OpenBSD disk encryption (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://xn--thibaud-dya.fr/openbsd_softraid.html <comment><USER2> I think that almost every experienced Linux user has some secret love for *BSD deep down, myself included. They just seem to get it right for the majority of times.

</comment><comment><USER3> Recently there are more and more BSD related news :)

<comment><USER4> I think that's great. The BSD projects have been extremely undervalued. OpenBSD provides OpenSSH, LibreSSL, etc. FreeBSD provided a lot code to Mac OS X and used used in a some commercial products (Playstation's OS, Juniper routers, etc.).

The BSDs have worked on shoestring budgets. Let's hope this attention leads to more sponsorship!

<comment><USER3> And DragonFlyBSD provides HAMMER [https://www.dragonflybsd.org/hammer/](https://www.dragonflybsd.org/hammer/)

Worth mentioning, BSD were the only systems that disabled Intels RNG after leaks that it might be compromised and Intel cooperate with NSA.

[https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/)

[https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html](https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html)

[https://www.dragonflybsd.org/donations/](https://www.dragonflybsd.org/donations/)

<comment><USER5> With regards the RNG, to be it showed a lack of understanding of how seeding RNG generators work.

Perhaps Intel's RNG can, in some cases, be persuaded to produce a low-quality, or otherwise broken stream. This seems plausable (there could be a deniable 'bug' which causes this to happen), but there are many low quality data streams fed into the random number generator, it never hurts to add another.

However, for things like VMs, soon after startup the CPU RNG is about the only possible source of random data, so I suspect there are more users who are being hurt by not having a well enough seeded RNG than those being helped by it being disabled (which is none).

If these two points seem contradictory, they are not. It would always be better to have multiple sources of quality input to the RNG, because as long as one of them isn't corrupted / low quality, you will get decent quality random numbers out. Safety in numbers!

<comment><USER6> > because as long as one of them isn't corrupted / low quality

There's a hidden assumption here that they are independent. Without malice, that will be true. However, a malicious CPU might, for example, sniff other sources in order to produce a bad mixture. It's unlikely, but not impossible, and certainly something that intelligence agencies would do if they had the chance.

<comment><USER5> That would also require breaking the mixing function (which no-one knows how to do, and is typically a high-quality hashing function), and measuring the other sources (many of which are related to details of how the kernel does various things, like measure hard drive latency).

You could, in principle, hard-wire understanding of some kernel's version of the mixer, and crack the used hashing function, and then inject nasty bits into the random number generator.

However, there is no way you could ever plausibly deny what you did at a future date when the chip is eventually photographed and you could easily break it by just tweaking the random number generator (which happens almost every kernel version anyway, as new methods of gathering randomness are added).

If the CPU really was willing to go to that extent, it would be much, much easier to just monkey-patch the code to edit the register containing the returned random number, whenever rand() (or whatever) is called.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's with this highlighted comment? Are you guaranteed corruption on every half terabyte?

> "XXX - this does not handle the case where the read/write spans across a > different key blocks (e.g. 0.5TB boundary). Currently this is already broken > by the use of scr_key[0] below."

<comment><USER8> Based on my reading of the article, it says that OpenBSD always uses the same key, scr_key[0], and does not implement the use of different keys for different parts of the disk. I haven't looked at the OpenBSD source code to confirm this, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> interesting domain name. HN shows it as xn--thibaud-dya.fr but browers show it as thiebaud.fr (accented e) . Reminds me of something I read here on HN about a month ago about the history of web/URLs

<comment><USER10> It's Punycode.

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

In Firefox, you can force it to always show the encoded form, as HN had, with network.IDN_show_punycode. Not as pretty, but may protect you against homograph attacks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Get Well Soon – AI-based online diagnosis - <AUTHOR> https://getwellsoon.ml/ <comment><USER2> This site demonstrates quite efficiently why it's plainly illegal to advertise the claims that it makes in the headline.

<comment><USER3> I flagged this submission. It's not just letting you explore symptoms, but collecting names and ages from individuals without a bare minimum effort to post any kind of privacy policy. Who's behind the site? How can I contact their HIPAA privacy officer (a requirement in the US at least)?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an open source demo application. Not a commercial website, neither intend to be one. Here is the code - [https://github.com/mastercoder82/getwell- soon](https://github.com/mastercoder82/getwell-soon) Look for yourself and check if your name is collected, social-engineered or sold to insurance companies.

