authentically or artificially amplified. Even if people do view the internet social atmosphere around them with caution, it's difficult to find who exactly is behind the amplification and to what extent. On other platforms such as reddit I suspect that there has been further political activity.

For nation-state actors, it is a modern form of agit-prop that is probably superior in both its effectiveness and its ability for fine-grained control. What's interesting is how this approach can utilize the idea of proxy control on so many fronts. In the US, the citizens themselves are being gamed as proxies for foreign voting power. Malicious actors hide behind proxy servers as well, which adds another avenue of difficulty in dealing with the problem. And then there are the botnet overlords.

An instance of a normal person posing with their own identity once is its own bit of fun, but now that commercial and then national actors are involved it's a whole different ball park. If your fridge supports the other candidate and products from its superior overlord should this be the advent of bot rights or total bot enslavement? I partly jest.

I did a quick Google Translate and read the Vice Germany article they referenced and it's an entertaining read. I recommend it. If you want to look it up, the title is "Die Applausfabrik: So funktioniert die Industrie hinter gekauften Likes und Followern".

</comment><comment><USER8> Intriguing. On the other hand Facebook cracks down on new users and requires them to jump through many hoops to access the service.

My wife finally gave in and signed up to Facebook in order to be able to take part in a webinar she already payed for that was staged on the platform just to get her new account blocked for using a different device from the one she signed up.

They wanted her mobile phone number, photo and her ID (think passport).

She didn't want Facebook SPAM on her phone, she already gets bombarded by WhatsApp notifications and sending her photo again didn't help. She got banned for good. Also her IP was blocked so she couldn't sign up again.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been curious about the ?fbcid=lkjwejowijtoirj14j blah blah that fbook adds to urls then you click over.. I think this id is always the same(?) - <USER2> it's another layer of fingerprinting.

I don't use fbook enough for it to be a big issue - and I had assumed it was always a unique string so fbook could track ads, but I am now things it's not different each time and it's another identifier than can be used by god knows how many groups and peoples to track - when I am employing several other systems to stop tracking - this is crazy - is there a way to strip this auto?

<comment><USER10> FBCLID is "Facebook Click ID". It is sent to third party sites as a URL parameter so that if an advertiser complains about fake clicks or something they can provide the IDs and the Facebook advertising team knows which ones they are talking about.

Analytics companies (I think Google and a few others) can pay Facebook to get data on your behalf like what page it came from and the demographics of the visitor.

Google AdWords does this as well on paid clicks with GCLID

<comment><USER9> This is terrible. Someone with access to server logs at a few web sites (or someone that loads a third party resource (ads, analytics, sharethis buttons, etc) onto a few web sites) would be able to know exactly who is coming from fbook and viewing different types of content.. no inside access to fbook or their data required.

I can't believe nothing is auto-stripping this url addition between firefox and ublock origin - must find and tell others.

<comment> _-___________-_ Note that the ID changes for each "click" \- hence "Facebook CLICK ID" \- so you can't tie different clicks back to the same user without access to Facebook's data.

But yes, an extension to strip these (along with `gclid` from Google, `reddit_cid` from Reddit, and so on) would be very welcome.

<comment><USER9> thanks for this - I was confused about it since I have seen a few that looked very similar (first 12 characters of it the same) - did a quick, slightly deeper check into history and see that I do have 2 urls that have the exact same string, but it appears at least in this one case, that it's a click to a short link that forwards (dj-m.ag to djmag dot com) - so the similarity was confusing, and see some doubles freaked me out. now I see at least some differences in several - so I guess unless there is an easy pattern match, or as the title of this hn thread story suggests they may be able to reverse engineer fbook clicks - it's highly concerning to be sure since so many places use third party scripts and assets.

fingers crossed this is good and it gets better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I don't use FB, this sort of thing is why I no longer give any weight at all to "likes", "upvotes", or product ratings.

</comment><comment><USER12> One interesting thing for me was that the majority of buyers seem to be small shops and individuals. Unfortunately they don't present any hard data on this but their examples and one answer in the Q&A at the end really hint in that direction. I wonder if big brands buy likes in a significant numbers as well?

<comment><USER13> Majority of cases is often a poor measure for such things -- what you're interested in is the _significance_ (in the general, not increasingly fraught statistical sense) of the use.

There are more small businesses than large ones. But large business practices are, for the most part, far more meaningful. Some metric of net financial or revenue impacts might be a better (though much more difficult to acquire) metric.

It's kind of the "space aliens land on Earth, who do they encounter" problem. Most _people_ are located in cities, but cities occupy a small fraction (~<1%) of Earth's surface.

By statistical likelihood, your alien is most likely to encounter ... a fish (or plankton). If they find land, they're most likely to find a rural area, and hence rural dweller. Not because that's a statistically accurate sampling of _human population_ but because it's a statistically accurate sampling of _human population areal distribution_.

So: if you look at like-buying campaigns, you'll find, because there are far more small businesses, many more small businesses participating.

If you looked at other metrics -- say, bought likes distributed among all commercial accounts -- you'd probably find the weighting swinging far more toward at least moderate-to-large sized businesses.

Though: for a small business, some early-stage "growth hacking" might be both a modest budget line, a plausible-sounding practice (not necessarily true, but _appearing_ to be true), and something a likewise ethically challenged black- hat SEO marketer could sell.

Then there's the possiblity of joe-job likes -- buying fake likes for a third party in order to present them as fraudulent. Possibly not widespread, but possible, and given the difficulties in attribution, something that's hard to demonstrate one way or the other.

Big brands:

\- Likely have more effective tools.

\- Have other ways of promoting online content without going through fake likes. (Paid "influencers" being one widely-practiced option.)

\- Might be aware of the potential downsides and hence avoid this.

\- Are a much smaller fraction of "like" campaigns, and have a higher "organic" (or at least organic-appearing) rate of user engagements.

There are numerous reports of ... large influencers in the political space ... paying $10k - $100k amounts monthly for social media promotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I mirror'd a copy of the video to Vimeo for those eager to see it and are having problems with upstream. I suspect they're having trouble dealing with the HN-effect.

[https://vimeo.com/382103218/bbe2fe74c3](https://vimeo.com/382103218/bbe2fe74c3)

<comment><USER15> They already mirror their videos on YouTube...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> FB generates a different user id for each FB application id.

"Facebook issues app-scoped user IDs for people who first log into an instance of an app, and page-scoped user IDs for people who first use a Messenger bot. By definition, this means the ID for the same person may be different between these apps and bots."

[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/for- business](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/for-business)

So the 10 billion number the researchers quoted does not necessarily represent individual users.

<comment><USER17> Hi, this is actually incorrect. Facebook uses internal IDs (these are the ones used here, they are valid globally) AND external IDs for Apps and their connected pages. The external IDs have a completely different format and cannot be used to access a profile in the web browser (which is what we were able to do for all of them). We cannot completely rule out, that Facebook assigns two IDs to the same profile. However we think this is highly unlikely. We tried to check for that as far as possible. For example: If I search for a profiles name, that I found via a random ID lookup, and then check that profiles ID, its the same ID that was used in the lookup. We couldn't try this at scale though.

<comment><USER16> It's pretty simple to validate. Create two different FB developer accounts. Then create a Login with FB type app for each account. Then use a third FB account to login to each different app and use the FB Graph api to view the user id in the tokens. It will be different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very curious about what Facebook's response is to this (outside the response mentioned in the talk, which is clearly not sufficient)

Also, if there are any FB employees on here, what do they think of their employer still enabling massive disinformation, astroturfing etc?

To be clear, I'm not blaming individual employees. Just honestly curious how they deal with these issues on their personal moral compass.

<comment><USER19> Frankly I don't understand this kind of "calls to action" directed to company X employeese.

First of all, it is not like FB employees are pushing people into gas chambers in Dachau, FB usage is not obligatory, what I keep telling everyone who complains about FB censorship or privacy abuse - I don't have FB account because of that.

In the same way we might ask to step out Coca Cola employees (say, delivery truck drivers), because drinking Coke is bad for ones health. Or HSBC employees because HSBC was laundering narco cartels money? Or John Deere employees because company forbids farmers to modify tractor software?

All of those practices are immoral and bad, but why chase the weakest, whose income, ability to pay rent, etc. depends on the employer? Why not target those, who are really responsible for that what is happening and who make huge money thanks to that?

I would say it makes much more sense to vote with our money, avoid services and products from companies we consider immoral.

Publicly discourage people from using such services and products, publicly stand against CEOs, shareholders of those companies, spread the knowledge about their personal responsibility for such kind of behavior - this is not that difficult and actually can make a difference. Imagine PR outcome of a conference that would invite Mark Zuckerberg, but no one else would want to attend it? Mark shows up on, say, TED, and all the people leave the room during his talk? In the media-driven World surely this would become "viral" and even Mark with all his money couldn't ignore that easily.

<comment><USER20> >FB usage is not obligatory, what I keep telling everyone who complains about FB censorship or privacy abuse - I don't have FB account because of that.

Wow are you saying that people should take responsibility for their actions and should let others choose freely what to do?

<comment><USER21> Shadow profiles, anyone? The idea that Facebook does not attempt to spy on former or non-users is laughable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oof - what is an "ordinary guy" and why is that person not Asian?

>"you instantly think of mobile phones strung together in multiple lines in front of an Asian woman or man. What if we tell you, that this is not necessarily the whole truth? That you better imagine a ordinary guy sitting at home at his computer? "

<comment><USER23> The sentence, though worded a bit awkwardly, is not implying there is anything strange about Asians, but it is implying that anyone who has dozens of phones in multiple lines is odd.

The many phones is what makes the person "not ordinary."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Likes" are as trusted as the platform that created them.

</comment><comment><USER25> We've become quite adept at pointing out the conflicting incentives, scaling problems vis-a-vis mobs, and hidden rights violations users agree to without realizing the implications. There is, however, another aspect to this we don't talk about much.

Who suffers the most here? It obviously not the social media platforms. They adapt their code and move on. It's not the users, at least in the long run. The problem has been identified and resolved. It's not the people selling likes. They get punished, bail out on some fake accounts and get new ones. Even if you could somehow ban individuals from using platforms, there's a million more people willing to create fake likes from where those came from.

It's the poor, as always. The people who know the system is rigged, know the system has to be gamed in order to make money, and are desperately looking for a way to be competitive and get ahead. So they buy some fake likes, then get destroyed by the social media companies. Perhaps they've already invested a lot of time in their presence before they got desperate. In either case, they're not running fake ids. It's just them. And they don't know enough tech to move on. They get slammed for life for making a poor moral choice. Why? Because they're easy to find and it's easy to punish them.

That's whack.

<comment><USER26> > It's the poor, as always. The people who know the system is rigged, know the > system has to be gamed in order to make money, and are desperately looking > for a way to be competitive and get ahead. > They get slammed for life for > making a poor moral choice. Why? Because they're easy to find and it's easy > to punish them.

This observation has strong parallels with how the poorest are lowest rung of the drug trade - on the street, and bear the highest price of it - death or imprisonment, while the higher level traffickers usually get away with impunity. But the populace feels good because of the disheveled mugshot of the street drug dealer they saw on the evening news.

<comment><USER25> The drug analogy is very interesting. As you may know, 100-ish years ago, drugs were legal. Some people frowned upon them, some did not. Then there was a great moral uprising followed by legislation, then we had the War on Drugs. Finally the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way. So we've seen most of a full cycle.

Continuing your low-level drug dealer example, if that guy that runs the car wash down the street gets banned for using fake likes, why shouldn't he? It was a bad thing to do! We can see him, we know him, he did a bad thing and deserves his punishment. Not only does he deserve his punishment, we should shame him if we can in order to discourage others from contemplating doing the same thing. Maybe if we increase punishment we can see less of that sort of thing around here.

Ever hear how a lot of social/internet companies got started? Sock puppets, fake likes, generated social proof, paying off influencers, and so forth. All the things the little, common folk aren't supposed to do today. It seems there is a moral code for the common folk and a separate one for our betters. All animals are equal ...

This story, where we find all these millions of fake people and likes, is a "drugs on the table" story: big flash, looks like progress is being made, we have heroes and villains, feats of strength and daring, and people can feel like the net is somehow safer. Then things can go on as usual.

<comment><USER26> Another recent example of this are the ICE raids on slaughterhouses rounding up undocumented immigrant workers.

I've yet to hear of a single executive of those companies arrested and put on trial for their employment practices. It's almost as if changing the employment practices wasn't the objective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21910573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21910573)

</comment><comment><USER28> What is worst than being popular? Perhaps bought popularity. A team member decided to boost an instagram post(same FB platform) expecting a few tens of likes to start the virtuous cycle. We got a few thousand likes. It is our most embarrassing post ever and the worst part is that I haven't deleted that post yet. FB and instagram are black mirrors that make me wonder who am I and how low I can stoop.

</comment><comment><USER29> A side note: I really like the linear video timeline thing ccc does.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think the line between was is ethical and isn't is very blurry and there is almost no reason why advertising is ethical.

</comment><comment><USER31> Any textual write up available?

<comment><USER32> Honestly I was underwhelmed. They started by scraping a site that offered paid likes for a list of their "clients" i.e. the pages to be liked. They talked to a couple of people who got paid to like pages. They then reported that platform to Facebook so they blocked it (dick move towards the workers they interviewed imo) then they noticed how Facebook profile IDs are incremental so they deduced a profile's creation date from that using "interpolation" even though it didn't account for various sparious points. They used that to look at the distribution of certain pages' and like services' liker profile age (recent profiles -> fake, older profiles -> genuine account) and that's about it. Not to be cynical but I don't find this groundbreaking at any shape or form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there a way to remain anonymous but verify that the person is a human?

</comment><comment><USER34> There is only one metric that really matters when it comes to using social media as metrics and that is comments. Those are the actual relevant users.

<comment><USER35> A lot of them are bots or paid astroturfers, also.

<comment><USER34> Sure and easy to spot, thats not the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This may rub some folks raw and be pessimistic, but a half a century on this planet has taught me that any solution which relies on "doing the right thing" (ethics) but does not have any rules, laws or other repercussion for abusing it, then (some entity - person or company) will use your altruistic belief to their own gain, ethics be damned.

Just Google "buy reddit upvotes" and the internet is full of folks who will sell you a million Likes for cheap - in my mind, it's just a modern digital con (confidence game) - some of y'all may remember having created self-signed OpenSSL certs with the Snake Oil, Ltd company named in it. :) Even Wikipedia has a page for "there's a sucker born every minute" it's so institutionalized.

<comment><USER37> There are trustless systems though, like bitcoin

Oh btw you can buy hn upvotes too : [https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news- upvote/](https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/)

<comment><USER38> Wow, does that even work - I just assumed that HN was too small a community for misbehaviour to be lost in the noise.

Would love to hear moderators opinions on this?

<comment><USER39> Recently HN seems to have become more heavily targeted. I think bad actors have realized the value of the community here. I am increasingly wary of opening links to unfamiliar domains except in a sandbox environment.

<comment><USER40> This has been going on for quite some time. But the mod(s) do a more than credible job at keeping up with the trash and identifying such behavior.

The bigger problem - in my opinion - is people submitting (unwittingly) content cloned from elsewhere.

There is quite a bit of blogspam that makes it to the front page. Usually even that is taken care of sooner rather than later but for every time it works there is proof that it can work which will drive more people to try to get away with it. We can all help with this issue: ensure that we submit content from original sources and in case content from a cloned source is submitted flag the article and point to the original.

<comment><USER41> > in case content from a cloned source is submitted flag the article and point > to the original

It sure would be nice if there was a way to add a comment to explain why one has flagged an article, so the moderators don't have to guess why it was flagged! As it is, I occasionally add an explanation in a comment or direct email, but it always feels awkward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's also the beauty of capitalism and the creation of new types of work, that can provide value. For every like factory there is a fraud detection startup, so everyone's a winner.

Never mind where the "problem" came from in the first place.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, create the problem and then provide the solution is one of the best business models.

Climate change is also making people rich now due to this logic.

<comment><USER43> It is saving anyone from having to actually innovate. Remember when there was a rush of "but on internet" patents and businesses? Well, now there's a bunch of "but green this time" businesses. Not to say they aren't needed, but redoing the last 100 years of tech isn't really moving us forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> After listening to the video I have a hard time seeing the difference between paying for likes vs paying for ads from an ethical stand point.

Instead of FB, etc getting ad money, that ad money is being spread out to many others instead. It also seems like this might be more cost effective than ads.

I think I would consider this much more ethical than how Google puts the top 3-5 results as "ads" these days. Sometimes I question how long until I have to go to Page 2 to get off the advertised results.

Note - In the above I'm only considering this practice being done by legitimate places sharing fairly accurate or honest content. Such as a business trying to promote a sale or a blog piece.

I would consider paid ads, paid likes, paid comments, etc., to be unethical if the content they're supporting is false.

TLDR: What's the difference between paying Facebook/Google/etc for an ad vs paying someone else to like your post? The 2nd seems like a better solution for a majority of people.

<comment><USER45> People expect that companies pay for their ads to be presented. A big reason for buying likes seems to be deceiving people into believing the posts aren't ads. I'd say it's similar to "sponsored content" that doesn't disclose the fact that it's sponsored

<comment><USER46> I think, at this point it is safe to assume that on any platform where individual content can be promoted via a crowdsourced upvote, including star ratings and "likes", much of what rises to the top is manipulated in some way, often sponsored (paid for) by a commercial interest. This includes FB posts and Amazon reviews, but also comments on reddit and even HN comments and articles. I would love to see internal reports from these companies about what % of each platform's accounts and/or activity they estimate to be automated, botted, farmed, fraudulent, etc. but for obvious reasons nobody seems to be willing to regularly publish this information!

<comment><USER47> Not percentages, but actual numbers of reports and suspicious account challenges: [https://transparency.twitter.com/en/platform- manipulation.ht...](https://transparency.twitter.com/en/platform- manipulation.html)

<comment><USER46> I stand corrected. Great job, Twitter!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The 10 billion active accounts figure can not be right. As someone else mentioned Facebook generates new ID for application users.