P.S - If you have even little knowledge about browser dev console, you will know that the name doesn't even leave your browser.

<comment><USER3> There are a few counter-arguments to that. First, it's impossible to determine that the source on GitHub is the same as what is deployed to a server. Additionally, having to locally debug any given site in order to trace whether or not information is being transmitted is an unrealistic expectation.

I trust that your intentions are in the right place, just that when it comes to medical-related things it's worthwhile to err on the side of caution. If some information is not being used, it's best not to ask for it in the first place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense. Removed the "name" field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, our family doctor jokes that patients would come to him and say 'Oh, I googled whats wrong with me, I just need your second opinion' :)

Jokes aside, human doctors won't be replaced in foreseeable future, but many people will screw up their lives because non-human gave them the diagnosis (to read, or ai, or webpage), and be late for receiving the appropriate medications.

Think Theranos, but with far greater potential (because there are no physical tests here, it's just text, so the reach is greater) to screw people to not seek the correct help, in a timely manner.

If anything, there should be law outlawing websites like this.

<comment><USER2> _" If anything, there should be law outlawing websites like this."_

There is, don't worry. This would be 'Standalone Software' that is labeled as:

"intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, in man or other animals"

So, by claiming to be a Medical Device, it's regulated. And since it seems to be a pretty lousy, unapproved, medical device, it's actually illegal.

Maybe when Theranos.com comes available, these guys could try to snag it though!

[1][http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidanc...](http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/Overview/ClassifyYourDevice/ucm051512.htm)

<comment><USER5> I'm curious -- does this kind of regulation apply to a site like WebMD as well?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm getting an Internal server error on every click to Submit.

AJAX Post in dev tools: 403 Forbidden Authentication Failed

</comment><comment><USER7> I just gave this details for a common, non-life threatening condition and it suggested the likeliest condition (at 1% probability) was lung cancer.

Still being worked on, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apparently my shoulder pain is caused by...an internal server error?

<comment><USER9> As is my post nasal drip. I always suspected I was a cylon.

Good idea though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The API calls point to [https://api.infermedica.com/v2/diagnosis](https://api.infermedica.com/v2/diagnosis) which is currently yielding a 403 Forbidden on every query. It looks like [https://symptomate.com/diagnosis/](https://symptomate.com/diagnosis/) uses the same API and is currently functional, for what it's worth. (I certainly have no affiliation and would not endorse any of these tools.)

For what it's worth, I tried a query about chest pain lasting 5 minutes and associated with diaphoresis but without radiation down the left arm, and it offered "unknown diagnosis."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, using Infermedica API. The monthly free limit exhausted just within 10 minutes of posting on HN, and that's why 403 errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I typed in "ear pain", and it didn't come up with any conditions.

EDIT: Anyway, what we really need is a crowdsourced solution, where we can automatically correlate our conditions with the conditions of thousands of other patients, and find treatments that have a high probability of working.

We really need this, because right now, for certain diseases there are hundreds of different possible treatment paths. See e.g. the number of drugs available for "depression". We really need big data, the expertise and experience of our doctors alone is not good enough anymore.

<comment><USER12> I feel like an Elon Musk type needs to take on healthcare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey. What data source are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://developer.infermedica.com](https://developer.infermedica.com)

<comment><USER13> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Getting error 500 popups on Android after selecting a suggested symptom.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure UK insurers are looking forward to snooping on this sort of information.

Also: The hypochondria is strong in this one.</comment>


Detect logical fallacies in text using Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amsa/fallacy-hunter

<comment><USER2> Cool Project~</comment>


The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980 – 2020 (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/1997/07/longboom/ <comment><USER2> What about the insane housing costs for the poor and middle class, and the stagnation of wage growth? Clearly it hasn't played out the way they predicted.</comment>


Profitably brings Fortune 500 analytics to small business - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/14/demo-profitably-brings-fortune-500-analytics-to-small-business/#disqus_thread

<comment><AUTHOR> We just launched today at DEMO, very exciting to get our MVP out there.</comment>


How Much Code Should My Developers Be Responsible For? - <AUTHOR> http://www.daedtech.com/much-code-developers-responsible/ <comment><USER2> My former boss, as much as I did not care for him, taught me an extremely valuable lesson: before you even begin writing code, write out the functions of your code, what it should do, and how it should work. I have stuck to this method every time and it has saved me a lot of time.