<comment><USER17> We don't use application level IDs for this but global IDs. These are unique for users (at least we have no evidence otherwise).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Developers in London - <AUTHOR> Will be moving to London and hoping to get connected to the developer scene in London. Formerly a software engineer myself, I'm building an AI deployment platform and hoping to eventually build a team out once we've successfully raised funds. <comment><USER2> Hit the various meetups and check the venue calendars of the big coworking spaces. London is big enough, there is one for every programming language, framework, industry. [https://www.meetup.com/London- DevOps/](https://www.meetup.com/London-DevOps/) [https://www.meetup.com/LondonAI/](https://www.meetup.com/LondonAI/) [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/travel-technology-trends- tick...](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/travel-technology-trends- tickets-53948354982)

The local [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanyrd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanyrd) (like gumtree vs the US Craigslist) got acquired by eventbrite.

We run [https://thegeomob.com/](https://thegeomob.com/) which is industry specific (geography, open data).</comment>


Ask HN: How to effectively deal with recruiters? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Golang developer based in western Europe with around 5 years professional experience.
I frequently receive unsolicited messages from recruiters, mostly on Linkedin, introducing this and that amazing job opportunity. Right now I'm happy where I am, but I won't mind hearing them out if said opportunity is especially compelling.
I'm not sure how to engage with them in an effective way. My goals are basically two:
1. avoid wasting time
2. avoid coming across as arrogant - they are doing their job and their time isn't worth less than mine.
To know if their opportunity is compelling I need to get some key information upfront, e.g. what's the client's budget. I don't want to even start discussing anything if it turns out that the client pays 25% less of what I'm making today. Of course money is not my only concern, but it's still a very easy way, and a very relevant one!, to filter out jobs that have no chance whatsoever to fit my definition of compelling. Another deal-breaker would be a company that doesn't allow any form of remote work. Also some of them absolutely want to talk over the phone and I don't feel comfortable with that.
So what's your strategy for dealing with recruiters? Do you demand employer information upfront? Do you ignore them? How do you interact? Thanks! <comment><USER2> My advice:

1) Don't ever interact with MPC recruiters. These are recruiters who do not have a contractual agreement with a client in place and want to use your resume to sell their own agency to new clients. 100% wastes of time.

1a) Don't do a lot of legwork (background checks, reference checks, official documents, etc.) before they even submit you. This is a way of filtering out MPC recruiters who are vetting you to become sales material for THEM, not for the job.

1b) Send them your resume in PDF, not DOC form. If they insist on DOC then this is a sign that you may be working with an MPC recruiter.

1c) If they insist on knowing what your current salary is, say you'll tell them if they reveal their bill rate for an equivalent candidate for this client. Again, this is another way of filtering MPC recruiters who will have no way of answering this because they don't have any clients.

1d) Build up a good spam filter to filter out MPC recruiters you've identified. They all share tactics and templates, so they're pretty easy to spot.

Essentially, just be a nice person and avoid MPC recruiters.

<comment><USER3> What are MPC recruiters?

<comment><USER2> "Most placeable candidate". It's just the insider term for the strategy I described above where you find a good candidate and then use them as bait to dangle in front of clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> what stops these people from downloading mine or anyone's resume off LinkedIn and use that for their purposes? they wouldn't even need to bother contacting me first

<comment> toper-centage Nothing. And they do already convert your PDFs to Doc for editing, often destroying part of your layout. At one job interview for a frontend developer position, I was very embarrassed to learn that the idiot recruiter had done that to my CV. My interviewer jokingly showed me how my CV looked all messed up - wrong alignment, missing icons, mixed up fonts, weird borders. All this because the recruiter wanted to remove my email address from the document...

<comment><USER4> Well, one could print the PDF on paper and then scan it as image, it will probably loose some resolution/detail, the layout will stay, unless the recruiter uses OCR, and then you will have, besides a messed layout also several typos ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't ignore them, but if I'm not looking I wait a week to get a batch of messages and then answer with a short copy-pasted reply. I don't think they mind, since they do it themselves.

If you're considering depending on compensation, I'd be upfront and tell them that. Ask for salary and if it's a remote position in your reply. Tell them you're busy for the phone but give them your email.

About talking on the phone, unfortunately my experience is that the ones with the best opportunities want to interview you themselves before referring. A recruiter from Germany even asked me technical stuff about my GitHub projects, and after that she decided to refer to an even better company.

<comment><USER6> If you don't mind - What sector are you in/is your recruiter working in? Really good recruiters (such as yours it seems) are really scarce. Would you mind sharing the contact of her on LinkedIn/Xing (Here or per mail (see my profile))?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I politely tell them where I am at in my career, what I would need from a position to make it worth discussing, and ask them whether they believe the opportunity they had in mind makes it worth talking to each other.

I don't share details about my salary - I just say I'm paid above market and would still need a raise. This weeds out most run-of-the-mill recruiters just looking to fill your average coder job. The ones who really have a good opportunity will tell me so and we'll talk. The one who don't usually still appreciate being told where I am at, so they know when I would want to talk.

I usually also tell them that if the current opportunity isn't a match, call me again in 6 months anyway, just in case my current project doesn't go well. This gives me a nice safety net if my job changes, and over time builds up a decent network of recruiters that I can just write back to if I ever were to want a change.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think nothing wrong in polite initial reply about the budget/pay/salary upfront with a firm notion that without that information no further conversation is going to take place.

This will weed out flakes and save time for everyone.

<comment><USER9> Has that worked for anyone here? The most I get after answering a cold email/LinkedIn message with my salary requirements is something along the lines of "that's doable," and finding out later the client had an appetite for a senior with the budget for an entry level.

<comment><USER8> Don't give the number first, insist of getting the number or no further reply.

Typical recruiter (or any saleman for than matter) wants to drag you into personal sales dance conversation - the key is to avoid wasting your time until they open the cards.

Just plain ignore typical "it depends on level", "lots of upside", "super competitive", "willing to match" or whatever they come up with and wait until specific reply upon your specific request.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My company is expanding an paying recruitment bonuses. So I try to recruit THEM. I mean our recruitment dept. is hiring too! Fantastic opportunity, signing bonus, etc. And it's all actually true too.

How much are you making? I can double that!

I've made a couple good checks and a the rest stop bugging me.

</comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like you have an idea of what opportunities are interesting to you. Refine that some more and come up with a copy paste response for recruiters. If they do not reply with useful information, then just end the conversation. Most recruiters are terrible at their job, the ones that aren't will engage you meaningfully.

Also, yes many will try to engage you on the phone and there's not really any way around that if you're starting a relationship with them. They need to get a feel for you before they can submit you to clients and phone screens are just an efficient means to do so.

</comment><comment><USER12> Talk to them, briefly. Don't burn bridges, but also don't waste your time (and theirs). When you identify a good one, hang on to their contact info.

How do you identify a good one? Well, I once got called by a headhunter, whom somebody gave my name to. One question he asked is where I was currently working. I told him. He said that he couldn't recruit me, because his company placed people where I was working. A recruiter with ethics? I put his name in my permanent file. If I decide I'm looking for work, he's getting a call.

</comment><comment><USER13> I simply don't deal with them anymore. The few times I've actually taken offers from them, the role has been misrepresented or ended up being in a rushed org that torpedoed their own culture.

More recently, I had a recruiter sabotage my interview process by telling me an interview was "non technical" (it ended up being 100% technical) and another time deliberately setting salary too high and pissing away a good opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER14> Don't be afraid to speak your mind to them and ask them whatever you want. They only treat you as a resource so why not treat them the same? Chances are it's some former waitress with 2 months experience in recruiting that learnt all the buzzwords and is trying to test you even though she has no idea about technology and is just trying to make her commission.

</comment><comment><USER15> > they are doing their job and their time isn't worth less than mine.

Is that second part really true, though?

As a thought experiment, suppose we're talking about scam-running telemarketers rather than recruiters. Would you still consider _their_ time as valuable as your own?

If not, then what's the critical distinction between them and telemarketers who spam everyone that matches some LinkedIn query?

</comment><comment><USER16> > but I won't mind hearing them out if said opportunity is especially > compelling.

ASK them to forward you a full and complete Position Summary including company name, reporting relationships, and compensation structure-- for your review.

If there's a match-up you'll be happy to engage in further dialogue or provide professional referral.

</comment><comment><USER17> If they don't tell me up front who they're recruiting for and how much the client is paying, I email back and say, "I appreciate your interest, but I am content with my present engagement."

</comment><comment><USER18> ignore them</comment>


LHCb discovers matter-antimatter asymmetry in charm quarks - <AUTHOR> https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/lhcb-discovers-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-in-charm-quarks <comment><USER2> "The idea that matter and antimatter particles behave slightly differently is not new and has been observed previously in studies of particles containing strange quarks and bottom quarks. What makes this study unique is that it is the first time this asymmetry has been observed in particles containing charm quarks."

<comment><USER3> What is the difference and what was this information blocking us from discovering?

<comment><USER4> So we have these matter particles that are defined by three numbers, a weak hypercharge Y in the set {1, 1/3, -1/3, -1}, a weak isospin T in the set {1/2, -1/2}, and a 'generation' in the set {0, 1, 2}. The electric charge is a derived quantity Q = T + Y/2 that does not depend on generation. For generation 0 we have the particles,

          T     Y     Q    name
        -----|-----|-----|</comment></comment></comment><comment>----
        -1/2   -1    -1    electron
        -1/2  -1/3  -2/3   antiüp quark
        -1/2   1/3  -1/3   down quark
        -1/2    1     0    antineutrino
         1/2   -1     0    neutrino
         1/2  -1/3   1/3   antidown quark
         1/2   1/3   2/3   up quark
         1/2    1     1    positron

The weak interaction has to preserve these quantum numbers, so for example when a free neutron (up-down-down) turns into a proton (up-up-down) and an electron, as it will do if you leave it alone for about 15 minutes, then one of the down quarks is turning into an up quark and an electron. This preserves electric charge but it does not preserve the underlying quantum numbers, so it requires emitting an antineutrino. [The fact that you need 4 particles total is part of why it takes a long time on the order of minutes; in this case the Feynman diagram vertexes only have three lines going in/out and so creating a 4-particle state requires two of them, in the middle you have a W- boson, (T=-1, Y=0).]

And then there are some things which are not present but fit the quantum numbers, for example many grand unified theories predict something which is spectacularly unobserved called "proton decay" where an up (1/2, 1/3) could hypothetically annihilate with a down (-1/2, 1/3) to generate an antiüp (-1/2, -1/3) plus a positron (1/2, 1)—this would manifest as a proton decaying into a neutral pion (up-antiüp) plus a positron, which would presumably be hugely energetically favored (protons have several times the mass of pions and elecron/positron masses are negligible)... this sort of decay does not have a way to happen in the standard model because there is no interim (0, 2/3) particle to sit between the two vertices.

Anyway, the next generations up are basically copies of the same 8 matter particles, with "electron" replaced by "muon" and then "tau", "neutrino" replaced by "mu neutrino" and then "tau neutrino," "down" replaced by "strange" and then "bottom", and "up" replaced by "charm" and then "top". The down and up quarks typically cannot decay into anything without some antidown or antiüp quarks sitting around to annihilate with them, though again, this is not 100% obvious from the table above, as the case of proton decay shows. So that we have observed this with strange and bottom quarks is two out of our four possibilities.

So what this makes very clear is that the CP-violations are _not_ something specific to the (-1/2, 1/3) / (1/2, -1/3) antiparticle pairs that are called (anti-)down, (anti-)strange, (anti-)bottom in the three generations. It is not some sort of physics phenomenon that requires these two signs to be opposite; it has now been observed in the (-1/2, -1/3) / (1/2, 1/3) antiparticle pairs, too. Assuming that the presence in the bottom quark means that this asymmetry crosses generation lines, then we are all but assured that the much harder to measure top quarks would also display the asymmetry, and it is something very fundamental, rather than some as-yet-unappreciated aspect of the coupling of isospin to hypercharge.

<comment><USER5> Thank you so much for this. Not only did this description help me understand what this discovery actually meant, it clarified and tied together a lot of what I have been trying to learn through occasional reading and youtube videos on the subject. The table of particles and associated values and the description of the rules of decay bridged a huge gap I've had in understanding all of this for a really long time.

When you say "The fact that you need 4 particles total is part of why it takes a long time on the order of minutes...", does it take a long time because there are significantly fewer decays (described by Feynman diagrams?) from a lone neutron that result in a proton, anti-neutrino, and electron than there are decays that end up back at a neutron?

<comment><USER4> So like it wouldn't be a decay if it went neutron → neutron, if that makes sense. There is one "main" diagram which goes neutron → neutron and it looks like a straight line with no vertices and it is by far the most probable thing, most neutrons just stay neutrons.

So there are two reasons that a free neutron outside of a nucleus takes so long to become a proton, and you can kind of visualize it like pulling a molecule of air through an air filter or so, the first reason that this particular setup takes so long is that this particular air filter is really thick, and the second reason is that the fan you're using is not very strong.

The "wall being thick" has to do with this intermediate particle, and that's what I was alluding to above. The wall is thick because you need to create this W- boson. The problem is that this boson has about twice the mass of the neutron itself, call it Bohb because it's a Big Ol' Honking Boson. There's just nowhere near the energy in the system to create this thing directly. And in quantum mechanics that is _okay_ because quantum systems can "tunnel" through states that they cannot directly actually occupy: but it generally takes longer and longer the more and more energy you need to borrow, and this is a lot of energy to borrow.

The other thing is the weak blower, and that has to do with what "pressure" or "energy difference" drives the decay. In this case the driver is the mass difference: down-quarks are just intrinsically about 2 MeV heavier than up- quarks and that is enough to cover the 0.5 MeV of an electron and a neutrino., so you have something like 1.5 MeV left over to spread across the universe. By itself that number doesn't mean anything, though—what means something is the ratio of the initial to the final masses, which is something like 939.57 MeV : 938.78 MeV, so the final mass is only 0.08% lighter than the initial mass. The reaction rate goes like some high power—a fifth or sixth power—of this ratio, so when one side has like half the mass of the other side then the reaction happens very very fast because there is so much pressure driving it. But in this case the masses are so close to equal that the reaction takes something like hundreds of times longer than you might otherwise expect from just the thickness of the barrier alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quote:

These observations have confirmed the pattern of CP violation described in the Standard Model by the so-called Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) mixing matrix, which characterises how quarks of different types transform into each other via weak interactions. The deep origin of the CKM matrix, and the quest for additional sources and manifestations of CP violation, are among the big open questions of particle physics. The discovery of CP violation in the D0 meson is the first evidence of this asymmetry for the charm quark, adding new elements to the exploration of these questions.

</comment><comment><USER7> Unrelated, but

> Precision studies of antihydrogen atoms, for example, have shown that their > characteristics are identical to hydrogen atoms to beyond the billionth > decimal place.

the wording for this is a bit ambiguous, since it's not clear if the decimal place is for the billionths or if it's the actual billionth place to the right of the decimal point.

<comment><USER8> I guess to one billionth, because nothing can be measured to billionth decimal place.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I'm sure that's what they meant, but I still feel like it could have been worded better…

<comment><USER9> Agree. Also, "billion" is ambiguous across countries. So, 10^{-9} would have been great (or is it 10^{-12}?).

<comment><USER10> In which countries is 10^12 still billion?

My immediate research only renders that it used to be this in British English

<comment><USER11> Every non-English speaking one, in my very anecdotal and limited experience. I've never seen it used like that outside the US and sometimes UK.

No offense meant but it's usually shown as an example of the "Americans can't count" stereotype: 1,000,000,000 is a thousand millions.

<comment><USER12> Both systems are broken. The British system is a bit more nominally consistent, but the names are poor; million and milliard are stupidly phonetically similar for what they are (generally we prefix those differences, probably because it's the ends of words that tend to get slurred, hence we have milli-meters and not meter-millis), and staggering the names out two chunks of 3 at a time doesn't really make much sense. It isn't very user- focused.

The American naming system uses roots more clearly and doesn't have the weird pointless bundling together of two groups of 3, _but_ it has a bizarre off-by- one issue... and not the usual 0->1 or 1->0 issue, but a 1->2 issue. For consistency, the order ought to be "ones, millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions", so that the prefix on the digit counter indicates the number of factors of 1000 in question, from zero, one, bi=two, tri=three, etc. However, "thousands" get stuck in there wrecking the whole thing up, so where the names say you have 1 group of 1000, you in fact have two, and so on.

It's not an imperial vs. metric sort of thing, it's more an arguing which is the "real" temperature, Fahrenheit or Celsius, when in fact the answer is basically neither because the "real" temperature scale ought to have its 0 at absolute zero, like Kelvin [1] or the lesser-known Rankine [2], which is basically "Kelvin, except the degree is 1 degree Fahrenheit". These are both more "real" because now you can add and subtract temperatures meaningfully, which you can't do with either of Fahrenheit or Celsius. And likewise, neither number system is abstractly all that great. But then, that's part of why we have scientific notation.

[1]: Which I just learned is about to be redefined, as of May 20th, 2019: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin#2019_redefinition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin#2019_redefinition)

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

<comment><USER13> What's wrong with the long scale? It's pretty consistent. Each name is the last times 1000, each new prefix is 1 000 000 times the previous one, and each -iliard is 1000 times -ilion with same prefix.

        milion = 10^6, miliard = 10^9
        bilion = 10^12, biliard = 10^15
        trylion = 10^18, tryliard = 10^21
        kwadrylion = 10^24, kwadryliard = 10^27, ...

Compared to that American way is just insane (as always).

But I agree that writing 1.23 * 10^6 is preferable.

<comment><USER12> To put what I said another way, it emphasizes the wrong things. Nobody cares how many collections of 6 digits something has. 3 digits are what people care about. (Except where they care about 4, or actually vary the number of digit groupings they care about depending on where they appear, but then, this debate has no meaning to them anyhow.)

It's consistent, but it's consistent with something that doesn't match people's usage.

Both systems are roughly equally broken, so either side mocking the other for their number system is a display of parochialism above and beyond the usual levels one would see.

<comment><USER14> > Nobody cares how many collections of 6 digits something has. 3 digits are > what people care about.

I respectfully offer the Lakh [1] (1,00,000) and the Crore [2] (1,00,00,000) for other things people care about. :)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ainar-g 99.9999% is almost 5σ, right? Have we finally discovered New Physics?

Edit: The CERN[1] article says that it is in fact 5.3σ.