Had he taught this to all his former employees, I may not have had a job. However, I was hired to fix bugs in his software. While I certainly improved the program myself and fixed many bugs, there was just years of code on top of code on top of code, and while it worked, there were bugs. It was like patching up one thing caused another bug in the code.

Reminds me of that saying... 99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs in the code, take it down, patch it around, 117 bugs in the code.

I think developers are largely responsible for their own code, but everyone has their own coding style, and if the boss is just hiring random coders and not giving them a method for how to write their code, they are likely to do their own thing.

From adding a comment section at the top of the project and each page, explaining everything.... it definitely helps. But if one just throws a bunch of programmers in there over the years... there are bound to be mistakes and plenty of bugs .. resulting in profit loss. Keep code well documented and understandable so that when bugs are found, they can be quickly fixed.</comment>


Armed police raid unlicensed barbers - <AUTHOR> http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-11-07/news/os-illegal-barbering-arrests-20101107_1_barbers-deputies-raids <comment><USER2> Do you need a license to wash cars in the USA as well?</comment>


JPMorgan drops terms 'master,' 'slave' from internal tech code - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-jp-morgan-race-exc-idUSKBN2433E4 <comment><USER2> Dropping the term 'master' and 'slave', assuming both or just the latter are being used makes sense, but 'blacklist' has never carried a racist connotation, and that's just as a matter of fact.</comment>


No, Really:  ad-blockers are not the problem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sentimens.com/en/no-really-ad-blockers-are-not-the-problem/ <comment><USER2> The problem is ad-blocking is forcing ads to either look like content or forcing content to become locked up and paid for.

For someone that didn't particularly pay attention to ads but liked the free content it kind sucks now.

<comment><AUTHOR> The argument being presented is that it's not just about looking like content. If you stop there, you have something sleazy: the user is being tricked into seeing something he doesn't wish to see. However, if the ad has perceived value (e.g. it presents pertinent information to the user), it becomes content -- albeit sponsored. Naturally, these things have to be labeled as such, but from a a marketing perspective it works where the other solutions get flagged.

In short: native advertising doesn't work if you're trying to hoodwink your end-user into seeing something he doesn't particularly care to see.

>For someone that didn't particularly pay attention to ads but liked the free content it kind sucks now.

Which content are you referring to?</comment></comment>


PostgreSQL 9.1 will be NoSQL - <AUTHOR> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2010-04/msg00003.php

<comment><USER2> I read the whole thing so you don't have to: "It's time for us to switch to something fresher. I personally would have preferred XSLT, but QUEL is almost as good."

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh, April is the cruelest month for techies if only because of today.

</comment><comment><USER4> Too predictable...

</comment><comment><USER5> This one actually made me smile. Probably because I just woke up and it's the first one I saw.

</comment><comment><USER2> April hates developers

</comment><comment><USER6> I hate April 1st. [shakes fist]

<comment><USER7> Would it be appropriate to flag such articles? We might be able to clean them off the front page effectively if so.

<comment><USER8> I think the most appropriate thing is to just mark as [April Fools].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Joke all you want - this just may be the kind of turn one or other DB actor on the market will take.

<comment><USER10> What sort of turn is that? Their joke talked about replacing SQL with a syntactic variant. Do you mean other elements of the lauded NoSQL? Guess what : We've had them for time eternal. SQL Server replication allows you to decouple from CAP. Lots of RDBMS solutions are shared nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like it. When is 9.1 coming out ?</comment>


Own the Demand - <AUTHOR> https://florentcrivello.com/index.php/2018/10/22/own-the-demand/ <comment><USER3> Being a distributor is no better than being a producer. They have different strengths and are reliant on each other. Who holds the power in the relationship is cyclical.

All platforms rise and eventually decline. Amazon has already started going downwards after it sacrificed quality in its chase for scale by opening up its platform to third parties and their counterfeits. Similarly, we'll see ecommerce in China move from Tmall to independently owned stores that allow for differentiation, higher service quality, and owning the customer relationship. Just like offline stores are now coming back, for the same reasons.

<comment><USER4> There is a reason platforms decline.

Biggest one is when platform gets too fat and lazy and then torn apart by competition (Myspace, Aol).