[1]: [https://home.cern/news/press-release/physics/lhcb-sees- new-f...](https://home.cern/news/press-release/physics/lhcb-sees-new-flavour- matter-antimatter-asymmetry)

<comment><USER15> C-symmetry is already broken in SM, so I guess we haven't.

<comment><USER16> Not only C: even CP!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am unfamiliar with the concept of CP violation, and this description was really helpful:

[https://www.nevis.columbia.edu/daedalus/motiv/cp.html](https://www.nevis.columbia.edu/daedalus/motiv/cp.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a great result and a real milestone in particle physics. CERN is really ablaze with the news (seriously, there was a fire: [https://i.imgur.com/i8nkPMR.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/i8nkPMR.jpg))

Stay tuned for more high-profile LHCb results at Moriond tomorrow and on Tuesday.

<comment><USER19> > CERN is really ablaze with the news (seriously, there was a fire

Will you be here all week?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Live seminar [https://webcast.web.cern.ch/event/i807176](https://webcast.web.cern.ch/event/i807176)

Paper [https://cds.cern.ch/record/2668357/files/LHCb- PAPER-2019-006...](https://cds.cern.ch/record/2668357/files/LHCb- PAPER-2019-006.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> So, does this disprove all of supersymmetry? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersymmetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersymmetry)

<comment><USER22> No, supersymmetry and charge-parity symmetry are different.

<comment><USER21> Ah, thanks.

"CPT Symmetry" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPT_symmetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPT_symmetry)

"CP Violations" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation)

"Charm quark" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charm_quark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charm_quark) :

> _The antiparticle of the charm quark is the charm antiquark (sometimes > called anticharm quark or simply anticharm), which differs from it only in > that some of its properties have equal magnitude but opposite sign._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would be very exciting if the Standard Model can't explain this.

<comment><USER20> _In summary, this Letter reports the first observation of a nonzero CP asymmetry in charm decays, using large samples of D⁰ → K⁻K⁺ and D⁰ → π⁻π⁺ decays collected with the LHCb detector. The result is consistent with, although at the upper end of, SM expectations, which lie in the range 10⁻⁴–10⁻³ [8–13]. Beyond the SM, the rate of CP violation could be enhanced. Unfortunately, present theoretical understanding does not allow very precise predictions to be made, due to the presence of strong-interaction effects which are difficult to compute. In the next decade, further measurements with charmed particles, along with possible theoretical improvements, will help clarify the physics picture, and establish whether this result is consistent with the SM or indicates the presence of new dynamics in the up-quark sector._

from the paper (links in my other comment). SM = standard model.

<comment><USER24> I think a layman summary of this is "it seems consistent with Standard Model, although at the upper end of it, but we're not sure yet."</comment></comment></comment>


FDA Agrees to New Trials for MDMA as Relief for PTSD Patients - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2016/11/29/us/ptsd-mdma-ecstasy.html <comment><USER2> The fact that one of the doctors in the article compares the dangers to opioids is misleading or misguided. MDMA has an exceptionally small potential for long term abuse when compared to most other drugs. Despite having studied brain damage in chronic users (not very many of these), I doubt the doctor has ever personally done opiates and MDMA. Anyone who has had any significant experience with both would laugh at the comparison when it comes to potential for abuse.

<comment><USER3> > _I doubt the doctor has ever personally done opiates and MDMA_

Well it's a good thing that's not a prerequisite to getting someone's opinion.

I'm all for sensible drug policy, and you may be right that MDMA and opioids are completely different classifications of substances, but the fact that the doctor hasn't personally done both is no reason to dismiss his statements out of hand.

<comment><USER2> You're right. Although I am much more likely to trust someone who has had significant experience with both (especially if they have also managed to become a doctor or something similar).

I don't have much information, but based on the article, I believe this doctor is biased by the fact that he has focused only on the very rare cases of individuals which develop an obsession with the drug and continue to use it even after it's primarily sought-after effects have stopped working. If you use MDMA every day for a prolonged time, then you are definitely going to get brain damage.

The reason this generally isn't a problem with MDMA is that, long before this happens, you will use up all your serotonin (temporary) and the drug essentially stops working, even with increased dosage. This usually means that people stop taking it before any major damage is done. Contrast this with opiates, where you can keep upping the dose and keep the high going indefinitely over a prolong time (until you overdose).

I dismiss the doctors statements not just because he hasn't done these drugs himself, all I need to do is look at the number of heroin addicts in rehab vs the number of chronic MDMA users.

<comment> nv-vn Is there any proof that serotonin issues are temporary with MDMA? I've heard of people having severe long-term consequences after frequent (> once a week) use for as little as 3 months. Also, I disagree about the potential for abuse. I've heard of many people abusing MDMA, with daily use for long periods of time (all of which have reported memory issues and other permanent problems).

<comment><USER2> There aren't many good studies in the US precisely because of it's scheduling under the DEA. But serotonin levels are definitely restored. Most estimates range anywhere from a few days to six weeks before serotonin levels are fully restored. Not that permanent damage is impossible with frequent or high enough doses. More than once a week is definitely too much. More than once every month is probably still too much if you want to be safe. Most recommend 2-3 months for maximum safety.

I don't believe there are 'many' people who take MDMA daily for long periods of time, unless they only want negative side effects. They definitely aren't getting the same experience after the third day, regardless of how much they take. You only have so much serotonin. Perhaps these people are not actually taking what they think they are?

Here is an article about a decent study from the UK:

[http://newatlas.com/study-effects-ecstasy/10995/](http://newatlas.com/study- effects-ecstasy/10995/)

<comment> nv-vn Obviously it's the minority (<1%) of users who are abusing the drug at anywhere near that level. I'm sure that the positive effects are long gone by that point, but I think people who abuse to that extent have become dependent on MDMA in order to feel normal (or have convinced themselves that this is the case). While I'm sure most of these people aren't consuming pure MDMA, there's likely some cases where it is still what's really being used.

Anyways, I've seen many people claiming to have done this (or having friends who have done this) on Reddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/45sgbe/daily_mdma_us...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/45sgbe/daily_mdma_use_permanent_brain_damage_or_not/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/1ldmka/so_really_how...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/1ldmka/so_really_how_bad_is_frequent_mdma_use/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/MDMA/comments/2765jb/i_used_100mg_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MDMA/comments/2765jb/i_used_100mg_of_mdma_every_day_for/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/MDMA/comments/211jkj/ive_been_rolli...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MDMA/comments/211jkj/ive_been_rolling_almost_daily_for_the_past_3/)

Lots of these cases may be false, but there still seems to be at least a few real cases of this. Of course, that's no reason to make the substance illegal (and especially not a reason to stop studies attempting to use it). Better regulation as a controlled substance is probably the best solution (i.e. enforcing the 2-3 month rule by only allowing MDMA to be purchased at those intervals).

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't put too much stock in these Reddit testimonials. I agree, there are definitely cases where individuals have used MDMA chronically, but I believe the percentage is much, much less than 1% of users.

There are also cases of individuals who believe they need to eat glass on a daily basis.

Anyone can convince themselves of anything if they want to believe it badly enough. I would be willing to bet that most of these chronic users would not exist in the first place had they sufficient knowledge about the drug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having taken MDMA several times purely for recreational use, it doesn't surprise me at all that used correctly, it could help treat conditions like PTSD.

It is an incredibly powerful drug and I genuinely believe since taking MDMA i've been a much more empathetic & loving person.

Whilst the high may only last a few hours, you tend to remember the emotions you experienced quite well.

</comment><comment><USER5> How about letting consenting adults free of doing what they want to their own body and legalizing all drugs?

<comment><USER6> I used to think this, but I'm not so sure anymore.

I think probably about 30-40% of the population would be able to make adequate life decisions and control the use of drugs to the point where it would be recreational use only, and they would otherwise be able to live a productive and positive life.

But what about the other 60%? The majority of the public make bad long term decisions in order to get a quick payoff, examples: Payday loan companies, Fast food / obesity, binge drinking, credit cards .. these are (not absolute) but examples of how people "just cant wait" for the long term payoff and take 'fix' and run.

Having > 50% of the population addicted to drugs would be disastrous.

And another point: What of the health costs of all of these consenting adults? Here in the UK, public health care is free though the NHS - should society as a whole bare the cost of the drug addicted and unproductive majority?

I do actually think legalisation is the answer, but I'm not sure how to answer these tough questions first ...

Maybe drugs should be legal but very expensive?

What do you think?

<comment><USER7> Let's put your thoughts into perspective.

There is no drug drought currently. Anyone that wants to get high can. Current market is not regulated. Anyone can become a seller with a little effort. Sellers are not regulated.

We do not see an addiction rate of 60%, even with the ready availability of drugs from an unregulated market.

Rat Park [1] was an experiment that revealed that everything we know about addiction is wrong. I recommend reading up on it.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg)

<comment><USER8> I don't believe the "anyone that wants to get high can" mantra. This misses a very important part of the equation which is that they must also be willing to face the consequences and repercussions of said decision including up to loss of freedom, financial costs and deal with the sketchy providers. In addition, it does not take into account the social stigma still associated with some drugs and/or usage in general. I know people who have used all manner of drugs who will talk pejoratively of individuals who still continue to consume, and have not 'straightened out'.

Even with drugs that are pretty available like alcohol, alcoholics have to curb their desire and usage based on many external constraints. And there is definitely no alcohol drought, but there's also no permissive free for all for consumption.

<comment><USER9> You're mental model makes some strange and seemingly contradictory assumptions. It seems like your assuming that would be drug users are completely irrational when weighing the intrinsic consequences of drug-use like large ill-health effect, and great risk of addiction, but are very rational when weighing the legal costs of drugs use. Maybe you can help explain this? I would be surprised if the legal costs were even a third of the long term damage done by addiction, not to mention behavioral studies tell us its not the magnitude of the punishment but the likelihood. And judging from people I've met hard drugs are more likely to ruin lives through addiction* than the legal system.

Also when people argue for legal drugs the vast majority are arguing for end- users to have the ability to purchase drugs through a regulated system, not the ability to air drone a pound of heroin to your house at a moments notice. The two most important regulations in my mind should be age restriction(to stop children) and a waiting period(like 3 months to stop impulse buys).

*Knew 4-6 people over my life who had their lives ruined through hard drug use, and no-one who's life was ruined through the direct legal consequences of hard drug use.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't trying to say all factors apply equally to all people.

Some factors are completely negligible for some users. For example, individuals coming from a high income bracket rarely face significant legal costs due to their drug use. However, the story is much different for those from lower income brackets. None of the people I know that use drugs have faced any legal problems, but people are detained for carrying drugs. Just because I'm not witness to it, does not mean that cost does not exist for some non-negligible part of the population.

In another vein, for some people the legal repercussions are an issue due to their personalities or circumstances (drug testing at work).

I was merely saying that you could want the drugs, but there are still some strong forces (that pull on people differently) that make this decision far from frictionless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.veteranstoday.com/2008/02/11/breaking-the-drug- ta...](http://www.veteranstoday.com/2008/02/11/breaking-the-drug-taboo-group- of-traumatized-veterans-get-experimental-ecstasy/)

MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy: How Different is it from Other Psychotherapy? (PDF) [http://www.maps.org/news- letters/v23n1/v23n1_p10-14.pdf](http://www.maps.org/news- letters/v23n1/v23n1_p10-14.pdf)

[http://www.maps.org/news/media/6230-the-veteran- psychedelics...](http://www.maps.org/news/media/6230-the-veteran-psychedelics- for-ptsd-what-a-long-strange-trip-it-s-been)

<comment><USER10> In the UK Gulf War Vets are being given psychiatrists, not the treatment they want or has been demonstrated to offer help, it's a fairly shameful situation with a history to match, if we want to go around starting wars we need to factor in the long term costs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Divorced, alcoholic and at times suicidal, he had tried almost all the accepted treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder: psychotherapy, group therapy and nearly a dozen different medications.

Once again I have to advocate for EMDR, which is not mentioned here at all. There are very few accepted treatments. Most drugs will only treat symptoms, not the underlying condition.

<comment><USER12> Personally, I've seen multiple people close to me with trauma histories (some complex) benefit hugely from EMDR. It deserves to be much more widely known and accessible. Other related (and similarly structured) possibilities include brainspotting ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainspotting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainspotting)) and yoga nidra ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_nidra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_nidra)).

While I'm greatly in favor of studying and using psychoactive substances to help people heal in their lives, they're at most a supportive component in an overall treatment strategy. Our society's preference to just medicate problems away doesn't solve things over the long term.

<comment><USER13> > While I'm greatly in favor of studying and using psychoactive substances to > help people heal in their lives, they're at most a supportive component in > an overall treatment strategy. Our society's preference to just medicate > problems away doesn't solve things over the long term.

All of these studies are treating the psychedelics as a tool for greatly enhancing therapy. No doctors advocating for their use are suggesting that troubled people should be dropping a bunch of acid at parties on the weekends. The general idea is to work with a patient to understand what their ailments are through talk therapy sessions; then to have a comfortable, controlled setting with doctors and therapists present to help guide the patient through the drug experience, assisting them through any difficult portions; and then to follow up with further sessions of talk therapy.

The "LSD will cure the world" craze died out with Timothy Leary, and with good reason--subsequent advocates (albeit with a few exceptions) have been more level-headed about these things acting as consciousness amplifiers that can go flying off in any direction unless they are channeled into helpful ones. The revival of interest that is taking place now follows a much more measured approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The researchers are so optimistic that they have applied for so-called > breakthrough therapy status with the Food and Drug Administration, which > would speed the approval process. If approved, _the drug could be available > by 2021_. (my emphasis).

The expedited process takes _three_ years. No wonder the only way that most drugs get approved is because the drug is patented and the company that brings them to market can expect huge profits. Existing unpatentable (cheap) drugs usually don't have a backer with deep pockets to go through this process. Our health care market seems to offer perverse incentives at every turn designed to increase cost and decrease effectiveness.

<comment><USER13> Much (all?) of this work is being funded by MAPS (www.maps.org), which is a non-profit organization that relies on donations for its continued existence. If this research and advocacy is important to you, please consider donating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Although MDMA was first synthesized by Merck in Darmstadt in Germany in 1914 - [https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalD...](https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=DE&NR=279194C&FT=D#) \- apparently nobody has yet erected a museum. Surely it would be a tourist draw in Europe?

</comment><comment><USER16> From the outside, I'm curious if anybody here has any comment on what effect (if any) a Trump presidency could have on this and related research/progress?

In all the noise of the election run, I didn't any position on controlled substances and medical research coming from Trump's side.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds good. I know that a lot PTSD patients feel that they are neglected.

</comment><comment><USER18> Calling MDMA "Ecstasy" seems like bad journalism. While Ecstasy should contain MDMA it often has all kinds of other things in it.

Nobody would ever allow the use of Ecstasy as a treatment drug.

<comment><USER19> As with many illegal street drugs, there is no standard definition of Ecstasy. It's whatever a drug dealer decides to sell you and/or call it It is certainly not bad journalism to call it that. That's what MDMA pills were known as in the late 90's/ early 2000's.

Also, call me an old timer, but I refuse to call it Molly

<comment><USER20> > It's whatever a drug dealer decides to sell you and/or call it

That's the point. Ecstacy does not have a precise definition. MDMA does. Given this is a trial, it should be labeled what it is.

<comment><USER21> OK, I have friends of friends who say they take 'MDMA' on a Saturday night out. Is it really pure MDMA, or is it just what we would have called Ecstasy in the past?

<comment><USER2> MDMA (or Molly) usually comes as a cloudy off white crystal or crystalline powder (if broken up).

Ecstasy comes as a pressed pill (presumably containing some MDMA, with the possibility of other drugs/adulterants and fillers).

The only way to know if they were taking pure MDMA in either case is to test it:

Potentially NSFW: [https://dancesafe.org/product/complete-set-of- all-8-testing-...](https://dancesafe.org/product/complete-set-of- all-8-testing-kits/)

<comment><USER22> To be honest, the only way to _truly_ know if one is taking pure MDMA is to run a _fairly expensive_ test (along the lines of GCMS, NMR, or many of the other qualitative analysis).

Reagent tests ala what Dancesafe sells are great harm reduction, if the pill fails the test, the pill certainly has 0% MDMA. However, they will _not_ be able to identify that you are taking _pure_ MDMA. I imagine any MDMA+other substance mixture will flag positive. In addition there are probably a few non-MDMA substances that will false-positive that reagent test.

There's an organization out there ([https://www.ecstasydata.org/](https://www.ecstasydata.org/)) that does GCMS analysis of pills, the data on what they find (in terms of ratio of substances) is public. So if you want a bit of a sampling of what type of things get sold as "molly" / "ecstasy" you can look there.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. I did not mean to imply that the results are lab grade quality.

To clarify, by "pure MDMA", I did not mean that the substance is 100℅ pure MDMA, but rather that it does not contain other active adulterants.

With reagent tests you can be reasonably sure that a given pill does or does not (most likely) contain only MDMA and (most likely) contain no other (common) adulterants.

If you want to be sure on the actual amount of MDMA and be absolutely certain it contains nothing else, then you absolutely need a lab test.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How many images am I able to upload before Flickr locks my account? - <AUTHOR> http://kimasendorf.com/fickr/

<comment><USER2> Hm, that's from 2011. Should be marked as such. I wonder if it's true today?</comment>


The Chapel Parallel Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://chapel.cray.com/ <comment><USER2> Fortress ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_\(programming_language\))) and X10 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_\(programming_language\))) were the other two languages that came out of the DOE HPCS program ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Productivity_Computing_Sys...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Productivity_Computing_Systems)) that might be interesting if you liked Chapel.

Other aiming-for-HPC languages include co-array Fortran ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coarray_Fortran](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coarray_Fortran)) and Unified Parallel C ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Parallel_C](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Parallel_C)).

I never really saw any of them while working in HPC, though. It was just Fortran, C, and sometimes Python. The Python would really just call out via SWIG to a C function for the numeric kernel.

</comment><comment><USER3> The overview paper [1] is a reminder of the pace of change in computing:

> DARPA's HPCS program was launched in 2002 with five teams, each led by a > hardware vendor: Cray Inc., Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SGI, and Sun.