If competition is too weak (AMZN) or platform is too strong (GOOG) - <USER2> decline is afar.

That said - I think the biggest and quickest riches are made by connecting supply and demand (platforming) instead of owning either of these.

<comment><USER3> Amazon is fat and lazy now. They grew by offering the lowest prices on products you know, with fast shipping. Now, you don't know what you're buying or that you're getting the best price, and shipping isn't as fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That number thrown out at the end is pretty mind-blowing: Google pays almost a tenth of their total revenue just to stay as the default search browser on Safari on iOS and MacOS. And Apple gets nearly 5% of its total revenue from this one deal.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure if we've seen this entirely play out yet. We're now seeing content companies (supply) starting to exert their power over the internet/media intermediaries (Disney is the recent example), so it may end up being a case that the intermediaries had a good thing going for a while, but...

IMO, you either produce something or you don't. Someone may be able to interject themselves into your transactions with your customers, but, ultimately, the power lies with the producer (they can just stop producing).

<comment><USER7> > the power lies with the producer (they can just stop producing).

It's not that easy. This presupposes that there isn't another producer that is capable of creating a comparable product. There's many studios that can deliver high quality movies. If Disney stops producing new content, they can continue to coast on the old content but those other studios will step in and take a growing amount of Disney's share of the market. As long as the new studios are willing to make a deal with the intermediaries, those intermediaries won't be the ultimate loser in this scenario. Disney will be.

Now if all the producers of high quality content decide not to deal with an intermediary then the story plays out a bit differently. In that scenario everyone is a loser and we go back to piracy being the best solution for most consumers.

<comment><USER3> Content producers trade in IP. There is no substitute for the Lion King. Now, the challenge is creating such IP consistently.

<comment><USER8> > There is no substitute for the Lion King.

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

<comment><USER3> Yeah, no.

<comment><USER8> Read through "The lion King" controversy chapter

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TLDR; The author argues that you want to aggregate the demand side and offload actual production, inventory and even logistic to someone else. The example is Kylie Jenner who runs billion dollar cosmetic business through 5 employees and only handles brand/marketing while offloading everything else to others.

This is similar in advice from various life coaches like Tim Ferris et al. The problem with this model is that your supplier eventually will take over your marketing with parallel product and leave you in dust. Margins in business are like vacuum and people will eventually move in to reduce them.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for this. I was bruising reading the article.

I also agree with your point about vacuums in supply chains closing quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "owning the demand", "aggregation theory" are all powerful advice, but it seems that it's mostly for big companies or stars. And maybe for VC based startups.

But is this relevant for a small scale entrepreneur ?

<comment><USER12> I think he says it right there "In short, if somebody successfully inserts themselves between you and your customer, they can exercise tremendous control over you, including taking a big chunk of your profits or outright killing you."

Read "you" as "large incumbent" and "somebody" as the small scale entrepreneur.

<comment><USER11> OK, but how ? how does a small scale entrepreneur with few resources manages to achieve such difficult feat ?

<comment><USER13> You innovate. You deliver a similar solution in a simpler "good enough" way (rebar). Or solve something cumbersome (stripe), or create new markets (invision, Netflix)

<comment><USER11> Stripe raised $245M. Netflix raised 3.1B. invision too raised significant funds. and rebar isn't about a demand side business, it's a better supply side business.

<comment><USER14> The ultimate trade-off made between self-funding and raising outside capital is how much you can invest in growth at an accelerated rate. Unless you have a pre-existing brand you can tap into (like Kyle with her cosmetics or Clooney with his Tequila), it's nearly impossible...though some companies have done it. But, even with outside funding, outsized success is still rather difficult to achieve, so it's a matter of personal preference what route you go down at the end of the day.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Parent Over Shoulder: Apps Help Mom Snoop Online, But Should She? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/11/21/165485240/know-what-your-kids-do-online-there-s-an-app-for-that <comment><USER2> I always find it interesting that parents committing acts that would be illegal for other, less related adults get the bye. I mean, if you worry about Big Brother, why are you being Big Brother?</comment>


Dick-move by Instagram - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sefsar.com/post/29972108283/this-is-a-bit-of-dick-move-by-instagram-share

<comment><USER2> It's already not in the EXIF data anyways. Instagram API is assigning its own geo tag to it, so why bother with all the extra info that they don't need to track?

Granted, still a dick move– they could just store it, but I think you're imagining that they're going to strip EXIF data (which they already do anyways)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a reasonable interpretation of this that would make it not a dick move? Like maybe they assume if you don't want to share your location now, you never did in the first place?

<comment><USER4> That should be a separate action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not necessarily a dick move... just sloppy Web 3.0 engineering as usual</comment>


Web Search Navigator: Keyboard Navigation for Google, YouTube, GitHub, Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/infokiller/web-search-navigator <comment><AUTHOR> Web Search Navigator is a Chrome/Firefox extension that adds keyboard shortcuts to Google, YouTube, Github, Amazon, Startpage, and Google Scholar.

Note that this extension focuses on searching, not general keyboard navigation. For the latter, you should look into extensions such as Vimium [1], Tridactyl [2], and Surfingkeys [3]. Alternatively, if you are willing to use a niche browser, you should look into Qutebrowser [4], Nyxt [5], and Vieb [6].

I use it with Vimium C [7] and Firenvim [8], which are both excellent browser extensions that focus on more general keyboard navigation. This provides reasonably good keyboard-based web browsing in Chrome/Firefox.

Disclaimer: I'm the project creator.

[1] [https://github.com/philc/vimium](https://github.com/philc/vimium)

[2] [https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl](https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl)

[3] [https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys](https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys)

[4] [https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser](https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser)

[5] [https://github.com/atlas-engineer/nyxt](https://github.com/atlas- engineer/nyxt)

[6] [https://github.com/Jelmerro/Vieb](https://github.com/Jelmerro/Vieb)

[7] [https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c](https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c)

[8] [https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim](https://github.com/glacambre/firenvim)</comment>


"They would have said faster horses" – An example of asking wrong questions - <AUTHOR> https://codarium.substack.com/p/they-would-have-said-faster-horses <comment><USER2> There is a quote by Don Norman on the matter that I like very much (from "The Design of Everyday Things"):

> Requirements made in the abstract are invariably wrong. Requirements > produced by asking people what they need are invariably wrong. Requirements > are developed by watching people in their natural environment.

<comment><USER3> In my experience, requirements are never fully developed until after many iterations have been undertaken.

You can never perfectly plan how an application or any other arbitrary convenience should be in isolation of the user. You can certainly get very close, but there is something about actually using a thing that cannot ever be fully simulated in an authentic way. The way a knob feels to a person is not a thing you can ever truly encapsulate and store in a database field.

Constant feedback and iterating on that feedback is how you arrive at ideal outcomes. The art of developing software or other high-quality user experiences is a very iterative, chicken-egg-style problem. It is a human problem. Being prepared to throw it all away and start over each time you iterate is one of the most powerful things you could ever hope to do. Just keep a copy of what you tried before as a stick to lean on. Each time you iterate, that stick should be getting stronger. Eventually you wind up with a bunch of sticks and you can start to chop them up, reorganize them, and build a proper structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > No one could think about cars at that time. Correct.

Ford Motor Company was Henry Ford's 3rd car company, and by that time there were probably 15+ car companies in Detroit alone.

As a curious aside, his second car company is still around too. He left after serious disputes with his financial backers; they decided to liquidate the company and brought another experienced Detroit engineer in to do so, but he recognized the value and convinced them to continue, renaming it the Cadillac Automobile Company.

</comment><comment><USER5> Stated another way: Listen to your customers, but don't feel obligated to do exactly what they say.

> Just ask "What is your top problem?"

People will answer this question in the form of imagined solutions or improvements to existing systems, so it's not a matter of simply asking a different question, it's a matter of digging into the answers and needs.

<comment><USER6> Jeff Bezos says this exact thing in a slightly different way: "If you don't listen to your customers, you will fail. If you only listen to your customers, you will fail."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > P.S. This article is not GPT-3 generated

This stands out to me. When I frequented reddit, folks would often preface a post with some sort of pre-apology about their English. Now, when I read articles with strange grammatical features, my first thought is "what are the chances this was generated."

Recent Personal Anecdote: While struggling to get OS X to run in a VM, on AMD architecture I came across several unattributed guides with informative, topical content where the language was just a little "off." It occurred to me that they might be ESL or translated, but none had any attribution. For some reason it finally struck me as odd that such detailed, technical guides wouldn't mention an author or at least acknowledge "The team at xyzWebCollaboritive."