It also has one of the more amusing euphemisms I've heard in a while:

> In 2003, the HPCS program transitioned to phase II, and a _programmatic > downselect_ occurred, enabling the Cray, IBM, and Sun teams to pursue their > proposed research plans.

[1] [http://chapel.cray.com/papers/BriefOverviewChapel.pdf](http://chapel.cray.com/papers/BriefOverviewChapel.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks seriously cool. I need to spend a day or so really diving into the documentation, but if they can actually get this completely built and optimized it looks like it has the right features to be a systems language for the age of massively parallel and cloud computing.

I'm especially interested in the domain maps - I need to read more, but it looks like a system that separates the semantic view of a data structure (this is an array of integers, you can perform these functions on them) from the implementation details of in-memory layout and distribution across systems. Essentially, you seem to be able to adjust the algorithms on your data structures and the (extremely performance-critical) representation of them somewhat orthogonally.

</comment><comment><USER5> Chapel emerged a while back from DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems project along with the Fortress (now defunct) and X10 programming languages. Out of curiosity, is there a reason Chapel is a getting attention now?

</comment><comment><USER6> How not to promote a language: hide almost all examples of source code for the language behind at least two clicks in PDFs. I was finally able to find an example of defining a variable after visiting the Tutorials page and reading through the first two and a half powerpoints, the first two not containing a single line of Chapel code.

Seriously, if I need to spend ten minutes just to find out what the language looks like where an example is somewhere between the extremes of the ten lines of code in the "quick reference" chart and the 313-page formal language definition, I'm probably not going to dive into the setup process to get the thing running when I can just go learn Rust or whatever.

[https://twitter.com/MozElevator/status/368467593805328384](https://twitter.com/MozElevator/status/368467593805328384)

To someone on this project: you'll get a heck of a lot more community behind your code if you have at least one or more pages that look like the following:

[http://dlang.org/comparison.html](http://dlang.org/comparison.html) [http://coffeescript.org/#overview](http://coffeescript.org/#overview) [https://www.python.org/doc/](https://www.python.org/doc/) [http://doc.rust- lang.org/tutorial.html#syntax-basics](http://doc.rust- lang.org/tutorial.html#syntax-basics) [http://learnyouahaskell.com/starting- out](http://learnyouahaskell.com/starting-out) [http://tour.golang.org/#1](http://tour.golang.org/#1) [http://www.scala- lang.org/documentation/getting-started.html](http://www.scala- lang.org/documentation/getting-started.html) [http://clojure.org/getting_started](http://clojure.org/getting_started) [http://www.php.net/manual/en/intro- whatis.php](http://www.php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php)

<comment><USER7> The fifth bullet point on the page has a link to the examples directory.

[http://svn.code.sf.net/p/chapel/code/branches/release/1.9/te...](http://svn.code.sf.net/p/chapel/code/branches/release/1.9/test/release/examples/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked on the Chapel team in MN about eight years ago. I'm glad to see they're still actively working on the project. It seemed very promising then.

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks definitely interesting. I'll have a closer look and play around with it a little to see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER10> From the little I saw, it seems to be a pretty nice language.</comment>


Online streaming sites and URL obfuscation - <AUTHOR> https://thesquareplanet.com/blog/resistance-is-futile <comment><USER2> Is a shorter solution possible?

Is decompiling SWF and/or de-obfuscating Javascript really necessary?

Years ago, I approached these sites like the author in the blog post. I spent hours reading about Flash and figuring out the schemes websites used. I decompiled swf. I also tried rtmpdump, livestreamer and other all-in-one solutions. I used early youtube downloaders (clive, etc) and later quvi. I also used /dev/bpf to capture HTTP requests. I tried it all.

I can relate to what the author is trying to do. I never settle for "streaming". Download only.

However I found over the years either the websites have made things easier or I was simply trying too hard. Or maybe I just am not interested in the type of video that is served in this way. For some reason it takes much less effort now.

To make sure I am not imagining this, I decided to try one of the author's examples.

I chose projectfreetv.so

1\. I followed a link on the main page for some TV show I have never seen.

2\. I read the HTML.

3\. I noticed /watch/?aff_id= URL's.

4\. I chose the first one, 493165, and followed it.

5\. I read the HTML.

6\. I noticed a URL pointing to a website that serves TV shows and followed it.

7\. I read the HTML.

8\. I noticed a URL pointing to an MP4 file.

9\. I downloaded the file.

I assume I got the TV episode on offer. The screen size is a little small but the file was about 89MB and appeared to be the full episode.

Total time: less than 10min

What did I use? sed, netcat, less and ftp for the download. The entire process is a one-liner.

If anyone has some more examples to try, please list them. I would welcome the challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here: for some sites, that approach works well, and this is what I originally did (and why I decided to write streamsh in bash). Have a look in the "tricks" directory and you'll see some of the much simpler solutions that are tried first. However, an increasing number of sites try to hide the URL, and through increasingly complicated means. The article is about vidbull.com, but there are others. They often also layer multiple obfuscators (vidbull uses both JS obfuscation and URL encryption for example). While it's true you can get pretty far just by scanning for mp4s on some mirrors, they are becoming fewer and farther between.

<comment><USER2> vidbull looks more like the old "file storage locker" sites that were popular before the megaupload crackdown. Isn't this the same content you can find using torrent sites? Is it likely that vidbull would have something for which no torrent would ever exist? Sorry for my ignorance.

<comment><AUTHOR> No no, there are torrents for all of these videos (at least usually). However, torrents are slightly less convenient in that you can't play the file until the download completes. For me personally it's also an upside that HTTP is easier to proxy, and there's no need to seed. That said, torrents will probably be a better solution for many people. If you're interested, I wrote a tool a while back that scanned torrent sites for the newest episode of a particular show and automatically downloaded and started the torrent: [https://github.com/jonhoo/smore](https://github.com/jonhoo/smore). No idea if it still works, but shouldn't be too hard to get it up and running again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> rtmpdump [1] and livestreamer [2] are other good tools for this type of thing.

I've always had trouble trying to rip JWPlayer videos that sit behind a login. I did manage it but I had to stream (second-by-second) the entire video.

[1] - [https://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/](https://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/)

[2] - [http://docs.livestreamer.io/](http://docs.livestreamer.io/)

<comment><USER4> Youtube-dl [1] is my go to tool for pulling video content out of a page, and its source [2] is a nice lesson in de-obfuscating the sites it supports

[1] = [https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) [2] - [https://github.com/rg3/youtube- dl/tree/master/youtube_dl/ext...](https://github.com/rg3/youtube- dl/tree/master/youtube_dl/extractor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "streaming freedom" is a really clever euphemism.

</comment><comment><USER6> At the end he says something like "We need Encrypted Media Extensions to get ad free streaming...". Hmm, never thought about that this way. Maybe he is right, but couldn't it be that with EME the ads will not be sitting next to the player, instead the streamed video will contain the ads? Or does anybody believe (enough) people will pay for streaming on youtube or similar pages?

<comment><USER7> > the ads will not be sitting next to the player, instead the streamed video > will contain the ads?

This tech already exists, and it's called 'Server Side Ad Insertion', with Brightcove, The Platform, Adobe and Google all offering solutions.

It's actually pretty cool - it works by instead of streaming a baked file, the client gets a 'live stream' URL and ads are inserted into that stream, dynamically, just like regular video. It's like having `badge.svg` image that's actually a PHP script that dynamically creates an SVG.

I'm not overly familiar with video tech, so I've definitely butchered the exclamation.

<comment><USER8> And then ad blockers will snip out the ad portion of the stream and the cat and mouse game will continue.

<comment><USER9> VCRs did that long before streaming became popular, as in those days the only way ads could appear were as directly in the video signal.

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

Not surprisingly there was some legal action, but I think it's rather unenforceable in practice, and saying it's illegal to do so is nearly equivalent to saying that you do not have the freedom to change the channel, look away, or even close your eyes - a rather scary situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a long time I've used the by hand method of URL extraction either inspecting source code and searching for .flv or .mp4 filetypes (or simply "file:*"). The other method I use is the built in developer tools "network" tab of chrome under "inspect element". So far, I've only encountered one host (sorry I cannot remember the name) which I wasn't able to extract the source file via one of these two methods.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the second method I used to use quite frequently, but it means you have to open your browser, click play to get the video to load (which will spawn a torrent of ad pop-ups and captcha prompts and whatnot). This way I can get the download straight from the command line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How do you use streamsh?

[https://github.com/jonhoo/streamsh/blob/master/tricks/jwplay...](https://github.com/jonhoo/streamsh/blob/master/tricks/jwplayer.sh)

<comment><AUTHOR> stream.sh <video URL (preferably the embed URL)> <filename to download to (without extension)>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Many of these sites have started supporting iOS. Wouldn't it be easier to spoof iOS Safari and then only have to dig around in JavaScript?</comment>


Why Is Beijing So Worried About Western Values Infecting China's Youth? - <AUTHOR> https://www.chinafile.com/features/whys-beijing-so-worried-about-western-values-infecting-chinas-youth <comment> st-fresh lol, obviously Western Values have infected American youth.. so why would they not be? It's said China is more afraid of Christianity than anything else.. I would say this is fact.</comment>


Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker-finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml <comment><USER2> The neatest outcome would be that restaurants will (should?) stop singing their alternative non-infringing songs to those celebratimg birthdays.