Several guides under the same domain name contained relavent information on my very specific search topic, with langue that was "uncannily" askew.

Is this just me?

<comment><USER8> Google simply generates the guides on demand and throws a link somewhere in the search results for you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Faster horses is still a challenge for solutions that aren't always obvious to people. A vision isn't always the one the customer wants. An obvious solution isn't always the best either. One way I found to help overcome this barrier is testing for symptoms based on assumptions about your new feature set and what you aim to solve:

Cars have wheels. Okay,tell me about your problems with horses and the way they move?

Cars don't need rest. Okay, tell me about your problems with stopping to feed your horses?

Cars are faster. Okay, walk me through a time when you were late to something - why so?

It's easy for a customer to answer all three answers separately, but they'll struggle to put them all together and come up with "car". They've never seen it before. However, you can still validate because their problems are very real. When you have your concept, you can show it, and then validate the final solution.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure who this blog is talking to, it feels like classic straw-man argument. Ford never said the car wouldn't solve anyone's problem, in fact his pitch was that the car was _better than_ a faster horse.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree with you. I think this blog post is about the same.

Whatever Ford said, this quote is famous (most likely he did not say that, btw)

<comment><USER10> > Whatever Ford said, this quote is famous (most likely he did not say that, > btw)

I just took that bit at face value, but you are right... and makes this blog post even less palatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is also known as the XY-problem [1]. People want a solution to X, and they think Y is the way to solve it. But they're having trouble doing Y and so they ask for help with Y.

The problem is that Y is not the best way to solve X and you're confused about why they'd ever want to do Y. Life would be much easier if they had just asked for help solving X.

[1] [https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66378)

<comment><USER12> Is there a name for the reverse, when Stack Overflow assumes you don't understand your constraints and propose all possible solutions to what they think is X that aren't a solution to Y?

<comment><USER13> It has been called the YX problem a few times on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23599250)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22842747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22842747)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> love the ending about not being gpt3 generated :) nice touch

<comment><USER15> I have this fear I'm reading GPT-3 produced text now whenever I read an article or comment that seems to lack a lot of context or goes off on weird tangents. It's a unique feeling, similar to experiencing gaslighting or the uncanny valley of text. I think this new phenomenon needs a name

<comment><USER16> Confusion. You're experiencing confusion.

I get the exact same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a person who has ridden horses I would say horses that don't poop. After that, horses that don't throw you randomly, need constant vet checkups, make tons of dust, smell funny, or bite. Far in the distant horizon of the problems with horses is speed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's my problem with that quote: it comes from the same man who also said _" Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black."_

Considering that context, I view his horses quote as another expression of his contempt for what other people want, even when they want something reasonable.

Also, Henry Ford did not invent the car. Cars existed before he mass produced them; had he asked people what they wanted, people probably would have said _" a car I can afford"_ not _" a faster horse."_

<comment><USER19> Here's my problem with people that have heard a few popular quotes and think they understand the whole story: for the first several years the Model T came in several different colors. It switched to black only because of demand, then eventually they went back to offering multiple colors when they could.

Ford only switched to making black cars only when the demand was so high that the production lines couldn't keep up. It wasn't contempt for the customer that made him do it, his choice was either to streamline the production process or to raise prices so that demand would drop. The selling point of his cars were that the common man could afford them, not that they were colorful. He made an appropriate business choice, not some user-hostile choice.

<comment><USER20> But I think that quote is usually invoked by people when they blatantly disregard the wishes of their customers.

It's just a way to justify "screw the users, they have no idea what they want, I know what they want, because I'm a genius like Henry Ford, and my users are stupid."

I heard that Steve Jobs was fond if saying that. And sure, Steve Jobs had a lot of success, but people don't remember his failures as much. Steve Jobs was responsible for the Apple III, a fiasco for Apple computers because Jobs insisted on not having fans in it.

He was adamant that the era of fans in computers was over, and the Apple III was a disaster that kept overheating. I am sure that when engineers tried talking Jobs into reconsidering, they just gave them that Henry Ford platitude and dismissed them.

I have heard so many times disastrously unpopular UX redesigns and dark patterns were justified with pigheaded platitudes about how stupid users are.

So regardless of what Henry Ford himself actually meant at the time, the perception today is that it was justification for disregarding customers.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Free placeholder logos for side projects - <AUTHOR> http://thelogo.site <comment><USER2> "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Zero License. This means you can download and use or modify and use the logos for free, without asking permission or providing attribution. Just don't sell them."

The CC0 license allows reselling. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Types...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license#Types_of_licenses)

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies. I had attribution license before but changed it to CC0 later and then forgot to take out the don't sell phrase. Should be all set now.

<comment><USER3> I love some of those logos. I find that once I love the style of a few of someone's work, I tend to like their future work too. I'm not a designer, so I'm not sure if there's a vocabulary to describe the "style" I'm attempting to refer to.

Is there a way I can contact you when I (or someone I know), need some art work in the future? Your email or website is not listed on your profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks. I just tend to make anything random at night after a long day of work. Glad you like it. I just put up a contact me button on top right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If you came looking for free designer logos, we suggest you look in the directory next to free engineers."

I love this! Thanks for building this site.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is good stuff. Thanks for making. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We will making more regularly so keep checking back or subscribe so they come to you.</comment></comment>


Fire! A brief history of theater fires in New York City - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/fire <comment><USER2> Having seen this essay as it's appeared a few times across HN and elsewhere, a key lesson is the _extreme_ tendency of those who are responsible for and more specifically _benefit by_ externalised risks, to deny, equivocate, and outright lie about those risks.

It's a lesson that applies as well to numerous other technologies: asbestos, lead paint, leaded petrol, CFCs, tobacco, vaping.

And, just possibly, some aspects of information technology.

There's also the long history and tremendous advances in fire safety, mostly through avoidance, but also through improved response and firefighting techniques. Among the notable aspects of the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire was that it was the largest urban fire in well over half a century. I've just looked through Wikipedia's listings for an earlier comparable event, and thought there was one in the 1920s or possibly 1930s, but there the only remotely similar fires were in the 1900s or 1910s, with the Great Fire of San Francisco (1906) possibly being the most notable. Also suggesting that the SF fire and quake left such an impression simply because there _was no comparable disaster_ following it. Previously, great, city-wide conflagrations occurred with distressing regularity.

</comment><comment><USER3> And here's a brief history of the phrase "yell fire in a crowded theatre," and its use in politics and law, and in modern free-speech issues: [https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a- ha...](https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed- apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Tangentially - I can't recommend Ken White's first amendment related Make No Law podcast highly enough - and his podcast on the often mis-interpreted but oft quoted "fire in a crowded theatre" is great.

Episode is: [https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no- law/2018/06/fi...](https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no- law/2018/06/fire-in-a-crowded-theater/)

</comment><comment><USER5> As a stagehand, I've spent an inordinate amount of time on fireproofing, worrying about fire, as well as working with fire officials to make sure the risks are minimized as much as possible. Oh and also cleaning up after one fire, which destroyed a major-market local news studio and pushed Regis and Kelly out of their studio. It's no joke.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Gerhard claimed that the average life of a theater in the United States was only about thirteen years due to fire._

Though approaching retirement age, I have always wondered why such a thing had its own phrase, "...'fire' in a crowded theater." I mean, c'mon, how often does _that_ happen? Well, apparently, before any of us were born...

Which brings to mind how many other idioms we have that haven't been relevant in our lifetime. Heard a podcaster the other day ask his fellow hosts where the phrase he had just used came from: "nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure." He didn't forget, he hadn't even seen any of the movies. It is entirely possible that the source material is older than he is. (I saw it in the theater, which remained uncombusted, if I might bring this back on topic.)

<comment><USER7> Interesting; I didn't know that was a movie reference. I had usually only seen it used in conjunction with "kill it with fire" (eg when fire wasn't enough).

The first recollection I have of it is this reaction gif (which must be 15+ years old by now): [https://tenor.com/view/stickman-nope-funny-crazy-destroy- gif...](https://tenor.com/view/stickman-nope-funny-crazy-destroy-gif-3430252)

<comment><USER6> Well, FWIW, you're missing a good action-filled sci-fi flick that still stands up well after 35 years, IMO. (And believe me, I know what it's like to recommend movies to youngsters that, whoops, didn't age so well. I'm looking at you, _Eacape from New York_.)</comment></comment></comment>