On a possibly related note, here's something I've been wondering about. A few years ago phrases like "I love LA" or "I love New York" became "I heart <whatever>". Is this also some kind of a copyright issue? It sounds so ridiculous that I couldn't imagine radio and tv stations using using it if not by force.

<comment><USER3> "The neatest outcome would be that restaurants will . . . stop singing . . . songs."

IANAL, but I believe that particular practice is prohibited under the auspices of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, while not legaly binding as such, forms the linguistic basis of legal constructs within binding covenants and treaties to which the United States is a signatory.

The fact that this practice continues should surely be pursued with the utmost priority by all those concerned with probity and justice among civilized peoples.

<comment><USER2> Yikes! I literally have no clue what you are saying. Not sure how we connect alternative happy-birthday songs at restaurants with human rights.

Are you joking? Maybe this is just sarcasm bordering on being a little dark, but it would be funny. This is where seeing someone's face uttering the words would convey a lot more information.

<comment><USER3> It's a joke. I would rather have a root canal than have the wait staff of a chain restaurant come around and sing me one of their obnoxious birthday ditties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The copyrights were filed with the U.S. copyright office at some point. If the copyright should be found invalid, does that obligate the former copyright holder to return licensing fees? I somehow doubt it. The licensor acted in good faith; if you now own a worthless license, that is not their fault. Indeed, Warner themselves probably bought the copyrights from someone else (they were founded in 1958) believing them valid. Willful fraud, on the other hand, is another matter.

<comment><USER5> Shouldn't the question of willful vs. accidental fraud be the decider in whether penalties are faced, rather than just returning incorrectly claimed fees?

The same way that if someone accidentally pays too little tax they'll be told to pay the difference and will do that, whereas if they lie to try and pay less taxes then not only do they have to pay the difference, they'll also get slapped with fines and/or prison time.

Otherwise the model is there to claim fees you don't have a right to, wait until you get stopped, put your hands up and say "oops we didn't realise" and keep all that money.

edit: Should point out I am giving an opinion on the logic, not the law.

<comment><USER6> If I'm not mistaken, accidental fraud just penalizes for the value of the fraud, and may wind up being limited to restitution for those who had WB come for collections AND come forward about it. Willful fraud come with treble damages. But I am not a lawyer.

<comment><USER7> I always cringe when I see this "treble damages" because it must be a person who doesn't understand English very well. Tri_p_le is spelled with a _P_ after all, isn't it?

Then I googled it and found out that is actually the name of the law. It means triple damages. It's from British English and the phrase is still correct in American English.

 _facepalm_

<comment><USER8> Double/treble

Duplicate/triplicate

Duplex/triplex

Duple/triple?

'Triple' is the weird root-isolation here.

<comment><USER9> The original Latin verb from which numerals are built is "plicare", which is why in italian you have basically the same word as the original Latin: multiplicare (multiply), duplicare (to double), triplicare (to triple) etc.

I guess the softer "b" versions come from some French influence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Until this happens, one could use something like this :P

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc)

</comment><comment><USER11> It blew my mind when I heard that "Happy Birthday" was copyrighted. So glad to find out that it's bullshit. Make those lousy, greedy bastards pay for being epic trolls.

</comment><comment><USER12> Title is unclear -- I thought this meant that it was now out of copyright, not that someone has field suit.

<comment><USER13> It is out of copyright by any reasonable definition, but the copyright office has so far failed to recognize this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would seem the lyrics would be hard to enforce copyright on, because you change the lyrics for each person you sing to. Happy Birthday Dear (your name here), etc.

Yes, I'm being overly technical. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> The article isn't clear on the current copyright status for the song. It was first published in 1918. Copyright for songs published prior to 1978 runs out after 95 years. Therefore it should fall into the public domain this year, regardless of any lawsuit.

<comment><USER16> The article is blogspam. You want this one:

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmma...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker- finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml)

Which also has the full text of the filing. Basically they argue that the _melody_ dates to at least 1893, first copyrighted in 1896, and that this copyright expired in 1921. The _lyrics_ were first mentioned in a 1901 newspaper article. No attempt to copyright them is known until 1912, through a songbook in which they would not have been eligible for copyright as a new song. Although a series of copyrights were also filed in the 1930s, they were all for specific new arrangements of the melody, never for the melody itself or for the lyrics, since the melody and lyrics already existed, and the melody had already been copyrighted once and expired.

If their historical research is correct, then neither the melody nor the lyrics could possibly be under copyright in the present day, and most likely could not have been under copyright even when some of the earliest lawsuits for infringement were filed; the latest the melody could have been under copyright was 1921, and the latest the lyrics could have been under copyright (from the original filing of the 1912 songbook) was 1930.</comment></comment>


The death of skeuomorphism - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-eulogy-for-skeumorphism

<comment><AUTHOR> See also the section "Arguments against skeuomorphism in digital design" at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph)</comment>


Bad Working Conditions, part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.crazyontap.com/topic.php?TopicId=56627

<comment><USER2> I have a client that is in the business of supplying equipment to studios in Hollywood, very high end equipment. The offices are tricked out to impress studio executives. The employee kitchen id full of SubZero refrigerators, commercial ranges, and the like. The theater for demonstrating the equipment is the size of a small movie theater but the seats are rows of leather easy chairs. Thirty or so fit in a space that would hold a hundred or more regular seats.

All the offices are taken so my space is in the projection booth above the theater. It's 6 or 7 feet wide with equipment racks along the wall behind me. The walls and ceiling are painted black. Whenever a demo is going on, and usually a demo requires several days of tinkering with the projectors, a projector is running and the door to the server room behind me is open. Do you have any idea how noisy a projector is? It competes quite well with the server room. And the lights are out, and the chief engineer talks very loudly, almost as if he were deaf. And projectors like temperatures similar to those of servers, because they generate huge amounts of heat.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Part one is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=900809></comment>


Allwinner VPU support for the Linux kernel - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bootlin/allwinner-vpu-support-in-the-official-linux-kernel <comment><USER2> Allwinner would be pretty foolish not to fully fund this endeavour (including stretch goals). They couldn't do it themselves this cheap. They'd make up the costs in new sales faster from FOSS-minded devs in no time flat and they'll have minimal recurring dev costs in the long run.

To me this is a no-brainer.

<comment><USER3> > "Allwinner would be pretty foolish not to fully fund this endeavour"

Why would they fund it? If they saw the potential benefits, they could probably open source their own closed source drivers and avoid this Kickstarter being needed, or at the very least provide documentation to speed this work along.

<comment><USER4> If I were Allwinner, I'd be quite nervous about open-sourcing my code. Who knows what patents it infringes?

<comment><USER3> Patents for what? Algorithms? I've heard similar arguments/excuses made before, I'd like to understand if there's any legal precedence for them, or if it's more of a hypothetical risk.

Lastly, with the 'supply of documentation' approach, does this (to your knowledge) carry the same legal risks?

<comment><USER5> The API would expose what IP cores are inside the GPU.

A competitor could easily dissect the code and figure out what blocks and/or techniques are violating their patent rights.

<comment><USER3> > "The API would expose what IP cores are inside the GPU."

How would an open-source driver developed by a third party be less effective at doing so?

<comment><USER5> The third-party is probing into a black box. They have no idea what is or isn't there. So it could be plausible deniability on the side of the chipmaker.

<comment><USER3> How about documentation then? Let's say Allwinner releases C header files, plus high level descriptions of what each function does. Do they still maintain plausible deniability if the hardware design infringes on patents?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do more work on mpeg-2?

Couldn't that path just be left without acceleration, being it's a less complex codec to begin with, usage is not growing, and the data sources are likely smaller to begin with (no 4k for example)?

<comment><USER7> It's still useful for some applications. ATSC digital broadcasts in the U.S., for example, are in MPEG-2, as are the signals provided by many cable companies. I have an HDHomeRun Prime, and purchased the MPEG-2 HW Decoder license[1] for my Raspberry Pi 3 to make things a bit smoother.

[1]: [http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license- key/](http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/)

<comment><USER8> Isn't the Raspberry Pi 3 powerful enough to do MPEG-2 decoding in software?

<comment><USER9> Not if you want it to do anything else at the same time, and not if you need de-interlacing of the 1080i streams that half the over-the-air channels use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What kind of hardware is this that makes it usable for encoding/decoding mpeg2/h264/h265? Is this something that should be exposed as a general programming target instead of a set of video specific APIs?

<comment><USER11> It's a DSP firmware turned into silicon. If you look at for example the VP8 decoder registers for a Rockchip VPU here:

[https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/8118991/](https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/8118991/)

You can see it's quite specific to the primitives the codec needs. If you want general purpose, we now have Vulkan for that.

(And this one is reasonably low-level. On some like the Raspberry Pi, you throw bitstream over the wall to a coprocessor which gives you YUV back)

<comment><USER12> On Raspberry Pi it's not clear who is _co_ processor, actually.</comment></comment></comment>


Articles Every Programmer Should Read - <AUTHOR> http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2014/05/10-articles-every-programmer-must-read.html <comment><USER2> It would probably be enough to google for "what every programmer should now about <subject>" before starting to develop software for a new subject.</comment>